3 Easy Ways Get Business Leads On LinkedIn (And What Not to Do)

Rob  00:09

Alright everybody. Today’s episode is going to be about LinkedIn, and Lane and I got a chance to talk to Dan. You’ll meet him in a minute. But Lane, what did you get out of this episode?

Lane  00:19

Well, Dan’s a great guy. And really the, my key takeaway is the right way to connect to folks on LinkedIn for success.

Rob  00:28

Yeah, I agree. He does a great job of that. And I’ve seen it firsthand in person and on LinkedIn. And, you know, one of these that I forgot about, which is crazy, because I used to use it all the time of Sales Navigator. And he talked about how he uses it. And so I think that was one of those other key nuggets that I get out of this interview. So we’d like to thank Dan for coming. And so with that, let’s just get started.

V/O  00:51

You were listening to The Slow Pitch Podcast, a podcast about selling less and closing more.

Rob  00:58

Alright, welcome back, everybody to The Slow Pitch. And today we have a special guest, but I see first is Lane is joining us today. So how’s it going, Lane?

Lane  01:06

Doing fantastic, Rob, and yourself.

Rob  01:08

That’s good. I’m doing well doing well handling the storm rip through here. But that’s okay. We’re, it was just a little tiny thing. It was just over us. But we also have another guest who’s having weather of his own, but he’s afar. So we have joining with us, Dan Gershenson. He’s in with a windy city in Chicago. How’s it going up there, Dan?

Dan  01:25

Hey, Rob. And Lane doing just fine, windy and all I’m making it through

Rob  01:31

Well, that’s good. Yeah. Try not to get blown over up there. I know. It’s, I mean, it gets the name for a reason, right? Yes. All right. So today, we are going to talk through or talk about LinkedIn. And a lot of people use LinkedIn really, really well. And some people use it very poorly. And I think we want to talk a little bit about in terms of if you’re a salesperson, what’s the best way to use LinkedIn to acquire leads, to interact with people, to kind of just how do you use it the right way. And LinkedIn is set up for sales essentially, right? As I know, it was created for job, create a job hunting, and getting another job or whatever. But it’s also been very, they’ve positioned it very well for sales and sales teams. So let’s talk a little bit about that. So Dan, give us a little bit of, you know what you do in a nutshell, so people kind of get an understanding of why we’re talking to you too.

Dan  02:23

Sure, sure. I am what’s called a fractional CMO, Chief Marketing Officer. And I help small and medium sized service based businesses that don’t have a marketing department to speak of, they may have a one coordinator or one manager, but that’s about it. And that poor person is usually swamped beyond belief with what they’re being asked to do from a marketing standpoint. So when I come in, I am really the quarterback of the marketing for that firm, so that not only can I give them some strategic direction, but I can also act as the Creative Director for their marketing makes it help them make some really important decisions, and also mentor anybody who is on staff as well. So the whole sum of doing that, hopefully, when it’s when it’s done extremely well allows that business owner and some other salespeople to free be freed up to really focus on sales and not try to focus too much on marketing, which sucks them away from what they really need to do, which is getting out there and talking to prospects and servicing their clients.

Rob  03:40

Yeah, and I think there was a word in there that people don’t quite understand, like when I first heard this term, and I’m sure you already know what it is. But when I first heard the term, I was like, what does that mean? I don’t understand the fractional piece. Yeah. Do you use the word fractional?

Dan  03:55

Yes. So I get that question a lot myself. And it is partially to describe like a regular full time CMO is somebody who’s going to be on site every day and be a full-time salaried employee, whereas I’m somebody that you might bring on for a fraction of that time and a fraction of that cost. But still, with all the experience and capabilities of the full timer, you’re just maybe needing someone like me for let’s say, 20 hours a month, or 30 or 40. You just don’t necessarily need someone to come in for 160 hours or more, you know, a month so yeah, that’s where being fractional in that way is really what the value is there.

Rob  04:44

Yeah, so everybody understands, too. I’ve known Dan for a long time. And one of the things he’s really good as the is the copywriting, the messaging, the crafting a message to help people understand what you do, how you do it, and all that good stuff and why you do it. And he’s really good at some of those things. Like where the detail, as the technical piece of describing something very quickly and easily so people go, Oh, I get it. I know what you’re talking about. That being said, let’s talk a little bit about this kind of why we’re talking about LinkedIn today. Because your focus, what I see you on is LinkedIn. And I always sit there wondering because you do a video, you do posts, you do different things. And I was wondering myself, is Dan getting business out of this? What is he doing? Or is he just like lollygagging over there on LinkedIn all the time?

Dan  05:25

That’s really what a lot of its brand strategy, content marketing and lollygag.

Rob  05:33

You should put that on your business card.

Dan  05:36

But yeah, I get that question, too. And someone was asking me recently, you know, what, what kind of business? Do you get out of it? Or what’s the impact of it? And when you’re posting like this, and I say, well, first of all, my goal is not to get immediate business from doing posts. I mean, I’m pretty realistic about that. And I think most people should be in that somebody’s not going to see your post and suddenly be like, oh, yeah, hire that person. Like, that’s, that’s my guy. That’s my marketing guy. That post was awesome. I would be a little frightened. Actually, if somebody did that, I think that would be a little too soon. So my goal is more just to hopefully get a meeting, out of like a discovery call or discovery meeting off of that kind of thing. That’s really what I look at as my goal. So when I think about what we’ve often heard this term, the buyers journey, or the marketing hourglass, when they come into LinkedIn, and they might see me for the first time, well, they’re only in the know, stage. And then if they liked my post, or in the life stage, so they’re not even trusting me yet, or anything like that. So I don’t, my goal is simply to get them to not only like me by liking a post, but rather to have a deeper conversation. And the deeper could be, you know, that could be a client eventually. But that could also be a strategic partner or somebody else.

Rob  07:08

Okay. Yeah. So and I think a lot of people don’t understand when you’re posting as much as you do. What I find is, is that if I haven’t been on LinkedIn for 24 hours, I start scrolling and guess who I see?  There’s Dan. Yeah, yeah. And but what that does is it reinforces what you’re saying. And yeah, I can always tell it. Hey, I don’t want to see Dan anymore. Yeah, I could do that. Yeah. But at the same time, there’s a lot of times I’m looking at it and like going, what is he saying now? And or what is he talking about? Or what is he bringing in into the mix? Sometimes you’re bringing other people into the mix, too. So to me, I feel like there’s value in doing the posting piece that you’re doing so that you can get in front of the right people? And then in that messaging, you’re, I’m assuming you’re hoping you’re striking a chord? Yes. Is that how you’re doing that?

Dan  07:53

Well, I have to admit, it is probably something where you know where it’s this is this is a look inside my brain here. And the scary place. Yes, is that when I get a thought, and it stays in there for a while, it is something where I can’t almost go on to the next thing I’m supposed to do until I get it out. And I just have to get it out right there. There is no draft folder with me at all. And you know, what’s funny about that, Rob, is that it was something that happened with the pandemic. And I don’t know what it was, but I just felt this need more than ever, with all the situations of the world where I just didn’t know what kinds of things awaited my business. And I had all the stuff I wanted to say, and I’m like, I don’t want to polish it. I want to get I need to get it out now. And so, at first that was like, Okay, that’s a day or you know, that’s, that’s just something where it’ll be for a flash in the pan where I do that? Well, it really ended up being the way that I always operated ever since. And so when people say are Is it your goal to to post every day? I say isn’t it’s more that these thoughts, for whatever reason into my head that have to do with you know, they’re not random, they are something to actually do something where you’re, you’re getting it out there. And that’s really what’s going to happen.

Rob  09:30

Yep, and, I think the cool part is, is that when you start to do that, you know what you’re, you’re, you know, kind of what’s in your head and what you want to say. Yeah, and then you get going and then what do you do you write something out? Do you

Dan  09:43

No, I really don’t I write it out, you know, right there in the status update. But before the you know, the couple of years ago, oh, I would absolutely polish it. I would have it in The draft folder, I would put it in a Word document, I’d come back to it, I mess with it a little bit more. I have not done that in years. And the thing is, is that granted, I know that for me, it’s a little different because I write for a living, and I edit for a living. So I have a pretty good sense of, is this ready to go? Okay, is this frankly darn good enough to put it out there? I think sometimes people, they fall in love too much with their posts. It’s, you know, what are you in that moment, you will never have more energy and passion around what it is that you’re saying, as when it’s at first in your head, it will always tend to, you come back two or three days later, it’s not going to be the same. It’s going to be something where they are just words that are kind of floating out there. And you may even say, well, I don’t think I need to post that right now. And that’s what would sometimes happen several years ago. And when I posted it, oh, sure. Yeah, they they loved it. But it was so you know, weeks would go in between, and I just realized I was like, you know, I’m not writing a New York Times bestseller here, I’m writing a post that is hopefully going to resonate with people. I think the other thing that is, you know, something that I think about a lot is I don’t want to leave it on the shelf. I don’t want to leave any thoughts out there. And I also people were shocked, I must say they were shocked at some of the things that I would come out and have as as my tone. And I said, you know, look, this is how I am. You just haven’t seen this side of me.

Rob  11:44

Well, that’s interesting. You say that because that was my initial, I guess I’m feeling when I first saw you starting to post them. I was like, this is not the Dan, I know what’s going on here. Like he’s going off on people like what is his deal?

Dan  11:57

Yeah, I really felt like I had been hiding that for a long time, a long time. And there’s kind of this thing of, well, you have to have this persona, you know who they see on the web is different than who you are face to face. And I never really thought that I was just always hiding that side of what I always felt and how it was going to be. And most people were pretty cool with it. They thought it was good and fresh and anything like that. But there were a few who are like God, who are you? Yeah. And I said, Look, you don’t see this part where I am a pretty down to earth person. I think when people get to know me and everything. And the thing, though, that I do not want to do anymore is sugarcoat advice, because I feel like that’s not what I do. When I get with people. I don’t sugarcoat it. And clients have said, just tell us what we need to do. Don’t hurt, don’t worry about hurting our feelings, you know. And I can tell you, I would not be doing anything that I’m doing right now, if it wasn’t for clients who said, I want you to not hold back, we need this. And so every time I would post I would hear some of those clients in my head. I would hear them say, don’t hold back, don’t sugarcoat this for me, I need to hear what’s going on, you know, what do I need to do to make change? And it changed everything about my approach. But I can tell you this, that guy that you see is what you see is what you get. It’s a what I have stopped doing is just trying to put on some kind of special persona that is the Dan LinkedIn versus the Dan, in the real world, there is no difference. And I have to say it’s probably the one of the most liberating feelings there is.

Rob  13:49

I bet

Lane  13:50

It sounds like what you’re saying is marketing on LinkedIn really isn’t about sending messages. As soon as someone connects with you saying, Hey, you want to buy my service?

 

Dan  13:59

We definitely I don’t know you guys ever see that? Once or once or twice a day, maybe?

Rob  14:07

Once or twice an hour? Yeah.

Dan  14:09

Yeah, I think that has been one of the worst things. Unfortunately, that happens. And so many of these things. I do say it’s like, it’s not LinkedIn. It’s the people who like it’s always it’s LinkedIn is not the problem that yeah, is there’s connecting and pitching but yeah, I think it’s very weird. I said, why don’t you folks who are going to do something like that we’re going to pitch just walk around all day and instead of having a conversation just, you know, read off a business card or read off a note card, you know, hi name, it’s nice to meet you. I do this. How it’s ridiculous and you’re going to feel ridiculous. But that’s how ridiculous it is when you’re connecting and pitching to someone. It’s such an unnatural way to sell, you know, do you ever go into a conversation and say, Hi, I’m Rob, and this is what I do and blah blah blah in the real world? Of course, not like that would just be bizarre.

Rob  15:14

I mean, you don’t know me that well, Dan. Yeah.

Dan  15:18

Here’s my card. I have had that happen, actually, a couple times in my life, Hi, I’m… and press it into my hand. But for the…

Rob  15:30

Essentially, what you’re saying is, is the same as doing that at any networking event on LinkedIn, you’re like, you just walk up to somebody, I had it. Actually today, I’m sitting at my computer, I see a request a connection request on LinkedIn. And it’s in the financial planning industry, if you will, like their, their financial planner, you can tell what’s the first thought that goes into your head, when you see a financial planner that wants to connect on LinkedIn,

Dan   15:53

I absolutely think they’re ready to hit me up with a sell of some sort

Rob  15:58

Every time… and will only hold I clicked, except just because I thought I actually let it set for three days. And I saw it come popping up and they popped up again, they email me, LinkedIn emails me and he says, Oh, by the way, you get this request. Okay, fine. And then I accept it. I’m like, Alright, I’m going to just verify my, my intuition here. Yeah. And within 20 minutes of connection, ping email, hey, looking for this blah, blah, blah, is what I have is what I do. I can get you a better this I can get like, oh, my god, are you serious right now? So yeah, disconnected. I just yeah,

Lane  16:32

I do the same. The second I get that; it’s I just immediately disconnect.

Rob  16:35

So, why do people think that that’s effective? That’s what I don’t understand.

Dan  16:38

Yeah, I don’t know. Because I will tell you this. There is a camp of people on LinkedIn who are like, well, you know, you have to accept every single connection, because you just never know who’s going to be your next business connection there and what it’s going to lead to. And then you have people like me who are like, yeah, that’s never actually happened ever. Like not once, like net? Never have I ever accepted somebody where they automatically or even close to within a few days or something became a client or yeah, no, like, that’s never happened. And why? Because what we are doing is a complex sale. And I think it’s so much better to quite honestly, I act as the dumbest person in the room if you have to and ask more questions than making statements. I do not even pretend to write in there with a whole bunch of answers and say, we do this, we do that. When you start with we I’m out. Like, I’m done. I’m just connecting. Hi, Dan, we do know, I’m out. Click, like, there’s no, there’s no getting back. You know, I mean, it’s just like,

Rob  17:51

…in person. Have you ever done that in person where you’re like, you’re at a networking event, and they start something like, they just shake your hand and like, hey, we do this? Do you ever just like turn around and walk away? Like don’t even talk anymore?

Dan  18:03

There are a couple times where my eyes will give me away, let’s say and I don’t have a good poker face. Somebody with somebody? Does that? They can pretty much tell like I’ve my body is there, but I’ve checked out. So yeah, it’s because it’s so weird to me. It our relationships are so much better when we become a curious student of what everybody does. Whether I do business with someone or not, I always am trying to understand what they do a little bit better. And I think that’s just a great, great thing to have to just say, Well, I’m just going to see where this goes. Because you don’t know yet what they’re going to be. They can be a strategic partner, they can be a client, they can be somebody who could you could give a good introduction to, but to right in there with assumptions or worse to make a pitch. I don’t pitch at all I just I do this crazy thing called having a conversation with somebody and seeing if there’s a fit

Rob  19:07

Never heard of it.

Dan  19:08

Yeah, and it’s just to me, it feels very, very strange. And that’s from coming from a guy who used to do pitches as part of the advertising world. But I don’t do that anymore.

Lane  19:20

Is there an effective way when you do make that connection with somebody someone accepts your connection request? Yes. Is there an effective way to not immediately hit them up to sell them a service but to start that connection and kind of conversation?

Dan  19:33

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the best ways to do that is look at I am biased towards a tool of LinkedIn called LinkedIn Sales Navigator. I think Navigator is a tremendous tool for helping you understand the contact the potential lead and the company, so that you’re going to see certain events or actions associated with that person or their company that you You can speak to these other jokers who are doing connect and pitch, they’re doing copy and paste, they have no interest in doing any kind of custom message at all. Whereas I look at, you know, let’s say, Lane, you were working at a particular company, and I’m looking at your profile. And in LinkedIn Sales Navigator, I can see if you posted something recently, I can speak to that I can see if you change jobs in the last 90 days and what that job change was. Or if you left from one company to go to another, I can kind of look at what the role is, and maybe to do some things about what it is that you’re doing now. And I and I don’t again, go in with any assumptions about you. But rather, I might say something like, Hey, Lane, great to be connected to you. I really liked that post that you did. Blah, blah, blah. I wonder if what your thoughts are, you know, asking a follow up question in relation to that post and not selling or talking about what I do. Some people like to get right in there and say, Well, I do this, I have shied away from doing that. I probably haven’t talked about what I do until the third touch if there is one. And that in itself is a differentiator, they are expected just like Rob said, they are expecting you to say we do this and this and this to hit you up on LinkedIn or by email. How much of a differentiator is it when you can just say, really liked the post great to be connected to you have a nice day, and then suddenly, they’ll wait, there’s no, there’s no pitch there, what’s going on, this guy just wants to connect to me, he wants to have a relationship?

Lane  21:47

A relationship? What’s that?

Dan  21:50

I’m with this crazy guy who just wants to get to know me on LinkedIn. It’s so interesting. And so you know, that in itself is really kind of a nice way and a natural way to go into it. But when you are doing LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you are building lead lists and company lists that are going to give you plenty of fodder to make custom messages towards people one at a time. And that’s the thing I don’t have to tell you guys is that there’s a lot of people out there who are lazy as hell, and they don’t want to do that they’re there. They’re like, oh, yeah, but I got, you know, whatever, I got a goal to make, and I got a quarter to reach and yeah, okay, fine, you go do that. And you do your copy and paste, and you play the, quote, numbers game, which is the worst thing in the world. And instead, I’ll do my custom stuff. And where you get 1 or 2%, maybe I’ll get 10 to 20% or more. I think doing a lot of different kinds of scripts is totally fine. But make sure it’s custom.

Rob  22:52

How else do you use Sales Navigator? Because you know, when I’ve done it, I’ve used it to search other ways. What are you? What other things do you do?

Dan  22:59

Well, I’m also looking to curate people’s content, I don’t believe it or not made me look like it. But I really don’t like to post about myself and my thoughts all the time, I’d like to get a whole lot better at finding people’s posts. So I have about 100, 120 people or so that I’ve saved on a list in Sales Navigator that I otherwise wouldn’t really know about when they post something. But if they say Rob just posted something about this, and I go, Oh, that’s interesting. Be sure I could possibly see you in the feed. But what are the chances of that, whereas in Sales Navigator, I am able to see what you posted, I’m able to share it out, I’m able to put a comment on top of it and say you guys should check out this post from Rob and maybe even have my own thought on top of it. But I think when we have allies, and we are really diligent about trying to share their stuff, they will be wanting to share your stuff and not out of a like a guilt thing as much as a common… common allies and trying to do best practices together. So that’s, that’s h ow I do it.

Rob  24:17

Okay, and are you still active in the local chamber?

Dan  24:20

I don’t know if I’m active in Well, I’m not active in the like, the chamber in our town as much as other networking groups. So okay. I have about three or four networking groups that are of all different kinds. And so that’s a good question is, you know, when you’re, if these groups are different from each other, and so I don’t put all of those folks in one bucket, I’ll say, Okay, here’s this one, group, group A, group B, Group C, they all need a certain kind of love for me to share their thoughts. When I do that I, number one, feel like I’m giving them a lot more mileage on their post. That’s a really good thing. That way, I want to be able to put out my thought, but I want to put up their thoughts as well. And here’s the part that people don’t do enough of is share the thought, but then have your own thought on top of it, you know, you don’t have to be just sharing it and forwarding it saying, here’s this person great thought. Yeah, no, you ever thought to go ahead and put it on top of that?

Rob  25:25

Yeah. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I think the other question, the other question, I think beyond the chamber piece, have you ever used Sales Navigator, like, here’s one of the ways that I’ve used it. And I don’t know if this is helpful, or if you’ve done this or not. But I’ve had people that I met, and I go, wow, this is a person that I should be meeting, I need to be in front of that person someday, this would be I would love to meet this person. Yeah. And LinkedIn does so much. But when you get into Navigator, all of a sudden, you’ve got a whole other thing to look at layer to look at. But more importantly, what I usually try to do then is look on Sales Navigator, see what they’ve done, like you said, but Then who are they connected to? And then there are some limitations in LinkedIn, in terms of being able to do things just in the regular free version but when you get a navigator, there’s some other things. How have you used navigator that way? If at all?

Dan  26:11

Yeah, there’s a couple things that you can do. First of all, sometimes we think, Oh, I’m bothering that person. Rob So busy. I don’t I don’t want to bother with that. Yeah, no, it’s fine. You can give me like, 10 people you want to connect to? It’s fine. I mean, it’s one person reached out to me and said, “How well do you know so and so?” And I said, I don’t even know how I’m connected to this person, but I don’t really care. I’m like, it’s fine. It’ll probably give me an excuse to get acquainted with her. And that’s fine. Because it’s like, who cares? Like, the worst they’re gonna say is like, I don’t know who you are. Okay, fine. Bye. But other other than that, I genuinely think people want to help other people on LinkedIn, because it is a bit of business networking platform, I think sometimes we forget that, that you’re there to help other people. And as long as you know, it’s fine. You can be honest about knowing someone or not knowing someone. But from my point of view, I just let that fly. I just say, You know what, I think I know, I think I talked to him maybe five years ago, great opportunity for me to get back in touch, I’ll introduce you two. But it doesn’t stop there, if I was someone who wanted that introduction, I would make it easy on the person doing the introducing and say so and so I noticed is someone I would love to meet if that’s okay. Here is a good paragraph or so that you can copy and paste if you’d like talking about me that makes it feel like a natural something you wrote, hey, you should really need Rob he’s great. And this and this and this. They don’t have to write barely a thing. And how easy is it for them to just drop that right in and make that introduction? Because the roadblock many times we don’t like to admit it. The roadblock is oh gosh, I gotta sit down and do an intro for somebody. One of two things happen. You get the lamest intro that ever existed, which is lane, this is Rob. Rob, this is Lane get together. I think you guys have some things in common good luck. Like, what? What just happened? Like? I mean, there are people I don’t mind saying in this town who are known as like the master connectors, and I’m like, I Who is this individual that I’m supposed to have coffee with or zoom or whatever, I don’t know anything about them. Like, could you give me a little help here? I think people deserve that. So not only do they deserve it, but you will be making their lives easier by writing up a little script. And again, you can use this over and over and over again. Because it is really your one time script that you are going to paste ask people to paste into their message. And it’s about you know, I think it’s a really underused tactic. I think if you have faith in people and you give them a script bill, they’ll do it for you. So I have I have I have used that. And I certainly don’t have any problem people asking me about it making an introduction. But there’s you know, there’s one I have to give a shout out to a guy who I can’t take credit for this tactic but I thought it was brilliant is my friend Kurt Mercadante he he said you know, sometimes I look at who’s viewed my profile, which is not necessarily something I believe that you can do for free you can’t see everybody who viewed your profile. So what he does many times is I always was like oh how do I do this? How do I make that you know reach out I saw you were looking at me? No Yeah, many times it’ll just be Hey, I saw you liked this post or I saw you were you stopped by my profile. Not you were checking me out. You stopped by my profile. I see you’re in this business. Would you be interested in connecting? I mean, who’s probably going to say no to that?

Dan  27:10

I mean, there was one guy, especially sincerity looked at you. Yeah. Well, there

Dan  30:06

was. There was one once or twice. Some guy said, Well, was there a reason why you were reaching out? And I said, Yeah, because you were looking at me like, yeah, I didn’t initiate you were the one who was looking at me, buddy. So but yeah, that’s always a great thing. Were you we forget who viewed my profile. And then using that, I believe Kurt describes it as going on your lawn. There’s people who are coming onto your lawn, you might as well take advantage of it.

Rob  30:37

Yeah, the other thing I’ve done when I’ve had somebody do that, too, is just a simple statement or phrase. That’s something along the lines of I noticed you took a look at something that I posted, or I noticed you checked out my profile. You probably have no reason at all to connect, but I extend the invitation in case you think there might be a fit just someday have a connection in this industry.

Dan  30:58

Yeah. Yeah.

Rob  30:58

If not, if not, no offense, I take no offense, no worries. But it was it was refreshing to have somebody stopped by or you know that kind of stuff. Sure. And it’s one of those things where it’s just gives them a reason to say, well, it was kind of nice.

Dan  31:10

Yeah, Yeah, it’s amazing how much we can stand out by just being a human being, like, we, if there’s one good place, if there’s one good thing about all of these salespeople circulating around LinkedIn, and making sure that people now have their guard up thanks to them gives us the rest of us an opportunity to say, hey, you know, I think there’s a reason for us to have a conversation to see where something goes. And if you can, again, I think, really going to it naturally, I would not jump into the pool and start talking all about, you know how great you are and what you do, but rather talk about some things that you’ve noticed about them. One of the things, though, that I do think is very interesting, if you were to go to someone’s website, or you were to see something about, again, something they posted, but you’re almost giving a little bit of some feedback on them. In my case, I might say, Hey, I checked out some things about your website, it was just like three things, I noticed that you might want to take a look at maybe to improve it just a tad, if that’s something that interests you. And I may record something using Loom or VidYard that has a screenshare and says, here’s what I did here, here and here. And here’s what I might do differently. It’s pretty hard for someone to say, Oh, well, I don’t want to watch this guy’s video where he mentioned, like, how is somebody going to like turn away from that is the tools that we have. Now, even though we’re talking about LinkedIn, I think one of the most extraordinary tools that we have is the use of video in our messaging. Now, in our connecting, I mean, video card has done an incredible job of creating a Chrome extension that actually goes in your messaging, you have this little Spaceman icon on your message, somebody connects to you, you do that. And then all of a sudden, it’s Hey, Lane, great to connect with you. I noticed this and this and this. And, again, not pitching it all. But it’s so refreshing for people to see that. Because all you’re doing is warming them up and taking the first step forward. And it takes no nothing. There’s no equipment, there’s no, there’s no cameras, there’s no nothing, you’re just you’re going right into it. And I love what I see from video now with some of these tools, it just makes it so much better to do screen share and get those things off. I mean, it was kind of like, you know, what we were just talking about with how I how I might post well, how you connect, could be just as much that way. Not like, hey, I’m just going to throw something out there. But rather, just do a nice message and record it and send it out and put the link in there and you got yourself a nice warmer connection. They’re going to love that.

Rob  34:16

And people connect to something like that, too, I think is they don’t when they look at an email that’s different than everybody else’s, the messaging or the style, or the look or the feel, or all things that make you stand out, which is really kind of interesting. When I think about you and your LinkedIn and what you how you stand out. As you scroll through there, you stand out because of what you do and how you do it. You sit in front of your camera; you speak you talk and it’s like a short little clip. It’s not that long. And usually, it’s if it’s more than five minutes, it’s usually unusual. That’s not something usually does. It’s usually a few minutes and it’s something you can understand and get in relate to usually so there’s, to me the whole concept of having you come and talk to us was like, how do you use it? What are you doing behind the scenes there that we don’t know about? And to help other people to understand what they could do to change the way that they come across on LinkedIn, and whether you want to come across as one way or the other, you have the ability, just like any social media platform, to kind of formulate how you want to be seen, so that when people see you in person, they can know, okay, this is what they’re all about. And you kind of differentiate yourself that way. Yeah, I think that’s refreshing. Yeah, I think a lot of people don’t understand all that.

Dan  35:28

Well. I mean, the one of the things that people don’t even realize is, there’s a lot of different ways to reach out. There are, I’m sure there’s a lot of folks who don’t use the LinkedIn app. And if they did, they would see, you can actually do a recording of like, almost leaving basically a voicemail message in someone’s messaging, which the first time somebody did it to me, I was like, yeah, oh, that is nice. And if you want to, you want to talk about selling on LinkedIn, that guy sold me on taking two courses from him. And there will be more I joined his community. Because he the way if I remember, it was something like, Hey, Dan, I saw you voted on one of my polls about this. And this and this. I mean, he really uses polls for good reasons. Not, do you like peanut butter and jelly or not? Like he uses it in a way that is real research based? And any says, Hey, you voted this way, I think, tell me, is that a problem for you? Have you thought about that? And this is all stuff that’s being left on my voicemail of LinkedIn, in the messaging? And I’m like, oh, my gosh, you know, how in the world? Can you not respond to that? Because he’s reaching out to you. That’s not some canned recording that he’s putting out to 1000 people. So

Rob  36:59

It’s directly it’s targeted directly towards you. And there’s no question who he’s talking to. It’s about what you talked about what you what your response was to that poll. That’s interesting. Yeah,

Dan  37:10

Yeah. And so that’s a really fresh way to just use, you know, be a student of the people who you find to be your ideal client, or quite simply, really interesting colleagues that you think you could curate their stuff for. And, and you don’t need as many as you think. You don’t need to have as many clients as you probably think. You don’t need to have as many strategic partners as you think. But once you do, and you have a nice list going saved, then that that LinkedIn Sales Navigator becomes your new inbox. People don’t often view that as a CRM, but they should. It’s a really great way to tag people in countless ways. You know, it’s a secret weapon. Because if you’re Yeah, you think about it when you’re meeting with people, and then they go, do you know, like a good accountant for this or that industry? And you’re like, oh, I do. But what was his name? Like? Well, if you tag that person, six ways till Sunday of the different things, okay. He’s an accountant. He does this. He does that. Oh, yeah, actually, I do. And right there on the app, you’ve got yourself a connection. And that’s the power I think of navigator.

Rob  38:31

I agree. And I think, yeah, I think it’s underused for a lot of people. And there’s a lot more that you can do with it that people don’t even understand, you know, when I’ve messed around with it for a while. It’s like, wow, every time I turn around, there’s something I’m discovering a new thing. Oh, no, I can do that, too. Yeah. So I love it. I love it. I think it’s really important for people to go out and check out Sales Navigator, because I think it’s something that’s like I said, underused, and you can get a lot of value from it. It’s, it is a lot of money. It you know, when you look at it, you’re like, wow, that’s that much a month, really. But when you think about okay, well just let’s break it down. If you if you have a sale, and your sale is how much? Like how, how many times is it going to take to just make that back up? Oh, yeah. If you think about it’s not going to take that long, you know what I mean? So, the value is there, especially if you’re using it correctly. Now with that said, Lane, did you have any other questions?

Lane  39:28

No, I’m sitting here looking at Sales Navigator.

Rob  39:33

So we’ve got an interested, interested party. Microsoft slash LinkedIn, we want to let you know, Lane is purchasing because of Dan.

Dan   39:42

Yeah, and I’ll expect a nice little commission from Microsoft.

Rob  39:46

Yeah, just a small, small token of appreciation would be nice. That would be nice.

Dan  39:50

But you know, it’s funny, Rob, because the thing about it, I want to say I don’t know, $79 a month or something like that. Now maybe. Yeah. Well, you think about it and you go So I could have my ideal client list in about five minutes. Like, yeah, one, but you could have easily like 300 people.

Rob  40:10

Easy, easy.

Dan  40:11

How else are you going to do that? Like you’re going to Google like, so if you’re you take your hourly rate, let’s say your hourly rate is $250. Well, gosh, I mean, how great is that you could make that up in no time, because of all of these really nice, ideal clients that you’ve saved, and you’re able to see when they’ve made a post a change, etc. So…

Rob  40:38

Yep, who related to or who they’re who they’re connected to. And I find, yeah, and I find it’s really interesting to is to say, All right, I want to be in front of all the people with these particular titles, located in these particular areas, working for companies of this size, that are similar to this company, blah, blah, blah, you can just narrow down narrow down there. And obviously, you’re like, well, here’s 150 people that fit exactly what you’re looking for. You’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you’re right, five minutes. It’s like, I just, it’s beyond belief, what they can do. But at the same time, we’ve given them all the data, and they’ve just show you just sort it for you, right,

Dan  41:13

Well, and here’s the thing that I have to say as a caveat, because you’ve heard this I’m sure you guys have and I know I have is that, Oh, it didn’t work for me? Well, it didn’t work for you. Because let me guess, you paid for this thing. And you thought you were going to have clients lining up on your doorstep? Because of…you turned it on. Well, it’s not going to work. If you turn it on, or you do a bunch of matches, the real secret sauce is okay, you’ve got the names, you know who it is. And that’s no longer a problem. Knowing the ideal client is not a problem. Knowing how to message that person, how to have an ongoing conversation with that person how to be patient, not pitch them too soon. All of the types of ongoing messaging and outreach that you would do to them is really the missing link. When you have that going with the technology of navigator than you that’s really the secret sauce of it all.

Rob  42:12

That really is the secret sauce. Yeah. Listen, we’ve gone through a whole bunch of different things, you know how to have a message. That’s the correct message on LinkedIn, how to use LinkedIn, the right way Sales Navigator, we talked about that. The difference between what people should be doing who are in sales versus what they actually are doing is a little bit disturbing. And obviously, this, this show is about a lot of that, like, how do you position yourself to be the person that people want to talk to, when it’s time to buy what they want to buy? And you sell that? Right? So, and you had to do that through all these different pieces that are put together? So, with that, I think, Dan, I think what would be helpful for people is if they listened to you talk today and said, Hey, I want to get a hold of Dan, how would they do that? And we’ll put this in the show notes as well. How would they get a hold of you?

Dan  43:00

Yeah, they can get a hold of me by my email is Dan@HighCaliberBranding.com, And my phone number is 773-MY-CMO-16.

Rob  43:14

My-CMO-16. Yeah, I like it. Yeah. And then if they wanted to connect you with you on LinkedIn, should they start selling to you right away? Oh, why should they wait like five minutes?

Dan  43:25

Yeah, if you want to see what a revolving door looks like, the fastest connection and disconnection I’ll help you out five seconds. No, they should. They should absolutely reach out. I don’t bite. You know, let’s get to know each other first if that’s okay. You know, so yeah, don’t start the sentence with we I’m just warning you now.

Rob  43:52

All right, well, would that we have to go so I appreciate everybody listening in. And again, if you have your questions, please let us know. We’d love to hear them. But until the next time, Slow Down and Close More.

V/O  44:06

Thank you for listening to The Slow Pitch. Do you have a question about sales? Call or text your question at (608) 708-SLOW. That’s (608) 708-7569. Or you can email them to Questions@TheSlowPitch.com. Slow Down and Close More.

Rob  44:56

Thanks as always, for listening today. If you’d like this podcast, please subscribe. And leave us a review. We really appreciate it. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at The Slow Pitch. We were mixed today as always by Johnny Polakis and we were produced by High Gravity Studios, music credits and other notes are in the show notes section on TheSlowPitch.com And we’ll be back with another episode soon.