Episode 56: Making Sales Social & LinkedIn Best Practices With Bob Woods
Bob Woods
Bob Woods was one of the first people on LinkedIn… literally. He joined in December 2003 when LinkedIn was just a few months old, and he’s never looked back. An award-winning salesperson, Bob has utilized LinkedIn and social selling even before social selling was a “thing.”
Bob has trained and coached sales professionals around the world at companies big and small to effectively use LinkedIn and other tools to start sales conversations with qualified buyers. Specific companies where he has trained salespeople and teams include Experian, Penn Mutual, State Street, Fiserv, Triose, and UPS. He is the CMO of Social Sales Link, a company that guides sales and business professionals to grow their businesses by leveraging LinkedIn to start more targeted conversations.
LinkedIn continues to be one of the best platforms to build and maintain professional connections. However, no one wants to be bombarded with endless pitches and salesy talks every time they log in. Sara Murray sits down with Bob Woods of Social Sales Link, dubbed as the LinkedIn Sherpa, to discuss the right way to leverage LinkedIn to start more targeted and meaningful conversations. They go through the most common mistakes people make, the four impactful ways sellers can develop fruitful business relationships, and what's in store in 2024 for micro-influencers. Sara also undergoes a crash course as Bob checks out her LinkedIn profile while providing advice on profile optimization and value-added content creation.
---
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Making Sales Social & LinkedIn Best Practices With Bob Woods
Bob Woods was one of the first people on LinkedIn. He joined in December 2003 when LinkedIn was a few months old, and he's never looked back. An award-winning salesperson. Bob has utilized LinkedIn and social selling even before social selling was a "thing." Bob has trained and coached sales professionals around the world at companies big and small to effectively use LinkedIn and other tools to start sales conversations with qualified buyers.
Specific companies where he has trained professionals and teams include Experian, Head Mutual, State Street, Trios, and UPS. He is the CMO of Social Sales Link, a company that guides sales and business professionals to grow their businesses by leveraging LinkedIn to start more targeted conversations. They call him the LinkedIn Sherpa, and I'm so excited to have him on the show. Bob, welcome to the show.
Thank you. It's fantastic to be here. I appreciate you so much for asking me to be on.
I can't wait. I know we have a ton to get into so I'm going to jump right in and ask you. I have to ask about the origin story, what's behind the nickname, the LinkedIn Sherpa?
That comes about from the CEO of the company, Brynne Tillman. If you are on LinkedIn and social selling, you probably heard her name a lot more than mine, which is fine, because that's what she does. Her nickname is the LinkedIn Whisperer. We decided, "We think Bob needs a nickname." I'm back there thinking, and I view myself as a guide in the truest sense possible. Whenever we have been overseas, we hire guides and we hire personal guides. We try to go one-on-one or one with me and my wife as much as possible. A guide to me is someone who knows what they are doing, who knows everything, or as much as they can about all about them while having an ultimate goal.
In those situations, the ultimate goal is a guided tour of the Parthenon or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. On the Leaning Tower of Pisa, our guide also told us about many other things around the actual tower and about how other things lean there because of the soil and everything else. It's way too much stuff for me to get into, or quite frankly, even remember . That's how I view myself as a true guide. The LinkedIn Guide doesn't sound good. I have always liked the word Sherpa because it sounds cool. A Sherpa is a guide, essentially. It's a synonym. There goes LinkedIn Sherpa.
The LinkedIn Sherpa is on the show. I have been working with the Social Sales Link team and have been part of your community. I can vouch for you as an excellent Sherpa or an excellent link guide to orient the audience. Can you give a quick overview of Social Sales Link and what social selling means?
What Social Sales Link does is help whether it's large, medium, or even small organizations or people who are working more as individuals, whether it's an entrepreneur for a small company or professional coaches and things like that. We help them get conversations started on LinkedIn without being salesy. In other words, a very genuine, approachable approach or something like that. Very genuine and very authentic. We don't use automation. We are starting to use AI but even with AI, there are ways to use AI that are genuine and authentic.
We teach all of that and much more with the goal of ultimately starting sales conversations with the people who are either buying or if you are in a B2B type of situation where you need to get to multiple people because of that old statistic that there are 6.8 people involved in every B2B buying decision. We also help people get to the other potential decision makers and hopefully the actual decision makers within companies to start conversations with them in an effort to get everybody at the prospect company on board and get the proverbial signatures on the dotted line.
You are prospecting but you are using LinkedIn as the tool. That's why I gravitate to your group so much because I do feel that authenticity, I do feel the genuine piece. I'm excited to get into some of the more meaty tactical tools that we can use here. One question that I have is at a very high level. What are some of the most impactful ways sellers can either use LinkedIn to develop relationships or increase their sales? From a 30,000-foot view, what are the biggest things that people should be focusing on?
A 30,000-foot view, I would say three main things. Number one would be commenting on other people's posts. That's a big one for a couple of different reasons. It's a good way to show your authenticity as well as your thought leadership by commenting on the content of other people. It's because not only is the original poster seeing that all of the people within their network are seeing it too. That's all very important. If you are doing this, you can't put down great posts, and then leave it like that. Otherwise, you might as well click like and move on.
You need to add value. You need to add your voice to whatever the subject is that was posted. Whether you are what we call yes, and which is a principle in improv. You are agreeing and you are adding something else. If you are adding something a little different framing things a little different way, that's fine too. Make sure that you are adding value to whatever the post was so that you start to stand out as a thought leader in whatever area that you are in, essentially.
Always add value when engaging in other people’s posts. You have to stand out as a thought leader in whatever you are in.
Commenting on other people's posts is big. Especially if you are starting. If you are like, "2024 is going to be my year to be on LinkedIn, I'm going to own LinkedIn." That is probably the best way to get started. I have heard of people eventually getting deals from comments that they have made on other people's posts. It does work.
Engagement is number one. Number two is sharing. Sharing content. This has to be in a value-added thought leadership way in whatever industry that you are in. This also applies to the first one. You can't be salesy. We have been emphasizing lately and probably a little more than lately but we haven't been putting it like this, you can't be salesy. Don't talk about how you help people and help people. Don't be salesy. Don't do this expecting to push someone to a gated page that has content that they need to put their name and email address in to get. Just help them out. If you are going to refer them somewhere, maybe you can do that. That is salesy.
Help people out with your content. You can do that in a simple post. You can do it potentially with a poll. LinkedIn has polls. When polls first launched, people went nuts with them and used them for all types of stupid things. Thank God, we are over that hump. I hope, at least in what I have been seeing. People areusing them for what they should be used for. That's the genuine gathering of opinions and thoughts on whatever subject it is.
If you decide to do the poll, you should then plan on doing an eBook or something like that with the results of the poll and then adding your perspective on whatever it is that the poll was on. That could be a wide variety of things. Not only are you reporting what was in that poll but you are also giving your perspective to the responses that were in the poll.
You can also do videos. video, although it's not as impactful on the LinkedIn algorithm as it used to be. I still think video is big because not a lot of people are doing it still, even though you do see them more and more. It's very impactful to watch someone talking about whatever it is that they are talking about because it's much more than just text. You are seeing emotion. You are seeing their eyes. Again, you can't do that in text.
Video is not only important for posts but next to no one is doing video indirect messages. That's where it gets important because, with indirect messages, you can talk to the person, it's still a one-way conversation. Again, it's much better than text because you get context, you get emotion, and you get someone starting a message with you. "Hi, Sara. I got your recent message. I thought it was great." Whatever you want to say next.
It's not an AI bot making the message either.
As of December 2023, it's probably not. There are some video AIs starting to get fairly good but it's still not great. Everyone is like, "Is it going to be better in a year or two?" The one thing that I always say about AI is no matter what guess you make, half that in terms of time, if not, even more, because it's going to happen. Things are happening so quickly in AI. We talked before about how we are not going to focus on AI because we could do an entire show on AI.
Quite frankly, if I said something now, it would probably be out of date by the time this makes your drops. AI is incredible. It's going to be huge in terms of a trend in 2024, not only on LinkedIn but on sales in general. Again, that's another mind-blowing topic that deserves an entire episode on its own, as well as adult beverages on the side to take it all in.
For the human-made versus AI-made. Audience, if you want more details on AI for LinkedIn, we will direct you to Bob's podcast because he has a plethora of deep-dive content. We can't get into it now. I love engaging videos, and polls, and putting together a value-add seems to be the trend.
Delivering value, and then adding to that value. Polls are probably the best way to do that. With that content, especially with that value-added content, the third thing that we are going to talk about is profiles. Everybody's like, "Profiles? Who cares? It doesn't matter." It does matter. They are huge. Think of it like this. If you are commenting or posting, there are going to be people based on hopefully the kickass content that you have. Neither one of those things, they are going to want to click through to your profile.
If they click through to your profile and there's nothing there or if it's all salesy and the digital equivalent of the stereotypical used car salesman, and I do mean stereotypical here because there are a lot of good of them out there, you are going to turn them off completely and totally. The profile needs to be as value-added, as value-driven, as thought-leadership promoting, and as educational as the content that you put out there. If it's not, people are going to get turned off. End of subject. They don't even see a reason to follow you, connect with you, or potentially even reach out to you directly via message.
That was a 30,000-foot view. I want to dive into that topic in a minute but before we do, I want to talk about the biggest mistakes people make too, because I get turned off on LinkedIn often. I'm nervous, I'm turning people off or audiences are maybe thinking the same thing and that's why they are not even trying. What are some of the biggest mistakes people make? We will then get into some of the good stuff.
Let's bring back AI quickly for the one thing that you told me about that happened to you. Do you want to share it? I honestly think that that's the perfect example of AI gone wrong and why you shouldn't do this. Go ahead with your story.
Bob and I were chatting and I told him this story. For our audience who are connected to me on LinkedIn, you may remember not too long ago I posted a photo of me and my last living grandma, grandma Murray. I had asked her what were some keys to longevity. I had a lot of engagement. It was a sweet little Friday post. Somebody I didn't know, the only comment on the post said, "Thank you for writing and cheering your grandparent's sales journey." I was dying to write back and say, "AI did not support you here, sir. AI did you dirty." I didn't want to call that person out and embarrass them but it was so obvious that it was not a real comment.
That was either scraped directly by an AI or there are tools out there where you can read something and then have AI generate something for you, and then you can change it if you want that. I'm not sure which route the person who originally took this or made that comment did but it's obvious that they didn't care about what was up there because they left that ridiculous comment there.
It was so dumb. Using AI and not having the human eye to spot-check it is but what else?
Being way too salesy. I have had people reach out to me all the time via direct messaging and InMail. They start pitching. Pitch down your throat essentially, for lack of a better phrase. No one or very few people like to be pitched to in an immediate approach. A lot of us don't like to be pitched at all. They like to have conversations. That's what we are all about but a lot of other people out there view LinkedIn as another form of cold calling. If you do that, if you get maybe possibly or potentially one deal out of it, and that's a big maybe, how many people are you turning off in the process who will never do business with you to get that one possible deal?
Don't DM people. Don't InMail people. I have seen people even pitch in their connection requests to me. You can't do that. It's supposed to be a social element to this. With a pitch, it's either a yes or a no. For most people, it's going to be a no. It's not necessarily because of the product. It's because they don't want to be pitched to.
I have received InMail with direct pitches and it's like whatever their niche is so specific that they are using acronyms I don't understand. Sometimes I want to write back but, I don't even understand what you are asking me in this direct pitch. Not even because I want to buy their product, I almost want to give feedback. This is not an approach. My biggest pet peeve is when people connect with you with the whole, "Love to have you in my network," and then it turns into a five-message pitch on lead generation. It's the same thing butI'm even more irritated because you Trojan horse me into a connection that started pitching me.
That's another one of our older phrases but we still use it. Connect and pitch is a bait and switch, which is precisely what it is. It's a bait and switch. The way we teach social selling, we do not bait and switch on anything. We will smack your knuckles with a ruler if you do that. It's bad. It probably feels bad when you even do it. If not, you may want to evaluate your life choices. If it feels bad when you are doing it, you shouldn't do it. If you get that slimy sales feel when you are doing something, you probably shouldn't be doing it. You should figure out a way to do it in an authentic, genuine, and value-added way.
Do the gut check.
Fewer words, same idea. I love it. That's great.
Big mistakes, those are some obvious ones. I would like to get into where you see some of the biggest trends for 2024. You gave us a 30,000-foot view butlet's get a little closer to the tarmac and talk about what you see things evolving for 2024 and beyond.
I think that B2B influencers, what we call micro-influencers, sometimes people use that as a negative term but that's normally the big influencers like, "You are just a micro-influencer." They see it negatively. We see it as a positive because when we talk about micro-influencers, we are talking about influencing your target audience of prospects. That in and of itself is already very limiting. That's very limiting in a good way because you don't want to be attracting people who are in your field or you don't want to be attracting people who are never going to buy from you. You want to attract prospects.
The best way to do that is to become a micro-influencer. That's knowing what they want to hear about, knowing the problems that they want solved, knowing about their issues, and then creating content that addresses those issues. Being a micro-influencer, there's that thought leadership component embedded into it. You want to be the thought leader in your industry. You want to be what I used to call the go-to girl or go-to guy. We are calling it the go-to person now. Whatever you want to say, you want to be that person. Being that person involves being a micro-influencer. In our case, a micro-influencer is a good thing.
I love that because that takes some of the pressure off of, "This person has 15,000 LinkedIn followers, 70,000 LinkedIn followers.”
Who cares?
I agree with you.
If you have 750 followers but every single one of those people are prospects, that's all you need. You are not a Kardashian.
That's not what LinkedIn's built for. Hopefully, that's not the 2024 trend. I think about my following because it's not huge but I do feel like people are pretty engaged. I hired a marketing intern to support me because it's time-consuming to do all this stuff. He commented. He said, "You are getting 30 to 40 people engaging on your posts when the same people that have 15,000 followers are getting the same 30 or 40. The ratio is different because it's more engaged. Your percentage is more engaged." I never thought about it that way. Thank you to everyone who likes my stuff. I appreciate it.
You are doing a much better job than those other influencers too because you are hitting your audience in a much more meaningful and impactful way to the point where they are taking the time to leave thoughtful comments. Those macro influencers, if they get likes or whatever, it takes nothing to go boop and you are liking there. To leave a comment is somebody giving you their time to give you their thought on something. That's a gift in and of itself.
Liking or leaving a comment is a sign that somebody is giving you their time and thought. That is a gift in and of itself.
For people reading, I call them emotional bank account deposits, it's such an easy way. It costs you no money and it takes 30 seconds or less. If somebody puts something out there, throw them a comment because it's going to mean something to them. That’s where I try to come from. It's like, somebody took the time to put together this thoughtful post. I'm going to engage in it. I want to get better at that in 2024. I appreciate you saying that.
That's huge, not only from the courtesy standpoint. If someone comments on your content, even if it is a great post, if nothing else, thank them for it. Sometimes it's a great way to advance your thought leadership even more if they have commented in a value-added type of way. You can be on top of that. I forget the specific numbers , I just know from that 30,000-foot view, that the other big thing is when you reply to people's comments also helps you in the LinkedIn algorithm.
I have to be honest with you, sometimes LinkedIn makes me want to bang my head against the window. I'm sure you know.
I am the proverbial LinkedIn Sherpa and yet I want to bang my head. I have got a wall 4 feet in front of me right here and I'm shocked that there are no forehead impressions in there already.
Maybe you could give us a little pep talk or a takeaway. One of the things that kills me with my LinkedIn newsfeed, and maybe this would be something you would advise not to do, it's people posting pictures of their products. "Here's this new light fixture that came out." I see a lot of product promotions but it's like, "What am I doing with that?" I'd rather see a case study or an application of where they used it. I see a lot of products out there and it's so boring. I'm like, "Let's throw in a video. Let's throw in something fun," just to mix up people's news feeds. I don't know if that's the right move. I'm just throwing spaghetti on the wall.
I get that. I do think that sometimes with a product launch, you could do value add there in the actual comments depending on what the product is. It's difficult for me to speak to that. A video showing the product is good especially if you can hold the product. There are a lot of times when people sell stuff that you can't hold and there's nothing you can do about that. If you can somehow demonstrate it on video, even if it's a short 45-second video, that gives more context. Even though it is essentially an ad, you are delivering information from that rather than a PDF of a slick that came out of a product sheet. You have to start thinking more along those lines with adding value.
It can be done even with something as important yet mundane, important to you, mundane to everyone else, as a product launch. You have to start thinking more about the value that you are delivering in every share that you do and every comment that you make. Deliver value in your profile. It's all going to be about value. This isn't anything new but so many people don't do it. It's always a trend. I'm waiting for this trend to take off because it deserves to take off.
I have an acronym. I say ABAV, Always Be Adding Value. I appreciate that you guys put it in the framework of anything you do on LinkedIn because I have been using it when you are interacting with your clients, how can you develop these bank accounts? I love that you have that as almost like the North Star for when people are doing anything on LinkedIn. We need to Post-It Note that on our computers and make sure that that's where we are coming from for 2024.
I could not agree more.
What other trends for 2024? We have a micro influencer. Always add value to any type of interaction. AI of course is going to be part of our lives so we have to learn to love it or at least work alongside it. What other trends do you see for 2024?
One that I'm hoping that happens is verification. People are probably starting to see more on their profiles about verification. In other words, this is when you provide your credentials somehow. There are a couple of different ways to do this. Sometimes it's directly to LinkedIn, other times it's through Clear who are the annoying people at the airport who pitch you about their service whenever you are going through lines. Clear at airports gets you past everything directly to the place where you go with the luggage and everything else. Clear on LinkedIn, they are verifying your identity so that people who visit profiles willsee that shield on there. It's better than a check-mark on Twitter/X or Instagram because you pay for those there but you don't need anything else.
With verification on LinkedIn, they are verifying you. That is a much more secure way of knowing at least that the person you are dealing with is an actual person and not some profile that companies set up. Sometimes, unfortunately, companies set up profiles that aren't real. LinkedIn won something against a couple of companies that were setting up fake profiles and trying to get sales from them. None of those are going to be verified. That verification is going to be a trend that takes off in 2024 because people are going to want to know that who they are talking to is real. Now that LinkedIn is providing a way to do that, I'm hoping, wishing, and thinking that that's something that's going to take off. If not, it sure as hell should.
By verifying LinkedIn profiles, you have a secure way of knowing that the person you are dealing with is an actual person, not some fake profile set up by companies.
If you are tuning in to this, I did the verification process, it's easy. We could do it as you are tuning in to this. Get right on their LinkedIn. Do you have any other trends before we get into some of the profile questions I want to ask you?
Another one that and hope has to do with profile optimization. I know that we are going to be going through some specific stuff but the one thing that I want to encourage everyone, we talked about this on our podcast, is your customers' and your prospects' concerns or problems, they change over time. I'm betting that with 2023 being the year that it was, they have changed probably pretty significantly. Does your profile reflect their new concerns? Does your content and content plan going forward reflect those concerns? You need to either start talking to people or maybe even doing polls on those subjects. What's your biggest concern in 2024?
You know your respective industries so put in options A, B, C, or D, and a poll is always another share and comment because you are going to want people who have different ones to share what their concern is in the comments. You need to not make assumptions that everyone's still going to be the same in 2024, as in 2023. Get out there, talk to people, and poll them. Whatever you do, find out what their concerns are, then start angling your profile and start designing your content towards those concerns. Those new or altered concerns.
Do not assume that everyone will still have the same problems as last year. Talk to people, find out their new concerns, and angle your profile towards those concerns.
That's the definition of thought leadership. You are staying ahead of it. Thank you, Sherpa. This is a great example. Talking about the profile then, what are the most important pieces of someone's LinkedIn profile?
Four areas are going to be the most important. What we call the top of the fold is your photo, your banner, and especially your headline. We call that top of the fold because like old-style newspapers. Remember those people? Newspapers were designed so that when you fold them over and you are passing by a newsstand, hopefully, it will entice you enough to buy them. Same thing with the LinkedIn profile, except you are trying to entice people to scroll further down.
Everything needs to be constructed in a value-added way. It needs some eye-catching banners, and banners run the gamut of what you can do with those. There are all kinds of philosophies behind that. If there's one overall arching thing, I would urge people to do is to have one. You don't want to have that big ugly gray blob up there.
With your photo, a photo of how you show up every day for work. If you are like me , in the winter, I'm in a quarter zip in a shirt underneath, I'm not going to wear a three-piece suit in my profile photo because I don't even own a three-piece suit. Show up as how you normally show up so that people aren't surprised. Also, don't use a ten-year-old photo of yourself or one that's dated somehow. I have lost about 100 pounds in the past few years. Any of my old photos do not look like how I am nowadays. I also had more hair back then. I shave it all off now. I look different than I used to.
Especially in the era of Zoom nowadays, if you don't look pretty much like your profile photo when someone gets on a Zoom call with you, they are already going to be a little suspicious because it's like, "This person doesn't look like what they look like on LinkedIn. I wonder what else doesn't track about them." It's very important.
It’s like online dating. "This isn't what they looked like in pictures," or the catfishing fake profiles. Think about that.
Swipe left.
Congratulations on your health journey. That's amazing.
Thank you. I appreciate that. I use that as an example that people's looks do change over the years. Even if you or someone else is taking a photo of you on their phone, make sure it's in a neutral background and everything else. If you want to go the professional route, that's fine. There are some AI photo tools out therethat I have seen that are pretty amazing.
There are tools too. You could have six different outfits on for a photo on your camera. Banner, must have one, maximize that. The photo must be new. What are the other couple of things?
Headline. Do we want to talk about that ?
To the audience, I have been putting off a LinkedIn profile refresh for a couple of reasons. It's because I knew I had access to Bob, Brian, and the team. If I'm going to redo it, I want to not have to do it all the time. I want to do it right. I have struggled with my LinkedIn headline because I know you are supposed to niche down and talk about the problems you solve and specifically who you help. One of the things that I have been struggling with is that I have a lot of different types of clientele. My customer is a little bit of a mixed bag, and then I have a lot of different balls in the air. , we can read my profile and I have asked Bob to help me, in real-time, make it better and make it more substantial and value-centric.
All of that for me as someone who is coming in with an eye to making profiles, because we call them profile makeovers because that's what they are. We are taking the base and making it better so that it achieves a goal. With that, why don't you read your new headline?
The headline on my LinkedIn profile is, "Sales and marketing consultant. Sales coach. Author. Speaker. Host of Prospecting on Purpose Podcast." That's it.
You are right. There are several balls going there. Also, if you have her profile up, which is LinkedIn.com/In/SaraMurraySales, you are going to notice that in her banner is her show. If I'm seeing all of this stuff along with the banner, I'm thinking she's a podcaster. That's it. We all know better. I would suggest changing the banner to maybe incorporate the show. I'm not saying get rid of the show but to also somehow, and this is where design and everything comes in and my mind gets blown with the possibility so I'm not going to suggest anything specific here but in general to work that other stuff in there as well. Into the banner.
That's so interesting. All the pieces work together for that first impression. What would you recommend for the banner? I know we are talking about headlines but a picture of me hosting a workshop or group or more text group?
Maybe a text strip. If you want to look at mine, mine is pretty good. Although mine doesn't mention the podcast that I do making sales social. You get more of a flavor of what I do there in my banner. If the audience wants to go there, it's LinkedIn.com/In/BobWoods. If you want to connect with me, please feel free or follow me. That one's much more representative. It lists some of the companies that are up there as well as what I do, as well as a little graphical representation of LinkedIn and our thing as well.
Two coffee cups cheers-ing. I love it.
It depends on what you want to do because there are so many different ways to tackle it but I do think that if you take what the elements are of what's in there of mine, transfer it over to what you do, add podcasting, and then put whatever visual spin you want to on it because I know you are a visual person and you can make that work. From there, that leads down into the headlines.
If you are a client of mine, one of the things that I would want and you have already addressed that, is who are you trying to attract? Who are your prospects? Sometimes it's verticals. Sometimes it's verticals plus titles. Sometimes it's any business owner. It's so wide and varied with people in general but Sara Murray, who is your prospect?
I support B2B sales teams. I support B2C companies. I support entrepreneurs. Anyone who finds themselves in a sales role. Maybe where my niche is, is focusing on the prospecting relationship part of that process so the beginning part of the sales cycle. It's tricky because B2B, B2C, and people who are finding themselves in sales roles like entrepreneurs, real estate agents, or travel agents, are people who have to go sell themselves.
Based on that, I'm changing something here quickly. I wouldn't even consider this a full first draft or a beta version. I consider this alpha minus. I would say something like, one of the things that people face when it comes to encapsulating who they help is trying to find that term or phrase that encapsulates several things. When you have people visiting your profile, you want them to feel that they are in the right place. The easiest way to do that is to identify them through what's in your headline and also what's in your About section but that's a little bit later.
When people visit your LinkedIn profile, you want them to feel like they are in the right place. The easiest way to do that is to identify what you do through your headline.
I would say something like empowering sales professionals and teams to prospect effectively, and then maybe a pipe there. Tailored training, marketing strategies, client-centric solutions. What was that one phrase you said when you said, "When it comes right down to it, I want salespeople to," what was that again? I'm trying to remember.
Prioritize the relationship part of the sales process. One of the things that I keep seeing is that usually our competitor isn't the competing product, it's the relationship the competitor salesperson has with our clients. I want to capture that but I don't know if the headlines were to do it. Thanks for workshopping this with me.
This is probably going to be one of those times where I'm going to say we need to go back and look at the transcript because you said something that encapsulated that perfectly. Whatever that was, that's how you ended up.
I will go back and revisit it.
I had a little turn of the phrase at the end that encapsulated everything you said but in a clever yet businessy way, which I can't remember what it was because it was great. Ending up a headline like that is a good way to do it too. You want to try to have four elements in your headline. Who you help, how you help them, the solutions you provide, and the results that you bring.
That's the formula then. Can you say that one more time?
Who you help, how you help them, the results that you provide, and the solutions that you provide them with, essentially.
I'm starting to work together in my head on those different pieces. Empowering sales professionals to maximize their relationship skills. I'm going to biff it as I'm running through. The results truly are more confidence to talk to the high-level decision-makers. More increased confidence in yourself and embracing your authentic self to then use that as your differentiator when you are selling to your prospects. The results are more confidence and it's very tactical skills. I don't need to leverage the podcast in there because I can do that in the banner or incorporate that in the banner.
You can incorporate that in the banner. You can mention that if you want to in the About section. I would probably do that at the very end. You can look at my profile to see how we did this. On your company page, you can showcase the show and then you can link to it in your Experience section.
I'm going to creep on yours then and follow the Sherpa. Thank you for putting it out there, you are valuable.
There have been once or twice when a guy has said to us, "I'm talking." I was like, "I'm sorry."
I would never do that to you but I have had that happen to me too.
No. It's funny. It took me back to Italy there for a minute.
I feel like one of the things that's been very cool about this whole 2023 is you can use LinkedIn to meet so many amazing people. Having you on the show, we have never met in person. I know you live in Kentucky. I do not live in Kentucky. I have met so many people in 2023 through LinkedIn and genuine value-add. It's cool and special. I appreciate your time being on the show because it proves exactly your point with the Social Sales Link team on how powerful LinkedIn can be.
It's social. People need to keep that in mind. We always wrap up our podcasts and things like that as, "Always be sure to make your sales social." It's more than a cute tagline for us that unifies each show episode. It is true. Make your sales social.
You had one more thing in the profile. You said four things.
I will go over those quickly. There are two more left. Featured section. That is where you put your educational content in there. Whether it's from a website or a post, especially a successful post. You can list that stuff directly in your Featured section. A tip there, always make sure that it's as new as possible. Think of the Featured section as a produce section in a store. You always want to see fresh and nice stuff in there that brings value to you. In other words, when you eat it at that point, the same type of thing, except in content form. Your content pieces are your cabbage, your lettuce, and all that other fun stuff that they sell in produce sections.
Also, the About section is important because that's where you get to expand on the headline. I always like the headline to flow into the About section because we have a bit of a formula and I will go over that quick for the About section but it's important. The first paragraph or two should always list more specifically who you are targeting in terms of audience/prospects, and then identify their pain. Do that in a very storytelling way. You can look at my you can look at my profile to see how I have done that. You then provide some very basic education. Education about what you about the problems that you solve. Hopefully, it's in regard to the problem that you presented and the paragraph above.
That's where you can start talking about yourself a little bit more. Up until this point, you are always framing things as being directed at the person who's reading your profile without talking about yourself. After you have proven your case a little bit, you could then start talking a little bit about yourself in terms of, "Here's how we help." List something short down there, and then have a paragraph that's a call to action.
"If you are facing these problems, let's have a conversation. Whether or not we work together, I'm sure our call will provide valuable insight into your situation." Have your contact information down there. If you have a Calendly type of calendar, you can have that down there too. Ideally, you want people to contact you directly from your About section.
It's almost like your sales page or a website in some way but in a value-add. Let me ask you one other question because I know we are wrapping up here. For people who work for employers as opposed to entrepreneurs, do you find the Featured section is a nice way to promote some of the new product offerings that they are selling? How can they make sure that that's captured? In my experience looking at my newsfeed, people who work for other people aren't the ones generating a ton of content. I feel like there's a huge opportunity there to differentiate yourself whether you work for yourself or work for an employer.
If someone is working for a company and that company puts out content, you can share their posts directly, and you can then bring that into your featured section. You can either bring in your post about their post or sometimes if you want, depending on the situation, you can link to their posts directly and then have the company's post live lie in there too. It depends on how you want to do it. It's one of those every-case-is-unique types of things but that is one way to do it.
That's a great point because I have seen people reshare their company posts but it will be like, "What an honor to be a part of this project," or, "Here's the area that I got to meet with so and so." They can make it their own even though it's a company-generated piece of content.
Except, instead of doing it like how you said, they should write on their own. You are citing other people and I know that but if you are going to do that, you mean the audience, make sure that you add your value even to a company post.
That has to be our lens for everything in 2024 and beyond. That's with sales social. Can you talk a little bit more about how people can work with you and find you? I feel like the content and the value you are putting out in the world is important and people will want to work with you. How can people work with you if they are interested?
SocialSalesLink.com. We have two big lanes that we work in. One is corporate where we design all types of programs and things like that. Specifically for corporations, we go in and makeover all of the profiles of their salespeople and quite frankly, anyone else that they want to too but we concentrate on salespeople. We then take them through our entire process in terms of using LinkedIn and social selling. That could be 4 to 6 weeks. It depends on what the client wants but it's all very customizable.
We also offer full Sales Navigator training, which is something that we didn't even touch on here because I don't think this audience necessarily uses Sales Navigator a lot. If you are wondering what Sales Navigator is, it's basically LinkedIn on steroids. There is so much more going on there. It's targeted specifically at salespeople but it's expensive.
That's what I have heard. I haven't played with it much yet.
It's not cheap. We have more of the public area where we have group coaching. We are rolling out all types of new things coming up here in 2024 so I don't want to get a lot into it. If you go to SocialSalesLink.com, I'm trying to remember, I don't have the site up but very easily navigable. If you want to get in touch with me, go to my LinkedIn profile directly, I'm very easy to find. Also, SocialSalesLink.com/Bob and that will take you to my page. There's even a calendar there to book a fifteen-minute meeting with me.
I am so grateful to have you on the show. Thank you for sharing your many years of expertise with us on the LinkedIn platform outside of your sales expertise. I am so grateful for it. I'm going to go back to this episode too because I'm going to profile makeover then come back to you and get you to improve it. We will do it before and after. I'm looking forward to the next coaching call because I love the group and I'm sure we will be in touch.
Love having you there. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Thanks for joining.
