Show notes
In our last podcast, we began a discussion on pandemic and post pandemic selling skills because the skills that got you to this point will probably not be enough to keep you moving forward. Do you have what it takes to survive and thrive in the new environment? Let's find out.
David: Hi and welcome to the podcast today cohost Chris Templeton and I are back to continue our discussion on pandemic and post pandemic selling skills. Welcome back, Chris.
Chris: Hi David. You know in our last podcast we were going to talk about all kinds of skills that have to be developed in order to succeed in this new selling environment.
David: Right.
Chris: We didn't get as far as we thought we were going to and we kind of left off on Facebook groups and the type of content that we can put up. Let's talk about some other things that we can do in regards to social media.
David: Okay. We started talking about Facebook groups and Facebook personal profiles and Facebook pages, but obviously there are other social media sources as well. LinkedIn is always thought of as being a good source for business. You want to discuss that one next?
Chris: Sure. Let's talk about LinkedIn.
David: Okay. If you've been in business for a long time, you probably have some sort of LinkedIn account or presence. If not, you should definitely look into getting one. LinkedIn is one social media environment in which it's okay to be in business, be in sales. Sometimes with some of the more personal social media platforms like Facebook, that can be frowned upon. But in LinkedIn people sort of expect the fact that you're in business and that you might say things related to business. Now that doesn't mean that you can just go on there and turn it into a 24 hour pitch fast, right?
David: You can't just go on there and say, "buy my stuff" all the time because you will alienate just as many people on LinkedIn as you would on any other platform.
Chris: You don't think that'll work?
David: You can try it if you want to. See how that works out.
Chris: Yeah, you try it and let us know how it goes.
David: Yeah, send us an email. But you can get on there and exchange ideas. You can initiate conversations that are more business related. You can connect with people. Because on LinkedIn it's more about connections. Whereas on Facebook it's about friends, quote unquote. So you're friending people on Facebook, but you're connecting with people on LinkedIn. So people expect that there's going to be a business component to the discussion on there. So that's helpful. The flip side is that since it's all business, people do get pitched a lot, and so the way that we approach people on LinkedIn is going to have to be thought through and not just "winging it" the way that a lot of people do.
Chris: And I don't know if you want to go with 80/20 or some different split, but you know, like you said, if all you're doing is pushing your sales messages, you're not going to be very effective in generating connections and interest. And so, can we do 80% that is informational, maybe half of that tied to your specific products, but not as, you know, "Hey, buy my product" and then can you do things like we're doing right now, which is how do we help people in these difficult times? And almost everybody in business has the ability to tie this to what's going on with the pandemic, that sort of thing, don't you think?
David: Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the primary changes in focus has been, and this is something we've talked about in previous podcasts as well, is that right now with everything that's going on, sales is far less about what can I sell you and far more about how can I help you? How can I help you with what you're looking to accomplish? And so if we're looking to initiate business conversations, let's say through LinkedIn, then we want to be clear up front that it's not just about selling people, it's about trying to figure out how we can help. And so if we're initiating connection requests on LinkedIn. There should be a reason for that. In other words, you don't use the generic, "I'd like to connect with you on LinkedIn" because if they don't know you, they don't know the benefit. They don't understand the "what's in it for me" and so they're going to be far less likely to be receptive or to connect. If you can give them a reason about why you're connecting, there'll be a lot more likely to do it. For example, if you serve a particular niche industry and you are able to say in your connection request, "I work with a lot of people in your industry, I thought it might be worthwhile to connect. I have a few ideas I'd be happy to share with you." Then there's a reason for the connection. It's not just, Oh, okay. Some other total strangers just trying to pitch me.
Chris: And if you can take that initial pitch and at the same time tie it to what's going on in these wild times. And I think if it's not going to be sales oriented that you say it. I'd love your business at some point, but at this point I'm just trying to help people that I have worked with in this industry, that sort of thing. Something that eases it up a little bit and it's gotta be authentic, doesn't it?
David: It does. And you had mentioned the 80/20 thing and a good example of that on LinkedIn would be if you were to publish some sort of article that would be helpful to a particular industry to help them understand how they could accomplish or get a result that would be favorable to them. If they read something like that, then that's going to get them interested in you. So you're putting valuable content up there. And then if they like it enough, what will happen is they'll say, "Oh, that was interesting. Who is this person?" And then they'll very likely go to your profile page on LinkedIn. And they'll see what you have to say there. That's why it's really important that your profile page is optimized to position yourself for what you want people to know about you. What is it going to say in your profile page about what you do and how you do it and who you serve? Because if it just says, here's this person and this is their title and this is where they're located, that doesn't really give them a good feel for how you can help.
Chris: It goes back to what we talked about in the previous podcast was, you know, if you're going to try and do some marketing and develop relationships on Facebook, you'd better make sure that your Facebook page and your profile and what you're posting are things that are going to enhance that process.
David: Right.
Chris: The same is true probably more so in LinkedIn. The good news with LinkedIn is that it's a much briefer way to find out about a person. In other words, we've got a profile set up where we've written about what we do. We've showed our experience, that sort of thing, but I strongly encourage you to take a look at your profile and in addition, have a couple of friends take a look at it and say, you know, does this feel like the message that I want to portray to people on LinkedIn? I think that's probably a pretty important place to start.
David: Yeah, so that when they go to your profile, they're seeing the benefits that you offer, and it could be some sort of paper that you've written. It could be an article that you posted, but right there at the top, there should be a statement about what you help people to do, who you help and how you help them should really be right there, front and center, in your LinkedIn profile.
Chris: And just as a side note, there are a lot of people out there that are available to update and clean up your LinkedIn profiles. You can go to Fiverr or you can go to Upwork. Lots of places where people would go through and really from a much more objective place, be able to take a look at it and say, "I think this is what I'm seeing, what you ought to be thinking about." Does that make sense?
David: Yeah, definitely worth looking into and something else is just looking at other people's profiles will give you a lot of ideas. If you go to somebody's profile and it's uninspiring, you can ask yourself, "why is this uninspiring?"
Chris: Yup.
David: Whereas if you go to some people's profiles and you say, "wow, this is really great," what do you love about it? How are they describing what they do and how they do it? What sort of things are they offering on their profile to entice people to get in touch, or to make themselves known so that you can start initiating conversations and dialogues there?
Chris: You know, the other thing that's really worth taking a look at is just going through my existing contacts, like I think I have four or 500 contacts. When we first got involved with social media. We were friending and everybody and their brother. And now's a good time to take a look at who you're friended with or connected with and also just reaching out to them personally. "Hey, just thinking about you, hope you're doing well through this crazy time." What a great message. Simple, to the point, not sales oriented, but you're now back in that person's mind.
David: Yeah. Now also, and I don't want to go too deep because the last one we went really deep into Facebook and I don't think we're going to be able to do that, otherwise we're going to have the next 45 podcast episodes on all sorts of different topics. But the main topic that we're examining here in this podcast and the last one are prospecting using social media. And so we talked about, in the last podcast, some of the ways to do that on Facebook. We talked about some different things that you can do in this one on LinkedIn. What were some of the other platforms that we wanted to discuss?
Chris: Well, I think the other one that we ought to look at is YouTube. People forget that YouTube is the second largest search engine...
David: Right.
Chris: ...on the internet and from that standpoint alone,