We host many webinars, but we were particularly excited about this one. One of the reasons is that you would hardly find a better group of experts to teach you about using social selling to fill your pipeline than Brynne, Viveka, and Kurt. Another reason is that they all have amazing personalities and are a lot of fun to watch present.
If you attended any of our webinars in the past or have been following the term social selling on any social networks, you might have already come across these three experts. What you may not have known is that they recently came together and formed a consulting company called Vengreso. We wanted to use this webinar to introduce their company to our community because there truly is a lot we can all learn from them.
If you were not able to attend the webinar live, check out the recording! Don’t have time to watch the whole thing? No worries. You can read through the session summary under the recording.
Turning Social Connections into Relationships: Real-Life Example
Our CEO Jon Ferrara kicked the webinar off with introducing our guest speakers. He started with Brynne Tillman who he recently met up with in person. Before the webinar even started, Brynne talked about how great it was to finally meet with Jon in person after so many years of engaging digitally. She shared that she loves a quote from Brian Fanzo who said that:
[Tweet ““#SocialMedia can change first meeting from a handshake to a hug.” ~ @iSocialFanz”]
Jon added his two cents by saying that:
“You need to take digital relationships into face-to-face communication because it’s the human connection that transforms those relationships and deepens them.”
First Step For Building Your Personal Brand: Your LinkedIn Profile
Viveka von Rosen was the first one to take the stage and started the webinar with describing to our audience how to set up a great looking LinkedIn profile. Your personal profile and company page are key to successful personal branding, but many people underestimate their importance and don’t spend enough time and attention on it. Viveka said that most LinkedIn profiles fall into three buckets:
1) “Losing Business”
- These profiles are so bad that you tell yourself that you will never want to work with the person or company which is definitely not the bucket you want to be in!
2) “Good Enough”
- It’s better than the first bucket, but you should never settle for mediocre.
3) “Lead Generating”
- THIS is the bucket in which you would like your personal LinkedIn profile and your company’s page to be in 😉
Good personal profile and company page are important because they build your presence and attract people to you. Here are Viveka’s best tips on creating a killer LinkedIn presence:
1) Create a Background Image
- Your background picture should reflect your brand, your business and who you are as an influencer/business person.
- As you can see on the screenshot below, Viveka herself had a little fun with hers and put her company’s logo on a a picture of herself on a hang glider which lets people know a little bit about her and her personality.
- To make it really easy for people to connect with her, she included her email address and phone number there as well.
BONUS: Brynne Tillman created a template for LinkedIn banner which you can download here. For LinkedIn banner creation, Viveka also recommended a tool called Relaythat.
2) Use a Good Photo
- You should include a profesionally looking photo of yourself.
- Don’t underestimate the importance of a good photo because especially on a mobile device, it might be the first and only thing that people will see from your profile.
3) Create a Great Headline
- LinkedIn allows you to describe yourself and your business in 120 characters.
- Make sure that the headline grabs people’s attention, don’t just say “CEO”, instead, describe how are you going to help people.
- When creating your headline, always keep in mind who your target audience is, what their main pain points are and how can you help them solve their problems?
Viveka’s ninja trick: If you go to edit your headline on your mobile device, LinkedIn will actually allow you to add up to 220 characters.
You’ve Connected on LinkedIn. Now What?
Brynne Tillman took the microphone after Viveka and walked us through the primary activities that we should all be doing on LinkedIn on a daily basis.
1) Review ‘Who’s Viewed Your Profile’
- Review the people that have viewed your profile and determine if they are somebody that you would want to have a conversation with. If so, you can send the person a connection request, something along the lines of:
“Hi Christina, I saw that you viewed my profile! I had a chance to look at yours and thought that this would be a great opportunity to explore if there are any ways that we could work together.”
- On a free account, you will be able to see the last five people that viewed your profile, on any level of premium LinkedIn account, you will be able to see the last 90 days
2) Review Outstanding Invitations
- Another great tip that Brynne shared was that you could just send people a quick message and ask them how they found you. Was it through a piece of content you wrote?
- If you send people message after accepting their connection request, it will encourage them to engage back.
3) Send Welcome Messages
- You should always send a welcome message to people that have accepted your connection request.
4) Respond to Messages in Your Inbox
- Review your inbox on a daily basis and in addition to sending welcome messages, respond to everybody who have reached out to you.
5) Engage with Your Network
- Scroll through your newsfeed, review your notifications and look for engagement opportunities.
6) Share Content
- You should share some kind of content on LinkedIn everyday, this can be original content created by you or your company or a curated piece of content written by somebody else.
7) Request Introductions
- Brynne herself has a weekly goal of requesting 20 targeted introductions.
- Mine your connections’ network and take advantage of it, politely ask people in your network to make introductions.
How to Turn Connections into Phone Calls
Kurt Shaver started his part by saying that many sales people complain that it is getting harder and harder to reach people. Most people are not openly listing their phone numbers online and hate being cold called. He also shared a piece of advice that he received from one executive who said that people either have to get introduced to her by someone she knows or post something that catches her attention. In other words, in order to start a sales conversation, you either have to do outbound prospecting or inbound marketing.
1) Outbound Prospecting
- You have to be connecting with people and nurturing your network in order to start seeing results and deserve the right to ask for a phone call
2) Inbound Marketing
- Posting interesting content that brings value to your target audience.
[Tweet ““50% of #SocialSelling” is #prospecting” #Sales ~ @KurtShaver “]
Kurt said that sales managers are usually pretty confident about the skills of their salespeople to have a successful conversation and close deals, but they are not sure how to get those phone calls at the first place.
Here are some ideas on how you can use the LinkedIn’s search bar to mine other people’s content, create a list of prospects, connect with them, and make them want to take your phone call:
- Most people only use the search bar for looking up people, but you should definitely start using it for finding content as well
- Try typing in terms like “social selling” to find relevant content that you can then share with your network.
- If you consistently put your name out there by commenting on other people’s content and adding value, you will see more and more people engaging with you. Chances are, these people are great prospects!
- Do you like an article that somebody shared? Share it with your network as well!
- Go through the comments on some of the articles and see if some of the people that commented are people that you would want to connect with.
- Write a customized message to those that you want to connect with. Remember that the invitation has to have context and relevance.
- Look at the people that clicked the like button on some of the articles as well, and do the same thing as with the people that commented.
The message you send can read as follows: “Hi Rachel, I noticed your comment on Kurt Shaver’s blog post about social selling. I am interested in discussing your position on … further. Since we share interest in social selling and 90 connections, I thought it would be a great idea to connect as well.”
This Was Helpful, But I Need More Training
Did you enjoy the content of the webinar, but feel like you would need to go over everything in more detail? You are not alone! This is why the founders of Vengreso created their virtual Social Selling Boot Camp that will help you to turn the tips they shared on the webinar into productive habits.
The training starts on September 19th and if you mention Nimble, you will receive a bonus in form of a free LinkedIn Audit report ($97 value)!
