Consultants: Use LinkedIn Like A Pro To Fill Your Sales Pipeline

Consultants: Use LinkedIn Like A Pro To Fill Your Sales Pipeline

Gary runs a LinkedIn event on using LinkedIn to fill a sales pipeline, covering network building, profile optimization, content, a newer post-boosting ads strategy, outreach, LinkedIn events, and a brief “mailbox is still empty” reminder about direct mail as a low-competition channel. He argues LinkedIn success comes from relevance and being a real person rather than generic AI posts or fake personalization, and outlines a combined approach of content, comments, outreach, clean pipeline management, and watching data. He explains the value of building relevant connections (vs followers), refining headlines and About sections to build trust, and consistently engaging. He contrasts engagement posts vs business-development posts, suggests boosting winning personal posts with company promotion for targeted reach, recommends non-pitch first messages and 3-message sequences, and answers that solopreneurs should post from personal profiles and that Sales Navigator is worth the fee.

Discover:

00:00 Welcome 
02:11 Event Setup And Agenda
04:10 About Gary And Pipelineology
05:28 LinkedIn Strategy In A Nutshell
08:40 Network Building Basics
10:42 Connection Requests And Intent
14:18 Profile That Builds Trust
19:16 Content Reality On LinkedIn
23:07 Engagement Vs Sales Posts
25:02 Boosted Story Posts
26:38 Creative Formats and CTAs
27:25 Targeted Promotion Strategy
30:01 Outbound Outreach Mindset
32:14 AI Intro Message Prompt
35:18 Sequences Follow Up Offers
38:45 LinkedIn Events Authority
41:48 Direct Mail Attention Hack
44:48 Pitch Q&A Wrap Up
45:40 Posting Personal vs Company
47:56 Sales Navigator Worth It
49:15 Final Thanks/Next Event

Transcript:

[00:00:04] All right. Welcome everybody to today’s event. so appreciate you bearing with me on a little bit of technical difficulties today. So we’re about three minutes late, which, if you’ve been here before, you know how I like to start on time. so appreciate everybody bearing with me here. we’ve got, the slide show is our, my slide deck is processing at the moment.

but we’ll be. Be going on here in just a, a minute or so. I just wanna give everybody a, a second for the notifications and everything to, to go out to let people know that we are in fact on. and then we’ll get started in the meantime, where’s everybody calling in from today? It is currently a, I’d say it’s kind of, it’s been kind of a, a rainy, seasonal day here in Detroit, Michigan, actually about, 15 miles north, 16 miles north of.

Of the city and the suburbs. but, would love to hear, where you’re at in, in the world today and, how’s the weather there? I don’t in, in Michigan, right? Like this is our, this is our best time of the year. This is, I got married last year and my wife and I were talking about our honeymoon and we both said.

we got married in September and we said we wouldn’t. Why would we leave? Why would we go anywhere in September when that’s the nice time? So we, we waited till January when the weather sucked here to go to, to go, take our honeymoon. But anyway, I think, yep, got some people coming. I’m Stewart from Florida.

Welcome, glad to have you here today. Marty from, from New Jersey, also cloudy. Welcome, glad to have you here.

And I think with that, we’ll get things, started here. ’cause like I said, I know I’m running a couple minutes late, so it looks like we got some people in, in, Maryland, Boston Port Tobacco. Excellent. Well, thanks so much for being here today. Let’s, let’s jump in. Let’s, let’s get this party started, shall 

[00:02:09] we? So let’s talk about using LinkedIn like a pro to fill your sales pipeline. So my goal today, we’ll probably go for about 40, 45 minutes or so. if you can’t stick around for the whole thing, there will be a replay available. Typically, it’s about one to 24 hours after the event ends. Sometimes it’s like five minutes.

And I find it really just depends on how many events, kind of backend stuff on LinkedIn side and how fast they wanna process it. There’s usually about a 20 to 32nd delay from when I say something here on my side to when you hear it. That’s just the, the live streaming delays, doesn’t really affect things too much.

It’s just if I, if you make a comment, know that I’m probably a few, few seconds away from actually seeing it. and if you do want to be notified of future events, we do send, make sure we send out usually two reminders, before the event, and that’s where we also send out the replays. You can see those at Pipeline, you can sign up there at Pipelineology dot com slash events.

So today’s agenda we’re gonna be talking about, basically all the things that kind of go into building, you know, basically getting, getting good prospects, good meetings, good leads from LinkedIn so that you can close more business for your consultancy, for your business. So we’re gonna talk about network building.

we’re talk a little bit about your profile. we’re talking about using content in a new ad boosting strategy that kind of really helps get your, your message in front of the right people. we’re talking a little bit about outreach and kind of where that fits into the strategy We’re talking about LinkedIn, LinkedIn events, and we’re gonna talk about, my mailbox is still empty.

If you’ve been with me before, you know how I’d like to, to do that one. I just kind of let remind people that there’s more than one way to do, to do advertising and outreach, and it’s not all just digital anymore, or it never was all digital. It’s not all just exclusively digital in terms of what’s 

[00:04:09] effective.

So, and then we’ll open it up for a little bit of q and a. So the mercifully short, 32nd version of About Me. I’m the founder of Pipelineology. I host the Pipelineology podcast. and I’m excited to let you know that I’ve got a new person starting next week and she’s gonna really be helping get the podcast going.

And so, if you’ve been waiting around thinking, gosh, you say that, but you haven’t had any new episodes in a few months, Gary, you’re absolutely right. We’re a little short-staffed. But, excited to have a new person come aboard. We’ll have some new episodes coming in October, quite a few in October. and hopefully we’ll be publishing again regularly, you know, twice a month, starting, starting after that.

so I’ve been in the marketing game for 24 years now. Used to run call, call centers, for car dealerships for a while. these days I really work primarily with small businesses, consultants, small manufacturers, software companies, things like that to help them find prospects for their business.

And if you happen to know of any, I’m always actively seeking New England. IPA beer styles, that you would recommend. I try. ’cause they’re good, but they’re hard to find. They’re, they’re generally good. It’s the great ones that are really, really tricky to, to find. So let’s jump into 

[00:05:27] it here. So in a nutshell, I think, Kara really said it better than I could.

So in a nutshell, here’s the thing. Here’s kind of the strategy for us right now. It’s a combo of content, comment and outreach, keeping a clean pipeline and watching the data. We’ve been playing around with new tools that are showing us some signal intent to, which has been fun. And, I couldn’t have said it better myself, hence why I just told her.

I think I’ll just delete my whole, PowerPoint and tell people that. So if you need the, the too long, didn’t read or, or didn’t watch version of today’s event, that is it right there in a nutshell. So bottom line, really success on LinkedIn right now isn’t about using Jet GBT to write generic posts. use fake personalization, pretend you listen to their podcast or whatever else people are recommending you do now, or having AI comment on their latest posts pretending to be you.

Really what’s working now is what has been working is, is relevance. It, it’s getting relevant connections into your network, sending out relevant messages to people posting relevant content. and if you take nothing else away from today’s event. I say be a real person, and right. Authenticity, transparency, being who you are, really has advantages as everything kind of gets, gets noisier, right?

It’s not just LinkedIn, it’s the internet in general. Things are noisier. There’s more slop, ai, slop everywhere. So just being who you are and being a real person. Is, is probably how you’re gonna go stand out and win. So here’s kinda the process we’re gonna be looking at today. I realize that is very difficult to read.

every, every time I do it, I say, yeah, it’s, I, how do I, I wanna make it bigger without, you know, making it, you know. So, so big that it, it’s, we gotta go through three slides just so we it. But anyway, we’re gonna be looking at outreach events, content, and some strategies built around content using LinkedIn ads today.

If you’d like a copy of this flowchart, if you can screenshot it and blow it up, feel free. otherwise just shoot me an email, Gary at Pipelineology dot com. I will send you a copy of, of the PDF of it. So. Or you can message me here on LinkedIn, whatever you prefer. but I’ll get that over to you so you can kind of take a look at it and see if that would be, would kind of make sense for your business.

Or you can hand it off to, you know, one of your, your assistants or team members or kind of who are in charge of that, part of the, the process, to, to take it and run with it. And if you say, I just don’t have time to do this myself, I’d, I’d love to do it. I wanna do more of this stuff. I could use some help.

We do offer a done for you program that really is designed to take as much of this off your plate as possible. and. Get, you just deliver meetings to your, to your calendar. So we’ll do the heavy lifting and you take the calls. So feel free to schedule on a call with me if you’re interested and you don’t, right?

No pressure. but you can go to the appointment lab.com. That just takes you to my Calendly, calendar. Or just shoot me an email again directly at Gary at Ruplinger, gary at Pipelineology dot com and, we can get something set 

[00:08:39] up. So let’s talk about building your network, because I think this is, this is one of those very important topics that I think oftentimes doesn’t get talked, talked about often enough.

’cause the, the targeting of it is so important, so. On LinkedIn, there’s really two types of, of people you can have kind of in your sphere of influence. One is followers. You can have as many followers as you want, right? That’s, that’s probably the one you’re very familiar with. If it’s, YouTube, you call ’em subscribers.

If it’s TikTok, I think it is. Followers, and I don’t use TikTok, so I probably shouldn’t be, I don’t know. But Instagram, things like that. So unlimited numbers, but you’ve got limited abilities to communicate with those people other than posting and hoping they see it. which, if, if you’ve been on LinkedIn, you know, is real hit or miss, you can have tens of thousands of connections and a hundred people see your latest posts.

So you’re like, what, what good are all these, all these connections and followers, if nobody’s seeing it. So the one I really try to focus on is building connections. You can have up to 30,000 of those. it does take a while. I think I, I hit the limit late, early, either early this, early this month. And it took, really six years of a very consistent effort of getting near close to, you know, a hundred, a hundred new connections a week was always the goal.

So it takes time. You’re, if you’re not, you’re, so, if you’ve got like a. 300 people, now you’ve got years. If you’ve got 10,000 people now you’re still years away from, from really hitting the, the max. And you know these people, you can invite them to subscribe to your newsletter, attend events like we’re we’re doing right now today.

you can get contact information and it’s much easier, much more reliable to message those people, but it does take time. LinkedIn’s got a bunch of limitations in place, so start now. And just be consistent with it and you’ll, you’ll get there eventually. and big thing is just focus on the right people for your 

[00:10:39] network.

so just to kind of give you an example of sending out connection requests, what I tell people is, here’s, here’s the best thing about it, is if you’re connecting with the right people who are relevant to you, you don’t have to worry about trying to figure out what the best connection message is. in this particular list of people I’m showing you, I’m only connecting with one of ’em.

’cause you can look at the other ones here, you can look at, Sandeep here. And again, nothing, nothing personally against any of these people. but if you’re trying to pitch me in the message, I’m just gonna click the ignore button. if you’re trying to grasp at straws with your connection message that, you know, we’re both interested in brand growth or something like that, again, I, I know you’re just looking to pitch me, so I’m gonna click ignore.

If your profile picture. Doesn’t show your face In this particular example, she’s covered it with her camera. other people, it could be that it’s just their logo, but in any case, I’m also clicking the ignore button. And again, I’m, I freed up a little bit of space. So I have room for maybe like 10 or 20 new connections.

But don’t be offended if you send me a connection request today and I can’t accept it. ’cause I’m, like I said, I’m bouncing right around the 30,000 limit. and you know. I’ve been trying to get some irrelevant connections out of my network, but there’s not a whole lot of space there right now. and then finally, I wanna just talk about kind of the intent signals, ’cause it’s been coming up more and more, on LinkedIn and right.

Intent signals are, are certainly nothing new. And Google’s been talking about buyer intent as part of the sales buying process. Sales process for I think close to 15 years now. but on LinkedIn, essentially what some of these things could be is that these are people who, are engaging actively on LinkedIn, which is a good signal to know that, they’re, they’re not just somebody who abandoned their profile five years ago.

and they’re never gonna see your connection risk ’cause they’re, they’re not active here. you still need to, you know, you still need to find people who are kind of connecting with the right type of content. just randomly getting people who are connecting or, or are commenting. Not terribly useful.

Your connection rate will probably be pretty high, but you’ll fill up your network with the wrong, wrong, irrelevant people. so you still need to kind of filter people out. it’s helpful, like I said, if you are kind of in that place where you said, I just need more connections right now, and I, you know, so let me, let me start with the low hanging fruit.

but the other kind of thing to keep in mind is these lists oftentimes aren’t very big. You’re typically taking a lot of different posts and cobbling them together can be a little bit on the time consuming side. It’s effective mostly, But, don’t, don’t get too attached to this particular one. because we’ve seen a lot of campaigns be successful without paying attention to it.

It’s just kind of that extra boost, in case you need it. Every once in a while. We will run into that in certain industries where, you know, the, trying to think of a good, good one here. Like, for example, we use it oftentimes for, for our own internal campaigns to find consultants who are active on the platform.

Because sometimes it can be a little bit challenging to, to get meetings scheduled with them. ’cause I’m in, I’m just in a very competitive industry. Right? Right. How many, how many messages have you gotten this week from somebody saying, I’ll help you book appointments. So it all kind of starts to sound the same, to, to the, to the person receiving them.

[00:14:13] So. So let’s talk about your profile. So we’re gonna shift gears here. So build connections. Let’s talk about your profile, because this is kind of where people get to learn about you and you wanna let people know who you are, what do, and who you work with. And I also recommend you have a little bit of fun with it, be a human being.

Again, right. So you can see mine here. And again, feel free to, to kind of make this your own. This is not set in stone. You don’t have to do, do all of this stuff exactly the way I do it. In fact, I would encourage you not to do it exactly the way I do it. Because you want to be uniquely, right? You’re not me, I’m not you.

So we can all kind of have, have our own unique approach to doing this. But, you know, for me it’s just, you know, I, I like to start with just who, who I am. I find that from a connection standpoint, that actually works better than I, than leading with. Kind of what I do, which is in this case, is helping businesses land high value clients.

so I also mentioned some of the other things I do like, you know, podcast host, I really like memes. Feel free to send me memes. I always, I always enjoy them. and then I like beer, which I mentioned earlier as well. So. Something just to kind of keep in mind there, but it, it, it lets people eat more easily.

Connect to you. For example, I’ve had many, many people who’ve responded to messages I’ve sent them, talking about beer. right. And, and it’s right. That’s not my business. That’s not what I do. It’s just, it, it, it made it much more relatable. Made, made, made. It made it easier, easier for them to connect with me.

So. Some things to think about there. also the headline here is, basically think about is this kind of is a little billboard that follows you around wherever you go. So if you’re writing, posts, part of, there’s a little blurb that will stand out there if you’re commenting on something. So anytime you’re commenting on other people’s posts, which a lot of people are gonna see, typically, your, your little blurb there, that little headline is gonna show up there.

Also shows up in, in direct messages, basically anywhere that you’re communicating with people, that’s gonna show up. So it is worth spending some time to think about what you wanna write there and kind of use it as a way to pique somebody’s interest so that they come and check out your profile. Because then a nice thing about your profile profiles, I consider this to be your, your safe space to do your selling.

So. Building your profile. Basically, your goal here is to build trust and authority. So use the about section to essentially make your pitch. you get about, I think you get about five or 600 words or so to kind of put it in there. if you, yeah, feel free to take a look at mine. I’m not saying it’s the best one, but it might give you a good starting point.

Basically it’s, you know, just kind of let people know what you do. It’s not a place to talk about your, your resume or, you know, if you’re gonna talk about your work experience, do it. So in a fun way that leads people to think, oh yeah, this is, this is the guy I’ve been looking for. I need somebody who knows how to do that.

you’ve got a bunch of different kind of features in there. For example, the featured section. It’s a great place to kind of put content. You really wanna highlight whether that’s, you know, different types of, lead magnets or webinars you’ve hosted, you know, engagement, speaking engagements that you’ve done, or just posted, you said, you know, I’m proud of these, these, these have really performed well.

I want more people to see them. and then we’re gonna talk about activity, and we’re gonna kind of talk, you know, as we get into content, we’re gonna really kind of dig more into the type of activity that well results in. People reaching out and saying, Hey, hey, Gary. you know, I’m interested in what you guys do, recommendations.

Don’t worry too much about them, but it’s good to have some, from, from other people that you worked with. Think of ’em kind of like testimonials that are, you know, for you personally, kind of like, Hey, you can trust this person. They, they do good work. A work history, again, fill it out. Even if, you know at one point, you know, you know, 20 years ago you worked at a, you know, target as a grocery or, you know, whatever you were doing.

Just kind of put it all there. It just, again, can make you feel more relatable, even if it doesn’t, isn’t necessarily relevant. It just a good way to kind of, again, be human. So fill it all up and you know it, it’s gonna help you book more meetings the more you’ve got there. That’s your profile. We’ve talked about building your network.

I know I’m going fast here. I will keep an eye on the, comments. but I’m trying to make sure I also get through everything ’cause I don’t want to keep you here all day. So if you put questions in there, I’ll try and do ’em, mostly as we come along. And, if, if I miss ’em, I will come back to ’em at the end.

So, otherwise. I think we’re okay right now. I don’t see anything at the moment that we need to talk 

[00:19:15] about. So let’s talk about content. And I, I think this is one of those areas that is, is way more challenging than you think it would be on, on, on LinkedIn. And I think one of the big reasons for that is that.

LinkedIn is not a, a platform where people spend a lot of time on average. I think I, my most recent data is probably a couple years out of date now ’cause there just hasn’t been any updates to it. But the average LinkedIn user spends about 19 minutes a month. On the platform, whereas an average, let’s go with YouTube user, we’ll spend 40, six minutes a day.

So it’s a huge, huge difference in how much time people are spending there. So if you’re posting your content on LinkedIn. A huge portion of your network’s never gonna see it. ’cause they’re, they’re not spending time there. So trying, you’re kind of, you’re, you’re kind of competing with for a small group of eyeballs there, which is why sometimes the content can, can feel impossible or, or really inconsistent.

Or you, you’ll see people complaining that, you know, engagement’s down and all this stuff is, is down. Basically the sky is falling. So. Let’s talk and talk about what you can do with it and kind of ways to, to boost their performance, make sure we’re getting in front of the right people, so that ultimately we can build a nice low book of business.

So the thing about your content is ways to meet with the end goal in mind is that you, and eventually you wanna land new business from it. not every post needs to be about exactly what you do promoting your business, that it shouldn’t be. You’ll have a combination of different posts that work, but you’re also just trying to kind of increase awareness.

You don’t, don’t be the best kept secret in your industry. Let people know what you do. you know, posting can, especially when you’re telling stories or talking about case studies, video, things like that can all Elevaate your authority. They reduce price resistance, increase trust, and streamline your sales process, so that as you go along, you’re, you know, you, there’s just less hurdles in the way because people already feel like they know, like, and trust you.

Yeah, but content is not a, a, a drive by. It’s not something you can just do once in a while. It really requires participation consistently. I saw a guy or bank last week, he’s bragging about, you know, I use chat GPT to write my post. I haven’t been here in a month. I don’t engage. and it was pretty obvious ’cause it was pretty cricket.

Pretty much crickets on his post. And, you know, it, it, it, obviously, you know, he thinks it’s working for him, but it would work so much better if he actually took the time to write posts because he has a big network. So he’s gonna get a little bit of exposure from, from doing that. But, you know, by actually, you know, getting in front of people regularly, engaging with everybody in his network, engaging with people in his network and posts, you know, much, much better results.

So. If you need to, if you’re, if you wanna use content, you’re, you’re, it’s a participation, participation sport, and you need to be there consistently. It’s not, like I said, you can’t just show up once a week and hope or, or worse, you know, once a month. unfortunately it’s not a set it in, forget it type of strategy.

You need to regularly post, respond to people who are commenting. Please respond to people when they comment. It’s really good to get more people to engage with your, with your post and comment on other people’s posts. So engage with others ’cause. A lot of times you’ll find that your comments get a lot more impressions than your posts ever do, because some other, some posts just blow up.

They get a lot, they’re a lot more interesting, or well engaging in some way. Sometimes it’s rage bake, but nonetheless, there’s, there’s more eyeballs there to, to do it 

[00:23:05] so. In terms of what to post though some posts, well, they’re good for engagement. I’m gonna show you some examples here. some posts are good for promoting your business.

They’re once in a while, they’re the same, but typically not so much. So lemme show you what I mean. So again, back to the whole, I’ve got way too small of little examples on my slides here, but essentially I had two posts that I made in the past, 10 days or so. So first one I made was basically, here’s how I get clients on LinkedIn.

Said, here’s a flow chart I can share with you. Kind of just talking about telling that story of how, how we’ve kind of built the, that business up and, and kind of what’s been working for us there. And I said if you, you’re interested, comment and I’ll send you a flow chart. And after a week we got about 600 impressions, not very good.

And then the post above, it was me on a Monday just randomly deciding, oh, I got a, I got a cold call. It was, it was interesting at least. So I asked for engagement from the cold calling community to give their feedback on it. We had a lot of discussion. We got, I think at the time I took the screenshot, almost 10,000 impressions.

I think it’s quite a bit more than that now, but a lot of comment, a lot of good discourse and, and kind of conversation happening. But that’s not the type of thing that brings in any, any business for me directly. Nobody saw that post and was like, yes, that’s what I want. I want to talk to that guy because I’m, I’m not a cold calling expert.

I don’t use it. I, I was just trying to start a conversation there. So you’ve kind of got two posts. There’s two types of, two different lines of thinking essentially with two different end goals, and one is kind of the get impressions, get conversation going. Get it shown to more people who are in my network, right?

I want more 

[00:25:01] eyeballs. And then you’ve got a second type of post that is, okay, I want those eyeballs now let’s see if we can move them further along and get them to raise their hand and say, yes, I’m interested in your services. Of course, interested in your services typically means. That’s a lot less people, engaging with it.

So one of the, the strategies I’ve seen more recently, and it’s, still in testing, so I can’t guarantee this is gonna move the needle for you, but it really is, is kind of an interesting strategy in terms of, it lets you basically boost your, boost your posts, which is. Right. You can, you’ve been able to do this on Facebook for, for years, but I like that you can do it now, essentially your personal account and you can have your business promote the post.

So, which it seems to be helping, at least in our experiments so far. Essentially what you’re trying to do, again, take the same idea, is let people know what you do. What’s performing best right now is essentially taking this as a, a chance to tell a story. so you can talk about results. You might achieve origin stories for something.

Share the struggle. it it, you know, right? You don’t, you don’t have to pretend it’s all sunshine and, and rainbows. you can kind of let people know, you know, here’s areas where we’ve struggled, or here’s how we’ve had to shine a address changing this or, or that, or limitations or, or any of that. It, it, again, it makes you relatable.

It makes 

[00:26:35] you. and, well, I know kind of posting a, a selfie style picture of yourself is a bit, again, cliche on LinkedIn especially. they tend to perform better. That’s again, just been my experience looking, looking strictly at the numbers, you know, I like to do. It’s much easier to take a screenshot and you.

Circle it up and, you know, put some red lines on it and, and talk about it. but I get more engagement when I post a picture of me, which I’d rather not do. But, that’s, that’s what it requires. So, we’ll, we’ll keep doing it. you can also use video if you prefer. And finally, if you’re gonna do, do these types of posts, you do wanna have some type of call to action.

Just getting more eyeballs on something with no clear direction on what to do is, is, is probably gonna have. Fairly 

[00:27:24] mediocre results. So when you’re running ads here on LinkedIn. keep in mind, LinkedIn ads tend to be a little bit more expensive than other platforms. so you’re gonna get your, your CPMs and all that jazz general are gonna be higher.

but the reason I like this, this strategy is that now I can make my posts and I’ve got control or more control anyway, over who’s gonna see it. I can say, here’s kind of my ICP, here’s my ideal client. Show it to these type of people please. when it’s just content, when I’m just posting, it’s a little bit hit or miss, right?

I’m connected with a lot of the right people, so there will be some of that. but not, not everybody in my network is a prospect for what we do. So this lets me really kind of essentially make sure more of the right people see it for a longer period of time. Now, now that post that I made on a Friday.

Two weeks later is still getting comments. I’m still getting people to, to reach out and say, Hey, I’m interested in that, versus typically that post is done by 24, maybe 48 hours later. And, and then that’s it. Now you’re onto the next one. This, this gives more life. So you can spend more time and more effort making your posts good, knowing that you’ve got a way to get it in front of the right people and that that effort is going to be, be worth it.

So one other thing I’ll mention here is that it does help if the posts did get a little bit of engagement, initially without having to promote it. but feel free to play around with that yourself. That may not necessarily be, the case every time. but again, feel like I said, do do what works for you.

But that’s kind of what we’re seeing is try and basically promote your. Promote your winners and kind of let the ones that really fell flat where nobody was interested, just let those go. And, you know, try and try a different approach to, to the same, same idea if you want to wanna get people in. So that’s kind of my content strategy, like I said, with the ads now being, more easily accessible and kind of being able to essentially have a business, promote personal posts.

You know, I’m seeing a lot more value to, to that content side of things. and, you know, it, it makes, it makes a, a, a very small investment in, in a LinkedIn ad campaign go a lot further than just strictly running, you know, display ads that, you know, don’t have a connection to a 

[00:30:00] person. So. So let’s pivot over here to outreach.

if you do have any kind of more questions about the, the LinkedIn content and ad side of things, feel free to post them and we’ll kind of come back to that at the end if you’d like. so in the business to business world, outbound is often the most consistent, most reliable business development strategy.

Used in the enterprise space, right. basically virtually all your big, business to business companies have some type of enterprise team. Even ones that you’d say are mostly consumer facing? apple, Google, Amazon all have enterprise sales teams, for different offerings within the, in their conglomerates.

So all of them, even with their huge brand name and recognition, still have somebody whose job it is to do some form of cold outreach. so. Oh, we’re a little bit ahead of the schedule here. So, the outreach approach. So I will, I get the, I get this kind of thing here all the time. People saying, well, people don’t like, getting dms on LinkedIn, or they don’t like getting cold email or cold call.

And you know what, you’re right. They, they absolutely don’t. But they also will tell you that they don’t like TV ads or radio. they’re gonna ignore all the Google sponsored posts. They throw away all their junk mail. they don’t want another tedious of networking or mixer to attend. They, they hate, they hate everything.

Doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. So bottom line, nobody get is coming into the office today hoping that today is the day they get your pitch. But people do respond positively to, you know, services offers that they think will help them or their company. even if they didn’t want it, even if it wasn’t invited, it can still, you know, you’re, you’re gonna see that be effective, right?

That’s just advertising in a nutshell is, well, it might be relevant to this person. Let me show them something. Right? you know, some of them are more intrusive, right? Text messages are really annoying. Billboards on the interstate. Not so much, but nonetheless, it, it’s all just some type of 

[00:32:13] advertising.

So if you’re looking for a little bit of help on what the heck do I say? And I, I get that question all the time. People say, well, what, what do I say though? How do I not come off as, as like every other pitch that I’ve gotten? And they’re like, do you have any templates? And I always tell ’em no. Because the thing about templates, as soon as you start sharing templates, it just makes them ineffective for everybody including you.

So I started thinking about this, what can I give you? And what I thought was, lemme give you an AI prompt so that you can feed this to, usually I find in this particular case chat, GPT, the four O model, is better than five. Maybe, maybe that will change with some of the later, you know, you know, other models that come down.

But as we’re doing this in September of 2025, that’s been the one that really tends, I think, gives the best type of messaging, with this particular prompt, which is to say, can you help me write a short message to send out to new LinkedIn connections? I’m not trying to pitch them anything or ask them questions.

It’s meant to be a friendly hello that’s a bit folksy and a little self-deprecating. But don’t go over the top. Can you help me come with, come up with a few variations and you know, you don’t have to give it any particular information about this person for this particular prompt to work. And it will come up with some, you know, start with five and you can kind of refine it from there.

Take it, make it your own. Don’t, do not just copy and paste it. You’ll probably get poor results with it. but it will really get your, your brain in that kind of thinking. Oh yeah, that’s different. I like that. And it’s, you know, I can make that, you know, let me adjust some things here, kind of rewrite a little bit.

Now it’s, now it feels like me. Now it feels like I’m saying it. And now, now you can start sending that type of thing out. But that’s, you know, that’s generally where I start with it, is just that, you know, you, you don’t want, you don’t need to pitch in the first message. Most people do. You, you don’t need to though.

And you’ll probably get better results if you don’t. just because that’s what they’re expecting. And they’re expecting, you know, to get that, that pitch. And they’re like, yeah, not interested, disconnect, gone. Your opportunity is, is lost there.

So a couple other things about outreach, is kind of use, use that AI prompt to build a good introduction. Your first message that, that’s really all you’re trying to do is. Is is get them to say thanks, give you a thumbs up in return. oftentimes one of the side benefits is that they will go check out your profile, which is where you are trying to, you know, basically present yourself and say, here’s kind of what I do.

Here’s my experience, here’s what we offer. if that’s one of the better ways to actually get somebody to check out your profile, it’s not by asking them to view your profile, but by just sending a message that. Doesn’t call anything out. It’s just interesting enough for ’em to say, who is this 

[00:35:16] person?

do your best to try and reach out to relevant people. The more relevant your message is to people, the, the better it’s gonna be. Right? If the, if you’re reaching out to CEOs and you know, your message is about some type of, you know, cybersecurity offer, probably not gonna get much interest unless it’s really a small company and they happen to have it on their mind.

there’s probably other people in the company that are better to reach out to for something like that. I also recommend using a message sequence. Don’t just rely on one message. one is probably, ’cause the main thing is people don’t spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. They might only be on once in a while, maybe a couple times a month, once or twice a week.

so they oftentimes will miss your first message or even your second message. So I find three is kind of the, the sweet spot. After that, it’s kind of diminishing returns, but. Three is good and is enough to be somewhat per, is enough to be persistent without being too annoying. So if somebody does reply, be follow up with them, is check, check back.

See, see what, see if they’re still interested. it’s, it, it’s amazing how many deals close just because you follow up with somebody, right. Don’t, don’t rely on them to be the person to, you know, come back and say, yeah, I’m, I’m ready to, to work with you now. it will happen once in a while. But, but oftentimes it’s ’cause you check back, you followed up.

Maybe it, maybe it took a month to close, maybe it took two or three. but kind of just having a, having a follow up process in place will get you more deals and make an offer. right. I said don’t pitch in the first message, but that doesn’t mean you, you, you gotta have a pitch somewhere. now I like to, I like to do it as part of an introduction.

kind of sandwich it in there so it feels, feels more natural, feels more like what I would do if I were actually out in the real world networking with people is, you know, you’d introduce yourself, tell ’em what you do, invite them to do the same, right? They’re gonna tell you, you know, what, what they do.

And, if it makes sense, you can have a, have a further discussion about it. And that’s really kind of the whole idea is, you know, whether that further discussion is scheduling a call or here’s a, here’s a, here’s a video that I made, or here’s, you know, here’s some case studies that I’d like to share.

or here’s a, you know, example of how I think this could help you. There’s tons and tons of ways you can kind of position that. Just kind of thinking about what’s, what’s worked well for you in the past. If, if it’s just talking to people, then invite them to talk. If it’s, you know, I’ve got a, a Loom video to share, I know that’s worked well for us.

Share a five minute loom video with somebody, and, and go from there. So, so that’s a, that’s the outreach kind of portion of it. I find it’s, it’s just, like I said, it’s one of those really consistent types of methods. It’s not as reliant on LinkedIn’s algorithm for surfacing content. So, definitely I’d say kind of make that, you know, especially early on, make that kind of the mainstay of your, your offering, kind of build the content on top of that.

Also, I like that, you know, outreach gives you kind of that immediate feedback. If everybody’s saying no, you know, you’re not saying what you’re doing right? Or just that, you know, that particular thing is just not what people are interested in right now. So kind of look at your business and say, well what, what else?

How can I repackage that? Or how can I say it in a different way or in a way that’s gonna get more people 

[00:38:44] interested? So finally we’re gonna talk about LinkedIn events here. And I don’t have a whole bunch of slides on this one. ’cause since you are here. You know what LinkedIn events look like. You’ve got, you’ve got the invite.

you may have gotten a reminder about it, but essentially LinkedIn events are a really great way to kind of showcase, you, it can Elevaate your authority. Again, it positions you as more of an expert, not just some person, you know, happen into other people’s dms. And it really just kind of is another good way to kind of pull people in to, to your sphere of influence.

so you can talk to, you know, maybe, maybe 10 people, maybe 30 people, maybe a hundred people at a time. and, and kind of just share your knowledge in a way that’s very, it’s not a high pressure, it’s not a, a super sales pitch type of thing. It’s just them to get to know you a little bit better and kind of learn about what you offer and see if what you do might be relevant to them.

and may maybe for, for most people, most people on this event will never become a client of mine. you know, they’ll have some ideas. They might take it to their team. they’ll think of ways they can use it themselves, but a handful of people that will reach out, they’ll say, Hey, Gary, interested in, you know, interested in what you guys are doing there.

Can we talk a little bit more here? Here’s what we do. Do you think you could help us? And that’s generally how LinkedIn events are gonna, are gonna go, is that they’re a little bit of a slow burn. they’re, they’re not just do an event and then boom, you’ve got a flood of new clients coming in.

Unfortunately, they don’t work. I wouldn’t like them to work that way, but unfortunately they don’t work that way. but I, I find them to be a really kind of valuable tool. ’cause you can not only get the people who are viewing the, the session, especially if you do ’em as a live stream, you’ll get more people to come back and view them after the event.

now you kind of know who in your network is interested in some of these topics, so they’re more, one, they’re more likely to see your content. Also gives you an opportunity to, you know, contact those people as well. So. A lot of good things come from doing LinkedIn events. Heck, even if nobody shows up to your LinkedIn event, they end up still being worth it just from, you know, replays and, being able to get additional little clips of video content, to share later.

like. I like being able to take little video clips of these because video content is more engaging to your audience. May, they may not. They’re, they’re not gonna go viral. They’re not the types of things that, you know, are gonna get millions of views. But the nice thing about doing them is, is that it kind.

Gets people to, you know, basically, again, that know, like, and trust you, right? So now they’re saying, I like, oh, I like that person. I like what they’ve got to say. I’m, I’m more receptive to what they have to offer ’cause they’ve seen a video versus just a text post or something like that. So a lot of good can come from doing it.

give it a try If you haven’t actually done one before, they can be a little bit of effort, especially initially. but if you need some help with that, just let me 

[00:41:47] know. So finally my mailbox is still empty, so, right. This is not a LinkedIn strategy. In fact, this is kind of the thinking outside the box a little bit.

But I can tell you yesterday I received 33 cold pitches via email. 29 of ’em never made it to my inbox. They just went directly, they went unread directly to my spam. I did only get one pitch on LinkedIn yesterday. So, a little bit of an interesting kind of aside here is that I’m noticing there’s more and more cold email coming through.

It’s just kind of slowly creeping up and, less and less LinkedIn messages. probably because it’s, it’s much more challenging to scale a LinkedIn campaign, which I think is great because at this point now that means there’s less competition in people’s impacts. I also got, you know, 16 spam calls, which none of which were answered the vast majority.

I had to go look at my log just to see where they were, ’cause my phone didn’t ring. They got blocked immediately. But I got zero pieces of mail, not a single one. Not even a bill. and that’s, that’s more often than not, what ends up in my mailbox is nothing. I’ll, I’ll walk past it. I’ll get into the office.

On my way in, it’s right next to the door. I look over empty. And then same thing as I’m leaving, I take a quick peek on my way out still. So I think you’re gonna find there, there again, more and more people are not getting, you know, advertisements in the mail anymore. So there is, there is definitely opportunity there, to, to, to try things out.

So, for example, I had somebody, send me an email. saying, Hey, you know, if I could have sent a carrier pigeon, via email, I would’ve, blah, blah, blah. Doesn’t matter what they were offering. Some type of like software development. So very, a very, very competitive, kind of generic type of offer. But I did, I went and looked it up, I said.

What if I actually wanted to send somebody a, a carrier pigeon, I mailed them, in this case a little carrier pigeon key chain. But you can buy that for like 50 cents and then, you know, put a stamp on it. probably costs, you know, by the time you’re all said, that may might cost two bucks a piece to send those things, right?

Little bit more effort. But, you know, cold email’s not free. Right? You sending, it might not cost anything, but you’ve all the infrastructure. Cost, cost money these days, two bucks to contact. Good, good. Well targeted prospects is not bad. So again, not buying or selling here, but just some things to think about if you’re trying to get somebody’s attention.

If you’re trying to get my attention, shoot, shoot me a, shoot me a letter because that’s your, your your best bet. you can connect with me on LinkedIn too, but like I said, as I’ve kind of hit that, that peak of or maximum of, of connections don’t have as much, there’s not as much opportunity there.

But 

[00:44:46] anyway. If you need some help with this, go ahead and you can schedule a call at the appointment lab. Again, that just forwards to my Calendarly calendar. but it’s easier to say the appointment lab.com than to give you the long URL for my calendar link. and essentially, you know, we can build this, get it set up for you, manage it for you.

I think that’s the big thing is that it’s done for you, so you’re not trying to figure out how to do it or who’s trying to manage it. You know, somebody with experiences doing it and taking care of it for you. Every day. So if you get busy, you’re on vacation, doesn’t matter. It’s running for you. so that’s, that’s kind of my spiel.

That’s my pitch. If you’d like some help, please feel free to reach out. Otherwise, I’m gonna open it up for questions and help you get to any assistance you’re looking for today. And, then I’m gonna let you go and move on with your day. So, got one 

 

[00:45:38] here. I don’t have a name on this one, but this one says, for solopreneurs, is it better to post as your business or from your personal po personal profile or share from one to or the other for solopreneurs.

You actually, for, even, even if you are Microsoft, it’s better to post as from your personal profile. sat na Delic, CEO of Microsoft. you, there’s some before and afters from when Microsoft basically would post on LinkedIn compared to when the CEO of Microsoft would post on LinkedIn as himself. Huge differences in terms of engagement and things like that.

And I think, ’cause, I mean, think about it. LinkedIn is a, a person to person networking platform. You’re, you’re there to connect with other people. You’re not there to connect with companies. So. You are gonna see a lot better results posting from your personal profile. And then kinda like we talked about earlier, if you want to kind of enhance the reach and get more of that out there, you can then take your business and promote that post from your personal profile.

So in my case, you know, you’d see a post from Gary Rubinger and then underneath it it would say Promoted by Pipelineology. So that’s how my business can promote some of these and, you know, get, get that information out there. But in a way that, you know, with, again, I’ve got 30,000 connections, a fairly big network, a lot of followers.

That’s where, that’s where our authority lies, is kind of as a, you know, me as the, the owner of the company. So you’re gonna find it’s very much likely to be the same for you. Almost no matter how big your company gets. you’re probably gonna see, good results from doing it, doing it that way. So. any other questions from anybody else?

Otherwise, I will let you guys get on with your day. I really appreciate everybody being here. and, it’s always great to see, see you guys for, for these events. We’ll be doing one again, probably about the end of October. that’s one of my favorite topics we’re gonna be doing. I always like to do it for, for kind of our own Halloween, it’s called the Zombie method.

It’s kind of how do we revive dead leads, deals that have stalled, kind of that re re-engagement of, of your network. So, stay tuned for that one. It’ll be the end of October. I got a 

[00:47:55] message here. Question from Alex. Do you consider LinkedIn sales Navigator worth the monthly fee? Absolutely, 100%. it’s, it’s kind of a it, the problem with LinkedIn Sales Navigator is that it’s.

A tricky tool to use by itself. I find that it’s you, you kind of try and build connections and you’re trying to send messages and then LinkedIn wants to throttle you. but even with all the limitations in place, the extra filtering and ability to just really find the right people who are good fits for your type of offer.

People who’ve shown different types of activity, For the, I think it’s, I think it’s gone up recently, I think, right? It’s 120 bucks a month now. but still we, if we’re, if we’re working with somebody, it’s a, it’s written into the agreement that they need to have a sales navigator subscription.

Otherwise, we just can’t really do a good job, for them. So, I’ll tell you the same thing, is that, yeah, it’s worth it. It feels expensive, especially if you’re just getting started. but they usually give you a free trial. Give it a try. But yeah, we consider it to be worth, worth that particular fee.

and I feel like LinkedIn should pay me for saying that, but they do not ever. So I think that’s all the questions here. Lemme look over here. Yeah, that 

[00:49:14] is all of them. So thanks so much for being here today. Everybody take care. And I will see you next month for the zombie method. Reviving your dead leads.