No Clients From LinkedIn? The 7 Easy Keys That Unlock Your Pipeline

No Clients From LinkedIn? The 7 Easy Keys That Unlock Your Pipeline

Gary welcomes attendees to a LinkedIn best-practices session on “No Clients from LinkedIn: the Seven Mistakes Holding You Back,” shares housekeeping (stream delay, replay availability, and event notifications via Pipelineology.com/events), and outlines an agenda covering headlines, about sections, proactive connecting, clearly stating what you do, storytelling content, commenting for visibility, and “you never asked” outreach, followed by Q&A. He reviews multiple volunteer profiles in a “hot seat,” emphasizing a visible profile photo, a custom banner, using more headline space with personality, writing the About section as a sales pitch, featuring key posts, and maintaining recent activity. He recommends proactively sending weekly connection requests, using commenters and “people you may know,” and optionally Sales Navigator. He advises posting about your services, using business stories, and commenting on others’ posts. He encourages direct outreach, shares an example positive reply to a Loom video, warns against copying AI-written messages, and suggests using AI only for ideation, then rewriting in your own voice. He offers Pipelineology services and closes with plans for a September event.

Discover:

00:00 Welcome And Setup

02:46 Housekeeping And Agenda

06:25 Profile Basics Headline

10:02 About Featured Activity Tips

12:55 Hot Seat Michael Review

14:54 Hot Seat Howard Review

17:56 Hot Seat Zina Review

21:12 Hot Seat Crystal Review

23:57 Hot Seat Lavelle Review

27:25 Network Growth Tactics

28:16 Finding Ideal Connections

30:47 Sales Navigator Filters

32:07 Post What You Do

33:22 Business Stories Content

37:12 Visibility Through Comments

39:20 Ask For The Sale

43:09 AI For Outreach Drafts

44:57 Outreach Framework Follow Up

47:17 Offer Help And Q&A

49:26 Lydia Profile Hot Seat

51:39 AI Personality Editing

54:31 Wrap Up And Next Event

Transcript:

 

[00:00:00] All right. Welcome everybody to today’s session. So I know about, actually I’m only about a minute early right now. So give, give everybody a minute or two just to get, get logged on, get the notifications, all that stuff. so this session is the No Clients from LinkedIn, the Seven Mistakes Holding You Back.

Presentation today. So we’ll be covering what I would say are kind of seven of the most common things that I see people not doing or kind of missing that, you know, we’re, they’re just not gonna get as much activity as many, you know, potential new, potential new clients from, from the platform as as they could be.

So I kind of wanna consider this one kind of a best practices session. Things you can kind of do to. To get a bit more, you know, get more activity and more, more, more business from your efforts on LinkedIn. But while we’re waiting for people to hop on here, where’s, where’s everybody calling in from today?

You know, it’s, it’s late August, so usually that means great weather pretty much everywhere. but, I know today, especially here in in Michigan, it is a, it is a perfect, late summer day. I think it’s about 80 degrees. Stunning. I mean, it’s, it’s about, it’s one of those days where I say, what am I doing here inside?

not, nothing against you, just, but why, why am I inside today? And not, not doing this from like my back, my back deck, you know, with a, with a margarita or something like that. But, but neither here nor there. Where’s, where’s everybody else calling in from today? Like I said, it’s a beautiful day here in Michigan.

how about for you?

All right, here we go. Hey Michael, appreciate you. Hopping on today was, it’s always great to see the first comment come through, ’cause then you know the stream’s actually working. ’cause I could see I got a little, little live counter here in the top corner of my screen. but you know, and you’re like, Hey, is any, is anybody out there?

So appreciate, appreciate you being number one Michael out in Salt Lake City. So. It’s great to have you here today. we’ll give, give everybody just, I call it 30 more seconds and then we’ll get started. ’cause I always, I don’t like to be the person who’s like, yeah, we’re gonna wait five or 10 minutes, for everybody to get on.

And then, you know, you’re going through your introduction and that’s like 15 minutes into the session and before you finally start anything. So, but, so Crystal from Florida. Welcome. Great to have you here. So I think with that said, I’m gonna get started because I’m, I’m sure that’s, you’re, you’re not here for me to talk about the weather and where everybody’s from.

So let’s, let’s jump into it here today. So move 

[00:02:45] this. So, just a couple quick housekeeping items that there’s about a 20 to 32nd delay. So if, you ask a question and then I reply to it, usually it’s about a 32nd round trip on something like that. Does it affect anything? Not too much, except that sometimes it’s, I can’t, if I ask a question, it’s kind of tough to kind of go back and forth and have a a, a live, a live, conversation about it.

but otherwise, it tends to work pretty well. there will be a replay available. I get that one asked all the time. So if anybody pops in later in the chat and says, Hey, is this being recorded, or is there going to be, be a replay? Just reply Yes. Right. We’ll refresh the screen once the session’s over and it’ll, it should pop right up.

typically it’s, I say one to 24 hours, depending on LinkedIn. Typically, it’s less than five minutes now, but you just never know what kind of mood LinkedIn’s in. If you wanna be notified of future events, go to Pipelineology dot com slash events and you can throw in your email and you’ll get notified via email.

Though, the last thing I, I know I talked to a lot of people. The last thing anybody wants is another email in their inbox. But hopefully, if you get good value out of these, you, you would, you would welcome an email from me on that. So agenda today, we’re gonna be going through, like I said, kind of the seven things that I think are the biggest, biggest levers you can pull.

Things are gonna make the biggest difference for you. we’re gonna talk about your LinkedIn headline, your about section for any brave souls out there, who are interested in a hot seat. Post your LinkedIn profile in there, and I will do kind of a quick rundown of your account, kind of what stands out to me, things that, pop up as, as I’m looking at ’em, and kind of give you, you know, some feedback on your LinkedIn profile as well.

Totally optional. You don’t have to, you’re not required to, to do it. but, but if you’re kind of curious what, what someone else’s opinion is on it, pop it in there and, We’ll probably do, if we have three to five volunteers, I’ll probably cap it there. but, if you’re hearing this now as I’m saying this, nobody’s, I don’t have any yet.

So, so feel free to, to jump in there and we should usually, usually we can get everybody in. so then we’re gonna talk about connecting proactively with people. Make sure we tell people what we do, telling stories, commenting on other people’s posts. And then finally we’ll cover the You never asked section and we’ll do some q and a to wrap things up.

and maybe if we’ve got some time in. Another hot seat if somebody pops in late and happens to catch it. So otherwise, that’s all I’ve got for you today. So let’s, let’s jump in real quick. I’m gonna spend 15 seconds here. I’m the founder of Pipelineology. I host a podcast, been doing marketing and business development work for almost 25 years now.

and I’m looking for, IPA New England IPA beer style recommendations. Let’s keep going. So we’re gonna get back to this here. I’m gonna flip over to. My screen and let’s see here. There we go. And I’m gonna pull this up full screen so that you can see it. So, I know this is gonna be really small if you’re watching from a phone today, but, I’ll try and kind of explain it as best I can.

Otherwise this will, this should look good if you’re on maybe like a tablet or a tablet or a computer, preferably. So, yep, I see, see some people interested in the, the hot seat. Great. so Michael, we’ll get you on the list there, Howard. We will crystal pop your, profile in the chat. Just make it easier for me.

we’ll get you in 

[00:06:24] too. but let’s kind of talk about your LinkedIn profile. ’cause really this does a lot of heavy lifting, even if a lot of people never actually see it. but when I talk about headline. Technically, it’s these two lines right here as your headline. I kind of think of it as everything above the fold here that kind of isn’t in this top section, so.

Make sure you’re doing kind of some of the, the basics here is, is there a picture of you there and is it visible? if it’s not visible, if you’re in here, go over here to your public profile and URL, click the edit button and you can change that setting. But I’ve run into it probably more often, more often than you’d think.

It’s not that people don’t put a picture here. That’s not, that’s not terribly common anymore. Most people, if they’re actively trying to promote LinkedIn. They’ve put their picture there. But what they’ve done is here, lemme just show you to you real quick. is you can edit the visibility here and if it’s not publicly available, and you can kind of play around with this, all of a sudden you’ll be sending out connection requests or kind of commenting and it won’t show up for everybody, the way, the way you would hope it would.

So just kind of wanna mention that. is that. Put, put your picture there, and make sure that people can view it. next thing up here is kind of have, have a banner image, a custom one, right? The default one if from LinkedIn is gray and boring. you, you can do whatever you want with this. It doesn’t have to be anything.

Anything in particular? I’ve seen people who kind of got, you know, nice pretty pictures of sunsets and things like that. I like to use it as a sales tool. So this kind of mirrors the look of my website. So if you went to Pipelineology dot com, you’d say, oh, that looks very familiar. and that’s kind of part of the goal is to kind of ultimately, right, what are we trying to do?

Well, I’d like people, I’ve got a button here that says visit my website. So I’d like people to ultimately visit the website. And, and you know, if they’re interested, schedule an appointment, a meeting, and we can go from there. So trying to keep some consistency there. Again, you, you’ve got lots of flexibility, but I do recommend putting something there.

and then kind of what do you do with the headline itself as. Again, you’ve got a lot of options, but you get, you get more characters than you think. I think it’s like, 8 75 or 80, maybe a few more than that. use them. So, because not only is this, will people see your, your headline here on the page, they will also see your headline if you’re posting, posting on LinkedIn, making comments even if you message people.

They’re going to see part of this. So I, I like to have a little bit of fun with it, right? I tell people, you know, I’m the founder of Python. Boring helping businesses land high value clients. Maybe, maybe it piques their interest. Maybe. also mentioning, you know, Hey, podcast host me aficionado and a beer enthusiast.

And the one really that gets the most conversations started is beer enthusiasts, though, really, I want people asking about this. So you put ’em both there. Both ways to kind of get the conversation started there. So that’s the headline, that’s the big one. And like I said, if you get nothing else out of today, just make sure that this looks, looks good.

Take a look at it, look at it a few times, and if you’re happy with it, good. If you’re like, Hey, I could do better. And you know what? I, I probably could do better if I spent, I, if I went through it again, I’d probably say, Hmm, that could change. You’re always gonna, you’re always gonna find things you can change.

But, kind of getting this, To the point where it’s a little bit fun, has some personality to it. I think you’re in good shape 

[00:10:01] there. So next section here is going to be the about section. And that’s if you will not when, right when you view my profile. You don’t see these things here, so we’ll, we’ll assume that that’s the next one down, which is right here, which is about, again, tons and tons of flexibility here with what you do.

for me, this is kind of, you know, my, my, my spiel about, you know, how I’m not a big fan of, of networking and networking meetings and things like that, and that, you know, really is all about kind of getting, getting meetings, kind of. It’s a, and it’s a way to kind of pitch that you, if you don’t like the little Xs and, you know, check marks and stuff, don’t do them.

If you do. Again, it’s up to you what you do with them. but this is really, the about section is not a time to talk about how, you know, you’re with thought leader and keynote speaker and you’ve got 25 years of industry, industry experience. This is, this is your safe place to make your pitch about what you do.

So think of it that way. Think of it like, you know, a sales page on a website, or something like that. Where it’s, Hey, this is what we do, here’s who we help, here’s some things we can do. Again, this is just one example for you to take a look at. There’s tons and tons of ways to do this well, and we’re gonna take a look at the hot seat and we’re gonna, we’re gonna take a look at some of these guys, ’cause I know, I know there’s a few of you brave enough to, to do it.

So, a few more things here while we’re doing this. I know this is, we’ll call this the, about extended edition here, featured section. Again, another great thing ’cause it. I think a lot of times it gets flipped up above the about section. but another place to kind of feature posts that you’ve said, Hey, these are some of my, you know, my favorite posts or things that really kind of kinda get, get my, my, my, my opinions and kind of what I do out there.

so great chance to use them and feature them and get more visibility to, to some of the things where you say, yeah, Pete, I want people to know this about me. If you’ve got posts like that, put ’em in the feature and you get, you can put three of ’em and then the rest of ’em you have to scroll. Though, there’s a little button here so you can kind of see it.

So, I would say find at least three. And this can be PDFs and white papers and videos and events and all kinds of sorts of things. so any, anything you’ve posted can, can be featured there. and then, we’ll get back to, to activity here and things like that. But really the big thing about activities there, there should be something here.

You don’t want it to be completely empty. If I go to somebody’s profile and there is nothing to see here under activity. I’m not, I’m not following that person. I’m not connecting with that person. ’cause it’s, it’s just a ghost account and Right. All, all I, and I know with certainty that the only purpose that they want is to pitch me something.

[00:12:53] So. so with that said, let’s, let’s do a couple hot seats. Let’s take a look at some, some of, some of your guys’ profiles. and then we’ll kind of jump into the kind of the rest of the things here, as, as we go along. So. And I think I see, I think we see five here. So, let’s jump in here with Michael Tanner,

see if he pops up. All right. So looks like, we got a pretty good start here. right. The, the profile picture itself stands out. Yellow background kind of. Kind of pops. so I like that. I’d say president and founder at Dice Media. Sure. Good. I’d say maybe from here we can have a little bit more fun with it.

just kind of a little bit, you know, more about you, things like that. that, that’d be my, my advice there. I see we’ve got company and university that you’re from. I see your website here. So overall, Michael, overall good. Start here. maybe a little bit more that we can do here with, with the background image, just to kind of give people a little better idea here what, you know, what to do next.

But again, overall this is, this is a pretty good, pretty good start. and then we’ll take a look here at the about section. This is probably the area I’d spend if you’re gonna do something. This is probably the area I’d spend the most time on is just kind of. Get, get this a little bit more, more formatted and put, put more information there.

and yep, I see. Good activity. Good, good, good. So overall, good start. I consider you put some work into this. So, I would say keep, keep doing what you’re doing. Few, few areas you can, do a little, do a little bit more. But overall, I mean, I’d say yeah, you’ve, you’ve got a good start. Good start on that.

[00:14:53] So. Let’s jump into the next one here. Howard. Howard. We’ll do you next. Howard Will, I’m gonna say that wrong.

I had it. I had it there.

Did Howard. All right. Howard. All right. I’d say again another. Another good one. I don’t know if this is on purpose here with this, I’m gonna assume it was, the way this kind of comes off with kind of like little thinking bubbles, kind of right here. it’s a nice touch. So like I said, I’m going to assume that that was intentional.

so what do we got? We got, sales and leadership cope helps helping sales professional improve execution about accountability and consistency. Looks good to me. Again, probably, you know, last thing I’d probably put in there is just a little bit, kinda little, little human facts about you. Something that’s kind of interesting and things like that.

Right? I know, right? If you don’t have to, right. Obviously you don’t have to use the ones that I do. I know Carrie, who’s behind the scenes here today, kind of running things. She puts that she’s a big fan of claw machines, right? The things you see in arc. She gets com people asking her about it all the time.

’cause she just has a little bit of fun with it. So I would say kind of same type of thing here, right? Especially write a sales professional type of thing, right? The big thing, like, salespeople are good, they’re good with people. So kind of things that help, you know, that indicate that, hey, yeah, I’m a human too.

but you got a good, good, good background image here. again, think may, maybe, maybe a little bit kind of corporate speak. maybe don’t, feel free to feel free to dismiss that one if you’re like, Nope, this is exactly how I want it to be. but I’d say overall a good start there. it’s an interesting way of getting your, oh, you’re, yeah.

Interesting way of getting your. email and phone number in there for you. if it works for you, that I guess that’s, that’s, that’s up to you. I, I would, I would just actually go with school up there. but, of course, always up to you there. Let’s take a look at the about section and Good, good. yeah, I’m kind of looking through this and I.

I’d say little bit may, maybe a little bit heavy on kind of background, but client achievements, the stuff’s gold. so overall good. Good job here, Howard. yeah, I am Tru. Truly, I’m, I’m nitpicking on on what, what you’re doing here. You did a good job. So, I would, I would probably tell people that this is, this is a good one to kind of base what you’re doing off of, off of, on that 

[00:17:55] one.

alright, next up here, we’re gonna do, oh, I’m gonna say this wrong, Zina. but I’m gonna try, let’s see here. CA, k.

There you are. Alright.

And if I haven’t mentioned it on the other ones, I know one thing, I just assume it’s there with real people now is this verification badge of some sort. at this point, again, if I see somebody who wants to connect with me and I don’t, and I’m like, yeah, it’s this person, a bot, and I don’t see that, I can be pretty sure it’s, it’s about, so.

You know, something that I’m looking for there. kind of, same thing here with the headline management consultant at Blue Monarch Management. Good. Keep that there. and then just, just add to it. Add, you’ve got more space to work with there. Add some more fa fun facts and things to it here.

Background image is present. again, good start. And I would just keep, keep adding more here, right? You’ve got, you’ve got this whole computer screen here. This is a good place to kind of. You know, get your Photoshop or something skills out and, and plug in kind of what, what you do or, or have some fun with something on the screen.

That, that would be, what I would do is you can, you can keep this as it is, and just have a little bit of fun, with, with what’s on the screen here. You could have some like little doodles here with some, like, steam coming outta your coff. You know, little, little things you can do if you wanna keep the same image or, or just kind of replace it wholesale.

Overall, we got, you know, company and university. Good, good, and good. Take a look at the about section here. Overall, you know, again, good, good start. again, I probably, I, I, I try to use all of the space that LinkedIn gives me here. and I think it’s 5,000 characters, if I’m not mistaken. if, if you’re under 4,990 characters, you’ve got, you’ve got more space to, you can kind of add more, more in.

so tho those are kind of the things I, I would look at here. yeah, just kind of fill, fill this out a little bit more featured section. Good. we’ve got, we’ve got it. We’ve got at least three here, so, that’s what we wanna see. And kind of same thing here. We have activity, we’ve got posts, things like that.

So. yeah, so, so far nobody’s sent me a single bad one yet. and, but I think, you know, right, all of them little things that we can do to kind of improve it, and that’s, I think that’s a lot of what we’re trying to do here, right? Is nobody’s coming here. This is my first time on LinkedIn. I have no idea what I’m doing.

It’s, Hey, you know, I’m a professional. I just wanna make sure that, you know, I’m doing everything I can to kind of get, you know, get maximum connection rates and responses and things like that. So, but overall, you guys have been sending in some good ones. and I think we’ve got, got a couple more here. So we’ll do Crystal and LaBelle and then if we have any more time later, we’ll we’ll come in and, and kind of finish, finish off.

But I know I said we could do up 

[00:21:11] to five. So Crystal Willis, let’s take a look at yours.

Crystal Willis. I hire talented engineers. I like it. if you, if I have reached out to you, that means I’m, I sow someone. You like you. All right. Good engineering jokes. You gotta love ’em. All right. let’s see here. so overall, crystal good. Good, good headline. I’m sure this works with your target market.

so I would not change it. I see here white space where there could be a company and, and, university. I, I tend to think profile looks more complete when they’re, they’re featured there. that one’s your choice, background image with, I assume that you guys, you do a lot of work in robotics, so, as long as that kind of is, is in fact the case, then go ahead and keep it, otherwise, you know, a chance to kind of add in a little bit more about what you know, kind of who, what, what you want to happen next with people you’re connecting with.

Let’s see, so about, about Crystal here is, more, five more than five years focused on recruiting. again, I would say fill, fill this out more, right? As we, you know, probably used about a quarter of as much space as you’re, you’re provided here to do it. kind of go get, get kind of fill, fill in more of it.

I would say if, if your focus is really recruiting. Is this should also be focused on recruiting. Maybe one paragraph with, you know, your background if you, you want to, but, I see kinda a lot of stuff. More SEO and operations. If your focus is recruiting. Talk about recruiting. ’cause that’s, I’m gonna assume who you’re connecting, connecting with here.

more fun, more fun stuff. Posting, reposting about. Engineering things. What is that? Is that a McLaren or a Ferrari? I should not be doing tri car identification on, live on camera. I’m gonna get it wrong. But, let’s see. Overall good. and then experience here is filled out. So overall, again, another, another good start are a couple things you can kind of add into it to kind of really, really take it over the top.

But, I, I like, I like your headline. It’s really nerdy and, and I’m into it. Alright, Lavelle, we’ll do you ne last and then, then we’ll kind of move on here with, with the rest. ’cause as much fun as this is, I know we want to make sure that, you know, we can cover all, all seven things. though I could probably, I, you, I, I like talking LinkedIn profiles.

I think it’s fun. Alright. there you are. And all right. What have we got? So, so kind of the first thing that’s kind of standing out to me here is, I’m sitting on my screen here and maybe other people are kind of seeing it initially is too, is it’s, it’s very hard to read even from a normal distance. I, I, I have to lean in pretty far to, to read this, to the point where I’m, I’m, it, it makes me angry.

I’m like, like, are my glasses? Are my glasses, not working right? But overall it just kind of comes off, kind of, kind of blurry. So I would, I would redo all of this ’cause it’s, it’s just too small. is, is kind of there. And I’d say, okay, what, what do you really want to focus on? What are the biggest, you know, things here, and make ’em bigger, make ’em bolder.

get more contrast on this as well. Kind of white on, what is that Mov pink. I call it, call it sort of pink. That’s the color I’ve declared that. so, it is just, it doesn’t have enough contrast, so it’s kind of tough to see. Alright, let’s take a look at the headline, helping Organizations Master Microsoft 365.

I’d say good, but after that I would probably drop most of this off. Maybe keep this one and then kinda have a little bit more fun in the middle here. With, with things you do is right. This is just kind of, if it’s Microsoft 365, it’s like, yep, I I get it, I get it, I get it. And then, yeah, that’s a good one.

So kind of have a little bit more fun in the middle. And I think the, the book ends are good. So the start and the end look good to me. good. We got company and, in this here, and we’ve got a link to your free YouTube training. Very good. And. Let’s take a look at the, about section. Oral looks good. I like, I like I, I like how you broke it up with the little emojis.

I, I think that that’s a nice touch. It makes it my, my brain, right? As in, in my, my hyper distracted a DD brain. I can look at that and says, oh, I can read that. I know, I know where each section starts. So I like that. Those are nice touches. Very good there. Featured section. This looks good. Very good. activity is present, so.

Lave, excellent. Just fix the, the background image here. Otherwise, this is, this is very good. Alright, so there we go. we will, jump in, like I said, Lydia. We’ll see if we have some time here at the end during q and a and I’ll, I will do yours as well then. Otherwise thanks everybody. Thanks for being, thanks for being a little, little brave and a little bold going out there because I, I know, right?

It’s, it’s like, who is this guy on the internet talking about my I LinkedIn profile? So I do, I always appreciate when, when, when people are 

[00:27:24] willing to do that. So let’s kind of jump into a few more things here that, kind of make a difference. so once you’ve kind of got your profile under control, what do you do from there?

Well, the things I would say is we want to. Get more people in our network who are potential fits for, for our business and just posting and commenting and things like that doesn’t do a good job of, at least in my experience, doesn’t do a good job of bringing in the right people into your, your LinkedIn 

[00:27:56] network.

Sure. It’ll bring other people who are kind of see your, see your stuff and say, oh, that person’s interesting. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re interested in working with you. They just find you interesting. So how do you get the right people in your LinkedIn network so that you can then get meetings and eventually sell your 

[00:28:14] services?

you be proactive and you go out there and find people you want to connect with. there’s tons of ways you can do this, right? you literally, we can see a bunch of people here that LinkedIn has, has put online here that say more profiles for you. So here’s some people that are saying, these are probably people you should try and connect with.

here’s some thought leadership, so I skipped those. And then more people you may know, this is almost always a good place to kind of find other people you can connect with, right? Totally free. They’re just, they’re just there. You can click the connect button, right? If I said, you know, I want to connect with Greg, I just click the button.

and, and most of the times it really is, is that easy? Some other things we could be doing. As we can be looking at, people who are commenting on LinkedIn is a really good place, especially if you’re trying to find people who are gonna connect with you at a high, high rate. Especially if you’re just getting started and saying really, you know, wanna get more people in here.

adding people from comments ’cause you know that they’re active on the platform and they’re posting on the platform. It’s a really good place to kind of, especially if your goal is to get activity on your own stuff, getting people who are active on other people’s stuff. It’s et. It’s kind of, it’s kind of a, a almost a hack.

I’m, I’m, I’m always hesitant to use that word, but kind of a, a shortcut to getting more engagement on, on what you’re doing. And if you’re really trying to kind of take it, take it to the next level, using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Obviously this is LinkedIn’s paid tool, but this is a really good place to find people that fit a lot of your criteria.

So I know one of the right one, some of the things on LinkedIn is that, you know, the people you’re, you’re, you’re trying to work with may not be super active on the platform, but they have a LinkedIn profile. So this tool here just makes it much, much easier to, to find some of those people. So, recommend you get, you can get up to somewhere between 102 hundred connection requests that you can send out in any given week.

I recommend using all of those, those connections until LinkedIn says, Nope, you’ve hit the limit. That’s all we can send this week. Do that each and every week, and you will find your LinkedIn network growing at a pretty good rate. So. That’s, that’s my recommendation there is really proactively connect with people.

get, get the people you want in your network, in your network, and don’t, don’t just kind of cross your fingers and, and hope that, that they’re gonna come, 

[00:30:46] come in there. And a couple, couple things you can do if you’re like, Hey, my connection rate’s not great. Here’s, here’s the two that I would, you know, make sure I, I would check most of the time when I’m.

Getting started on a campaign as I make sure it’s second degree connections. and I usually will toggle this posted on LinkedIn unless the list gets too small. Like if it’s got 200 people on it, then I’ll turn it back off. But, how do you know how many people are on the list? It’s up here in the top corner, right?

This is, this is not a targeted list, obviously, with 2 million people. But that just kind of gives you an idea of what some, some of the things you can start looking at here. And, you know, every once in a while the change job ones can be a pretty useful place. kind of depending on what you’re doing.

For me, it’s not as valuable, but I’ve certainly worked with clients where this was a much more valuable one. ’cause I wanted somebody who was new to an HR role or a sales role or something like that, or they just changed positions. And leadership who’s just changed positions, oftentimes looking to make changes in the organization and kind of bring, bring their own things in.

And that’s kind of your chance to kind of get in as they’re, they’re in change mode and they’re willing to talk to you once they have kind of got their footing. So kind of another good one, depending on what you’re doing there. So proactively connect with 

[00:32:05] people. Next one here is. Tell people what you do.

I, I realize that, that, that kind of, that sounds, that probably sounds obvious to some of you. but are you posting about what you do? Like, have you, have you made a post in the past 90 days about what it is you do? if you haven’t, today is a good day. Today is, today is Wednesday, August 26th. You have my permission that today is a great day to tell people what it is you do on, on LinkedIn.

Alright, make a post about it. right, we’ve, we’ve already covered your profile, right? Where we say, does, does the LinkedIn profile, does it, does it tell people what we do? Does the headline kind of let people know? Does the about section give them more details about what you do? All those things. but you, you’d, you’d be amazed how often people just say.

They’ll figure it out if they’re interest people. I’ve got so much information right now that they’re not, they’re not interested in digging that, that deep and, and trying to figure it out. If, if your profile doesn’t tell them up here at the top, they’re not scrolling down and, and Right. We wanna catch ’em here and the feed as 

[00:33:21] well.

So tell people what you do now, let’s kind of move into the content side of things here. And what I’ve kind of, I have definitely been one of those people who is guilty of saying, Hey, you should post on LinkedIn more often and then not doing it. we tested this, I think about a month ago. We went with, I went with, alright, I’m just gonna post every day, every weekday I post either some type, some type of new video or, or things.

And it’s gonna be all business related. It’s not, not gonna be, you know, random cat videos or things like that. It’s gonna be really focusing on, on business. And what I can tell you is that business content, right? It’s not going viral. It’s not, you know, not millions or even hundreds of thousands of views.

It’s more like a hundred views or 200 views. But the, the thing I tell people is a hundred people, you’ve got a hundred people in a room. I, you probably, there are a lot of people I would know who’s like, I’m not going out there, I’m not going out there to talk to a hundred people. I’m not standing on a stage and I don’t wanna talk to a hundred people.

That’s way too many people. So, and you got, you can just post things on LinkedIn. It’s a hundred pe 200, 500 people. So a hundred people is a lot, is all I’m trying to say. And if they’re really engaged and interested, that’s, that, that number can, can legitimately move the needle more than, you know, 10,000 views on a viral post about what, whatever people are mad about this week.

Quite frankly, I’m to the point where I try and stay out of the news as much as possible. ’cause there’s always something. There’s always something. so what should you be posting about is telling? I, I, here’s kind of the, the content that I find is, is the one that’s been most effective is having some type of business post with a story kind of built around it.

So, right. I worked in the automotive business, so I’ll tell stories about that. I’ll tell stories about, you know, client projects, things that went wrong, you know, TV commercials, billboards, stuff that, you know, I’ve worked on that was either good or bad or where, where we messed it up, right? PE people, people like learning from your mistakes.

So if you’ve got ones like that, that you can tell that, that is your, your own story. I, I think those are the ones that are most likely to lead to a new business, right? You can tell other people’s stories, absolutely. But telling yours is really, really the one that I think really connects people to you and makes them want to work more specifically with you.

So if your goal is to get business, tell your stories. And then next up after that. So, alright. And we could, we could, we could talk all day just about, what you, you know, different things you could be posting. So, right. If you, if you’re like, Hey, can you gimme some ideas here, just, just go to my, my activity here and you can see all the different videos I’ve been posting lately.

With just, just different thoughts and things like that. on what, what, you know, stories from, from what I’ve done and, you know, a lot of it’s, a lot of it’s LinkedIn related and business development related ’cause ’cause that’s what I do and that’s what I want people to, to know me for and know that when they’re watching my videos, it’s likely to be, be around that.

So sprinkle in some stories. Around the business type of content that I do. That’s, for me, that’s what’s been moving the needle from a business standpoint. Like I said, it’s not viral. They’re not getting tons of views. Right. You can see this one from two weeks ago only got 615 impressions. Only one person commented three shares.

That’s it. So, uh Right. They’re not, they’re, but that’s, that’s 

[00:37:10] enough. so let’s talk about one other thing that’s gonna bring people into to see more of your content and your profile. and drive. Right? You can see 873 people viewed my profile in the past. I think that’s 90 days. I don’t. I don’t remember.

but, you know, people who are actually coming and checking it out. And some of that, some of that comes from, from sending out connection requests proactively to people. the other one a lot of times comes from comments, from commenting on other people’s, activity here. So, right, you can see Mandy, your, your LinkedIn coach, social selling and sales navigator trainer.

Right. You can see probably she’s got 41 comments on this, so might be a good time to, you know, get, oh, she’s getting a lot of attention. Maybe, maybe participate in that particular one. I try to avoid ones that are pretty controversial. I never let AI comment for me. just, just as a, just just so you know, if I comment on your post, you’ll know that it was me.

If I say something unhinged, it was not my AI saying that I, I will take credit for it. That was me. That was me going, going, I’ll, I’ll unhinged. But kind of just, just kind of commenting on different types of posts here. We’ll bring people in. ’cause if it’s getting, it’s on your feed right? More people are gonna see it.

but commenting is kind of one of those underrated ways to get more visibility to what, to what you’re doing. and it just kind of helps you show up more and more often to the people you’re, you’re ultimately trying to get in front of. So those are kind of all the. The profile related, content related ones.

And then I’ve got one more here. So, just gonna check here if we have any questions. And I’m gonna jump in kind of to the last section here and then, we’ll finish up with any other hot seats and any other questions you guys have. So, So I think, think we’re 

[00:39:19] good there. So let’s flip back here to the last section here, which is did you try asking them? and what do I mean by that? Is have easy right? You’re trying, you’re trying to get business. Have, have you tried asking people for business? And again, I know, I know. I’m Gary. Gary, you’re, you’re.

You’re not, you’re not a rocket rocket scientist here. but, but, but I’m serious. Have, have you actually reached out and asked anybody, have you said, you know, Hey, I think this might be a fit. Are you interested in taking a look at it? So talking about doing outreach, I know especially in a business to business setting, consulting, agency work, SaaS, software, any type of enterprise type of thing is in, in the business to business world, right out outbound is just one of these most, these consistent, reliable business development strategies.

Take a look at, you know, all the, all the biggest buildings in your, you know, the downtown of the nearest city. And pretty much all of them are gonna have somebody somewhere doing either enterprise or, or some type of outreach, cold calling, going, going out, knocking on doors, walking into businesses. All these big buildings got their, you know, with the big names on ’em, they, they have people doing that.

Maybe not every department, but when I’m looking at places, like right in Michigan here, right. Lots of, lots of automotive places here, but there’s tons and tons of people who do outreach to car dealerships. Cox Automotive, just down the, about a mile down the road from me. Not a, not a name. Most people recognize unless you’re in that space, in which case you’d recognize Autotrader and, deal, dealer, whole bunch of, of in solutions, different types of, of programs that they sell to dealerships.

What do they do? Well, they trade shows and they just have an army of salespeople who go out and walk in banks, same types of things. so. Lot, lots of, lot, lots of different opportunities there, right? So when people tell you outreach is gonna ruin your reputation, just, just look around and say, no, I think, I think that’ll make you know that people will, that that’s how I’m gonna actually grow the business and sell.

So. Basically what I’m saying is remember, most people will tell you that they don’t like TV ads and radio ads, and that they’re gonna ignore all the Google ads and Facebook and throw away their junk mail. And basically, people don’t wanna be sold to or advertised to in any way, shape or form. nobody’s getting into the office today hoping that today is the day that they get your pitch.

They don’t want you sliding into their dms. They don’t want you picking up the phone, but, but. If you’ve got something relevant, people do respond positively to things that they think are going to help them and their company. That’s, that’s just, just kind of what we, we see Some people say, no, absolutely.

Some people are going to say no, no matter what you do because they, they didn’t care for it. But here’s one that came in today, right as I was working on finishing up the slides here, some people say yes. And this is, this person replied and said, I watched the Loom video and I’m in shock everything that he, in this case, that’s me, everything that Gary described is exactly what you did with me.

And it worked right down to the LinkedIn profile. Ironically, I even commented on that in one of my first replies to you. So I’m sold. I’ve seen it work firsthand. We chat more scheduled a meeting. Is it always that easy? No, most certainly is not. All I want you to know is that people do in fact say yes to doing, doing outreach.

Yes, they’re gonna complain about it. That’s not gonna stop either. But if you’re relevant, it, it does in fact 

[00:43:08] work. I get the question is what do I say and do? I’m gonna tell you AI is not a good way to, to do it. right. Using AI messages. So what the heck am I doing here? Giving you an AI prompt because I know a lot of people will stare at their screen and say, I don’t, I don’t know what to write.

So here, here, here’s my recommendation is here’s, here’s a prompt you can use to kind of figure out kind of how to break the ice and say something that’s kind of gonna be a little bit fun and a little bit different from what everybody else is saying. nice thing about AI is AI can do lots and lots of iterations very fast, way faster than you can.

And this will kind of get, you know, any of that, your writer’s block or something that you might have if you’re like, I just don’t know what to say, use this prompt and don’t use anything that it writes. Literally anything that it writes, get, get a pad pad out and a pa pen out and write down what you like.

And then type it up based on your notes and that message, that message is worth using. Whatever slop a, whatever comes out of the ai, you know, the Claude Slop canon or open ai, whatever you’re using, don’t use, don’t use the stuff from the slop canon. Just use it to get some ideas and get some things going.

Write it down, type that up, that that will be a much better, much more effective message and it will be in your voice. That’s probably the most important thing is we want it to sound like you. So, just, just wanted to mention there that, ’cause Yeah, I, I mean, right. AI is all around us. It’s, it’s a tool that’s not going anywhere.

So there, there are ways that are effective to use it, and I find that that is an effective way to use it, is to kind of get, get, get things started, get some ideas going. But not so much for its output. Its output is, is 

[00:44:55] trash. so, but kind of here, here’s my approach is just think, just be more like Ango Montoya.

Hello, my name is Ango Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. Right? We’ve got an introduction. We want people, people to know why they’re relevant. Why, why, why? That’s a relevant one. He says it multiple times. Make an offer. What do you want to happen next? In this case, you should be preparing to die.

Fortunately, I’m gonna guess you didn’t killed anybody’s father, so you’re, you’re safe on that. So nobody needs to die today. It’s okay. But, but, but in seriousness, when we’re thinking about outreach is what do we want to do? Well, we wanna reach out, introduce ourselves, especially on LinkedIn. It’s a good place to do that.

LinkedIn is right, built to be kind of a networking thing. And if you’re, if think about in real life, if you’re out talking to somebody, you’re in, you know, in the office or at a, at a chamber meeting or a trade show, conference, whatever you doing. If you’re gonna go, you walk up to somebody, shake their hand, you’re gonna introduce yourself.

Hey, I’m, hey, my name’s Gary. I do business development, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They’re gonna get a chance. Hey, my name’s Jack, or my name’s Sandy, or my name’s Michael. My name’s Paul. you know, things, things like that. it’s now, now we have a conversation going. So next thing is, is relevance is that’s why you want to proactively connect with the right people.

Is because now you, you say, okay, this person is a consultant at a firm that’s, you know, got, you know, less than 10 employees, things like that. I can help them, generally speaking. next thing I would mention is sequence and follow up is not everybody’s gonna reply to your first message. They’re not, they’re, they’re busy.

They’ve got other things going on. They may have meant, they may mean to, but they didn’t get around to it. So messaging them, well, two or two or three times that don’t, don’t go crazy, but two or three times we’ll get you a lot more replies. and, and a lot more, ultimately, a lot more meetings and a lot more business, just ’cause not everybody’s gonna reply to the first one, and let people know, Hey, what do you want to happen next?

Is it, do you want a meeting? Do you wanna send a loom video? I send a white paper. do you wanna meet for coffee? I, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve gotten that one locally a few times and you know, it’s like if somebody, yeah, hey, you wanna meet? I’ll buy you a Starbucks. I’m like, oh, I’ll let you buy me Starbucks. Things like 

[00:47:16] that.

So if you need some help with any of this, and then I will get to the questions, but I just wanna mention this quickly, is that, you know, a lot of people say, this is great. I just, I don’t have time. I’ve got so many other hats that I’m wearing. I’m got a million other things going on right now. That I would like to do this, and I know I’m not gonna get to it, so can, can you help me in that case?

Yes, we, that is what we do. So you can schedule a call at Pipelineology dot com or shoot me an email, carry it Pipelineology dot com. basically we can put all these systems in place, kind of help make sure your, your profile is, is where you want it to be and kind of makes it easy for people to connect with you and learn more about you.

And ultimately, we’ll, we’ll do that outreach and we’ll help create that content for you so that you’ve got good stuff that’s in your voice that’s not, not, not from the ai, slop, canner. and ultimately, you know, we want to get, get, get good conversations on your calendar for you so that you can close more business.

So that’s all I’ve got to say about that. I’ll open it up for some q and a here. I got. I got one more, hot seat to do here for Lydia. Let me answer, Paul’s question here. Why are AI prompts not good? I didn’t say AI prompts are not good. I just said that, the output from AI is from a content standpoint.

When it. People don’t mind ai, right? The ai, you know, chat people use AI chat bots all day, all the time. They’re pretty used to talking to it. They just don’t want you to pretend to be it. Just, just tell them the truth, right? If you say, Hey, you know, Claude, here’s, here’s what Claude said about, you know, this.

That’s accurate, that’s an accurate, you know, representation. He’s like, here’s what I think about this. And then you just paste something from Claude that’s dishonest. so not saying AI prompts are not good, AI is a useful, useful tool. I just don’t use the output and pretend it’s you. That’s, that’s all I’m saying there.

alright. One more hot seat and then, we’ll finish up with any other questions. and then we’ll do 

[00:49:25] that. So let me flip my screen around here. So.

And we’ll pull up Lydia’s profile here.

All right. And if you haven’t already done so, make sure to check out the episode Lydia and I did on the podcast a while ago. Lydia’s, always nice to see you. So this is Lydia Sugarman’s, profile here and. Guess what? Looks, it looks pretty good. She’s, she, she, she, she knows what she’s doing. Don’t, don’t let her fool you.

so founder Revenue Architect, Venntive the system from early traction to real scale eliminates the friction of disconnected sy systems and disconnected people. Compare us at Venntive Venntive Venntive dot com slash compare. Good isight. Kind of same thing as I’ve said, probably on every other one, just a little bit more you, you personality in there, is what I would probably try and do.

overall again. Good, good, good. Banner image up here. little small up here at the top. Probably just use a little bit more to kind of say, Hey, here’s, here’s what we do. Experience. The power of one doesn’t really tell me anything. but if that’s the message you guys use, then, I mean ultimately right?

It’s, it’s however you wanna do it. about section here, let’s take a look at build systems that keep founders from losing time, data momentum, and growth when gets messy. That’s good. probably kind of similar as I’ve said to many of the other ones. Just a little bit more information here. is good.

I would just, you know, a bit more about, you know, how’d you get, how, how’d you do it, how’d you get started, right? We’ve got, we’ve got a good start to it. Just fill, fill it in more with more examples and more things like that. You’ve got your featured section here. good. You, I mean, you’re active on LinkedIn.

so overall. Overall, like I said, good, good starts today everybody. So, another good one, just a few more things you can kind of do to really, really take it 

[00:51:38] to the next level. So, and then one more question here from Paul. What are your thoughts on using AI to match your personality? Probably should, again, don’t use the tail put. right. I, I, I know, I, I know I keep saying that, right? Is don’t, don’t use it up, but don’t use it up. It, it’s good at the middle, right? ’cause it’s so fast, it can crank out ideas and help kind of pull things together really quickly.

But, as somebody who uses it in, in writing pretty often as part of the process, I, I use it intentionally as, ’cause I know it’s, it’s, it’s gonna gonna help. I can, I can throw a lot of information at it. It will mostly organize it, and then I can spend time doing what I’m good at, which is the editing process.

And I can sit and I can look at the screen and I can, or I can write down notes, right? I, I have my note, I have my notepad and I can, can take a look and say, Hmm, do I like that word right? I, I can start thinking, is that a good word, choice. I can say no and start crossing things out and I can. you know, kind of say, well, those two sentences don’t really go well.

And that’s part of the thing is that the ai, ’cause it can write so fast, is it may have two or three sentences. So you say, this is, this is very shallow, or those two sentences don’t belong together. There needs to be one in the middle, let’s you really think about the wording and things like that. So yeah, you can use it to match your personality.

It’s and will. At first glance look pretty good until you kind of actually sit there and try and read through the whole thing and say, it’s 80% of the way there and I need to, and I need, and I personally, as the, as the human here, need to be the one who’s gonna take it across the finish line. So that’s, that’s all I’m saying there is that again, they’re, they’re good tools.

They’re useful. There’s lots of ways you can use ’em. It’s just, I think people are, are just sick of you. Pretend sick of you throwing. Throwing the, the post. I’m not saying you do this, Paul. I’m not, I’m not accusing you of anything at all. or just sick of, of when people are, oh, cool. you know, chat, GPT write me a post and then copy and paste and, and that’s it.

And nope, nobody, nobody’s, nobody’s interested in that. I can, I can do that right now. I can, I can, I can do that. And I know who wrote it. But it wasn’t me, but it wasn’t me. So if it, if I want to be me, give it my information and my personality, sure. But I still need to finish and kind of do, do that final 20% of kind of crafting that message so that it is in fact me and my, my thoughts and my stories.

’cause the thing, it, you, it just, just doesn’t get the nuance, like 

[00:54:30] that. So, Carrie, do we have any other questions here, before we wrap things up? Alright, thanks everybody so much. we’ll be back again in, in September with another event. Appreciate you taking some time outta your day. Hope you got something valuable out it.

And, please feel free to connect with me here on LinkedIn. always, it’s always good to get to connect with some of the people here, who attend the event. So thanks everybody. Have a great day. We’ll see you into the next one.