Zero Likes, Full Pipeline – The Counterintuitive LinkedIn Lead System

40:49 Q&A and Next Steps

Transcript:
[00:00:01] Hello. Welcome everybody to today’s event. Today we’re gonna be talking about, I think I named it, zero Likes Full, full Pipeline, the counterintuitive LinkedIn lead system. That, and, I guess I buried the lead here, the counterintuitive lead system that has doubled our sales pipeline in the past 30 days.

So. Give everybody just a couple minutes here to hop on, wait for notifications and stuff to go out. But if you’ve been here before, you know how I like to get things started, mostly on time. ’cause I, I wanna respect people who actually, you know, showed up in here and I know, I know people are busy, so I don’t wanna hold everybody up waiting for other people to come on.

That’s why we have replays, that’s why we have recordings. So we’ll do all that so people who, you know, miss the, miss the start, can come back and watch it if, if they are so inclined. 

[00:00:50] So. While we’re waiting for those notifications to go out and for people to hop on. How are you guys doing? Where, where are you guys calling in from today?

I’m in the Detroit metro area. It has been a smoky past few days. I think I was sitting, sitting here on, Friday afternoon and it was, it just like my want phone just kept saying hazardous condition, basically don’t go outside. And it was, it was weird. It was like just, it looked like a fog, a thick fog over the.

The whole, whole area for, for like two, two whole days. it’s, it’s much better. It’s cleared up. Went for a nice walk last night. It’s been, it’s been much more pleasant. So how about you guys? How is the weather in your neck of the woods? Everybody staying safe out there? Staying, staying warm. Alright. And while we’re doing that here, I’m just gonna make sure I have the.

Venntive, system up on this screen here so that I can see everything that’s going on and make sure I can see all your questions. And from there it’ll probably be time to get started. So appreciate everybody hopping on. Give me like one minute and we’ll be, we’ll get, we’ll get this thing kicked off.

I think this is, this will be a fun one to chit chat about today. So. Well, Carolyn, appreciate you hopping on with me, Carolyn, in North Carolina. Welcome, welcome to to, to the event Today. It looks like it’s always, I always like to get that first person, that first person to comment. ’cause it lets me know that I’m not, I’m not, that actually that the technology has worked for the day.

Every once in a while you get that. The thing where, you know, the, the, the, the live stream doesn’t initialize properly and you’re looking at your panels here and it says, Hey, you’re live, you’re working. And then it something miscommunicated. So there we go. So I know, I know there’s always a little bit of a delay and I’m always like on pins and needles initially.

So go poll and ca in the Bay Area in California. Rocky in Seattle, an Nuba in Chicago. Like you guys got a bunch of that smoke too, I believe, Katie in, Southern California, so, alright, glad, glad to hear we’ve got, mostly better, better, weather for, for most people. Here. yeah, I know, I know. Like here as my, like it could be, it’s like a perfect, it’s a perfect summer day here.

but yeah, if you asked me three days ago, I’d say you, it’s like, I, I feel, I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s like a, a dystopian hells game type of thing. I feel like I’m living in a mad Max, type of type of show. But, other than that, Julie, welcome, Julie from, Miami. So welcome everybody.

Appreciate y’all being here. So, this is the, oh, I’m gonna add this back to the stage here. Let’s see here. That 

[00:03:41] view looks good. So this is gonna be the zero likes full pipeline session today that you all signed up for. This is the counterintuitive strategy that doubled our sales pipeline in 30 days.

and when I first was kind of putting the title together for this, I didn’t, I didn’t know that the results were gonna be quite, quite that strong, so I was like, yeah, I’ll just say it was kind of a double, a counterintuitive, stale strategy. But, but holy cow is it really made a big difference. so just a few housekeeping items and then we’ll actually kind of jump in with what, what the heck we’ve been doing, what has actually been making a difference, and how you can do it too.

’cause it’s, it’s, it’s not. It’s not that bad. so a couple things here that there’s a time delay of about 20 to 30 seconds as, as you’ve probably figured out, is when I say something is I’m kind of like waiting for people to respond to it. So, for the most part is that, usually it’s about 20 to 30 seconds from when I say something.

So if you ask a question, I can’t necessarily interact with it in real time. but I will try and make sure that, we, we do get questions, answered as we go along. if I miss it though. Carrie, my, one of my, my teammates behind the scenes who’s kind of running the show today. she’ll fly you for me to answer at the end.

There will be a replay available and yes, this is being recorded, so, and it’s actually on, gonna be on the same page that you click to get here, so just pops up on the page. You don’t have any need to register or put your email address in anywhere. it’s right there for you to use. And if you do want to be on the list, though, to get notified about future events, we typically do one every month.

You can go to Pipelineology dot com slash events, throw your email in there and I’ll make sure we send out an email address. We send out a message. Do yeah, the next time we’re, we’re starting here. so it, Julie lost sound. Typically the answer is to refresh the page, as it looks like, it’s working on my end.

Carrie, can you just, gimme a thumbs up if you can hear me over there? Is it working? Alright, so it looks like, looks like everything’s okay, so, maybe just if somebody wants to put in the comments for, for Julia that, that the sound, usually the answer to I lost sound or I lost the feed, is to refresh the page, you know, the, the wonders of, of live streaming technology in the, in the year 2026.

But kind of the agenda today, we’re gonna talk a little bit about, well, we’re gonna lead with off, with kind of the results we’ve been seeing from it. we’re talking about some of the algorithm chaos that has been, you know, probably like, seems like the last three months people have been nonstop talking about kind of the, how It’s very, been very unpredictable.

We’re talking about building your network content that supports sales. Then we’re gonna talk a little bit about outreach and then we’ll do some, open it up for some q and a. 

[00:06:30] So. Without further ado, let’s get into it real quickly about me. I’m the founder of Pipelineology and host of the Pipelineology podcast, always looking for guests by the way.

So if you know somebody, say, Hey, they’d be a good fit for your show, send them my way. And, you can always say, Hey, I think I’d be a good fit for your show. you know, absolutely we’re, we’re always looking for good people to, to talk to. I, I always have a lot of fun doing, doing those episodes. Rand, I’ve been in the marketing, I guess marketing, sales development, whatever you want to call it.

Whatever it goes. What is it? GTM go to market. These, I don’t even know what I’m, I don’t even know what it’s called. Business development work. I’ve been doing that for about 25 years now. I used to run call centers at car dealerships. We’d handle the incoming leads, schedule appointments for the 16, stores we had across the country.

These days now, I really work a lot with, consultants. actually some AI companies lately, some SaaS companies, and occasionally some manufacturing companies to help them build their sales pipelines. And, if anybody’s into bourbon and has some recommendations for me going on a. A bourbon trip next month with my dad.

We’re very excited about it. but we’d love some recommendations of any places that you, you gotta see. I know we’re staying in Louisville and I think we’re gonna gonna try and hit some of the distilleries in the, in the area. So if you have any recommendations, I would love, love to hear. I’m the only one I’ve been to is Buffalo Trace.

So anything else? would love to kind of hear what, what you gotta 

[00:07:55] see. So let’s, let’s, let’s lead with some results, right? Like what, what are we actually here for? So in terms of scheduling meetings, typically, you know, our outreach, when I was looking, ran, running the numbers here, I said, you know, before we kind of started with this new initiative as we were scheduling 3.75 meetings per week.

Is that great? It’s okay, right? It, it keeps, it keeps the lights on, as I like to say, gets us enough new clients that, you know. We’re, we’re able to support the team, we’re okay. So almost, almost four meetings a week is good. It’s fine. But since we’ve implemented this new system, which is using content, every day, posting content on LinkedIn every day of the week, well, did I really not put it on the slide?

Oh, there, it’s behind my camera. It’s been eight meetings per week. which is getting to the point where I’m like, okay, this is, this is getting to be a little bit much. so, which is, is a great problem to have. By the way. I am not complaining at all. ’cause Right, if you’ve got more, more people interested, then it’s easy.

You, easy to handle is you get to be more selective about who you work with, which is, is is the dream, right? You be more selective if you need to, you can start a waiting list, all that kind of stuff. Do, do all that. So it’s, it, it is, it has really been a. Surprising change. I expected to see some results from this.

I did not expect it to double, and I did not expect it to double quite as quickly as it did, just from posting, because one of the things is right. The, the, the title of today’s session is Zero Likes Full Pipeline. A lot of what we’re posting, a lot of it doesn’t get much engagement at all. I’ll show you some, some of the real numbers from some of the stuff we’re, I’ve been posting even with my, my big network just hasn’t gotten a lot of traction.

On the surface, but behind the scenes. Right. It’s, that’s, it’s, it’s leading to more meetings for us. ’cause that’s the only thing that we’ve changed. Right. That was, that was the one thing we did is every day we, we’d post either, usually a video is when it’s been, if you’ve, if you’ve kind of been following me for the past, month or so.

Usually it’s a new video. They’re short, kind of little stories, little anecdotes, little tidbits here and there. every once in a while it’s a text post, accidentally posted one earlier this week that got, got a lot more engagement than expected. And then yesterday’s is, well, you know, yesterday’s is kind of those, like, almost almost rage bait ones.

Somebody, somebody blocked me types of things. You know, they’re a little, a little scandalous types of ones that, that generally get a lot of views, not so much driving. conversions. So kind of a balance there. But, if you, if you’re anything like me and you’re kind of a little bit jaded and a little bit cynical, somebody says, yeah, we doubled.

Yeah, you doubled your meetings, but like, what really happened right now? Now nobody’s showing up and, you know, they’re not qualified and it’s just garbage, garbage meetings. And, here’s, here’s the thing. I’m happy to report show rate. Still about the same, still about 88% of people show up. That’s kind of where we’ve been holding for.

Oh man, years now. and, you know, as far as qualifications go, I’ve not noticed any difference, right? Everyone’s, you, you get a few that, you know, they’re not a good fit, you know, or, or you know, that they just don’t have the, the money to invest right now. But overall, that’s, it’s been pretty consistent.

There’s no, no uptick or no no shift really in how qualified the people are when they show up. But the most important question is, did the sales actually increase? Like, are you actually closing more deals with people? And the answer is yes. So that’s, I mean, ultimately at the end of the day, right, I don’t care about anything else.

Are sales actually increasing with good? Yes. Yes. 

[00:11:42] They’re. So right here’s, here’s probably the best way to kind of sum this up and this, thank you, thank you, Jonathan, for making this post. ’cause you’re summing it up way better, than, than I, than I can, somebody, you know, saying, by the way, I like your content on LinkedIn, yet they don’t engage with your post, at least not in a way that you can see.

They’re not liking it, they’re not commenting, they’re not sharing it and reposting it. They’re, they’re essentially a ghost to you. And, lead a lista here. Then, reply back, and this kind of thumbs up my experience as well with this, is that zero of my customers ever engaged with my content before.

Yes, they read. They never actually engage, then they suddenly book a call to work together and happy ending. Yep. That’s, and I think that’s, that’s the thing that is, is very counterintuitive. ’cause we get so caught up in, in kind of the you, the vanity metrics is it feel, it feels good to get likes and, and applause and, and, and types of reactions to your post and getting, you know, comments and having a discussion.

These, these are all easy things to see and it, it feels good. If you’re an influencer who kind of lives and dies by those metrics, then yeah, I guess they, they kind of matter. But on LinkedIn, if your goal is to, to get new business and new people to work with you, a lot less 

[00:13:05] important. So here’s kind of my strategy is.

Forget about the algorithm for now. We’re, we’re gonna build for those people who they’re, they’re lurking, they’re watching, they’re reading, but they’re not gonna interact. So we’re gonna forget about the algorithm and we’re gonna kind of focus on kind of three things. There’s one, just building your network with the right people for your business is proactively sending out connection requests to people.

Don’t pitch ’em on in your. In your message, just kind of find people, like use, if you have sales navigator, that’s a good tool for that to kind of find who are the right fits. Like what are, where, what kind of companies are they at? That kind of thing. What, what titles do they hold? we’re gonna, I, I’m still, I’m still seeing really good results too, and doing good old fashioned outreach.

I know not, not everybody likes it and not everybody’s going to respond to it, which is why the content is so valuable. but man is it, it just kind of this old reliable standby that just keeps, keeps everything moving and keeps the business running. And then third is produce content daily. And that’s, that’s been the shift is it’s like, like I’ve been, I’ve been producing content for years.

But usually it’s, you know, once or twice a month they’ll post. Sometimes weekly it’s, but what’s been the big driver lately has been moving to that daily cadence focus with a focus on telling stories, sharing anecdotes. That’s not, it’s not AI content. That’s really, really important. If you wanna get ignored fast, posts to AI content, post content written by ai, I should say.

Content complaining about ai. On the other hand, that’s gonna get you lots of, lots of, engagement. but basically, you know, tell, tell your story, share, share anecdotes, and kind of let people know what problems you solve. if you wanna see some examples that have been working for us, just go into my, go into my LinkedIn feed and kind of view some of my recent, recent posts.

kinda see the videos and kind of the approach we’ve been been using. But I’ll, I’ll show some, some brief examples here, but if you’re like, I really wanna see this. Just, just jump in and, and, and check it out there. So lemme make this a little bit 

[00:15:11] bigger. So kind of here’s, here’s the process in a more, more visual format.

and if you’d like a copy of this, just send me an email at Garriott Pipelineology. I will send you the PDF, ’cause I know sometimes if you try and screenshot it, it’s a little tricky. Or if you’re watching today from. Your phone, it is probably gonna be impossible to read, but essentially same concept is we wanna identify who are the right, right people for us.

We want to send connection requests to build your network. And then we’re gonna have two paths for them, is one, we’re gonna reach out to them, with, with a sequence of about three messages. And then the other path is we’re gonna post content every day, making sure that, because here’s the great thing about new connections, especially if they’re kind of the right fit.

Is new connections are much more likely to see your content. so now you’ve got new people who are seeing your content, they’re seeing your messages, and it’s, it’s going to help kind of boost that response. It’s gonna build that trust and they’re gonna see that it, it’s not, you’re not just kind of a fly, but you’re no longer that kind of fly by night.

You know, person just, just reaching out on LinkedIn. Now you’re, you’re, you’re a trusted authority in their feed that they’re seeing, and you’re willing to talk to them. Right. It kind of shifts, shifts the whole dynamic. and one thing I wanna mention here is commenting on other people’s posts does, does make a difference.

not so much from a, you know, oh, those people are gonna see my comment and they’re gonna wanna work with me. No, but it pulls ’em into your world. They, they see your posts now. They see those, and you know, a few of those people will hopefully, eventually work with you. But it’s not like. Boom, you’re gonna comment and now those people are gonna reach out and say they wanna work with.

If that happens, that’s great. Just, just know that the, the process is a little slower than that. but overall, still, still, still worth doing here. So let’s jump back in here. So move my view around here for you just to make it a 

[00:17:11] little easier. So how do you create the content? And that’s, that has been the challenge for, for years, for, for myself, myself included.

Is, how do you make good quality content quickly? ’cause right, if you wanna post it daily, you need, you need kind of a predictable system to, to do it. So here’s, here’s been the shortcut and here’s what’s been been really effective is think about a question that you can, you would say, this is, I want to, I want to answer this question.

And then just have somebody ask it to you and record the answer. So here’s, here’s what I do is Carrie, who’s running our show today, say, this is Carrie. Say Hi, Carrie.

So she, she’s, she will come on, we’ll, we’ll basically hop on like a Zoom meeting. sometimes we’ll use this platform here, which is StreamYard. And she asked me the question and I just, I answer it without. I don’t, I don’t have it rehearsed necessarily, but I might have a few notes written down about it because I wanna be able to tell a story related to it or a little anecdote about it.

’cause stories are helping help help people remember things. And one of the, one of the ones I did recently was telling the story about stories is that up until the 19, I think it was like 1950s. Half the world, still half the world couldn’t read or write, so how, but Right. We have language, we can communicate with each other, so.

How did we pass things on? Well, right by talking to each other and it really became that stories historically have been how we remember and learn better than sitting in front of a classroom and taking down notes. ’cause you can’t do that if you can’t, if you can’t write, it, it’s hard to take notes. right.

And people thousands of years ago figured that part of it. How does that. By turning something into a story, much easier to get people to remember writing can get passed down. so right. Telling, telling stories is same thing in your content is your stories are kind of what makes you, you. AI can, can write, I know, like information about, just about every single topic, but it, it’s dry and soulless and it just doesn’t, it just, it’s just doesn’t.

It’s not engaging, it’s not interesting. It’s the story that makes whatever you’re trying to explain interesting. If that makes any sense. so what we do then is we’ll take the little, the video clip and you get the option is you can just post the video or write down what you said in the video and post that.

and what I can tell you from experience is that the videos will get fewer views and less engagement. For whatever reason, but, it helps build trust. And the videos, the nice thing is, is you can use those for YouTube shorts or Instagram reels, TikTok, videos. So. I don’t have numbers on that.

We just started trying that out, trying to see, well, is this, does this work on any other platform? And for that, for that stuff, you’re gonna need the video content. the text post, text posts play pretty nice on LinkedIn, typically, usually, you know, put a photo in there. I know some people say doing a selfie can be a little bit cr, the, the selfie works well, so use it if you’ve got it.

but it will get more views and more engagement. I recommend mixing it up and use both, write the text post to kind of pull in more people the videos to build more trust and, authority with, with the people you’re actually talking to. So I see a few. Oh, thank you Steven for that. Steve for that, recommendation.

I think, I think we will have to check that one 

[00:21:03] out. so question here from, from Julie. Isn’t it more about original thought? You can use AI to polish your message, but make the message yours. I see the baits on this and interested in what people think. that’s, that’s my, that, that kind of echoes what I would think too is that use, you know, tell, tell your story, that’s yours and the, yeah.

The AI is, is good at, you know, kind of taking out the ums and ahs and likes and can even paraphrase a little bit if you, you kind of stumble over your words a bit. Right. The, there, when we talk, at least I, I know I do, when I talk, I have, tend to have a lot of filler words in the way I, I speak. So having, you know, ai, maybe not necessarily transcribe it, but paraphrase what I said, it’s good for that.

’cause then it retains your story and your message. it’s not good at basically writing it without having the video transcript right in front of it. So that’s been, that’s been kind of where, where I draw the line 

[00:22:06] there. And then, David asks, what platform do you use to go live? Or was this prerecorded?

Well, I think you can figure out that prob, that’d be a, that’d be a neat trick. Like if I could figure out a way to prerecord ’em and answer the questions. this is StreamYard David. that’s the, the platform we’ve been using. you know, they don’t give me anything for saying, any nice things about them, and sometimes I don’t necessarily say nice things about them, but overall, they’ve been pretty reliable, and a good platform for us to use.

We use it for, for doing the live streams, and we use it for recording most of the podcast episodes as well. So overall decent platform can be a little pricey when you start adding the features. But the base package, good value. It’s just the, the higher end ones, I think, like I’m a little iffy on recommending some of 

[00:22:55] those.

and then one more question here from, from Meraki. So I’m hearing the opposite. I’m creating and responding to videos. Is there any metrics supporting this statement? I’m, I’m gonna show you my, my, my numbers. Rocky, and then, then you can, can decide. But, but like I said, it’s for, for me, what what do I want is, well, I’m trying to grow, grow the business, so I wanna get more sales and getting more meetings is the, the best, best way to do that.

And the videos are supporting that. The videos are not getting a lot of engagement. So let, let’s just take a look at two posts here. So one is from last Friday and one is from, I believe on Monday. and I had a little drawing on here. It looks like it did not make, it did not survive the export over to the platform here.

so let me try and pull this up as big as possible. Look at the bottom left corner of each of these little screenshots. You can see the, the video I did, which has been up longer only got 188, impressions. So only 188 people saw it. and then on the right hand side, as opposed from. I think it’s from, actually was from Monday.

and this one has over 600 people who’ve, seen it and it’s gotten more engagement from it. One’s, right? One’s a video, one’s text. So, you know, what I’m seeing is that, that’s what I’m seeing is that the videos do not get nearly as many views, at least on LinkedIn. And it’s, it’s been pretty consistent.

Like it’s been, I mean, it’s not like 188 is no people. If I put, if I, if I was in a room with 188 people, you say it’s getting a little crowded in here. And I think how many people, if I said, Hey, you wanna go up and talk to ’em for two and a half minutes, you can, you can go up and chat to chat with everybody, talk in front of ’em.

And I think a lot of people say, I’m good. I’m good. That’s, I, I don’t, I I’m not a public speaker. Right. I think stand in a room of 188 people. Now you, now you are in fact a public speaker. So, it’s not, it’s not like that’s nothing. And, and when you’re really kind of focused in on business content, I’m, I’m okay with, with 188 views of as long as it’s getting people.

To, to, to actually meet and talk with me that are interested in what we’re doing. And like I said, that’s at the end of the day, that’s my goal. I’m, I’m not an influencer. I’m not trying to te teach you how to get LinkedIn famous. So, you know, for, for the people I work with, what they want is they wanna, they wanna sign on new clients and they wanna.

Wanna build their business. If they have to do content, they will to get there. but that’s not, that’s not why, that, that’s not their, their life’s purpose is to be, you know, famous on LinkedIn or any of the other social media, media platforms that are out there. So that’s, that’s what I’m seeing. So that’s, and that, that’s the content strategy in a nutshell.

So, like I said, it’s not, it’s not impossible to do. It does take a little bit of time. and if you know something you need has some help with, reach out to me. We’ve got some solutions that can help you with that, but this is only one piece of the puzzle. So it’s, it’s been an important one and it’s been one that’s been really impactful 

[00:26:02] for us.

But I, I do wanna mention that this is not the only thing that we, we do ’cause content alone is unpredictable. I know the big, big change in LinkedIn’s algorithm over the past few months has been, I think it’s called 360 Brew or Brew Brew 360. one of their algo algorithm updates, and it’s been like this every week, is people saying, what, what has happened to the algorithm this week?

You know, my reach is down 75%. You know, the system is going, going haywire, and now people who’ve, you know, have hundreds of thousands of followers are saying, well, you know, now LinkedIn has flagged a bunch of my posts and things like that, and they’re trying to remove, right. And part of it’s right, they’re trying to remove a bunch of the AI slop that’s on the platform.

which is good. Thank you, by the way, for that LinkedIn. but as part of that, right, there’ve been some, there’ve been some casualties along the way and what was working back in April is not necessarily what’s working now, and it’s really hard to build kind of a sustainable, reliable business that way.

So the content may be unpredictable. So what do we do when we’ll use content to support what we’re doing with building our network and doing outreach and all of those things? The three of them together will be a much more reliable, because typically if one is down, the other one will be up, has been kind of what What we’re we’re seeing is that if, you know, if content’s really strong, maybe you’re not seeing quite as much response from.

From outreach. Maybe if outreach is doing really well, maybe the, the content takes more of a supporting role, but overall, you’re still adding new people to your network. You’re getting more of the getting in front, getting in front of more of the right people every day, so. So that’s kind of 

[00:27:55] what I’ll say there.

So, outreach approach. I, I’d say this has just kind of been consistently one of those things that for anybody who’s in a, in a business to business space, again, right? Consultants, you know, SaaS companies, software, ai, any, any type of enterprise offering, all of that if you’re selling, selling to, to people at other businesses.

You know, outreach is just kind of, you know, whether you are, you know, just getting started or a giant enterprise. I know, I remember, oh, this is pro probably about 15, 15 years ago now, actually had a friend, she, she was, she had started a candle company, it’s based out in Nebraska. And she was, you know, trying to get more distribution with these kind of little boutique gift chops and things like that.

’cause she couldn’t, quite frankly, couldn’t get enough. Couldn’t get like Target to take her phone calls. So she said, I’m gonna kind of go with the boutique, the boutique thing. The thing is, these are scattered across the country. So what did she do? Well, she, she had one of her employees pick up the phone and start calling and she did a whole trip around the country, drove out through just about every state, you know, and just drove to the next city, you know, visiting the places that were scheduled for.

Go in, talk, talk to people and see if they’re interested in carrying your products. How was that done? Right? Somebody was picking up the phone ahead of her calling, scheduling, scheduling those meetings for her. So she’d go in and, and actually sell the product. And, and I know the thing is, well, didn’t that ruin her rep?

No. Didn’t ruin her reputation. It helped her actually build the real sustainable business. and you know, is is even as I know, people will say, well, she was just getting started. She had to be scrappy and do that. And then I think about. Like if you out out my office door here is giant, giant bank behind me.

What do, what do they do? Well, banks, right? You say, well, that they have your, they do loans well, how do they do loans typically? well, typically a lot of them have loans for, for auto, auto dealerships. So what do they do is they’ve got people who will go. Cold, you know, whether it’s door to door or cold picking up the phone or using LinkedIn to go into car dealerships and say, Hey, do you wanna sell loans for, you know, here’s our rates and stuff.

We’ll, we’ll do that. go down the street a little further. You’ll find Cox Automotive. Now they’re, I’m in Detroit, right? There’s lots of car stuff here. but same thing is, who’s Cox Automotive? Well, you’d know them by Auto Traders, probably the one you’ve heard of. but they sell products to car dealerships, including, you know, auto trader subscriptions that, you know, cost, you know, more 10 to $20,000 a month per dealership.

To have your cars listed on their platform. and that’s again done by people who, you know, go out and they, they walk into car dealerships and, right. It’s, it’s a cold approach. Go, go meet people, shake hands and, and try and sell ’em your product. So whether you are, you are the small single operator trying to, to build a business or, or, or get, you know, get, Keep, keep building your enterprise, you know, multi-billion dollar establishment. It, it doesn’t matter. Cold, cold continues to have a place. I think even Apple and, and Amazon and, and those giants still have enterprise teams who do the same thing. It just helps a little bit when you’re a household name.

That’s all. So. Bottom line, nobody, is getting into the office hoping that today is the day they get your pitch. I know that’s a really long way of saying all that, but people really do respond positively if they think that what you are doing is relevant and can help them. So that’s, that’s, that’s kind of what I’m, I’m telling you, is that yes, some people are gonna say no.

Some people won’t even be polite about it, but. At the end of the day, it gets, it gets you in front of the right people in ways that you know. Some people, some people will not respond to ads, some people will not respond to, to content. They might respond to outreach. Some people will not respond to outreach and they will respond.

It, it’s, it’s kind of do do it all because you don’t know how people are 

[00:32:04] responding. So I’m gonna move on to connecting with the right people. ’cause this is what makes all the difference. Is who, who are the right people to connect to? Because it’s, again, in the, in just posting on LinkedIn, it’s really unpredictable and a lot of the people that wanna connect with you, well they wanna sell you something that’s just kind of, that’s just kind of the way it is.

You will get, you know, the occasional person who you know, connects with you and they’re interested in learning more. You know, a lot of times it’s, it’s not necessarily well filtered. The great thing about LinkedIn is you can be very deliberate and intentional about who you’re connecting to. So if you were to say, you know, I, I need managing principals at consulting firms with 11 to 50 employees, doing, you know, five to 10 million in revenue, a year.

You can build that list on LinkedIn. it’d be reasonably accurate even. ’cause I, here’s the nice thing about LinkedIn is people tend to keep it relatively up to date. Not everybody, but as far as lists go, it’s, it’s about the most UpToDate one you’re gonna find. so, and you can, like I said, you can be very specific about who it is.

You can even find people who have been actively posting on, on LinkedIn in the past month. You can find people who’ve changed jobs in the past 90 days. Those can be really useful filters depending on what you’re, you’re doing. So, worth worthwhile. you don’t have sales navigator, there’s other, you can do kind of regular searches.

I would just put more focus on people who are active, that will get you, you know, will it still at least get you a good amount of connections, a good amount of people, be it, have a little bit more noise, but there’s no such thing as a perfect list. So you’ll wanna, you’ll wanna take a look at ’em as a human anyway.

David, do you remember what path she took around the USA road trip? she went west, ended up in southern, you know, went west and south and west, and then kind of up through California into the Pacific Northwest, and then kind of straight across. United States all the way to the east coast and then back down and around and eventually landing back in Nebraska.

Right? Nebraska’s right in the middle of the country. So you can, a lot of ways to go, go around, but yeah, she went, she went west first and came 

[00:34:29] back. so once you are connected with the right people on LinkedIn, reach out, say hello, introduce yourself. Just don’t, just don’t do it immediately unless like you’re, you’re both liter, unless you’re doing it like by hand, manually.

then, then you, then you, then you know that you can kind of do it. But if you’re gonna do it in a more systematic way, I, I, I recommend, you know, a three step approach is just reach out, say, Hey, great to connect, that, that, that is sufficient. Don’t pitch them, you know, and quite frankly, you don’t need to ask what, what gets you charged up and out of bed in the morning?

Is those stories are, those questions are, are weird. If I can be honest with you. so what I like to do is just, you know, thank them, thank them. Don’t pitch ’em, don’t ask for anything on your first message. it will help you later on if you can wait a little bit. So then message ’em again and with an introduction, tell ’em about you, tell ’em about what you do.

and you know, if you’re not really sure what to offer or what to do next is ask if they’re willing to meet for a virtual cup of coffee. Is it cliche? Yes. Does it still work? Yes. And then just one, one more sentence, you know, a few days later, maybe a week or two later, just seeing if they have any interest in whatever you were offering, whether it was you wanted to, to send them some, you know, some information, a loom video, any, anything like that.

and I, I will, I will say try and really keep it to one sentence. If it’s longer than one sentence, delete the next sentence. Just, short and sweet is gonna help. ’cause all you want ’em to do is look and scroll back up to the previous message you sent them. So make the previous message the one that does the heavy lifting.

It, it works, it just works better. I, it’s, I don’t like that one. I can’t explain why that’s better it, but I can tell you it does work 

[00:36:29] better. So if you must use ai. And I know no matter what I say, you, you’re, you’re gonna, you’re gonna try and do it anyway. So let me, let me help you a little bit here.

Here’s an AI prompt that has generated good starter messages, but take, read this, screenshot it, type it in, whatever you want to do. And here’s the thing, if you want it to be good, you’ll read it and say, that doesn’t, that seems pretty good. Or, I like that. gem Gemini is terrible at this, at least as, as, as of July, 2026.

July is not good at writing these c. Don’t use that one, but both, both Claude and and, GBT can or chat, GBT can generally do a pretty good job here, even if you use the free ones. Because here’s the thing, you’re gonna, you’re gonna ask it for, you know, a few variations and then ask it for a few more, okay?

Don’t, don’t just take the first group it gives you. Now, once it gives you another round, kind of read through ’em and read ’em out loud. Read them, read them out loud, And so you can kind of hear what it says. Say, would I say that? Do I like that? Hmm? Does that sound right? Or is that awkward? Did that, did that transition work?

Like think, really think about the, what it’s saying, and the answer is probably gonna be no, but some are close. So then you read ’em out loud. Take the, take your favorite one that you read out loud and kinda write it down. You want to get a feel for what it actually is. So, so take it and write it down.

Figure out which why some, why some of those words are awkward, or why, why that transition didn’t work. And then say, okay, I like this. Here’s this, but this, this didn’t quite work. And it’ll kind of re rework it then write it down one more time and then whatever you wrote down, put that, use that. So, this is much more about collaborating and editing, than it is trying to use AI to write messages.

’cause by the time you’ve kind of gone through all that. That, that output’s gonna be pretty, pretty much yours. You’re, it’s gonna, it’s gonna say it the way you want it to. So that’s, that’s been my approach. But this will at least get you started on something that’s usually not terrible. And if it’s all terrible, ask for more, more 

[00:38:39] suggestions.

And then finally get, get the meeting. I, I think in a lot of times is that this, this doesn’t get the attention it deserves. if somebody says that they’re willing to meet, is your, your, your job is not quite done yet. you, you, you need, you need to kind of take it through. ’cause sometimes, sometimes the easy part is getting somebody to say, yeah, I’d love to meet.

The hard part is actually getting that meeting to happen. I’m, I’m sure, I’m sure Carrie can tell you lots of stories, right? Right. Carrie, you could, you, you can tell them all the times it’s taken months for somebody who’s said, yeah, I’m willing to meet. you know, can you gimme some times for next week?

Two months later, we’re still, you know, it was like, oh yeah, I, I’m sorry about that. I got busy. and then, then they finally, finally come back.

So, so when somebody does say, yeah, they want to meet, go ahead, check your calendar, see, offer some times. do not send a calendar link here. I, I, I almost always get somebody who pushes back and say, it’s just more convenient. Why wouldn’t I send my calendar link? ’cause it doesn’t work as people in outreach scenarios do not want to use calendar links.

People will do it from like ads. They’ll do it from, even they’ll even do it from a Loom video. I found they will schedule a time ’cause it now, now it feels like they’ve, they’ve been provided value, but outreach to schedule a virtual couple, they will not do it. They will not, So send them some times, follow up on those times.

If you really want a calendar link, ask for theirs. That will work better. And, and, and again, just remember to follow up ’cause people aren’t on LinkedIn every day. and they, you know, they, they get busy and Right. You’re, you, you are not the priority right now. They have other things going on in their life, but if you gently check in and, you know, aren’t, aren’t, aren’t a jerk about it, they, they will usually come back around.

[00:40:46] So. With that said, that’s all I have for you today, so I’m gonna open it up for questions. and in the meantime, if you, have said, you know, I really could use some help with this, this all sounds great. I just, I just don’t have the time. That’s usually when somebody brings me in as they need somebody who can kind of come in and implement this system, do that daily, do that daily work that needs to be done and get it done for them.

That’s usually where we tend to be a good fit is when you just don’t have time to do it. You know, you’ve got clients, your, your system works, but man, if you just had more time in the day, we are, we are basically the more time in the day solution. So, you can check, you can, schedule a call if you’d like.

You don’t have to, you don’t have to use my calendar link. You can just send me an email. I will, I will send you some times that we can, we can do it, but you can go to Pipelineology dot com slash contact or Gary at Pipelineology dot com and I’m happy to have a chat with you. So with that, let’s, let’s have some, a little bit of q and a and then, we’ll, we’ll let you get back to your day.

and, appreciate, appreciate everybody hopping on here. So let’s. Take Steve’s question here. LinkedIn did something to my profile. Have been trying for a couple weeks to get someone to communicate with something other than pre-written responses that have nothing to do with the issue at hand. usually your best bet is to have some sort of premium subscription, even if it’s like a free trial to specifically sales navigator.

I feel like it’s a different team. They can usually be more helpful than. Regular LinkedIn support, ’cause that’s a more expensive subscription, so they’ve got a little, they can get you in a little bit more better direction. Fortunately, I don’t, I don’t have contacts at, at LinkedIn, myself, so I kind of have to go through the same channels of, all right, which support person can I get, get help with today?

And that’s, that has been the, the most reliable way is to, to use the sales navigator as a, a route to at least get me to the right person. They can usually do that. Yeah. And then David, one more question from him is, I’m getting more profile views than post impressions over 100 to 200 per day. That’s plenty of prospects.

Absolutely. Nice, nice work. That’s, I mean, that’s ultimately right. We just, we wanna get the right people in our, in our sphere of influence. So if the right people are checking out your profile, that’s, that’s gonna be a huge win right there, because those are, those are the people interested in what, what you’re offering.

and yep, it is my, my email address is Gary at, pipe? nope. Not quite right, guys. I will put it in the chat here. Gary, can you put my email address in the chat for some, for anybody? I can’t quite post from here. Well, I’m, I’m chatting with people, so, and I think, let’s see here. Julie says it and Julie says you find that if, if there is interest in what you wanna meet about, people do use Calendly links.

yes. If they, if they have enough interest, I think a lot of times is they’re, they’re, they’re a little bit skeptical, especially if you’ve, if you’ve kind of come in cold, they might, they, they’re, they’re tepid on you, so you’ll get, you’ll get more, you’ll get more, you’ll, you get more people to actually meet with you if you kind of slowly, you know, cater to, to them with, With the messaging. So, alright, I think with that, I think I’ve answered the questions. Thank you so much for everybody for hopping on today. It was great meeting with you. Come back next month. we’ll be doing another one sometime late August. I don’t think we’ve picked the topic on it yet. Otherwise, shoot me a message.

Let’s connect on LinkedIn. Thanks for being here and I’ll see you guys next time.