LinkedIn can help you get your articles, posts and videos in front of thousands of eyeballs and generate tons of leads – but only if you know how to use it correctly.
Dylis: Hi there, this is Dylis Guyan, and welcome to the Inspired Selling Podcast. The place where business owners and sales people who sell to bigger businesses, discover how to attract, convert and retain more of their idea of clients on consistent basis, and that is what makes the difference. And I am really excited to talk to our guest today Sam Rathling, and I know she will absolutely blow you away with her incites and knowledge on LinkedIn. So let me tell you a little bit about Sam.
As I said she’s a LinkedIn expert and is the CEO and founder of Linked Inbound. She inspires business owners and sales professionals to generate massive results from LinkedIn. She’s the most sort after LinkedIn expert in Europe, and she’s on a mission to generate over one billion in sales for her clients. And I’m just gonna say that again, she’s on a mission to generate over one billion in sales for her clients. In the last twelve months alone Sam and her team have had businesses to generate in excess of $7.5 million in new business from the LinkedIn platform. Oh my goodness I’m so excited to speak to you Sam thank you.
Sam: I am excited to be here.
Dylis: Excellent.
Sam: It’s great to be on the podcast.
Dylis: Excellent. So, I’d really like you to share with our listeners and our viewers your back story, because I know it’s really interesting. I heard it, you moved me to tears, and if you could give us a synopsis of that in terms of how you got to where you are today and how you became a LinkedIn expert.
Sam: Well first off my background is gonna started out in corporate life in marketing agencies and I worked for the drinks company Diageo, so I kind of had a little bit of corporate background in sales and marketing. Then I moved to the Netherlands in 2001 and I didn’t speak the language so I had to completely change career and ended up falling into the recruitment industry and I was a very early adopter of LinkedIn. So in 2003 which is when the platform launched I became a member of LinkedIn. Back then it was obviously very kind of CV related, kind of recruitment heavy platform and I used it for finding candidates. But then when I set up my own business in 2005 I needed to use it for lead generation. So I’ve pretty much been on the platform since it was born.
I was always good at LinkedIn, so people would ask me to speak about it or they’d ask me to share my knowledge and it was always something I did on the side. Then about 3 years ago I just decided that I wanted to become a niche expert in something and LinkedIn obviously was my platform of choice. I’ve spent the last 3 years building my business pretty much from scratch, and I’ve been able to build my branding and my positioning as an expert successfully and that’s largely down to what I do on the LinkedIn platform. I get about 400 leads a month inbound now to our business, so we don’t need to go looking for clients which is great.
Had a few ups and downs, you mentioned you heard my story but last year it was a little bit of a bumpy year for me. I had an investor come on board in my business and in September last year I unfortunately underwent a hostile takeover and lost everything I’d built over two and a half years, and I’ve had to literally pick myself up and rebuild everything from scratch and get myself back to the place I was in before all of that happened. So, and so it’s been a bit of a journey, but we’ve got new offices now, a new team and, you know, just rebuilt the client base from scratch basically. So yeah, it’s been an interesting journey.
Dylis: And you really are an inspiration Sam and it’s a shame that we haven’t got time for you to share all of your back story, because you are a great example of somebody who’s made it and then just got absolutely knocked sideways. Not just financially but emotionally too.
Sam: Yeah.
Dylis: Yeah and I know that it really knocked you flat and yet you picked yourself up, and yet you started again and here you are with a really healthy business employing people and generating all of this business for other businesses…
Sam: Yes.
Dylis: You truly are a credit and inspiration, you motivate people, you’re all of those things.
Sam: Aww thanks Dylis.
Dylis: And I know the conference that I attended where we first met, you got the…well I would say the one and only best standing ovation. You really were fantastic and I’m delighted that I’ve had the opportunity to be friends with you. Just before we get into things I just would just like to share with everyone that actually I took your teaching from the platform and looking at your LinkedIn profile I modelled, obviously I didn’t copy, I modelled your profile.
Sam: We call that R&D Dylis, that’s rip off and duplicate
Dylis: Oh I love that. That’s a different take on R&D, rip off and duplicate right, okay.
Sam: Modelled yeah.
Dylis: Honestly the engagement since then has been enormous, and that’s just with the profile you know, without any of the other tactics. I’ve had more comments. I’ve had more likes, I’ve had more people sending invitations to connect. And people who I really want to accept their invitation you know. So, thank you Sam and that’s to..
Sam: You’re most welcome. That’s just the beginning it’s just the scratch of the surface.
Dylis: Exactly. I want to come to one of your two day events but my calendar is looking a little bit tight at the moment.
Sam: Little bit tight. It’s actually moving towards a three day event now because the feedback I get from people that come and spent the couple days with me is just not enough time to actually deal with the practical implementation so…
Dylis: Yes.
Sam: So we’re kind of moving it in September to a three day event. People always say “Wow! How could you possibly learn about LinkedIn in two days let alone three. There’s just so many things that people don’t understand about it. So it’s you know, it’s amazing when you really kind of start to understand the whole ecosystem…
Dylis: Yes.
Sam: How much potential there is there, and people are leaving so much money on the table.
Dylis: Well I will be there. I’ll be there this year.
Sam: I’m looking forward to it.
Dylis: Yes. So Sam let’s get into it because I know people will be waiting with bated breath to hear your tips and strategies and so on.
Sam: Yes.
Dylis: So first of all why is LinkedIn such a fantastic platform for business owners and professional sales people to attract and bring in more clients and more revenue of course.
Sam: Oh it’s a great question. So at the moment obviously LinkedIn is, of all the social media platforms is the one that is really focused heavily on the business side of things so if anyone is listening to this it’s in a business to business environment where you’re looking to get into companies and get to decision makers. It’s pretty much one of the only places where you can directly get to senior level executives, decision makers in companies, so that’s the first thing.
Dylis: Yeah.
Sam: Secondly, the organic reach that you can get with content on LinkedIn, you know Facebook and other platforms are making it harder and harder to get traction without paying significant amounts of money. Right now the organic reach on LinkedIn i.e. the free reach that you can get without paying LinkedIn a penny is amazing if you know how to put out the right content, and you know how to get thousands of eyeballs on to your post and articles etc. So I think it’s super powerful. When it comes to sales professionals, I mean for prospecting, for outreach to you know, to get introductions to people where it’s warmed up, nobody likes cold calling.
Dylis: Absolutely.
Sam: So to be able to speak to people who actually want to engage with you, have seen your profile and have started a conversation on LinkedIn, like that’s amazing if you can strip away the cold element and go directly to decision makers, it’s very, very powerful.
Dylis: Yeah and people shouldn’t be frighten about going straight to the decision maker. You know, I hear my clients and prospective clients who say “Oh big businesses don’t want to speak to people like me” well actually yes they do. They do.
Sam: Yeah absolutely they do.
Dylis: It’s not big corporate to big corporate.
Sam: Not at all.
Dylis: You know, so people need to just kind of strip away that myth.
Sam: Yeah absolutely.
Dylis: And use LinkedIn to its full potential. So, how can people use LinkedIn…first of all let’s talk about how to find the decision makers, what should the process be?
Sam: Well first off before you do anything on LinkedIn, you’ve really got to truly understand your target market. So down to the job tittle, the company size, the turnover, the number of people that work there, the industry sector. Like you’ve really got to home in on who is that you want, because if you’re kind of going after everyone and anyone, it’s not gonna work. So, before you even start looking for people, it’s really important that you understand exactly who.
So I would start by making a list of kind of your customer avatar, or look at your previous clients and think, well actually we’ve got really good case studies in this particular sector or this type of business, so we should probably go after more of those.
So, before you do anything about searching and finding people, you’ve got to know who you want. Then you’ve got to make your profile as you’ve mentioned, your LinkedIn profile needs to directly speak to that particular niche or sector that you are going after. So rather than you trying to make your profile talk to everybody, again the more narrowed and niched down your profile is to speak to those direct decision makers, the better. So if you’re going to start prospecting and searching for these people that you want to sell to, one of the first things they’re going to do is look at your LinkedIn profile, and if that doesn’t really speak to them, they’re going potentially not accept your connection request or maybe not want to engage.
So, before you do any prospecting or any outreach to decision makers, those couple of things have to be in place. In terms of search, I mean there’s basic ways to search on LinkedIn, which is how most people do it. So most people would go into the search bar on LinkedIn and they will type in a job title, for example; HR Director or IT Director, or CEO for example, and they will hit the search button and thousands of results will come up, and they’ve then got to wade through thousands, and thousands and thousands of results, some of which will be right some of which won’t.
There is a really targeted way of searching on LinkedIn and that’s called Boolean search, which is B-O-O-L-E-A-N…if you just pop along to my LinkedIn profile, the last article that I wrote on LinkedIn was actually all about Boolean search. So I haven’t got time to kind of…on the podcast today to kind of explain boolean and what it is, but essentially it gives you a much more effective way of searching for those decision makers.
So for example, most people would search, just type in a job title and hit search. You’re gonna very quickly…if your on the free version of LinkedIn, run into kind of this commercial search limit, because you only get a certain number of searches per month and using a boolean search will help you to effectively avoid hitting the commercial search limit and more importantly get a better list, and much more targeted results.
Dylis: Excellent. So, how many searches Sam can you have a month?
Sam: There isn’t a specific number.
Dylis: Right.
Sam: A lot of it would depend…my guess is it’s somewhere between 25-100 per month. It runs on a calendar month, so if you hit your search limit in a month, you have to wait till the 1st of the next month before it will be released again, if you’re on the free version. If you’re on sales navigator you get unlimited searches. So, if you move up to the paid version of LinkedIn, not the premium one but sales navigator which is the one that I’d recommend. Don’t go paying for LinkedIn unless you know how to use the free version first.
So, too many people like have the, you know, this grand idea that they suddenly get sales navigator and everything is gonna be easier but quite often, especially in big corporates as well. I’m working with a company at the moment, there’s a 100 people on sales navigator, so the company has invested massive amounts of money into sales navigator and they’re still wondering why their team is not generating leads, and it’s because they have effectively given them a Ferrari and not taught them how to drive it.
Dylis: Yes. How often does that happen.
Sam: Yeah.
Dylis: I’ve seen that over and over again.
Sam: It’s all the time right?
Dylis: Yes. Yeah.
Sam: So, it’s somewhere between 25 -100, and the reason it’s different for everyone is because LinkedIn uses that as a strategy to move people into the paid services. So, if suddenly someone goes from no activity at all to suddenly doing lots and lots of searches, LinkedIn is gonna…that’s gonna flag up to LinkedIn that somebody is quite active and starting to use it more. Therefore they will target them more specifically for…they will start capping how many searches they’ve got so that it pushes them to move to the paid version of LinkedIn for example. So it’s not the same for everyone.
Dylis: This highlights also why you need to know who your ideal client is?
Sam: Exactly.
Dylis: Who you avatar is, to have done that work first of all.
Sam: Exactly.
Dylis: And so that you’re very clear about who it is you want to work with. Who are your best clients. Who…
Sam: Exactly.
Dylis: Who pay you promptly. Who value what you do. Who give you repeating growing business and all those nice things.
Sam: Exactly. Then you’ve got you know… so let’s say you’re going after HR directors, well there’s probably 15 different job titles just for that one type of person. So again if you’re not using the search correctly, you can waste 15 different searches on 15 different job titles verses using boolean search where you, you know, use one or two to find all of those people together, so.
Dylis: Yeah, excellent. So let’s say then that we’ve now found who, you know, our perspective client. We’ve made a list, what’s the next step?
Sam: Well obviously the next step is two stages to that, one is you got to get them to actually accept your connection request. So the key thing with everything on LinkedIn is never ever, ever, ever sell. So there’s nothing worse than connecting with somebody and within seconds you’ve got a sales pitch sitting in your inbox. It’s very annoying, everybody hates it.
Dylis: Yeah.
Sam: And yet so many people do it. It’s just really frustrating. So I call those people like the cheaters or the hunters on LinkedIn. They just don’t get how to do this outreach thing. So the first step is, you’ve got to get the person to accept your connection request. My advice on that would be to personalise the invitation, find things on their LinkedIn profile that maybe you have some common ground with and always prospect on your second degree network. That means that you’ve already got some mutual your connections. So, if you’re doing a search, always make sure that you’re searching just one step away from you.
So your first degree connections are the people that you’re already connected to. Your second degree are all those people’s networks. So always prospect in your second degree because you’ve got some common ground already, it’s a bit easier to say I saw we’ve got some mutual connections.
Dylis: Yes.
Sam: They’ll see some of the same people that you’re both connected to. Then the second piece is once they have connected, you’ve got to get that person into a conversation. And this is where most people go wrong, because they start pitching and selling and making it all about them. Of course it’s all about the client. So and this comes back to target market, if you truly know and understand your target market, you’ll understand their pain, you’ll understand their challenges, you’ll understand exactly what they’re frustrated by, and what things keep them up at night. And if you know all of that it’s easy then to construct a message that speaks to their pain and it really is…if you get the right conversation going…you’re not really trying to generate a lead, all you want is a conversation.
So just to give you an example I have a client in the automotive game, so he has a car garage and he does MOT and servicing. So he has two types of target market. One is kind of local directors who drive German cars, that’s one of his target markets, and the other one is fleet managers with a fleet of lots of German cars. So you can’t tell from a LinkedIn profile what car someone drivers right? So I can’t tell which car you drive Dylis, but if I ask you a question in a message and said “Hey Dylis by the way, out of interest what car do you drive?” You’d probably respond right? “What do you drive Dylis?”
Dylis: A Jaguar.
Sam: There you go right. So…and people will respond to a question if it’s easy and it’s, you know, not difficult and isn’t giving away like you know, confidential secrets. But for example with the Derby race directors, like you just ask the question “What car do you drive?” Most of them will respond and now he’s got a conversation going and he knows whether or not they are a potential target market. With the fleet directors or fleet managers it’s a different question, so we know that a fleet manager would be struggling with cost reduction, and that they would be struggling with you know, how much time their team are off the road, and if they’ve got to have their car serviced. You’ve 100 sales people on the road, well a fleet manager is gonna be concerned about how much time it’s taking them off the road for example.
So the conversation there is about you know, how high is cost reduction on your agenda for this year? So if, you know, they’re not all gonna respond but if you know the pain point of the client and you put the right message together, then it’s easy for you to get them into a conversation and that’s really where… And even if they don’t…let’s say they don’t respond to the outreach, that’s okay because now that persons accepted your connection request, they’re in your network and it’s then gonna be the content that you put out there that’s gonna drive them back to you.
So you never know who’s watching on LinkedIn. You never know who’s following your post, you never know who is out there going “Oh I like this person.” So even if they don’t respond to an initial outreach, now that they’re in your first degree network there’s a higher chance they’re gonna see…get to know, like, and trust you through the content that you put out.
Dylis: Yeah. I don’t know whether you would recommend this, but this is just what I do. Once I’ve connected with someone, and I always send a personalised message unless it’s on my phone, because if you connect on your phone is there a way around that where you can send…?
Sam: Of course there is.
Dylis: Is there?
Sam: Of course there is. So on your phone people have this myth that you can’t personalise a message on the phone. So rather than hitting connect button there’s like a little dot, dot, dot hidden menu, go to the right of where you’d normally hit connect. So on the phone if you hit connect, you can’t personalise it, but of you hit the dot, dot, dot button there’s an option to personalise the invitation from your mobile phone. So yeah, there is a way around that.
Dylis: See there’s always something, and it’s always simple it’s just you don’t know what you don’t know.
Sam: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, so…
Dylis: I will connect to someone, and then I would actually before I start any kind of dialogue. I would like or comment on their post…
Sam: Yep.
Dylis: Just to kind of put myself on their radar.
Sam: Exactly. Yeah.
Dylis: Then…and my strategy actually is then make that connection on LinkedIn, then I send an email, then I make a phone call.
Sam: I mean everyone’s approach is going to be different. I mean, ideally you want to be taking it from the online to the offline as quickly as possible. So you know, remember that behind every profile is a real human person…
Dylis: Yeah.
Sam: …Who’s looking for connections. So if you can get them to the point where they’re like ‘Actually I’m really interested in what you do, let’s have a conversation.’ Or even better that they see your post and then they inbox you saying “I’ve been following you. I really like what you’re doing, can we have a chat?”
Dylis: Yeah.
Sam: It’s all about that inbound and attraction piece verses kind of push and sell. So social selling which is kind of the art of selling without selling is really all about attraction and pulling people towards you who are in your target market. Verses having to always be constantly selling and advertising and pushing, which effectively repels your target market away from you. So, it’s all about attraction.
Dylis: Yeah.
Sam: And not repelling.
Dylis: So let’s talk about content for a moment then.
Sam: Yes.
Dylis: What should people be posting? How often should they be posting? Should they be posting at any particular times? What are your views on that?
Sam: So I have eight different types of content strategies for people. So, you know, I’ll give you the eight. I’m not gonna be able to go through each one individually but the first one would be kind of an educational post. Things that are gonna add value, tips, etc. Advice, knowledge sharing expertise, so that would be an educational post. The next one would be a gratitude post, so that is where you’re thanking somebody else in your network.
So for example I could do a post after the podcast thanking you for the opportunity to be on your podcast, and do a post about how fun it was to be on the podcast that would be an example of a gratitude post. So thanking somebody else in your network.
You’ve then got sharing your wins, so kind of successes and wins. People like to hear that other people are doing well or they’ve won something you know. So if you’ve won a big contract or a big proposal, you might not be able to share who it was with, but you could describe the customer, maybe describe the pain points that they had etc. But you could talk about wins and successes.
Another good one is kind of social proof that you’re good at what you do. So if you’re receiving a recommendation from somebody or somebody sent you a nice gift or somebody has written a nice hand written thank you card, anything where it’s a happy customer telling you that you did a great job, like share that on LinkedIn, tag the person, because it’s just continued social proof that you’re out there helping people and doing a good job.
The next one would be around the subject of…if you’ve probably followed Janet Murry, but Janet Murry is amazing and she’s fantastic at content and she calls it a grenade post. So it’s kind of a bit controversial. So you kind of lobbing a grenade into the newsfeed and splitting opinion that could be quite a good one. I wouldn’t recommending doing it loads, but when you do the engagement is really high because everybody has an opinion. So you might want to think about how you could do that in terms of you know, a subject that would divide opinion.
My favourite one is documenting. So Garry V. has a really good statement and he says “When it comes to LinkedIn and content, you need to be the TV show and not the commercial.” So people want to watch the TV show, they don’t want to watch the adverts. So by posting what you’re up to and documenting your journey, that’s a really good way. So just think about like the last seven days, what have you been up to. Write a list down and that’s a LinkedIn post. So just sharing and documenting what you’re doing, you know, if you’re running a master class, if you’re teaching people, if you’re at an event, if you’re at a seminar, like whatever it is that you’re doing in your day to day life, like share it and post about it because people are interested in what other people are doing. And that can drive inbound leads.
Dylis: Both personal and business.
Sam: Yeah both, personal and business. Or of you do something personal then link it back into business. I had a client the other day and he’s a culture expert, so he goes into big companies who are having problems with culture and team building and things and he’ll go in and help them to turn that around. And he got his 6 year old and his 9 year old to draw a picture, and he said to Holly, “Holly I want you to draw a picture of unhappy bunnies” and he said to Oscar “Can you draw happy bunnies.” So he did a post on LinkedIn with the two pictures; super cute little pictures by a 6 year old and a 9 year old. So he used his kid’s pictures, and he posted about a hospital in Manchester that he’s taken from the bottom of the rankings to being the number one through changing their culture. And it was all about culture and the shifting culture, and happy bunnies and unhappy bunnies.
So within two hours of the post going up, he had the third biggest insurance company in the UK messaging him saying we want to talk to you about culture. So that’s an example of where you can use something that’s, you know, kids related and pull it into the business world. So that was a great post, it was super smart of him to do that. He’s now working with that organisation and it came off of a post. So that’s an example of where you can share what you’ve been doing, how you’ve helped somebody and share a case study of the client. You didn’t mentioned the name of the hospital.
Dylis: Yeah.
Sam: But he shared the results he got for them. So if he’s connected with other people in that industry who are in that same position, someone is gonna see that and go “We need to talk to this guy because we’ve got a culture issue.” So just sharing what you’re up to can drive inbound leads. So that’s a really good one.
Then just general news updates about your career, or updates about your business, just things that are going on. So if you’re moving offices or rebranding or whatever it is that’s going on. So there’s so many different things, like content is everywhere. Like people are too scared to jump on a video. They’re too scared to use… you know. So video is by far the number one medium to use on LinkedIn at moment. So if you just look down on the newsfeed on your phone, take 60 seconds.
Dylis: Yeah.
Sam: 50% of the posts are all gonna be video. So, if you’re going to do content on LinkedIn, think about how you can use video included in there as well.
Dylis: I’m just making a note of all of these by the way.
Sam: So there’s so many different strategies. I would follow Janet Murry for more content ideas. Janet’s the UK’s leading content strategy expert, she’s got a fantastic podcast. So I’d recommend listening to her. I’ve learnt loads from Janet, she’s a client as well. So definitely jump on Janet’s podcast as well if you want some expert help on content.
Dylis: Yeah. I’ve actually been on her podcast….
Sam: Have you? Oh very good she’s great.
Dylis: Yeah. We’re looking to do the second part.
Sam: Brilliant yeah. So have a listen to Dylis’ interview with Janet, that’s probably the best thing. So if you pop that link in the post as well Dylis I think it’s just a, you know, I’m the expert on LinkedIn but from a content prospective. She’s got a great media planner as well you can use. Just think about like, you might not think about what you do on a day to day basis is that interesting, but actually people want to see what you’re up to and that’s the only way they’re gonna get to know you and come towards you,
Dylis: Excellent, and that’s a really great list. Is there anything else to add to that or is that your list of eight?
Sam: I can’t remember all of them. I think I’m missing one, but I can’t remember what it is.
Dylis: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 no that’s eight, that’s good.
Sam: Oh yeah. Perfect! Then we’ve done them all.
Dylis: So one of the things that I come across is, the business owners seem to get this although they are very much immersed in what they do. They’re experts in what they do, but they’re not experts in sales and marketing. So they suffer a lot from the peaks and troughs of cash flow. The sales people who are employed by companies, they get a whole raft of product training.
Sam: Yeah.
Dylis: And they get about that much sales training and this much in prospecting training.
Sam: Yes.
Dylis: Which of course is LinkedIn prospecting. A number that I’ve spoken to have said you know, we can’t as individual sales people put posts on to LinkedIn. What are your thoughts around that?
Sam: Well every company is different. So every company will have their own kind of social media guideline etc. What you’ll find is that the company is probably doing post from the marketing department on their company page. So in most cases, most companies will allow the sales people to share and repost the content that’s being put out by marketing.
Dylis: Yeah.
Sam: I always come across this battle every corporate that I’ve worked with. There’s always a big divide between sales and marketing.
Dylis: Yeah.
Sam: But the company is where there isn’t a divide, they’re actually working together, that works brilliantly. So, senior management tends to be a bit nervous about what people are gonna post. And I think it’s just the lack of education that the company or the senior management don’t necessarily understand the power, like the true power of LinkedIn. So I’m working with a company at the moment, I’m training a hundred sales people in 23 countries, and they’ve had to go through this journey of like educating not just marketing. So marketing have been in on all the sessions to understand like why LinkedIn is the way it is, and to give the sales people permission to really build their own personal brand within the newsfeed. But also understand what they need in terms of content. So, it can be a challenge. What tends to happen is they don’t post anything for fear of posting the wrong thing.
Dylis: Yeah.
Sam: So, I think it’s just a lack of education. In the company I’m working with, I’m now going in to train all of the MD’s of each country, and the senior management, and the COO’s because, they’ve kind of done like, we’ve taught sales people, we’ve taught marketing but the senior management aren’t brought in. Well they aren’t bought in because they’re getting tons of results, but in terms of they just don’t know why we should allow sales people or anyone in the organisation to post and it’s just a lack of education. So if anyone is listening to this and they are struggling with that, like reach out to me on LinkedIn and I’ll see how I can help you.
Dylis: Yeah will do.
Sam: But it’s definitely a struggle. But the companies that do allow it, like the results are ridiculous. I mean this one company, they’ve got a £1.5 million in their sales pipeline after just ten weeks. They’ve booked 37 sales meetings from LinkedIn, and I’ve only trained six of them and I’ve still got 95 to go this month, I’m all over Europe this month, £1.5 million on their bottom line in their sales pipeline off the back of them posting and them outreaching to prospects. I mean that’s significant you know. These guys are getting into companies that they’ve never dreamed they’d get into, because they’re actually going after the right people.
Dylis: This for me is about companies putting boundaries/standards in place.
Sam: Yes.
Dylis: Like it’s much like compliance you know.
Sam: Absolutely.
Dylis: It’s like financial services. They can’t just do what they want in the working day. They’ve got rules and boundaries around compliance.
Sam: Exactly.
Dylis: And it’s exactly the same thing. But if people don’t share the message, they don’t clearly, you know, with clarity share what their expectation is. What they can do, what they can’t do and that the managers get on board with it as well.
Sam: Yeah.
Dylis: You know, like you’re talking about marketing department and so on. So important that this…
Sam: A lot of it’s common sense. I mean you know, at the end of the day if someone’s working for an organisation, they are representing that brand and they are, you know, out there with that brand with that companies name. So, you know I think within reason as long as people understand what the…as you said, what the boundaries are and what they can and can’t do then, you know, they should be allowing their people to be out there you know, because they’re not gonna be out there… Especially in sales, why would you be posting things that would be detrimental to the company? Like if you’re in sales you should be allowed to post great content that drives people and drives leads, like that so
Dylis: Exactly. And rather than just having marketing department maybe four people, you’ve just got four
Sam: Exactly you’ve got like an army of people like…
Dylis: Exactly.
Sam: This particular company I’m working with literally like the competition. Like what is happening over here like the channel partners have taken notice, their competition has taken notice.
Dylis: Yeah.
Sam: Like suddenly the awareness of that brand in that market place is just gone through the roof, and it’s just because they’ve empowered their sales people to be able to create their own content and become their own personal brand. And allowed them to do it because they’ve trained them, what’s right, what wrong etc, and how to do it effectively, and the difference it’s gonna make. I mean I reckon by the end of the next year they’ll probably have £12 million in their sales pipe or in their sales and just off the back of training a hundred sales people on what they’re actually should to be doing with LinkedIn. And it just…like corporates get it so wrong.
Dylis: Yeah.
Sam: And…it’s just a lack of education. They just don’t understand the power of LinkedIn.
Dylis: Fantastic. So really what we said here is identify your target market. You could use the free search.
Sam: Yeah.
Dylis: Go for your second-tier connections.
Sam: Go for your second-tier connections, yeah.
Dylis: Personalise your invitation to connect, ask them a question and keep posting.
Sam: Yes. Keep the consistency going. Yeah.
Dylis: Consistency. Yeah.
Sam: Wrapping all around this is something called the social selling index Dylis. So I know I trained that…I know you now know what yours is but, just in terms everybody has a score out of a hundred on LinkedIn that kind of measures those few things that you’ve just pointed out there. So if you don’t know what your social selling index is, I’ll give you the link just now it’s www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi which stands for social selling index. So go check out what yours is, everyone has one and it gives you a score out of a hundred with four kind of main areas that LinkedIn is kind of looking at you to do.
So the first one is all about content, so that’s to do with building and establishing your professional brand. The next one is all about finding the right people and that’s to do with your target market. The following one is about engagement, so how much interaction you’re, having on the newsfeed. And the final one is about building trusted relationships. So go check out your SSI if you’re listening to the podcast and that really is the measurement of how you’re performing as LinkedIn member.
Ideally you want to be 75+ to start getting…that’s kind of where the magic happens. So if you’re below 75 right now that should be your target to get 75. Just implementing some of the strategies I’ve given you on the podcast will help, but if you understand the social selling index, pushing yourself into the high 70’s is gonna give you the best shot at generating business and leads from LinkedIn.
Dylis: Fantastic! Sam I could talk to you for two weeks. We’ve got half an hour, so we just you know, we’re on kind of on the top of the hour so…well actually at the half hour stage. So tell people how they might get in touch with you Sam, and I’m sure you’ll have lots of people getting in touch with you.
Sam: And well…yeah obviously LinkedIn is usually the best way to get a hold of me. I’m delivery training a lot of the time so, if you do message me I might not get to it immediately but go to my LinkedIn profile, just find me on LinkedIn Sam Rathling. There’s only two of us on LinkedIn and one’s an IT director in the US and the other one is me. I have a website called www.linkedinbound.co.uk. So if someone was interested in a deep dive or a master class or something like that, all of the details of that are on the website. I do have a book which is called LinkedIn or LinkedOut, and on the website it’s actually downloadable for free. So you can go to www.linkedinbound.co.uk just scroll to the bottom and you’ll see the picture of the book that has 107 tips on how to grow your business on LinkedIn. So it’s a good place to start as a checklist for you to kind of start working through some of the detail of LinkedIn. So it’s got a different section.
Dylis: What’s it called again Sam?
Sam: “LinkedIn or LinkedOut” is the name of the book.
Dylis: Yes.
Sam: And the website is www.linkedinbound.co.uk and the book is downloadable from the website. So those are free tips for you.
Dylis: Excellent. Marvelous.
Sam: Obviously I post things…I mean I’ve got my YouTube channel which I’m heavily focused on this year. So I’m just about to start putting up lots and lots of content videos and I’m on the other platforms but you know LinkedIn is the queen.
Dylis: I agree. Sam thank you so much, this has been absolutely fabulous and I know your insight I know will help people, because, you know, this hasn’t been fluff and filler. I don’t do fluff and filler podcast interviews. You know just tell people and help people and like you I’m on a mission to help people attract more clients and live the life that they want to live really.
Sam: Absolutely.
Dylis: Without struggling. So thank you so much and…
Sam: You’re more than welcome Dylis, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here take care.
Dylis: You’re welcome bye.
Sam: Bye.
Dylis: Oh how fabulous was that with Sam Rathling. Just an amazing lady. So please contact her, you know, get her download from her website and so on. Again if you want to interact with me more, then please come and join my Facebook group, which is a free group specifically for business owners and sales people who are selling to bigger businesses, and it’s called Inspired Selling. So just go over to Facebook and search for Inspired Selling, come and join us and I’d loved to interact with you over there. Thanks for listening or for watching and I look forward to seeing you the next time. Bye for now.
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