How to Make Your Personal and Business Brand a Success

Who are you?

What do you do? Are you someone I should know? Most LinkedIn profiles can't even come close to answering those questions. So, that's going to be our topic today on Marc Haine Live. I am so glad that you are here. This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up some core skill sets to help them create the jaw-dropping, show-stopping experiences that their customers and employees deserve. I am your host, Service Expert and Master of Experiences Marc Haine. I am so glad that you're investing your time with me here today. This is going to be a wonderful episode because my guest for this episode is Social Selling Strategist Marilyn August.

Hi Marc!

And today, we will be talking about what social selling really is versus what people think it is. We'll talk a little bit about why LinkedIn is considered to be the number one lead generation platform for business-to-business operations and why it cannot be ignored. We're going to cover some do's and don'ts of leveraging social media to establish your personal brand. And if you stay with us, you'll get a few Tips and takeaways about how to think about your social media strategy and some cool hints about how to make your LinkedIn profile much more effective. My one ask is that you go ahead and you share this episode with someone that you know who can use this information. I am sure like me, you get connection requests from people who show up and throw up. That is, you connect with them and they do nothing but just throw stuff at you without even finding out who you are, right? They vomit a sales pitch and it's like, well, you haven't even bothered to check my profile to see what I do before you even try to sell me something. But that's only one side of the issue. The other is when I check people out on their LinkedIn profile, the profiles are atrocious. I don't know what they do. I don't know who they are. So that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, what do you find the most intimidating thing about LinkedIn? I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. So go ahead and post this where ever you're listening to it, go ahead and post it on social media and hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership with your comments. What is the biggest challenge you have with LinkedIn when it comes down to your profile or working with LinkedIn? I am really excited to have fractional social selling expert Marilyn Auguste here with me today. It is so great to have you. Marilyn is the CEO of Profit GPS.

Hi Marc!

And for more than 15 years, her breakthrough sales and marketing strategies have shown sales and business professionals how to close more deals and make more money. As a former business consultant for the Small Business Development Center, she's helped countless small and medium-sized businesses identify their strengths, recognize their weakness, develop sales systems, and banish revenue growth stumbling blocks. Getting over all those blocks, it's heck! Welcome to the show, Marilyn. It's so great to have you here.

Ah, thank you so much. It's so much fun to be here.

Well, I certainly hope it is.

It is. It's really fun.

Before we get into today's topic, could you just let everybody know a little bit about how you serve your clients?

Well, I loved your intro and I'm going to tag on it and say that I put the love and care into social selling. I solve the problem of how do you get a meeting when you can't get a call through. So, I turn a cold call into a warm call by filling your pipeline with targeted prospects. So, it's the top of the sales funnel.

Wow!

I'm almost thinking it should be called the warm and cozy call.

Oh, I like that because it is. It's a warm and cozy call. I'm going to borrow that, Marc.

It's a warm and cozy call.

Is it okay for me to borrow that?

Please, it's all yours.

Oh, I love it. Warm and cozy call. Yes, because it's scheduled. You've engaged. Oh yeah, that's wonderful. There you go. That's exactly what I do.

Who knew?

That's awesome. Who knew?

So, we're talking today. We're talking about LinkedIn. Obviously, in my opening, I mentioned all these different things that come across And I always laugh when I get those show up and throw up connection requests. I always get slightly frustrated when I go to somebody's profile to look them up because I think that we can do business together. But I need clarification. And then, I go to their LinkedIn profile and I can't find it. Why do you think this topic is so important today?

Because Well, I'm not sure I'm clear on the question, but because I think— let me see if I'm answering the question you want. I think that people are fed up. There's a psychology to LinkedIn, a professionalism. So, if you're saying, why do people throw up on you? It's because they don't know any better.

Right.

It's amateur hour. And part of it is that LinkedIn started as a job board. So, people don't understand marketing. They don't understand the basics of know, like, trust. And of course, desperation, if that's the question you're asking.

Yes.

But I often say there's a psychology to LinkedIn. Frankly, nothing will destroy your brand faster Than that throwing up on you, it's it's annoying. I used to answer. I have very snarky replies to those. Sometimes I'm very snarky, and sometimes I've learned just to ignore them. Hit the delete button.

Yeah, just because it takes takes too much energy even to be snarky to it, isn't it?

And and. You know, they don't get it. They don't get it. Or truthfully, you're talking to a bot. Okay.

So, is that a lot? Is there a lot of that going on? Are there a lot of like robot and automated kind of emails that go out on LinkedIn or messages go on LinkedIn?

Yes and no. So, let me answer it that way. LinkedIn is not happy with that. LinkedIn is really, um, they're doing all kinds of things to, uh, to stop that kind of nonsense, but you can't stop stupidity. How? You just can't. Um, and I have to say, there are so-called gurus. I can tell when someone's been through a class, you know, I can tell when someone's been through a class and someone's taught them that this should be The invite request, because I'll get the same invite requests. It's been copied and pasted. So there's a lot of online do-it-yourself LinkedIn gurus. I mean, there's one on every corner. That's why I do it for you, because the money's in the mailbox, the money's in the messaging.

Right.

So it's just they don't understand it, but there is a lot of that. But I have to admit or tell you the truth that to do an effective LinkedIn campaign, copying and pasting isn't just going to work.

Right.

It's having an expert, having an expert that knows what they do. But basically, it's ignorance and partly it's because of LinkedIn, the way the platform started.

Right.

Well, and to your point, people are using LinkedIn the way that people are now using Canva to do their marketing. Like, they're not graphic artists. And so, they go on to Canva and they copy a template. And then, they use that as— and it's like, oh, so now I have some visual assets. And you just start going, well, it starts looking like everybody else's. And if you don't understand design principles, then you're modifying templates.

Right.

And thinking that it's going to look okay, right? And so, to your point, I think that comes up. But when it comes down to like, is it my imagination or does it feel like social media strategies are more of an afterthought in people's marketing plans?

Actually, I just talked to a very successful woman yesterday for whom that was exactly the situation. I could hardly believe it. She's building an enterprise company and knows nothing about LinkedIn. So yes, But let me clarify that LinkedIn is not social media. So, it's social selling. And that's where I think a lot of the problem comes. You just triggered something in my thinking. I think they treat it like social media. And it's not at all like social media.

Well—

It's professional networking. It's social selling.

And yet, now we're seeing a propensity. Somebody just put a rather humorous post on and said, I went on to Facebook and I was looking at all my friends' puppies and all the cute things that they're doing with their babies and stuff. And then, I realized I was on LinkedIn. People are starting now to use LinkedIn more and more almost like it's a Facebook post.

Yes, that's unfortunate and that's a brand destroyer. People don't know the difference between Facebook and LinkedIn. I have to think that some of it is that LinkedIn wants to be Facebook. They want the advertising revenues that Facebook has, but their advertising strategy is totally different than Facebook. Again, if you have no substance and you don't understand professional networking, so the person that's going to succeed with content marketing, with pull marketing is the person that adds value. Posting your puppies is fine. I post my puppy on my personal LinkedIn page, my personal Facebook page, but you'll never see it on my LinkedIn page. That's, I think, Marc, now that I'm thinking about it, some of it's got to be just simple laziness. Laziness and And lack of care and knowledge.

In that they're creating one piece of content and then maybe sharing it across all platforms?

Yes. And also when I do profiles, believe it or not, the hardest part of me doing writing profiles for some people is pulling out their value proposition. They have no substance.

Right.

And they've been taught features and benefits selling. If you've been taught features and benefits selling, you're in the 1990s. Forget it. It's not working anymore. I don't care what the sales trainers say. It's not working. So the issue is with adding value with content. It's not about And also, the ones that tell me I was just promoted, those are Facebook posts. And you're right, you're seeing more and more of it. And you're also seeing talking heads that are really boring.

Yeah.

Can I tell you a quick story?

Please.

I'll never forget him. Italian. It's not necessary that you know he's Italian, but I think you probably We'll need to know he's Italian. Anyhow, I was doing a LinkedIn campaign for him and he insisted that all his content be video. He wanted only video content on there. His way of doing video was to shoot a video of him talking. What I call a talking head video. Not with any graphics or anything like that. Well, the way he talked was he put his face into the camera. I mean, like into the camera, and he talks with his hands. His hands were all over the place. You would see his hands like this in front and coming like that anytime he had you know. So I made the mistake of I was posting it for him, and I looked at that video, and I said, "This is really lousy. Nobody's gonna." Watch this, and I said something to him. I said, "You know, Steve, that may not be the best way to lean into the screen." And it was like he was lying on the desk or something, and then his hands were all over, and I couldn't whatever point he was making. I couldn't. Anyhow, he got really mad at me. He got really mad. He says, "I like the video." I like it. I think it's good. So, one of the things is you have to be coachable. And so, he wondered why his LinkedIn campaign didn't go so well.

Yeah.

He was a little— but that's a lot of it is people don't know.

Yes. And I think there's a lot of myths as well into what people think are good. You know, one of the things like Like to your point, your client turned around and said, but that's what I like.

Yes.

And then, it's like, well, then your focus is all wrong because it's not about you. It's about your clients. It's about being able to resonate with the people out there who are willing to pay for you to do it. And again, to the point that we said about Canva, about people doing it all themselves. If you're not a specialist in doing video work, then maybe you should talk to somebody who is a specialist. in doing video work so that you can understand how do I show up. When is this too much and when is it not enough, right? So, but are there any other myths that you think people should be aware of when it comes down to kind of the really horrible practices that you're seeing out there in the LinkedIn world?

Oh my goodness, Marc! How much time do we have? I have a whole file of worst practices. I could. I actually do posts, and you can look them up that say this really happened. So number one, number one on my list, and if your if your audience leaves with nothing else today, please please don't pitch me in an invite. I just hit delete. I you know I get so many invites, and you evidently do that says. I help people do. You know, it's like you want to get married; we haven't even dated. Exactly. I cannot believe that's the number one, and I see more and more of it, and I see more of more of no message at all in a connect request, right? Or they've picked up. They've done the LinkedIn says we should connect, the standard messaging. Yes.

And if LinkedIn told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?

Yeah, exactly. The invite is critical because it's in— how did we meet, Marc? I'm here because we met on LinkedIn.

We did. Yeah.

I didn't know you.

And it was Yeah, exactly. And it was like you said you had done something and I sent a response to it. And then it's like, well, now we're in a conversation.

Yes, we were on a virtual conversation. Like, that's what I say, virtual to real.

Yeah.

I shook hands with a stranger. Now I know, think I know everything about you and your whole life. No, seriously, you're just a delight. I'm honored to be on this show.

Well, no, it's so nice that when we— because I think part of it is like going into a networking scenario.

Exactly!

When you're at a big conference and you go to the coffee station and the person next to you is right there. And you look over and go, hi, my name's Marc. Hey, and you know, I do something really— and on a previous episode, I used that video of Groundhog Day when the gentleman comes up to him and goes, you know who I am, right?

Right?

You know who I am, right? Am I right? Am I right? And it's like, will you Please shut up. Right? And people, we just don't talk that way. We don't interact that way. And so, to your point, would you say that putting no message in a connection request is better than putting a bad— putting any kind of bad content down in a connection request?

I think they're both equally deletable.

Yeah, well, that's for sure.

Yeah, I think I'd have a hard time deciding which is worse.

Yes.

Because I wanted to go on to number 2.

You go on to the next one. That's so good.

And that's the profile. That's the profile. Worst practices profile.

So, I'd like to take the steps going forward. I think what I'd like to do is I'd like to maybe uncover some best practices for setting up our profiles. What kind of content is good and how to effectively make connections on LinkedIn. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! I am speaking with fractional social selling expert Marilyn Auguste. Marilyn, what is fractional selling?

Well, fractional selling means That I work with you is if, if you don't have an internal marketing department focused on social selling.

Mm-hmm.

I'm a done-for-you. I do what it takes. And the reason it's social selling, Marc, is I've learned, like you have, that LinkedIn is one tool in the toolbox of social selling, but it's not the only tool. So as I said before, if the videos are lousy, If the visuals don't work, if the content is junk. This is a— somebody said to me yesterday, a woman I was talking to said to me yesterday, it's very complex. And I said, oh yeah, it is. And she says, I can't quite wrap my mind around it. And I said, that's why I do it for you instead of asking you to take a 12-hour course to do it yourself. And the other thing is, We're all too close to the forest to see the tree. Or so, we're inside the bottle. We can't see outside.

We can't see the label from inside the bottle.

We can't see the label from— I like that even better. And so, it means that I fill in the missing pieces. So, depending on how you're working. So, I found that I'm working on a LinkedIn profile and I look at their website. Whoops. Or there's inconsistency. One of the things I'm seeing now, which I'm really surprised about, and it gets into all kinds of ramifications, is that I'll see a company with, say, 5 salespeople. And the 5 salespeople all have different inconsistent LinkedIn profiles.

Sure.

One's written as a resume, which was going to be my next point. One's written as a resume. One use doesn't have a banner on there. I call that free real estate up at the top of your profile. So yes, that real estate there where it says Rock Solid Sustainable Success System. Okay, so that should be congruent with your branding. If you go to my website, the website will probably say something very similar. So do you want to? Go through a few best practices.

Sure, let's take a look at profiles and what some of the best practices are.

You're gonna put me on the hot seat. Okay, so on the hot seat because you're looking at my profile. Okay, and profiles. So first of all, that photo. The photo has a story. But you can— when I do trainings, and I do do LinkedIn trainings for companies, I'll put a photo array up. And ask the audience, you know, which one will you never do business with? And believe it or not, people make a very snap judgment on your photo. They make it. And the one— and I'll just tell you because we're not doing a training— the one they always pick is the one with the busy background. Believe it or not, I've had people on that I've— that have family photos right in this little tiny space. There's a guy holding his baby. This is not the place for the guy holding your baby. You look at this, I mean, something as basic as that, Marc, I didn't think I had to talk about anymore.

Yes.

But the other thing, and this is, I don't know if you're aware of this, but LinkedIn came up with this and you can only do this on your mobile. You can record an intro on your photo, like a 30-second intro. I've seen some really lousy ones where people are pitching.

Yep.

I've seen only a few good ones.

Yes. And I've done that as well. And there's also the one there. It's the one that has the— sorry about that. I goofed up the screen share now. But there's also a thing with a microphone on there as well. You have a speaker on there that allows you to pronounce your name. And being able to adjust that as well. And actually use that for a quick little recording of maybe something you share your values or something, right?

Well, I don't think that recording on that mic is long enough for that. It's really the recording on the image. But if you use that to pitch, people aren't going to go any further.

Right.

Okay. So, one of the other, and this is, I have really gotten pushback on this. But on your name or somewhere in your headline, LinkedIn in your editing has a place for you to put the pronoun he/she.

Yes.

To be— my advice to clients and my insistence is unless your name is hard to pronounce or non-gender-specific. So I know a man named Leslie. Leslie is a gender, not a gender-neutral name. When you're reading your name, if you've got he, she, and Mark is obviously a man's name, Marilyn's obviously a woman's name. They did this. Somebody got really mad at me when I did a post on this, and she's he said, "You're not a twenty-year, you know, you're not a twenty-something millennial looking for your identity." That's fine, but I'm a marketer. And it disrupts the reading of the name. So my, my tip, one of my 3 tips is don't use it. You're not required to use it unless you either have a gender-neutral name or a difficult-to-pronounce name that people would not know and they'd be embarrassed to do business with you. I, the speaker, when I'm talking to somebody and I only speak English, I'm one of those Americans that only speaks English, if I'm going to have difficulty pronouncing your name, I might not be so inclined to get to know you. Because I don't want to sound stupid or offend you. So these things might sound very, very basic. But They're very important when shaking hands with a stranger. Remember, LinkedIn is shaking hands with a stranger.

Right.

That's why it's social.

I mean, to your point as well, the idea being that these are about checking your values, right? So, some people might turn around and go, well, I'm going to use my pronouns to show that I'm sensitive to the communities that identify maybe a little bit differently. And so then, okay, if that's how you want to reflect yourself, then that's okay too. But I think we need to— it's all about, you know, you and I connect because we share some values. Not because we necessarily even have things in common but because we're sharing some values.

That's a very good point. However, when you are looking at my profile as a stranger, I want it to be easy for you to read.

Sure.

And if you've got the he/she there in parentheses, it's not as easy to read. It disrupts the eye.

Okay.

So, you have to make a judgment call on what's more important to you.

That's awesome.

So, I often recommend to leave it off.

Okay. And so, you mentioned something also within the name now about the headlines. I noticed that when you and I first touched base, I said, so what about mine? And you said something about my headline. What are some parameters around the headline that you think are important to keep in mind?

Okay. Well, if you notice my headline, first of all, you have 122 characters. But you are not required to use all 122 characters. But think of your headline as the headline on a newspaper in the olden days when we used to read newspaper headlines. It's got to grab attention. It's got to get people interested in scrolling. You want to stop the scroll and you want people to get to know you. So one of the things I often do on my headline is I put an action. What am I doing? I'm closing more deals, making more money. My title is important, but you're going to see the title down in my experience section. So I think it's, it's equally important. Now a lot of people want their title there so they have, um, Google, they have, uh, SEO, they're using SEO and they want Google to pick up the title, which it will. Google looks at your profile. The other thing I recommend after your name is I've seen so many of these with all these fancy letters after their name.

Yes.

You know, I have a master's degree. Nobody franking gives a darn I have a master's degree. But I had a client who had some letters after her name that I didn't know what they meant. I had no idea. It wasn't PhD or MD or most MDs won't put their or anything like that. And I said to her, you know, why? You know, can I take those off? Because I was writing her profile. And she was very, very insistent that people in her industry knew what those letters meant. And that was very important to be there. Well, I'm going to tell you something. People feel stupid, they're not going to do business with you. They're not going to share your value because they don't want to look dumb. The last thing you want to have is dumb. So I recommend no letters after your name. I don't care how many fancy degrees you have. That's not going to make me do business with you. That's not a value proposition. That's nice that you're certified. I also see these certifications from organizations I've never heard of. You're laughing. But I see this stuff every day.

I know, I know. It's more ego. It's more about ego than it is about— because it's to your point you mentioned earlier about features and benefits. Well, the fact if I'm going to go to a doctor, I'm looking for capacity. Yes, it's important for them to have their doctorate. But my assumption is that if your name is Dr. Smith, that you're going to be a doctor. And if I get recommended to you, it's because somewhere, some another doctor maybe said you can help me, right? So, having all those initials afterwards doesn't really do me any because I don't know what they mean.

Frankly, it's ego. Yeah. And if I don't know what they mean, and it's really important for people not to feel dumb. Nobody likes to and nobody's going to admit they're feeling dumb. So, there are some words that I see in headlines that I recommend against. So that I don't want to hear what you love. I really don't care what you love. I don't care what you're passionate about. Um, you know, so, so, um, I don't care about your commitment. All those I statements that I see in, um, headlines— you're laughing, Marc, because you see them too.

Yes.

It's like, so, so what?

Yeah.

So what?

I don't care.

It's not about you. It's not about you. And that's why I call it client-facing profiles.

Yes. So that's the magic term right there.

Client-facing profiles. Yes.

This is fabulous.

So that, that's, I mean, you wouldn't be, like I said, do we only have an hour? We only have an hour. These are some of the things and we haven't even gotten to the body of the of the profile.

And so, that's what people are— So, I think the magic term there is the client-facing profile that you're doing. Everything we're doing is to basically highlight what we can do for our clients. No different than when I first asked you on this podcast. I asked you, what do you do for your clients? Because I can go and list all your degrees and all the experience that you have and so on. But really, That amounts to a smack of poop because it's really what can you do to help people. And to that point, this is really fabulous content. How can people get in contact with you, Marilyn?

Oh, it's very simple. You can go to my LinkedIn profile, send me a message, or you can email me, obviously, at Marilyn. That's Marilyn@profitgps.com. Real simple to get a hold of me.

And before we get into actual creating connections, let's talk a little bit about what we should be posting. Again, we talked a little bit about the puppies and the cute kittens and the babies and stuff. When it comes down to our profile, a lot of it is I do see a lot of people who all they do is sales pitch on their profiles. What should we be posting for content?

Marc, I wish you asked me easy questions.

Then you should have gone to an easier podcast.

You are obviously very tuned into this. I will tell you what I do and I can tell you what I see other people that are successful do. My posts all come from real life. It says, I'll have a client experience just like I told you. I capture what goes on during the day. Now, obviously, I have a wealth of information and a wealth of background. And it's a story. It's a story with a point. So, I think the other day, I told the story about why I'm bringing my mindset training back off the shelf. And it means being vulnerable. I'm finding that posts that are the best posts don't point me out as perfect. So, I told the story of how I put this thing on the shelf. And now, after doing LinkedIn for all these years, I'm saying, oh my God, nothing changes till they change their mind. What have I been doing? Why has this been on the shelf for 10 years? I tell the story of how I got into doing LinkedIn. My experiences, my posts, and their written text. This is one of the things people should know too. LinkedIn has both articles and posts.

Yes.

Unfortunately, nobody looks at articles anymore. Your posts go in your feed. Sometimes my posts have an image, sometimes they don't. Sometimes my— I have an entire— when I was doing trainings, people told me I was one of the quotable, most quotable people they know. So I have a whole stack of what I call wallet wisdom, business bites. And sometimes those will go in as a little— like, I was laughing when you said video because I do that. I put I will put those into a quick little video, those words of wisdom, and then write something about it. But the key here, and I know this is a marketing buzzword, and the word is authentic.

Yes.

What's really going on? What's really happening? What are your values? How did you contribute to somebody? Do you have 3 tips? Because what you're doing is you're demonstrating your expertise. And your values and how you're different in your posts. Your posts are your ads basically. It's just a different way of letting people know that you're real, that you have expertise. However, the pitching in the posts, I might put a link at the bottom. And the other key to posting is to comment on other people's posts. And not just with a thumbs up or a heart. Or sometimes, I do that if I have nothing to say. But one of my favorite phrases is, if you have nothing to say, say nothing. No, don't post for the sake of posting.

And to your point, the way that I understand it is if you want engagement, you have to engage. And I think the rule of thumb is that you have to have at least 5 words in a response. So, you can't go, hey, that's great. And LinkedIn won't consider that engagement.

Yes. And LinkedIn has an algorithm that it uses now. If we look at this from LinkedIn's point of view, which is really Microsoft's point of view because when they bought— when Microsoft bought LinkedIn, everything— well, it's still changing. It will change. That's Microsoft.

Yeah.

But there's an ad— they want the ad dollars. So if you want your posts higher up in the feed, they want to know that your post is being engaged with. In order for you to get that engagement, it's like the law of attraction. You got to be that which you want. So in order to have your posts moved up in the feed and exposed to more people, you're going to need to engage with other people. And I didn't know, I learned something today. Yes, actually answer the post. So I guess in a virtual world, what we're both talking about is being real, being as real as you can be with your posts. Now sometimes I occasionally have reposted something I've read somewhere else, but I'll always put my My thoughts on it, my hit on it, my value system, if you will. Why I'm posting this. So I know that everything's visual today. I mean, we're going to post this this this live stream, but people still read. The difference is get to the point. Don't ramble. Right. Make a point.

And make it personal.

Yes. Oh, I was just— I'm so glad you said that because yesterday somebody that I follow put a post up because he was supporting somebody who's looking for a job, somebody who got laid off. He did this wonderful post about all the attributes of this person he liked that would make— happened to be a salesperson— would make a good salesperson. And he asked for his network If you know anybody to please reach out. I've never seen a post like that before. But I thought that was very interesting. It was very giving and generous to do that.

Yeah, it's— and again, it just reflects the person's values, right?

That's right.

It's kind of like being in the office and you have the gossiper in the office. And they come up to you and go, hey, did you hear about John? And you just know that if she's talking to you about John, then she's going to be talking to John about you because that's a reflection of the values. If however, the person comes up and goes, oh my God, John is such a fabulous person, and is able to recognize and kind of identify what makes John so special, then you know that she's probably doing the same thing about you. And so, that's where the values are really reflected.

Yes.

We mentioned before the that LinkedIn is about this ability to connect. And so, to that point where we're using people and our connections, essentially we're connecting people. We're connecting to our colleagues and we're connecting to our customers. But are there right ways of doing that and wrong ways of doing that? And by that, I'd like to get to right after this.

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Welcome back! I am speaking with the Profit GPS founder, Marilyn Auguste. And Marilyn, you teased us a little bit because you talked about taking a program off your shelf. And I understand that you're coming up with a new program.

Well, it's a new program in this format that I started Wealth and Wisdom Seminars with, that I started my business with. And I'm taking it off the shelf as part of my personal brand. That was a topic I want to make sure we get to because we're talking about posting. So, yes, it's the foundation of everything that I do and talk about values and living a richly fulfilled life.

Yes.

It's my story. I shelved it when I focused on LinkedIn for the last 10 years. And I did that at my clients' requests. So, it's kind of an evolutionary story rather than a revolutionary story. But yes, it's 100%. I didn't expect it to be a sales training, but salespeople and business owners have control of their own financial destiny.

Sure.

So, I'm very excited about rebringing that program. So, ask me any questions you want about that. But we definitely don't want to get off topic when we promise people we talk about LinkedIn.

Great! I just want to make a notification to the audience. If you're watching this, as you can tell, Marilyn and I are really passionate about helping entrepreneurs and business managers just like you. We do different things for different people. But if you belong to an industry association or an organization that you feel could use our services, feel free to drop us a line and do a connection request. The details are in the show notes. So, please make sure you do reach out. Marilyn, at the top of the show, I did talk about the dreaded show up and throw up. It's like if I say yes to a connection request from you, it gives you permission to sell me. Really, when you talk about this idea of social selling, what do we What do we need to be doing to be more effective? Okay.

So, the first thing you need to be doing is to make the distinction between sales and marketing. And that's, I think, the core of the issue here. LinkedIn is professional networking. It's marketing. And I define marketing as an invitation. Just like you issued an invitation for people to contact us. It's an invite. It's soft. A sale is a transaction. You're not going to sell me on LinkedIn. If you're trying to pitch me on LinkedIn, you're a brand destroyer. One of the most effective things you can do on LinkedIn or any social selling platform is to protect your personal brand. Personal brand means that no matter what I buy, no matter who— what I'm doing, I'm buying you. I'm buying your value system, your expertise, your integrity, and your exceptionalism, as you say, Marc. If that isn't visible, if that isn't written in your brand, in your About section, why am I going to get to know and like and trust you? Best practices, number one best practices is that optimized profile. Trying to do it yourself, as you said, is like being inside the bottle looking out. Expecting the label to read correctly. So, I call all those worst practices that you've been talking about, I call them brand destroyers. The most important thing all of us have is our brand, is our reputation. That's why I don't make a referral until I know somebody.

Right.

A referral is very precious. And so, when you—

I mean, when you do a referral, you make a referral because you know that the person you're referring can help the person. That's right.

Right?

So, when it comes down to this idea of connecting with people, when we find our ideal clients or we find any colleagues that we'd like to work with, what do you think are some of the best practices to start getting, setting those seeds so that you can get into a relationship where you can start building that know, like, and trust factor?

I think some of it is to have— you start with the messaging, be responsive. Back up a bit, Marc, and this is why I got into the entire fractional social selling is if you don't know your ideal client, you're not going to know who to connect with and what to say and what to do.

Right.

That's why this is a strategy. Do ideal clients— I don't not only do a demographic, and this is right up your alley, Marc, I do a psychographic.

Exactly.

I have a whole list of characteristics, and you can tell how my business was going because I used to have a journal where I would date the characteristics, so I— what I was looking for. And that little book worked almost like magic. I would attract people who shared Mm-hmm. Who I would find in a sales conversation, I was actually asking those questions or hearing those words. So, for example, on my ideal client profile, you can imagine that coachable is one of the words, coachable on this topic, after having that gentleman who didn't want to be coached on his videos. So, I think that it's most important to back it up into a strategy. And that's why I say LinkedIn's a tool, it's a tactic. But without a strategy, it's worthless. And so, who is your client? What are your values? Who are you looking for? Who do you work best with? Who do you know? So, I'm a very decisive person. You and I connected instantly. I even asked you the question, is that common for you? I mean, I can spend 10 minutes on the phone and know that nothing's ever happening with this. This prospect, nothing's ever— there's no relationship here. There's no referral here. I would never— I talked to a SaaS guy. I had 2 meetings with him. I still don't know what his app does. That's not going anywhere. So, my goal is to get onto a one-to-one phone call just like you or a Zoom call these days.

Yeah.

The way you and I had. So, the messaging leads to that conversation, But I've checked out your profile before I've had that conversation with you. I've checked out your website just the way I check out a restaurant today. I don't go into a restaurant without doing reviews.

So, I read the reviews. And to that point, I do likewise. But I take it one step further. I subscribe to a service that actually will scan through people's LinkedIn profiles and actually give me their personality type. They'll define their DiSC rating.

Really?

On there. It is absolutely spectacular. And if you want to know more about that, please do reach out. It's on the website. It is this little thing that says, view profiles right there. It's just a little— it's an add-on. And if I click on it, it'll kind of go through and pinpoint kind of how you can talk to these people, how you can sell to them. Are they the type of person who needs to have really quick turnaround times? Are they detail-oriented? Do they need a story? Do they need more direct conversations and that sort of thing? It's all based on DiSC. And it's a pretty phenomenal tool to use when you're talking to people. Not because you're going to change your whole— again, because to your point, you have to be authentic. But if there's something in there, if I know that somebody is a very strong decisive type such as yourself, I don't want to create long drawn-out things without getting to the point. For somebody who's decisive on the DiSC scale, I probably want to start out, here's the point of my call. Are you interested in talking a little bit more about that? Rather than somebody else who likes more of the cordial kind of laid-back and fluffy stuff.

I was just about to say that I don't use DiSC. But then, you used DiSC. To actually talk to people. So when you're making connection requests, your messaging would change depending on what their profile is. But you have to know who you work best with before you even message them, before you even connect with them. So that's where I say the money's in the mailbox because the messaging, that's another mistake that people make on LinkedIn. The money's in the messaging. Now, the LinkedIn mailbox itself is really cumbersome.

Yes.

So, there are actually mailbox apps coming out or the app that I use sorts the mailbox into read, non-read. And then I don't know what you do, but I have— I download a spreadsheet. And then you can't do that direct from LinkedIn. Oh, that's one of my done-for-you services. My clients get a spreadsheet so they can nurture that relationship as they move through the sales cycle, marketing cycle.

Yeah.

So, I think you raised a very good point. So, the messaging changes depending on who you're talking to and who you work best with. So, that's why I say this is a strategy more than a tool. And I think you just nailed down one of the reasons we get those pitch messages. is that people aren't doing that.

Right.

And they aren't doing the strategy.

You said the marketing strategy. And I'd like to push back a little bit and say it's more about the relationship strategy now.

Ah, you're right. And more about the relationship.

That's really what we're trying to do. So, are there aside from what we've talked about, are there any other cautionaries that really is a big red flag for you that people need to know? Do never, never, ever do for the Lightning and wrath of God and everything else.

Well, I can tell you, never ever pitch me on LinkedIn.

There you go. You're on notice. Never pitch Marilyn on LinkedIn.

Don't pitch me on LinkedIn. Don't pitch me. I can smell it a mile away, by the way. Most people can. Most people can. The other big don't is don't have a profile that reads like a resume. Yeah, that I don't care. I don't care what you did 10 years ago.

Yeah. Yeah. But again, to your point, it's also because LinkedIn started off as more of a resume-style service, right? Yeah.

Yes.

So, should people be putting in their past experiences, their job experiences and that sort of thing?

I was just gonna say that when I do a profile, The nice thing about the experience section is there's no limit, word limit. So I sometimes put testimonials right in there because nobody reads to the end. If an experience is incongruent with what you're doing now, so for example, I was working with somebody who had been a math teacher at one time. A math teacher has no credibility, nothing For what he's doing now, you're not required to have that on there. It reads like, because you have to have dates, but there's no reason you have to have working at McDonald's if you're a sales VP on there. It doesn't add anything to it. I eliminate those experience sections. Also eliminate really truly more than 10 years ago. Do I care 10, 15 years? Unless you're looking for a job, which that's not the people I work with. You have a job. It's called your business.

Yeah.

You know, use that experience section wisely.

Gotcha. Great! Are there any last thoughts about what we've talked about today, Marilyn?

Make sure you have a business page put up as well and post your content on your business page. Last thought is LinkedIn or be left out.

Nice! LinkedIn or be left out. And I like that last little tip about your business page. Obviously, the content on your business page is going to be slightly different than on your personal page. What happens if the 2 are the same?

Oh, well, they should— they can be the same. They can be the same. All the reason you're doing that is for Google to have another place to look for keywords because nobody at LinkedIn looks at the business page.

I hope everybody stuck around to this very end because that was a very valuable piece of tidbit, just so you know. Marilyn, thank you so much. I want to thank you so much for sharing your passion, your expertise with us. Could you just remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Just email me, marilyn@profitgps.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Wonderful! And you have a couple of offers that you described in—

Oh yes, I always do LinkedIn strategy review at no cost whatsoever at all. No hassle, no obligation. We'll just look at your profile, see where it can be improved.

So, a 30-minute hot seat without the hot bum.

That's right, a 30-minute hot seat. And when you do that, I do have a little ebook called LinkedIn Tips and Scripts. which you will probably never take the time to read. But you're certainly welcome to have it.

Marilyn, thank you so much. This has been so wonderful. I really appreciate your time today.

Oh, it's just been a pleasure, Marc. Thank you so much.

Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link It is in the show notes. It's the one that says meetwith.marchaine.com. It would be my absolute honor to be of service. And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and leave a comment or review about this episode? I'd love to hear what you thought of it. Was it on point? Did you learn anything? What was your big takeaway? I'd love to get your feedback because I want to know that this is valuable to you. Like I mentioned, we could probably do LinkedIn each aspect. We We could probably just do a 1-hour episode just on profile pictures, or the banners, or the headline. Like, it is so in-depth. So, I do encourage you to reach out to either myself or to Marilyn and see if we can help you in any way whatsoever. My name is Marc Haine. I hope that you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.