Jeff Hoffman "Why You're Using LinkedIn Wrong and Other Social Selling Secrets"

All right, good morning. I'm really happy to be here and I'm really happy to talk about this topic before I get into really the agenda and kind of what we're going to talk about for the next 40 minutes or so, as well as my own background, a couple questions for you in the audience. Pretty straightforward. Raise your hand if you were on LinkedIn today, if you've already been on LinkedIn for some reason today. Okay. Raise your hand if you were on it yesterday for any particular. Okay. Very good. Just about everybody. So congratulations. This room is in about the 5% place when it comes to LinkedIn usage. And I bring that up because that's really what we're going to talk about. When we use tools like social and LinkedIn, we use them often through our own perspective, whether it's sales or marketing or business development, assuming that the entire world we try to connect with in these platforms and sees it and uses the tool the way we do, and they don't. They don't come close to using it the way we do. So what we're going to be talking about over this session are some ideas of things that you can do either yourself, your team, your department, or just in general with your clients or your general ecosystem ways that you can use tools like this, particularly LinkedIn, in a different kind of way. So let me ask you, what are some of the challenges that we all face today when we try to connect with people, particularly customers or clients or prospects? We don't know what are the typical challenges we get when we try to use LinkedIn to get their attention? So we have this issue around the invitation itself to connect, and they're not always on as often as we are, and there might be a lag time or it might be weeks or months before they accept. That's very true. What else is a challenge? I agree. What else is a challenge? Yeah. Yeah. Because it's like, it's one thing to be at the awkward networking event at somewhere like this where everybody walking in the room has kind of signed up to network and we've all got our name badges on and we're all looking at everybody's name badge and saying, wait, are you a lead? No. Are you a lead? No. Oh. Shiring Plow. I work in New Jersey. Hi, I'm Jeff. And we have this weird moment where we kind of can break the ice, but LinkedIn on those strangers, we can't. That's a challenge. Any other challenges? Yeah, that's right. The idea that we can either get internally, our executive team to be a better participant, or more importantly, the ones we're trying to reach. And there's some reasons for it. Congratulations to LinkedIn as a tool, it's crossed that chasm where everyone kind of agrees. Now you have to have a profile so we don't have to convince people to get on it. But using it's another matter. So that's true. There's some other things as well. Yeah, it's absolutely right. There's some real functional challenges with the tool for a variety of reasons. The biggest one you kind of hit on it with if the email is even the appropriate one, or do I have the email or how do I connect? But there's also the issues of think about all the customers and clients we have that use tools. Maybe it's Gmail or Google Apps, where six years ago Google separated the Inbox into four tabs. And if you've got that tab around subscriptions or social, where most of us, that's where our InMail goes. If someone tries to reach out to connect with me on LinkedIn, a fourth tab, if I'm a CXO, that's not in our world, how often am I looking at that tab? And when I do look at that tab, what am I probably doing? When I see 75 unread LinkedIn requests, I hit that box up top that says select all archive. Ah, so cleansing feels so good. And that's right. And all of a sudden we have this challenge to even get their attention in the tools we have. So that's the kind of stuff we're going to talk about. There's some other things as well that challenge us. My hope for this session before lunch is that I offer up to you a handful of ideas that you can try this afternoon, tomorrow or throughout the week to dramatically change the way that you're not only using the tool, but getting the benefits it promises. So, a couple of kind of ground rules about this session. First, everything I share with you, I do myself. So my perspective is I've been in sales for 30 years. I've been doing training and consulting in the sales world for about 12. Work with clients all over the world. Clients like Microsoft and Salesforce and Google and Deloitte and pricewaterhouse and others. I also teach a variety of sales programming here in Boston, where I live over at Harvard Business School and, and it's Sloan. I'm kind of neck deep in this and the reason I'm neck deep in it and the reason why I kind of I'm here talking about this is that I think most of us get it wrong. As you'll see in the next few minutes. I'm very contrarian with this stuff. Now when I'm contrarian, I'm not being contrarian to be weird or different. I'm being contrarian because I think a lot of stuff that we assume works, doesn't. So what I'd ask you all to do is this. I'm challenging some ideas. I want you to kind of practice that out when you leave here. Ultimately, whatever I share with you is just one person's opinion. This is not gospel. I don't work for LinkedIn. I've never worked for a social media or social engagement tool. But this has just been my experience and my clients experience over the last 10 years. So given that it's not gospel if I share something with you today that's wildly different from how you're using LinkedIn, but it's working for you, then keep doing it. I'm not asking to challenge the things you're already having success with, but if you are not getting the responses or the connections or the acceptance that you want on the tool, I am going to challenge you to try some of this stuff because again, it's not intuitive and why would it be the reason why it's not? And by the way, I'll be showing some slides. Obviously my slide deck will be available to all the attendees here. My speaker notes are in there. So if you just want to listen, that's cool too. You don't have to like take notes or anything, but if you want to, that's fine. So one of the reasons why this is such a challenging environment, this idea of LinkedIn and others has to do with something called social paradigms, which is a, a phrase I'm sure a lot of you have heard before. Social paradigms are ways that we as human beings interact with strangers when we meet them. The idea is that when we meet somebody, building a relationship organically from scratch is really, really hard work. So we look for places to cheat. The idea is that I don't know you, but I recognize your uniform, I recognize your language, I recognize your behavior. I think I'm going to kind of fake my way through it. Little kids don't do this. Little kids don't act in paradigms. They build every relationship organically. So like, my youngest son doesn't do this. Doesn't matter if it's his grandma or the mailman. Same thing. Hi, my name's Max. What's yours? Why is your car blue? Totally normal. Okay, he's 19, but good kid. He's not 19. He's not 19. Somewhere around the age of like 8 or 9, you start to get it. Boy, that's a lot of work to invest in the mailman. If I never see the mailman again. But I'm a social person. I like to interact with the world around me. Can I fake it? Can I cheat? And the answer is, you can and you'll do it. Through this idea of paradigms. We learn this as we grow up. They've got funny names to them. I'll give you a perfect example. So, two weeks ago, I live here in Boston. A buddy of mine came over, watched a Patriots game before the buy. He's a friend of mine that I've had for 30 plus years. Doesn't ring the doorbell when he comes to my house and helps himself at the fridge when he comes over. I do the same at his house. But the following weekend, he also comes back to my house. But this time he's with his wife, who I also have known for a long time. He's here for a dinner party. Is it fair to say that I'm going to act differently in this weekend with him than I did the weekend before? Is that fair? Same is true for him, right? We're going to act different. How is he going to act different, by the way? When he comes to the dinner party, he's going to ring doorbell. That's already different. Am I going to yell, come in? Oh, no. I'm going to greet him. Hey, look who's here. The Petersons. Here. Come on in, guys. Big, big, big show. Can I get your jacket or coat? Sounds kind of normal. Did I say that to him when he came to the Patriots game? Hey, boy. Can I get your coat? What? No. Why you ask? That's weird. Why are you asking me that? Yeah, it is weird. Because it's a different dynamic here, though. I'm going to take your coat. And then what else am I going to do? Oh, I've got things to offer. Don't I gotta offer the selection. Can I get you something to drink, Boyd? We've got beer, wine, soda. I know you like the hard stuff. Have a little Jack if you want a jacking Coke. You know, Jen and I, we thought we'd have some fun. We made a little sangria. Guess you want a little sangria. And what am I hoping Boyd wants? What am I hoping he takes? Oh, come on, sangria. I mean, it's special. Now, my buddy has been to it through a Few parties before. So what does he say when I give him the selection? Sangria. Huh? Geez, I haven't had that in forever. That's cool. I have a sangria. Sangria? Really, honey? Sangrias? Look how happy I am. Look how happy I am. Because we are neck deep in a paradigm called guest host, and we are acting by the rules, even though we are have our own relationship independent of the paradigm. If you go to anybody's dinner party and you are a stranger and you were an invited guest, you can pick out the host in two seconds. Why? Because when we're in a paradigm, we have a uniform, we have a language, we have a behavior. If you think about host gets, it's pretty obvious what are the rules for me is host. I'm acting like all hosts act, which is how I'm welcoming, I'm engaging. What is my motivation as host? Make everybody feel comfortable and good. In fact, the entire pleasure of this experience is tethered to how everybody feels. I know this because if you fast forward to the end of the evening, I'll be cleaning up in the kitchen with my wife, and one of us is going to say, I think everybody had a good time. Which is, I don't know, our way of guessing this was a good party. So I'm going to be friendly and I'm going to be accommodating and I'm going to be helpful and I'm going to be offering. And what about my buddy? Does he have rules as the guest? He does. All paradigm says you have rules. What's his rule? He's got to be good. And what is a good guest? You're right. Not too imposed. But you gotta. What? You gotta play, you gotta join in, boy. Can I get your coat? No, I'm all right, really. Okay, well, can I get something to drink? You know, we got beer, wine, soda. Got the hard stuff. You got a little jacket toe. You know, Jen and I thought we'd have some fun and made some sangria in case. You want some sangria? No, I'm good. You want some water? Nope. Is this cool what he's doing? No, it is not cool because he's not playing. You're a guest. You gotta accept and play. These rules are baked in society. We learn them as children. They got funny names to them. Hostguest is only one. There are others. Doctor, patient, employer, employee, husband, wife. And not just the literal one. I mean, we have that expression, he's my work husband. We know what that means. That has a meaning. All of these Funny paradigms exist and one of them, which is a real one that gets in our way when we use LinkedIn is buyer seller. Buyer seller is a real paradigm. Everyone in this room has sold things in one way or another, and everyone in this room has bought things in one way or another. So we know kind of the dress, we know the uniform. If there was a sales call going on in one of these conference rooms and you passed by it, didn't know anybody in the room, but you peeked in the window, the fair to say we'd all identify, okay, she's the salesperson and he's the buyer. Will we all be able to identify that through their cues? Absolutely. Let's talk about their cues for a minute, then you'll see what we're making the mistake on LinkedIn with. What do sales people look like, act like. What is the uniform behavior and language? And I'm as guilty of it as anyone if I'm not paying attention. We're positive. How positive? Yeah. From a 1 to 10, how happy are we? Like a 12. I would call it hyper cheery. We're hyper cheery. Hi, how are you? Great. Terrific. That voice that like up in the air, super sugar voice, that's a big part of selling in that paradigm. What else? Confident. But it's funny because it's actually about acting confident, which doesn't look the same as confidence. When someone acts confident has its own look. And how does someone who's trying to act confident, who's not confident, what do they say? Things like, what customer is five minutes late to a meeting? What is the sales rep? When the customer says, I'm really sorry, had a little bit of a fire drill. I apologize for being late. What does the sales rep say immediately? No problem. No problem at all. That would be acting confident. We don't have it because actually, I'm kind of bummed you're here five minutes late because it's going to screw me up, but okay, I'm going to act it. Anything else that we all do when we're wearing that uniform, we're super cheery. Nothing wrong with it, but it's a lot of sugar. What else are we accommodating? For sure, that's why it's cool to be late. What else are we when it comes to our ass? How do we phrase our asks and what kinds of tones? We don't want to be the pushy salesperson, so we go to the other end of the spectrum and we act how? Almost well said, Almost apologetic. Look, I'm Sorry. It's no big deal. I'm just checking in. Just touching base. Just wanted to see how things are going. That kind of nonsense. Which is not really how we feel, but we're presenting it that way. Strange. You'll see where this pops up in LinkedIn in a moment. Anything else? We're told if we're going to be in the world of sales and marketing, we have to be good at what skill Listening. Are we? No, we're horrible at it. We're horrible at it. I'm going to show you what I mean. You're all looking at me and I can tell you're listening. Now, you might not be, but you're giving me nonverbal cues that you're listening. And I'm now going to be a mirror. I'm going to show you what you all look like to me. This is what listening looks like. And what you show it to. You ready? This is you looking at me right now. That's listening. That's exactly what listening is. Now I'm going to show you how a salesperson listens. This is not a salesperson listen. Oh, yes, I see. Oh, that makes sense. Oh, I totally understand this little bobblehead doll thing we do. And you'll see when this actually shows up. When we get into LinkedIn and we start talking too much and asking for weird things. Now flip it over. Because all of us have bought things too. And buyers have their uniform. How does a buyer act? What's the uniform to a buyer? And that includes the person you are reaching out to on LinkedIn. They're gonna wear that uniform. You show up at the door as a salesperson, they're gonna show up as a buyer. It's like trick or treat. I know what this is. I know this costume. Let me get mine. What's the buyer costume look like? How do they act? Reserved. Guarded. What else? Skeptical. Absolutely. What else? Unimpressed. We are hyper cheery. What's their mood? I always say, like, grumpy. That's like a good place. That's an emotional place for a buyer. Just kind of like, kind of grumpy. It's cool to be grumpy. So, and what's the biggest motivator for salespeople in the paradigm is often to be liked and be trusted, which is a horrible thing to enter a relationship. I want you to trust me. You haven't met me yet. That's a problem. The buyer is motivated by one motivator. Do not reveal intent. Do not reveal intent. What brings you to Boston? Honda. Oh, just looking, really? On a Saturday with your wife and three kids, you're just looking. Okay, but that's what we do instinctively. Don't reveal intent. If we reveal intent, they will have an edge on us. And this is a real problem. And this is a problem that showcases itself very easily when they're not even looking at us. Because we're reaching out through tools like social. And we do things like what is the transfer of that idea when we go out to LinkedIn, when we reach out and try to connect, we might have two paragraphs to say about our delightful product, service or company. We might have a handful of links that we think would really showcase our value proposition. Does that buyer want to read all this? Does that buyer want to engage that way? Absolutely. Absolutely not. What we got to figure out when we look at these tools is how do we switch this paradigm? The paradigm I'm going to have you think about this morning is another one. And we're in it right now. And it's called Teacher Student. We're in it right now. Everyone here has been to school, believe it or not, everyone here has taught. If you've ever given a stranger directions, in that moment, you were acting like a teacher. You're doing very predictable things. We're in it now. We've been it for 10 minutes. You're all acting like perfect students. I'm your teacher. That's working. It's very predictable. What are you all doing that students do? Which means you're quiet and you're still. That's a huge element that we're going to take into these approaches with LinkedIn. We have to calm down, we have to relax. We have to stop being so buzzy about this. That's one thing. What else? What else are you all doing? All students do it. You got to listen, but not just listen. Listen with the intent to what? Which is understand or learn. Which is a very different place than listening to sell or listening for opportunity. When we say to that prospect, who besides yourself is involved in the decision making process? Really, you're going to ask that to an adult and you're not going to expect anything other than what I mean, that's such a transparent question. When we ask, I was on your website and they see this is important to you. We do this as if somehow that's going to be an enlightening moment for them. They're smart and people see through the opportunistic approaches pretty quickly. But students don't ask through opportunity. Students ask questions with what motivation to learn or understand to be enlightened. The idea that I'm going to share with you is we give you some tips. LinkedIn has the problem of putting us in a position where we believe our profile showcases credibility. And so therefore we build profiles and an approach in the tool to continue the drumbeat of look how credible I am. But credibility is a motivator of salespeople and of marketing people, not of students. Students do not need to be credible. In fact, in the relationship between teacher, student, the student is by nature ignorant, not in a bad way and a healthy way. They don't know the teacher does. What motivates connection, what gets people to connect with you on these tools is not your credibility, it's your curiosity. Curiosity drives more connection than any other thing you can showcase when it comes from an honest, real place. If Your goal on LinkedIn is to get the connection or have the meeting or have the interview, or have the dialogue, you will enjoy the lousy conversion rates you have today. But if your goal is to learn is to be curious about what they do, how they do it and who they do it with, and how and why, you might find the engagement level goes up. I know. Has Alec Baldwin already spoken or is that tomorrow? It's pretty cool. All right, so one of my favorite movies. Flynn, Gary, Lynn, Ross. If you haven't seen it, it's on Netflix. It's great. He gives a sales motivation speech, a part of the movie, and if you remember in the movie on a chalkboard, he's got two acronyms. One of them is abc, Always be Closing. The other one says aida. If you checked out the movie, you can see it. AIDA is an old sales acronym. It stands for attention, interest, desire and action. The four emotional states we want our buyers and customers and prospects and partners to experience in order to consummate the relationship, to go where we want to go. Attention, interest, desire, action. The reason I bring it up here, LinkedIn is a wonderful tool for attention. It's a terrible tool for interest. And what most of us are guilty in doing is trying to inspire interest, when really all we should be doing is trying to inspire some level of attention. So let's take a look. There's me. Alright, already mentioned this again. It's already in the deck that buyer, seller is brutal. And what also makes it brutal? As sellers, we have low levels of authority and low levels of social value. Now, authority is inherent in the relationship. Buyer has the power, but social value, which is critical in building any kind of peer relationship with strangers. When you Walk in the room with that uniform of seller. Your social value is also low. And the buyer, we've already spoken about all the things that the buyer is generally going to present. There position is of high authority, which is baked in, but also high social value. And that's why we're like this and that's why we struggle to connect. But the student one's a little different because that we're still, because we're calm, because we're respectful and because we don't interrupt and we're motivated by curiosity. Those elements keep our authority low, but our social value goes up. The teacher, if they take that role and we'll show you how they get more engaged. Look at me today. Right now I'm in the teacher mode. What is the teacher mode? I am going to be highly communicative. I am going to be driving the conversation. I have to be respectful of the audience and all of your questions. I have to have the answers for this topic and I am focused on you. When you are a student you can drift in and out of the moment. Teachers cannot. We have to stay present the whole time. What does that mean? They continue to enjoy their high levels of authority and they continue to enjoy their high levels of social value. What I'm basically saying is this. If we can figure out a way in our messaging in LinkedIn and other places to inspire a teacher student relationship, it's going to be very comfortable for our customers because they were, as a buyer, high authority, high social value. As a teacher, high authority, high social value. How are we going to do it? All right, nothing here of real surprise. Why is this even hard at all? Ultimately, I think the biggest reason why these tools are so difficult is that fourth one down, social tools like LinkedIn and Twitter do not make you a better networker. If you are already good at networking, you have a new tool that you can use to network. But if you walk into those rooms not really knowing how to network, it can be very challenging. Mention the Aida. So let's talk about how we can actually do this. All right, first let's talk a little bit, two or three minutes about networking and see how we're going to transfer this to LinkedIn. Strong networking moments and you're all going to be doing this. Generally, I've always approached those moments not with a goal of quality, but a goal of quantity. If I'm going to be in a room with 100 strangers for a 30 minute networking event, I want to limit my networking moments to three or four minutes and maybe then talk to, I don't know, 10, 12 people in the hour or six people in a half hour? If I talk to six people in a half hour, I feel like that's a good goal as opposed to let me find the name badge of the absolute best person to talk to. I probably want my introduction pre selected. I don't want to wing it because speed and time is such a weird element of networking that I probably want to walk into that networking moment with an idea of what I want to say. I definitely want to limit my conversation to a short one. We've all done it. We walk into those networking moments. How do we feel? You walk into that room and how do you feel? You feel strong or you feel scared? Anxious? That's cool. I feel scared, but that's cool. Anxious, scared. We walk in, what happens? We feel bad because we're alone and it looks like everybody's already at the party and we're late and everyone's already talking to each other and we're alone. So what do we do? We walk to the one place that's a comfortable place to walk. Which is where? The bar or the buffet line. Because that's a comfortable place to be alone in. So we walk over to the bar buffet line and maybe there's a straggler like us who walked in 30 seconds before we did. And since she's alone and I'm alone and this is nerve wracking and anxiety ridden, we start having. Hi, I'm Jeff. Oh, hi, I'm Denise. Nice to meet. What are you here for? And we get our little networking thing going. That's great. Now we feel comfortable. I'm not alone anymore. I'm with somebody. I'm safe. But then we realize a minute or two in the conversation, we can't help each other. We're in completely different worlds, her and I, in a smart environment. We should probably eject from this moment, do we? Hell no. We hang around here way too long. Because even though this is not really fruitful, this is better than all that out there. So I'm going to stay here and be safe. If we frame our moments to three minutes. Always start a networking moment. When you meet someone in a networking event, always say, I promise you I will not keep you for more than three minutes. Say those words to yourself too. Say that it gives you the eject button you both desperately need. Okay? Your elevator pitch, your value probably have that teed up. You focus on them. Great. Networkers understand it's about offering, not asking. We offer before we ask. When we approach strangers with asks, things shut down. When we approach strangers with offering, we might actually get engagement. Ask for something easy. We don't go into networking moments asking to have 60 minute conversations with their board upon meeting them for 45 seconds. We want to ask things that are reasonable and hopefully easy to get. And we do want to offer something. This stuff makes sense. How do we apply this in the world of things like LinkedIn? Oh, and that final one, embrace the awkwardness. It's a big part of how I work. My belief is always the same. If I feel anxiety, the more I fight it, the more anxious I feel. So when I feel anxiety, I embrace it, I state it, I deal with it, I put it in the room with everybody else. I can tell you how many times I said to someone in a networking event, I gotta tell you, this makes me so nervous. And what do people say every time when you say that? Me too. All right, cool. So now we can talk for three minutes without freaking out. That's a good approach. So how are we gonna do this with LinkedIn? Well, first, have a long term goal. I'll get into some, some specific do's and don'ts in a moment. But have a long term goal. If you saw some, saw some friends this, this holiday season you haven't seen in a year and you were diligent about losing weight and going to the gym and you look great and you see those friends you haven't seen in a year and they go, you look amazing, what's your secret? Would you then say, well, In May, actually the 4th of May, it was that extra push up idea? Of course not because we don't look at it's a long term effort. Great use of tools like LinkedIn are not episodic. It has to be something that's more continuous. Have an opinion. The only way this works is if you're opinionated. I'm not saying be stubborn or worse being controversial, but have an opinion. If your idea is to take the neutral lane, no one's really going to connect with you very much on these tools. I'll show you how. Limit your daily involvement. I will tell you where to limit your daily involvement. I but generally people are kind of on it without really knowing what the time limit is on these tools. And short and sweet. You'll see how and the focus should be on what is being shared, not on the sharers or the person you're reaching out to. If you make the focus you or them, your response rates will be low. But if you make the focus, the content itself. And what better place to really embrace that idea than inbound? That's absolutely how that connection starts. Asking for feedback and detailed opinion. When you engage, what do you think of this? Do you agree with that? Where did I get this wrong? I'm going to show you some examples and offer something. I mentioned that networking moment. I do this constantly when I reach out to people in LinkedIn. I offer my network the offering. Who can I help you meet? How can I help you? I've got X number of people in my network. I would like to introduce you to anyone you want. I will be at a networking event. I'll have LinkedIn on my phone. I will hand them my phone. This is me on LinkedIn. Go look at it. Pick anybody you want. I'll make an intro. What do you think happens when you do that? You hand them the phone. What do you think the reaction is? It's not to grab the phone, by the way, it's to do what I don't want anything to do with. I don't know. I. Thank you, that's nice of you. I don't. I don't. And I. No, take it, Take it. Because once they take it, maybe I can close them for something after they scroll through it for a minute, which is what I'm going to do. And make it a running conversation. Don't treat it episodically, treat it like a conversation. And again, embrace the awkwardness. I'll show you how. All right. This is what I would conceptualize as our four levels of social. As you bring this to LinkedIn, this is my opinion. Again, doesn't make it gospel. First. Well, the first level, level zero, is not using it at all. But level one, which most people are in, is in the consumption level. You're on tools, Twitter, LinkedIn and you consume. You dip your cup in the stream and you drink from it. You'll read, you'll read, you'll follow, etc. You'll research. The second level after, for some of you in a smaller group, is to go beyond just consuming. It's consuming and also sharing, which takes levels of vulnerability and takes levels of confidence to do. The idea is that I'm going to share things into the Ethereum. The third one, the third level after one shares, if they continue on the journey, you share + opinion starts with I read something, but I read it for myself. Stage two, I read it and I shared it out there. Stage three, I read it and said, this is pretty interesting. Okay, that little. This is pretty. That Little editorial is my opinion. And the fourth and the ultimate place to be with social media is you're now the creator of the content. The reason I'm showing you this is when I show you these do's and don'ts, I want you to consider selfishly, where are you if you're at a 1? My challenge to you is to try to be a two with these techniques. And if you're already a two, I'll challenge you to be a three. But if you're barely on LinkedIn now, and I'm not going to sit here for 45 minutes and say start writing blog posts because you're not going to, that's cool. Just go one step above as you kind of try out these new techniques. So here are the rules, according to me anyway. Best used during the bookend hours is not true with Twitter. But with LinkedIn, the most effective place to use the tool is in the bookend hours of the day, which is morning and evening or before you go home. That's where traffic peaks, particularly in areas like accepting of new invitations, responding to requests. The hours of use spikes early, spikes late is dip in the middle. Twitter is the opposite. Twitter tends to do this. Start with recent updates. What do I mean by that? The most effective place to start in using these tools is in that top right corner where you get the daily 15 people in your network that had an update. Maybe they got a new job, maybe they added a certification, maybe they changed their photo. Why is that such a prime bit of real estate for us? Because those are 15 people in your network that what? We're on LinkedIn in the last 24 hours. That's the first place you start. I do not use. I'm sorry for my LinkedIn friends in the room. I do not use InMail. I do not use the vehicle within the tool for the reason I described earlier with Gmail and others. So what I will do is I will call all 15 of those people that have had an update, many of which I barely know, many of which I haven't talked to in a long time. Hi, Joanne, you probably don't remember me. I'm Jeff Hoffman in Boston. I know we're connected on LinkedIn from a few months ago. I think you attended one of my workshops. I was on LinkedIn this morning and I see you just updated your profile. I forgot you used to work at Dell and that's kind of how I drive this. I don't look for opportunities at Dell. In LinkedIn, I look for people who are already on LinkedIn in the last 24 hours because that's a more reasonable place to start. Because I don't want to dip my cup in the pool of people who haven't been on it in a year. Ways to keep in touch is another one. Many people will add in their ways to keep in touch or in their personal profile, alternative ways of reaching them. And it's not always just sell and it's not always just email. I've seen it in im, I've seen it through their company site. Pay attention to it. Whatever tools you're using, I highly recommend that you use this tool with some level of an existing platform. When we start opening up new windows and new applications, it slows us down in our ability to use this. Whether it's any of your CRMs or HubSpot itself, we want to be able to introduce this into the place that we're already living. Stay within one degree. Don't bother with twos and threes. If you don't like the number of ones or the first connections in your network, your marching orders is to add, not to expand. Offer access frequently. It's a big thing with me. I don't really think about offering my network to people. And I've heard people say to me, aren't you concerned that, like, you might have, some people in that network have a lot of power or influence and do they really want their name just passed out and given out? Well, I've had it happen. I've had people say to me, jeff, I just got a call from someone. How did they get my name? I said, oh, I probably did it on LinkedIn. Well, Jeff, in the future, I prefer if you didn't do that. I use LinkedIn really for my own personal network. I'm not really interested in being hounded by a bunch of your salespeople. All right, so he's a little pissed. So what do I say? I always say the same thing. Absolutely. I say absolutely. I respect anything you want to do. And that's cool. I'm going to. When I get back to my desk or on my phone, I'm going to take you out of my network. What? I'm going to take you out my network. Why are you doing that? Because I got a bad memory, man. I got about 5,000 people in my network and I can't remember what list everybody's on. This is the guy who likes some emails. They only want things from the US they only want new jobs. I'm not into that. If this is a networking tool, this isn't Facebook. This is not just people in my life that I've met. This is a networking business tool. That's how I use it. If you don't want to play, that's totally cool. I'll take you out of the network. But my assumption is, when you're in my network, I'm offering your name out to anybody. And what do you think happens in response when I explain how I use it to that very person who didn't like it? Oh, no, no, don't be so dramatic, Jeff. All right, all right. Someone says they take me out. But no, I mean, we'll get to. Then who gets in your network? Which is another question. Diligent with co workers. Every opportunity you covet, you are one jump away through somebody you currently work with. Trust me on this one. You work with 20 people. You work with 200 people. You work with 2000 people. Are all 2200 and 2000 in your network. If not, there's your marching orders for the next two days. Go and connect with all the people that are not in your departments that you currently work with. And you will be shocked at how quickly you're going to expand that network to people you want to reach. Be diligent with the people you work with. Those are the most powerful connections. Because the obligation is so high to get a return and publish and comment. LinkedIn has done an incredible job over the last couple of years in making it so incredibly easy to publish and to publish nothing more than maybe two sentences or 200 paragraphs. You can really do whatever you like there. The joy of it is, in the old days, for those of us who've been blogging for a while, you had this difficulty not only in attracting people to your blog, but staying current. Like, I write a blog post, I put it up there. It's August 7th. If I don't do anything, and it's August 28th, which is only three weeks, that August 7th posting looks old. And all of a sudden I started seeing, after two or three weeks, people who were following me or reading started to drop off. So this race to always have new stuff up there was really hard in LinkedIn because of the way LinkedIn works and how you publish. Unless they're really looking at you because you're publishing into the stream of updates, your frequency gets a little bit measured. You don't have to feel so compelled to do it. And the comment section would go well with anyone who's looking to kind of share and comment and have an ask, which we'll get to in a minute. Have an ask. Alright, so here are some do's and don'ts. Take what you will. Must have 500 connections and a professional picture. Maybe not everyone in this room already has that. That's cool. That's what you can work on then. First let's start with the 500 contacts. The obvious reason because that's the threshold where it's 500 plus. And what's happened now is if you're a 472, it looks weird. This looks weird if you're a 472. So go get another 28 contacts. Well, I only have 19. I only have 150. All right, so start with your co workers and start to move on. Professional picture. Not the selfie while you're driving. Have a picture that doesn't. Here's what happens when people other than us look at your profile. When our buyers look at. We look at profiles for a variety of reasons, for opportunity. When they look at our profile they're looking for things like they're basically looking for a sniff test. Is this someone like normal? They're gonna be on your profile for about 30 seconds. So if you got a goofy picture, you might actually hurt yourself. Keep it current, particularly where you're currently working and what you're currently working on. If it's not current, the implication is you're not audit enough. Where the tool is something that you use frequently, this is a biggie. You're going to reach out to someone and invite them to join your network. Have a custom message, even if it's only five or six words long. And I'll tell you why I will typically get, and this is true with most people, anywhere from five to 15 invitations to connect a day. I am not looking at them every day. I generally look at them maybe once a week. So I'm looking at 50 or 60 invitations to connect. Now I have my rules and you should have yours. For me, everyone should have rules for who's in your network. For me it's very simple. If I know you, if I've worked with you, or if you ever attended any of my classes or workshops you're in and anyone else is not. Because I don't want to worry about how do I know this person. So what do I do? I see all these names and faces of people who have asked a LinkedIn and generally what's happened is people have shied away from seeing their first job in their profile. And they say things like looking to build better relationships, operations and engineering. And that's their Little blurb about themselves. Well, when I see your picture in that little blurb, I have no idea who you are or where you work. The only other place I could go without opening your profile to figure out who you are is that little corner, little bubble that shows me the message you've attached in your invitation. And if you haven't written one, it's a default. Joe Smith has invited you to connect. So if I see a face I don't recognize with a title I don't recognize, and no personal message, and I'm getting 50 or 60 of these a week, what do you think I'm doing? I'm not accepting the invitation. So what I'd ask you to do is, even if it was a short message, I see you went to Duke. So did I. I don't care what it is. If it's something specific, it raises the obligation. When people get messages that they believe were either cut and pasted or in some level of spam they ignore. You have to make it more personal. I think I saw a hand, actually. Yeah, it. They can, but generally think of the company page as a way. It's generally a wonderful marketing kind of brochure in the network. So what will often happen is sometimes you can tag your company's page if you do a posting, and vice versa. So if I'm following my own company, when my company posts something on LinkedIn, they could actually connect to me if they wanted to. But the idea of building the network within the company side, probably not a very fruitful effort. You want to really focus it on the personal. Ask permission, particularly when you're using it as a research tool. You're having a meeting with a prospect or a partner, you look at them on LinkedIn, and then you have that meeting. So before we get started, I understand you went to UNC Chapel Hill. Says you. Yeah, I did. Did you go there? No, I just saw that on LinkedIn this morning. Okay, that's creepy. A little bit. It's a little stalkery. What I always advise doing is if you're gonna use it as a research tool, you ask permission. So when you close for that meeting, you close for that conference. Hey, are you on LinkedIn? Yes, I am. Are you okay if I do part of my prep? Read more about your background before I come to the meeting. I've never had anyone tell me no because it's public. So you just say, yeah, that's fine. I say, yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, too. If you want to check out my background, feel free. I'LL see you on Thursday. And then when I walk in and say I see you went to UNC Chapel Hill, it's not so creepy because I asked for permission three days ago. It is a good way of connecting, but people still get weird about it. If you're not clear on your intent, participate in postings. This is a great place to be for Stage two. If all you've done is consume, start participating in the postings. Not that you want to have conversations with those who have commented, but start to comment it took me a while to get this. Maybe it's my age or just using the social tools my wife had explained to me about the like because the like what I've recognized, particularly in Twitter like doesn't always mean I agree with what you wrote. Like often is a thank you. Like thanks for posting. That's a good way for you to start using those emojis and those kind of symbols. Don't think that I say like, you know, it's a way for you to connect in a little softer, easier place. But now let's talk about the things you shouldn't do, because there's plenty of Those don't make LinkedIn a substitute for your CV, cover letter or resume. That's not its intent. And here's a side note. If you're looking for work and you start updating your LinkedIn profile to represent what you're doing in the last six months, everyone in this room, your HR departments, are following all you on LinkedIn. So they know when you're doing little updates and they know that means you're probably looking. So I would advise keep it current all the time. That way it won't put a flag on you if you're actually thinking about leaving or you work. But don't make it just a substitute for your cv. It's not about you. And don't accept every invite or devalues what that asset is. I'm not saying you have to adopt my rules of entry, but you should have your own. I don't ask people to join or invite them to join my network until I've either met them or seen them. I will use LinkedIn as a reason to talk to them, but that just kind of whatever your rules are, apply them. Which means purge your existing network appropriately. If you haven't let it. If you've let it go that way, don't last couple before Q and A Make it your primary research. Don't make it your primary research tool. Don't make it your primary research tool because It's a poor one. And the reason why it's a poor one, it's too obvious to the person you're reaching. I saw on LinkedIn that it's very important that you're in charge of the OB part of your world and your focus on Six Sigma application, well, that made you sound very intelligent, but didn't make you sound like a student because you're just taking lists and bits and pieces of what they've kind of advertised about themselves and made assumptions about them. It's a better conversation vehicle than it is a research tool. And don't assume it's accurate because it rarely is, particularly when that world of ours that isn't really connect with us. And again, as I said before, don't invite prospects until you've actually met them. If they're someone you want to close or. Or do business with, I'd advise not to invite them into your network if you've actually met them. I'm gonna stick around outside if you have any final questions. Some of the topics I talk about social paradigm, social value. If you find that stuff interesting, be happy to. I'll be putting a reading list of books I really like on these topics and I'm gonna put it on Twitter in about 30 minutes. So if you're interested in these topics, you wanna read more, follow me on Twitter in 30 minutes. Hang around, I'll follow you back. If you unfollow me, that's fine too. I hope this helped. Guys, this is a decent 45 minutes for you. Thank you so much. Thank you. I got that back. Enjoy the rest of Inbound.