$4M in Deals Without Being a LinkedIn Influencer

Success isn't getting thousands of impressions because impressions don't make money. Success is, will one member of your ideal customer profile read this and/or will it set up a conversation and get into your pipeline?

Thousands of companies are increasing their visibility, credibility, and pipeline every day using LinkedIn. On this podcast, LinkedIn expert Harris Vaneroff will show you the blueprint.

CFO of a public company told me she reads every single thing that I write on LinkedIn. She has never liked or commented a single thing that I've done in 5 years of doing this. There's no value in going viral. The value is like, who that liked or commented on that post can we set up a conversation with that otherwise would have been ice cold and would have been like, why is Harris reaching out to me? Now it's like, Harris, I've been seeing you a couple times a week for the last 6 months. Like, I know what you're about. Of course, let's have a conversation. We had a guy who posted— he's a big Eagles fan, Philadelphia Eagles fan— posted him in front of the TV with his Eagles jersey, and one of his top prospects sent him a message being like, oh, I didn't know you were a big Eagles fan. Like, uh, and by the way, we have this problem and challenge. It's $500,000. Yeah, like, legitimately absurd.

How big does your network need to be? How long does this take to work? How do you help them, executives, reframe what they can do with LinkedIn? And welcome, Harris. How are you?

I'm doing great, Raj. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Thank you. I'm excited to share a lot of the stuff that, that you know about and are experiencing with LinkedIn and just helping people connect and build on those relationships. So, so let's, let's get right into it. There's a lot of executives that feel overwhelmed by LinkedIn. They're not sure where to even start. How do you help them reframe what they can do with LinkedIn to make it so that they understand it's a relationship-driven channel, uh, not just some sort of content machine?

It's a lot of different ways I can take this. I think you're exactly right in that executives get overwhelmed in thinking this has to be a big giant ordeal. And so that is one of the things that we do and that I recommend is breaking it down into what they can do in the most simple way to start to generate ROI. And so if they're not doing anything, that could be posting once a month, sharing something going on in their network, in their world, and doing that 6 times over 6 months, there's going to be someone that thinks about you that otherwise wouldn't have, and acting on that and sending outreach to that. And like, there is immediate ROI that can happen from that, especially if you're an executive with an impressive audience that's built an impressive business and has that network. So at the most basic, what are you, what are you saying to your clients that they're getting really excited about? What are they saying to you that you find interesting? What podcasts, what books are you reading, but what's your specific take on it is a good way to get started. If you're doing nothing, once a month, committing to that for 6 months is a great first place to start.

And are you talking about those are just things that people should just start sharing online as, as content that they post, or are you going one step further and that's actually the outreach that they might do to other people that they're connected to?

That is where they should. Start from a content creation perspective. I think a lot of people don't know what to share, and I know you and I talk a ton about this and what that can and should look like. There's no need to overcomplicate it. The worst thing that happens is nobody sees it. I think that there is a lot of analysis paralysis that happens and people get worried, hey, this has to be a 10 out of 10 post. And just like anything, when you start doing it, it's not going to be a 10 out of 10, but the longer you do it, the better you get at it. And what I love about LinkedIn is it increases your ability to get lucky from a business development perspective. So in a world where it's really hard to stay top of mind, the only B2B social media channel where you can do that is LinkedIn. And so if you are trying to stay top of mind for your network, creating content on a consistent basis, sending direct messages is a great way to do that. And there's no other tool that can do that from a B2B perspective.

Now, you said something really interesting, which I thought was was so spot on. Some people get just paralyzed and don't post anything. And the worst that can happen is that nobody sees it. And at the same time, they're like, nobody saw it.

You know?

So it's almost like a two-way street. It's like you still want people to see it and then you get a little frustrated that nobody saw it. So how do you get people past that analysis paralysis? 'Cause I see executives and, you know, I talk to CEOs, CMOs, CROs all the time and they hesitate. And actually one of the biggest groups that seems to hesitate are the technology ones, the CTOs. I don't want to post anything. I don't know what to post. This is just not my thing. I can't post like you, Raj. I can't post like you, Harris. You know, it's just not me. What do you say to somebody like that?

I think it's reframing success. So success isn't getting thousands of impressions because impressions don't make money. Success is will one member of your ICP, one member of your ideal customer profile read this and/or will it set up a conversation and get into your pipeline? And if it is of value to your ICP, your ideal customer profile, and/or one member of your ideal customer profile or ICP will find this interesting, then I think it's a good idea. I mean, at the end of the day, like we are trying to plant a bunch of business development seeds by going in person, by calling people, by email and social. Really LinkedIn is another way to do that. And so if you reframe it from like, I need to get thousands of impressions and I need to, to, I want to set up one conversation, or I want to have one person in my ICP find this interesting. It makes the goal easier to accomplish. So that's one of the things that we take a step back from. It's the strategy is a sales and business development perspective. And anybody who's an executive understands that, like, that's the goal of the business. My goal when we work with an executive and when I start talking with an executive about that, I don't care if you go viral. I don't even want you to go viral. There's no value in going viral. The value is like, Who that liked or commented on that post can we set up a conversation with that otherwise would've been ice cold and would've been like, why is Harris reaching out to me? Now it's like, Harris, I've been seeing you a couple times a week for the last 6 months. Like, I know what you're about. Of course, let's have a conversation. And, and even if they're not the right buyer, they know what you're about and can connect you to the right buyer. So in a world where we would have to start from scratch and they'd be like, I haven't talked to you in 5 years, 10 years, Harris, you're starting from a place that they know everything's going on and they're probably already starting to think about like, who they can connect me with and who I can connect them with. And at the end of the day, business is about relationships. And so if we create more of those relationships, we're gonna get luckier from a business development perspective.

Well, you know, so there's a lot of people looking at how many, uh, people are, are trying to reach out to. A lot of times it's just sales requests. So I know my inbox is flooded with them, yours probably as well. And I look to see who's engaging with my content. How do I filter out who are the right people? And then what's the way, what's that first step? What's the way to connect with somebody so that you turn that LinkedIn relationship into a potential relationship that's deeper that could lead to revenue?

We do that for our clients. Every time they post, we comb through the engagement and we have a tool that we use on the backend. But we have a tool that says, okay, you want to target CIOs of companies between 200 and 500 in the Washington, DC area. And we say, who out of the 50 people, who out of the 20 people that liked Your last comment fits that. And so once we put that into a dashboard, we'll say, hey Raj, who of these people do you actually know? Who have you not talked about? And you're like, oh, that's interesting. They were a client of mine a decade ago. I never would have thought of them before. Let's send them a direct message. And that direct message is very often like, hey Raj, really appreciate you engaging with my content. Would love to hear about what's going on at Make Media and share more about what we're doing at LinkedRevenue. Like, it's been a while since we last connected when we partnered together on X, Y, and Z. And when that would have been random and weird if You didn't like her comment. Now it's like normal. Like, yeah, thanks for doing the, the digging and we're doing that. And then it's showing up to that conversation in a value-add way. So I, I don't have anything that I'm immediately pitching cuz I don't wanna pitch something if you're not, if you're not interested at all in what I'm doing. And it's really just like learning about what are the challenges that you're facing. And then maybe I can connect you to somebody else in my network, or there's a per— or you're trying to hire. And I know, so, and it's showing up to that call, getting genuinely curious about that person's business and what they're doing. Planting enough seeds and having enough conversations that trusting that the good things will happen in the long run. I mean, that, that, that's really what I believe from a business development perspective. Have a bunch of conversations with people who can eventually buy, but don't be pushy and just add value to them and trust that good things will happen over the long haul. That's like my full-on business development. It's not rocket science. It's not anything crazy. And I love what LinkedIn allows me to do is stay top of mind. So that when that person is talking with a buyer of mine, they think of me rather than somebody else who does what we do.

I mean, it's like, it sounds so simple. Like, it's just all you did was like, hey, somebody engaged with something I shared, and all I'm doing is saying, hey, how you doing? And that's it. And it seems like we get in our heads that, oh gosh, I've got to come up with the right message. I've got to come up with a perfect thing to say to them. And it's really not. It's just like, Shaking someone's hand. It sounds, it sounds so simple.

What's up?

Yeah. What's up people from doing that? It seems so just logical.

And we have some tech, technical clients that we work with where this is even more of a challenge where they're just like not used to doing outreach.

Mm-hmm.

And so they might even send like 5, like we might do this for 5 people and they might get like 2 responses and they're like, yeah, these 3 people like didn't respond to me. I'm like, you clearly haven't been in sales. Like a 40% hit rate is an amazing hit rate for outreach. Like, yes, it's warm outreach, but they're also two people we wouldn't have talked to before. You never know where this can go. So that's definitely an educational aspect that we have to do when we work with someone who hasn't been in sales before. Yeah.

And it's interesting you say it that way because, you know, I, I have a technical background. I went to engineering school, so I went to school with a lot of the types that you're talking about. And the way I share information with them, and I say, look, when you went to engineering school, if your professor said, okay, build a boat, and you said, okay, cool, I built this boat, it's gonna, it's gonna float about 80% of the time. You could, you couldn't do that, right? That's like fail, you're out of there. In marketing, 80%, we're going to give you the Nobel Prize for marketing. I mean, that's like Emmy-winning stuff, right? You know?

It's a great, it's a really, really good point. And maybe my baseball background plays a little bit of role in this in that it's the most cliché thing of all time, but like hitting.300, getting a hit 3 out of 10 times is unbelievable. And it's very similar to marketing and sales. It's like if I reach out to 10 people and 3 respond and say, yes, I'd like to talk to you, that is a massive, massive success. But you're right, the people not in and that don't have a sales background struggle with that type of hit rate.

Now, before you post anything, you try to identify the right people to engage with. So do you do anything deeper than just only engaging with people who click like or somehow commented on your post? Is there something that you can do that's a little bit, a little bit deeper, like looking into your network, researching who you are connected with? Because especially as, as executives and I know, you know, I've been around for a while. I've got some gray hair. So I know a lot of people. They're not all connected with me on LinkedIn, but even those that are, I may not know them very well. How do you start like mining your network?

That's usually where we start with a client is who are their first-degree connections that fit their ideal customer profile? So if you're targeting chief revenue officers of companies between 500 and 1,000, and let's say you have 3,500 followers, you're probably not thinking on a day-to-day basis, at least I don't come across very many executives who, who are those people and what is the outreach that I want to send to them? So the first thing that we do is we use Sales Navigator and we pull your first-degree connections that fit your ICP and we go line by line of like, hey, when was last, like, do you actually know this person? If not, what's the outreach we can send? I love ideas that get people from ice cold to a little bit warmer. My favorite idea, and this works better if you have a big corporation and big organization backing it, but like putting on intimate executive dinners with that ICP and inviting that person, hey, I know it's been a while, or not sure how we're connected, but we put, we bring together a group of, uh, founders in DC. We have our next one coming up July 18th. Would love to have you as part, like, that's an amazing outreach that people aren't getting on LinkedIn. They're getting, hey, buy my lead gen service because it's the best and I'm gonna get you 4,000 leads every 30 seconds. It's easy to stick out if you send the right messages. But the right messages are not buy my product or service. They're how can I bring you into my world, add a ton of value for you, and then trust that maybe after that conversation or 3 months or 6 months or 10 years down the line, you're gonna be like, I wanna provide that value back to Harris. Like that, that's the big differentiator. I'm in executives' LinkedIn all day. The number of pure value outreach that goes to them is remarkable. I mean, it, and that's why I like. LinkedIn outreach, if you do it the right way, of value add and not pitch slapping somebody. And especially if you're an executive level where you've already built this audience and someone's gonna reply to you that you worked with a decade ago, or that was a client 15 years ago that would love to hear from you because you all were really close back then and it's nice to, and so what we do and what we're obsessive about is, is bringing those relationships back to the top of your mind. When as an executive, you have a million things going on, there's no way to strategically do that. I love that LinkedIn gives me the information to be able to do that and help an executive do that.

You know, I so agree with this. One of my former employees is now Chief Technology Officer at one of the top 5 banks in the United States. And he saw something I shared on LinkedIn the other day, and he just like reached out and said, oh, so good to see you. And that was it. We're not trying to sell each other or anything, but, you know, we'll probably connect at some point and see, hey, is there something deeper that we might be able to do together? I think you're absolutely right to make sure that the focus is just on that relationship side end of things. So, so, but getting that message right, that's, I think, where people get really, really stuck because it almost sounds, and if I'm hearing you correctly, it sounds like you can't send the same message to everybody. It's not like you've got a copy and paste routine here. How do you think through what's the touch? What is that message?

It's a great, it's a great point and they, and it's critical and it's important. And in a world where everybody's trying to AI everything and mass produce everything. I don't know, or at least I haven't come across an AI tool and I've, and I've been pitched a million of them that can, that can, uh, make relationships at scale. Like at the end of the day, you do need to do, and that's what we do. I mean, we are personalized. We have a Google Doc that we work off with Excel, uh, sorry, a Google Doc that we work off with an executive and we, what's the background with this person? Oh, we worked on this deal together. What's the background with this? I don't know that. And so the ones that we don't know, we can do more of that. Mass scripting that's like, hey, I wanna invite you to this executive dinner. We have these 3 companies going. I, we can do that for a specific person, but the way that you get the most conversations, in my opinion, is sending 50 targeted messages rather than 5,000 blanketed of the same messages. And so the AI gurus out there might not like me for saying that. And even like AI can do background on the person, at the end of the day, if it doesn't sound like a human and it doesn't like, build on that connection, your, your hit rate of success on conversations is going to be lower. We are very personalized in what we do for executives. I mean, these are the executives that we work with have impressive backgrounds. They've built impressive relationships, spamming their audience, their followers, their network with the same, just wouldn't work.

Yeah.

But it does work when it's, hey, we worked together on this and wanted to reach out because of why, like that Works. It takes time. It's hard to do. And that's why I love like the moat that we're building is like other people don't want to do this. It's, it's not, uh, it's grunt work, but like grunt work gets sales conversations scheduled.

Yeah. So it totally does. And, and, and speaking from a guy who's actually building a tool that helps people with, uh, by using AI, I, I fully support that notion that you've gotta start with authenticity. And that's actually one of the, like the differentiator with our tool is you cannot create content unless you actually have a conversation first, because that's the only way we can tap what's what's going on up here so that we can help you articulate it in ways that might make sense for your audience. And there's so many other tools out there that are just like, oh, we'll just figure it all out for you and send it. And I'm thinking to myself, the last thing I would want to do as an executive is to trust my reputation that I spent decades building to somebody who's just kind of using AI just without really thinking that through. And I'll share an example. So the other weekend, I was kind of having a little bit of fun with ChatGPT, and I wanted to see, can I get it to agree with me to do something? Like on something stupid. So I said, I have a great business idea, an expired food exchange. It's a really stupid business idea, right? So I'm like, okay, like run with me. And I'm like, well, let me give you pros and cons of this idea. And then I'm like, I think there's really pros to an expired food exchange. So I pushed it. I played a bullheaded person. I said, no, the reason it's a good idea was, and I listed out these stupid ideas and it flipped. It just started agreeing with everything I was saying. And so it was like this echo chamber and we have to be really mindful that we don't lead AI down the path of giving us the answer that we want it to give us. And when you trust, to your point, AI to do all that stuff for you, that relationship building, I think we're down, that's a slippery slope.

And they're businesses, they're triggered to try to get you to stay on and to be happy with it. So you're exactly right. It's going to do, yeah, I intend to keep you there and keep you happy. So it's going to agree with you. I love that example. That's so true. You can't outsource this relationship connection. What we do and what we found is like, you have 5,000 relationships in the back of your mind from different places in your world. How can we bring those top of mind for you is like the niche in the space that we fill. And we could do AI, we can do research backed by AI to bring to you, to tell you why they would be good to reach out to. But at the end of the day, like you're gonna have a way higher hit rate when there's a personal human aspect to what this is. And I think that's only increasing in a world where AI is taking over more and more. Yeah.

Yeah. I agree. And like I mentioned, when people use our tool and actually talk about a story because we interview them and say, tell me about the last time you had a conversation with one of your clients. And then it very carefully, like we don't use ChatGPT actually. We have so many different stages of our models and they're very deep. And I use my engineering background to figure out like ways to deploy that. And so they actually come out to be so authentic, they're indistinguishable, like when you're posting something. But now this brings me to another question. What about different media formats? So LinkedIn, you'll see people posting text, you'll see some posting carousels, infographics. And then for the outreach, for a direct message, LinkedIn can give you an option of uploading a recording, doing a recording, maybe in a video, what have you experienced, uh, uh, uh, with all these different formats?

So there's no magic bullet. What I would say is do all of them, right? Text form posts, do video posts, do polls. I think there was something on LinkedIn like 9 months ago that was like, video is the best thing ever. And, and every, and LinkedIn loves video and video, video, video. And that was sort of the case for like 2 or 3 months. I do a video once per week. It makes me uncomfortable to do it and I like doing things that make me uncomfortable. So that's like my way of pushing myself. It's my worst performing post every single week from an impressions perspective.

Okay.

Relatively every single time. But what I will say is anecdotally, I get people who are like, hey, I really enjoy your videos. Like, thanks for doing them. So I'm continuing to do them. So there's no magic bullet in that sense. What I'll say from a direct messaging perspective is video direct messaging does work really, really well. Very few people— I'm in executives' LinkedIn all day. Less than 1% are personalized video messages. So what I can say is the worst thing to do, and what a lot of people try to do, is they upload a mass video that they send to everybody. And please, please, please never, ever, ever do that. It's actually like the worst thing you can do. But doing a quick face-to-camera video, hey Raj, I know we worked on that project a decade ago, like, we're so excited to see you. That's a great, like, literally open your phone, press, uh, record, send that. That's really good. What people try to do is, oh, let me record one video that I can send to everybody every time they connect with me and I can integrate this AI tool. And I can't stress enough how bad of an idea that is. But I love the customized one-on-one video direct message because executives are, are not getting these. I mean, so much factual data around that is that they're It's just not happening. And your success rate is not 100%. So kind of what we were talking about before, but if my success rate on a cold message is 0.001% to an executive, I'm probably starting to hit at 3 to 5% of them replying. And I'm at least getting like a 10 to 15% of that percent chance of them watching it. In a world of sales and business development, like you do that enough, that's going to be pretty cool. And that's going to get pretty exciting.

That's— those are good numbers. I mean, 15% on a response rate for something that you send out to somebody. I mean, granted, it takes a little bit of effort to, to, to make that message. Uh, I remember watching a, a podcast once with, um, Pat Flynn, who, uh, some people might recognize the name for. He runs an organization called Passive— Smart Passive Income, has really built a big brand, millions of followers. Uh, and he, he, he, he, he showed this simple example of being on LinkedIn when someone engages with you, instead of just sending a, hey, thank you, sometimes what he'll do is just record a note and it takes 10 seconds to record a thank you. So I tried that one time and wow, the response was just phenomenal. I mean, the person I sent it to was just like, nobody does that. It was so nice to hear your voice. Thank you.

Nobody does. Nobody does it. I can tell you with 100% certainty after being in executives' LinkedIn all day, Nobody does it.

But you're finding value in it though.

There's a lot of value in it. It takes time to your point. It's way easier to press a button and AI blast 50,000 people. I, I don't believe in that. I don't think that works. I don't think that grabs the attention of people. Like personalized, customized, takes time to do is what we, is what we love. I mean, I'll tell you another thing that we do that, that has a really high success rate. We talk to a lot of executives who say we get the majority of our business from referrals. And I say, great.

Mm-hmm.

How are you getting those referrals? Oh, uh, someone introduces us here or there. And I say, okay, what if you could be a little bit more active with that? So instead of just saying, hey Raj, I know you've been a customer for a while, and if you come across anybody, introduce us. If I said, hey Raj, I did a little bit of digging on your LinkedIn network. I saw that you have 3, uh, these 3 people, they fit our, uh, they fit exactly on who we wanna work with. Here's actually a scripted message that I'd love for you to send. If you're not comfortable with it, just let me know. I'll edit it however you'd like. Your success rate on referrals is going to get so much higher. And this is just a tactic that people don't have time to do. But instead of just praying for referrals, like be active with referrals is one of the favorite, favorite, favorite playbooks that we run for executives who don't have the time to do this.

You know, one of the, one of the lines that I heard is, is if you're on a sales call, um, or, or a customer call and you finish that conversation and instead of asking, do you know anyone else who might find our tool or product service useful? Instead of saying, do you know? You switch it to say, who do you know that would, and just that simple switch actually just generates more leads for people. And I've actually seen sales teams be so successful, but such a simple switch, you know?

And I think, I think that's the, uh, that's the B+ version of it. Yeah. The A version is, I saw you're connected to these 3 people on LinkedIn. Here's a message that I would send to them. I've actually scripted it for you to send. Yeah, you're, you're exactly right. And that's a big shift from if you know anybody to who do you know? But the next shift is here are 3 people. And by the way, here's a scripted message that you can send.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, if you're telling them, here's, I know these are the people that you already know. So, and you make it easier for them by sending that scripted message. Let me pivot a little bit here to, um, staying consistent. So let's say you're, you're starting to do this. Regular posting, engagement starting to kick in, you're starting to reach some of the people in your network. Is there some sort of routine or process that you would recommend that people do, a system that they can set up to maintain that momentum? And how long would it take in a week to keep that up?

Good question. Utilize Make Media, I guess, is the— is the response there. The reality is, for who we work with, we interview them, once a month, so they say all the content and that holds them accountable to doing it. The consistency aspect is massive. This is always number 7 or 8 on somebody's list to do, and for a busy executive, they don't often get to it. Once you start to build the muscle for it, just like everything else, like you build a content muscle, like our, our clients who have been with us for 2 years, this is second nature to them. Like they, they know what to talk to us about in the interviews. They're forwarding stuff in the meantime, but it is a muscle that you have to build that is uncomfortable in the beginning. Like we're all not used to creating content. Business level content on a consistent basis. So what I've done and what I've always, what's always been comfortable for me was I can't sit down and write for like 2 hours. That's just not my thing. I can't, no, I have to do it like live kind of idea comes to me in a conversation. I make a note on my phone to follow up and write a little bit something deeper later on. I think my answer there is like, whatever works for you as an executive that can help you to be consistent. I don't think this has to be a massive undertaking.

Making.

And I think a lot of people do get overwhelmed. I don't believe in any of the LinkedIn creators who say you gotta be there 5 days a week. I just, I just don't think that's true. We're having massive success with clients who are out there every other week. Like this, depending on who you are, you really don't have to do it 5 days a week. And so I think that can also be a thing that overwhelms people. They're like, oh, you gotta be there every day, or I'm posting 4 times a day. It's like, yeah, stop. Like, that's not for everybody. I don't believe in that. Figure out something that you can do consistently that feels right with your brand. Maybe that's once a week, maybe that's twice a week, and stick consistently to that for 6 months and you will see positive results. I think people get overwhelmed in what they can see is, hey, it has to be 5 days a week or 7 days a week, or I haven't taken a day off in a thousand. It's like, stop overwhelming it. It's not the way that it has to work.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and I appreciate you mentioning make media. I wasn't leading you with a question, but thank you anyway. So what I was wondering about though was commenting. So comments, like when you actually post useful comments, and I've seen these comments that are just like, they're kind of innocuous, like agree, great point, you know, well said. That doesn't really do anything to move the needle for you. How should people approach comments?

I do a lot of presentations for sales teams, and this is a pretty big missed opportunity for a lot of sales professionals and executives, but really sales professionals. But there's a bell on everybody's profile. And if they are a prospect of yours, you should hit the bell that says notify me every time they post. And so let's say you were one of my prospects. I would get a notification in my LinkedIn that said Raj just posted, and it would be a good use of my time to read the post and think through what's something thoughtful that I can share. And I could disagree with you. I could agree. I could say, here's a resource that I find interesting. Here's an article I read around this. Like, mm-hmm. That is a good use of time for a seller to do because I went from, who is this Harris guy to now sharing 3 to 5 thoughtful responses on your posts. And so what was ice cold is now like, yeah, Harris like clearly is invested in this relationship, cares enough about me to reply. We all, whether we all feel good when other people engage with our stuff, it's just how the world works. And so now when I reach out and you're like, yeah, I'll take, I'll take that call. I'm more likely to say yes to that call after I've seen you provide value, help me out with my reach. Over time than if you're just a random SDR reaching out to me. I mean, I—

Yeah, because you're not pit-slapping them, you're actually sharing value and that makes such a big difference. And I think we're seeing a lot of people, you, you, you must be seeing this too, is they're using ChatGPT to actually create those comments and you can see right through it because it's either a, a, a summary of what you posted or it's got the standard words. It's, it's, um—

Terrible. It's terrible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's awful. I mean, I get the same, there's like 3 people who do it on my post every same day, every single time. Like, I know this is Scratchy. Like, I don't know what the point, I don't know what the point is.

Yeah.

Like in that comment, say something that only you would say, like make it so that it's obvious AI didn't do it. I mean, and that's a lot of our thoughts on content creation too, is if AI could write it, please don't put it out there. Like what is something only a human could say? Something only Raj could say, only Harris could say, that's actually valuable to people.

That's— yeah, I am so with you on that because that thing, that, that, I think that drives everybody nuts. Let's switch a little bit now to, uh, the topic of sharing personal stories online, being vulnerable online. Um, that's something that I know, uh, I, I don't know if this is a generational thing I'm part of Gen X, probably the older side of Gen X. And so it's not something that we were taught to do, to be vulnerable. Now, I know Brené Brown is big into vulnerability, and if anybody's watched her TED Talks, it's fantastic. But what do you, what are your thoughts on sharing personal information? What are the boundaries you think are useful to just kind of keep in mind?

So I'm pretty personal on LinkedIn. I would say about 20-ish percent of my content is personal and it's kind of related to exactly what we were just talking about before, whereas like, what's something only Harris knows, only I could write, like that's, and that personal stuff is the only, I'm the only person that could write that stuff. And I think people connect with that.

Mm-hmm.

We've had too many clients get sales meetings from personal content that I used to say, if you don't wanna be personal on LinkedIn, don't do it. And now I, it's a bad business decision for me to tell people If you don't want to be personal on LinkedIn, don't do it.

So let me dive deeper into that. You're saying that people, you've had a lot of people just from the personal comments alone get business.

Yes.

Can you give me an example?

We had a guy who posted about, he's a big Eagles fan, Philadelphia Eagles fan, posted him in front of the TV with his Eagles jersey. And one of his top prospects sent him a message being like, oh, I didn't know you were a big Eagles fan. Like, And by the way, we have this problem and challenge with $500,000 deal, like legitimately absurd.

Wow.

That's one example. I mean, I have countless examples of what I've done where it's helped also for me. And we have other ones with clients. Someone shared a picture from their wedding and it was a prospect that had been dormant for 2 years and then they brought them back into the pipeline and it was a $275,000 deal, like crazy, crazy stuff. That as human beings, we connect more with human being stories. So like, as much as people wanna say this isn't Facebook and blah, blah, blah, it's like, okay, fine. Then you're missing out on opportunities and ways to connect with people. And at the end of the day, business in my mind is about connecting with people and providing value. And so I do believe heavily that there is, there is value there in being personal. As far as like vulnerability, one of my biggest pet peeves on LinkedIn, and if I could abolish one thing, it's people saying, hey, I'm making $400,000 a month, and here's the amazing thing that I do. That just blows my— I just can't, I can't take it. I really, really dislike that stuff. Anybody who's talking about the amount of money that they're making on LinkedIn just really irks me and I don't like them. But what I would say is the flip side is intriguing and interesting. Like I posted the other day about the challenges of being an entrepreneur and a father. Uh, and some of the, I mean, you commented very thoughtfully around that and, and it's helped me to build a connection with people that were like, hey, I was experiencing the same thing. And so as I feel a little bit on an island at times where it's like, man, I, every other dad seems like they're crushing it. They're a founder. They're being the best dad on earth. I wanted to say, or say something a little bit vulnerable being like, if you, if this is you and you are struggling a little bit, like, I see you, I hear you. That's been me. I've been there. And in a world where we can sometimes see just the highlights on social media, I think Instagram's worse than LinkedIn, but there's portions of LinkedIn that are bad about that. It's like, let's try to be honest and open.

Yeah.

These things.

I, I found the same thing and I, one of my most, for me, viral posts, I guess is probably the better word, was when I was coaching one of my kids' soccer teams and I had this real intense look on my face cuz I was, I was like, wow, do I show up to meetings that look, looking like that intense? You know? and people just could so relate because, you know, there's, I'm in my shorts, I'm in my coach's shirt and everything like that. I'm like, oh, I remember I coached my kids too. I coached my kids too. And it was just a bond that we were able to create with people. I don't remember tracing that to a half a million dollar deal, which is pretty cool to be able to say, but that's good too. Some thoughts about, about sharing just little personal things, fun facts about yourself, perhaps even inside your LinkedIn profile, uh, in your about section. Have you experimented with that, and what could you recommend for that?

I do a lot of LinkedIn— I do a lot of presentations for like CEOs, executives, and that's how we got together in one of the ways. That's great. And I heavily, heavily recommend that. I have on mine, there's like 5 different things I have. I have a 2-year-old and a 6-month-old. I have, I was drafted by the Nats. I have, I got the Yips. And I get on the call all the time with people who are like, dang, you had the Yips? Like, that sounds brutal. Like, and we immediately have a connection and a bond. And at the end of the day, like that, that's what I care about. I don't, I don't like cold relationships. I, I like build, like what I love is just building relationships and meeting great people. And, and, and that's one of the ways I can do that. Before a call even happens. So anytime I'm about to hop on a call, I check out somebody's about section. I'll bring that stuff up if they have something personal in there. So I always recommend people be personal. I mean, I think in a world where AI is taking over more and more, the more we can be human and connect with one another through stuff like that, it's only going to be better.

You know, I think, uh, so I can relate to that. Like, behind me, actually, I don't know if we can see it on this video, but in my other videos, there's my drum set. So in my profile, I used to be a drummer in a Bollywood band. Like a drummer in a Bollywood band, you like, you live in the DC area. I'm like, oh yeah, we used to tour up and down the Mid-Atlantic. There's this huge market of Indian people who love having Bollywood bands at their shows.

And I was a drummer.

And so that it just starts a conversation, whether you're Indian or not Indian, it doesn't matter. Just, oh, you're a drummer. And so, and then I put a little note and I said, and you can see my drum set in the back of my videos. So people are like, oh, where are your videos? And that actually opens up a conversation. So here's a video I did. About our product. Here's a video. And they just, they look for the drums, but they hear the message.

Exactly. It's all about the human to human connection. Like what, what allows us to go deeper and really get to know one another and the human level starts to do that. I mean, our, the, the sales deals get done when you get to, I mean, at the enterprise level, when you get to like a texting relationship with somebody and that comes from meeting who they are, understanding their kids, what they actually care about, like business matters. Of course you want to talk about But at the end of the day, like people do business with people they like. I mean, I was at an executive dinner last night and that was, it's like, what can AI never replace? The human relationship of me liking Raj and Raj liking me enough to do business together. Like, that's never going to go away. I don't think everything else is a little bit scary with AI, but like deals getting done at a human level, I think will always be the case. So like, how can you build that and do that more effectively is is where is the space that I want to be in and the space that we're growing in.

Yeah, I mean, I love what you initially started out with, which is you can't build human-to-human relationships at scale. That's just— you can't. So as we start to wind down here, I've got a question about metrics, and I'd love to learn what you think are the most important metrics, because I see people trying to just pursue likes and pursue comments. And I was at a networking event the other day Or someone's like, you know, I post but nobody likes it. I'm like, you know, it's interesting. I'll share with you my experience. So the posts for me that get the most likes are the ones where I've got— I attend an event, I took a picture with a bunch of people, I tag a few of them in there, and then it just kind of spreads like wildfire and people like, oh yeah, I was there, nice to see you. And that's it. So they get a lot of likes. That doesn't translate to business though. The post that I share company news, that generates some degree of interest. But when I start to share educational information, tips, metrics, things that I'm learning, and analysis on stuff, those, those get fewer likes, fewer comments, but I will show up at a networking event and people start asking me, hey, when you attended that event and you talked about Vibe Coding, and I look back at my post and like, this person didn't click like, they didn't comment, but registered to them in the most meaningful way because we're talking about it. Can you talk to me about what metrics matter?

Your story is a really good one and I have countless, countless stories. I mean, I have one similarly and I'll get into, I'll share my answer, but I had the, I was playing in a charity golf tournament. CFO of a public company tell me she reads every single thing that I write on LinkedIn. She has never liked or commented a single thing that I've done in 5 years of doing this. But she came up to me and said, I read every— so, so you're right that there are silent lurkers who are doing stuff in the background. And that's a hard part about what we do. No doubt about it. What we track for clients and what we really, really care about, and we can't track everything, but we track people in their inbox who said, I want to speak to you, Raj. And so that could be inbound and that can be outbound. And that's what we care about. And we miss out for sure on people who click Raj, go to your website and book a meeting that way. But what I really care about is how many sales calls are you getting on a consistent basis? If you are meeting with enough of your ICP on a consistent basis, good things will happen. And so how can we use LinkedIn to help you do that is what we care about and what we focus on and our biggest thing. That's not as good of an answer for the average person. So what I would say, just if you're comparing between all the different profile views, impressions, likes, comments. We focus the most out of those 3 on impressions, then profile views, then likes and comments. I, you can't get that much from like, like, but all of that to be said, I care the most about who wants to schedule a meeting from you to learn about what you're doing. We star that in their inbox. We track that on a monthly basis. That doesn't, we don't have full access to that because of someone who goes on their website and does that, but like, that's what we're obsessive about. Is who's scheduling a call with you that fits your ICP in your LinkedIn inbox.

Yeah. And I think, I think, uh, to your point about landing a large contract, I mean, you get one of those contracts and you've paid for all this stuff for years to come.

So that's really exactly.

Last question, and it's kind of a two-part question. So how big does your network need to be before you start getting moving on all this stuff? I think some people are like, well, I only have a couple hundred connections. Some have a couple thousand connections. Other people come to you, maybe they've got like 30,000 connections. So one is what's the size of the network that you need to have to get started and what's the size that makes sense to try to aspire to grow to? Second part of that is how long does this take to work?

So the first question around size of the network, my follow-up question, how I could answer that best would be what's the size of your deals? Like if you, one person can bring you a $50,000 deal or a $100,000 deal or a million dollar deal, Your network doesn't have to be that big. And so one sales call with the right person based off of LinkedIn brings in $100,000 deal, $100,000+ deal. This is a great idea and a good channel for you to do. If you are, hey, I gotta sell 50,000 $10 widgets, then this isn't, I wouldn't spend my time on LinkedIn, honestly. Like one-to-one relationship creates big financial gain is where I think this makes a lot of sense to focus on. Okay. Uh, so I can't say, does this, is this easier if you have a bigger network? 100%. I mean, if I have 30,000 first-degree connections, I could find all the family offices because that's who buys my product. And I could send them a direct message rather than connect with them, wait to send a direct message. Like I'm going to have a higher success. I don't believe in in-mails. I don't think they work. I've never met an executive who really reads in-mails. So I'm much more a fan.

Mostly spam, I think at this stage.

I'm mostly a fan of like connect. Provide value, comment, and then send a direct message. So that is better. And now I'm blanking on your second question.

Second question is how long does it take to get traction?

How long does it take to get traction? This is so dependent on the size of, on the size of your network. Where we tend to have the most success the quickest is somebody has 3,000 or 5,000 followers, connections. They had a really successful business or, and this is their second or They've just built something successful and people have wanted to connect with them because they're impressive and they've never conjured up their network. We'll have a, I mean, we just booked 30 calls for somebody in the first month. He, he is an enigma. He has built an, he was unbelievably successful private equity individual that is now launching his own company. And so, I mean, unbelievable. 30 meetings with his ICP in the first month is incredible. But people who have really big networks to start. Make this easier. How long, if you're, if you are start, start, let's frame it this way.

Let's say you're, you've got a network of 1,000 people. What can you expect? Somebody signs up with your service. What can we expect?

How many of those 1,000 people fit their ICP?

That's a great question. I think a lot of times we end up with people who are connections who happen to be parents of our kids' friends at school, you know? And so we have a lot of like people in the network that just maybe aren't a fit. So I don't know, maybe say 20%.

Okay. So we're talking about 200 people, uh, depending on the level of the person. So this, this game changes dramatically if we're talking CEO versus SDR. So if we're talking CEO, uh, of those 200, let's say 40 of them are good people to reach out to. 10 out of 40, uh, of those people we might get responses from, like based off of utilizing the past history of that relationship. And we're scheduling calls with them. This game changes dramatically when you talk about an SDR. So the work that we do is with executives. So why we can have success is because we're building on the relationship that an executive's built over his or her 10, 15, 20, 30-year relationship. This game is a lot harder if you're talking about an SDR right outta college. So everything that I'm talking about is coming from the lens of an executive, and that's where we focus. That's what we do. We care about. There are things you can do as an SDR, but you're not getting 10 sales meetings unless you're an exception in the first meeting as an SDR. So like, I think that's an important aspect.

That is a very important distinction. And our audience is also executives. That's, I find that, you know, that's the one thing I, these are tools, techniques that I wish were available to me when I was building all my prior companies. Would have been a lot easier. I'm excited to be building a new one now, my fourth startup. So, uh, thank you for being part of that journey. And Harris, this was a masterclass. I really appreciate it. And thank you everybody for tuning in. Um, uh, how can people reach you?

So I'm on LinkedIn, obviously, uh, find me Harris Vaneroff, and check out our website linked-revenue.com. And I appreciate you having me on, Raj. Great conversation as always.

Thank you. All right, everybody, we'll see you next time.