BoneChat #106 - Josh Zukerman, LinkedIn Sales Navigator work that results in real sales leads.

So this is Bone Chat number 106 with Josh Zuckerman. He is, uh, highly recommended by Mark Maloney, uh, and he is a LinkedIn sales campaign expert. So he's going to teach us all how to drive sales leads Raise your hand anytime. It's just very going to be very Q&A and he's got examples and he'd be happy to take a look at your company online and give you feedback live.

Indeed so. Well, Tiger, thank you so much for the introduction. Everyone, thank you for joining. Tiger, thank you for the accolades. Let me share my screen and to echo Target, Tiger's preface, at any time feel free to interject, interrupt. No need to do the whole arm raising, just say, hey, I have a question. And the more you do so, the more you do so, the better. So can everyone see my screen?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Perfect. So first and foremost, who's familiar with Sales Navigator? Who has dabbled with Sales Navigator? And no worries if you haven't, you know, we'll go through a crash course right now.

I, I've started using it the past few months only.

And how is your— how has your experience been?

Uh, yeah, I don't— I, I want to say I don't find it useful, uh, and it's probably because I don't know how it's really that different from the regular LinkedIn.

Fair enough. That's—

yeah, it's perfect timing because I was thinking of just canceling my, um, my subscription to it because it's cheap.

It's not cheap. It's crazy.

This is perfect.

Yeah. I mean, Sales Navigator used to be $80 a month and then became $100. Now it's $120. And LinkedIn, I mean, Microsoft is doing what Microsoft does, the corner of the market, and then just, just, uh, suddenly you have price surges. And, um, you know, thank you so much. Uh, thank you so much for, for sharing. And, you know, Sales Navigator is a very powerful tool if used the right way. Um, now what is sales for, for, for everyone else, uh, on the call here who hasn't dabbled with Sales Navigator, what is Sales Navigator? So Sales Navigator is, uh, LinkedIn Sanction Crawler, right? So LinkedIn has pretty draconian privacy, privacy policies and T&Cs where, you know, you, you're not allowed to crawl LinkedIn unless you pay them $120 a month and then you can. So what, so how does Sales Navigator work? So you're, you're kind of looking at the main, at the main portal here and I'll kind of go, go, go, go through what you, what you're seeing here with current company. But that the basic portal, you know, you have your, You, there are pre, pre-filled filters across company. You can do a company search, company headcount, function, title, past job title, you know, connection, you know, so there's a best way in. This is once again the intent data hype and so on and so forth. Now Sales Navigator is built on the Boolean architecture, which is, which is great architecture. It's not AI-friendly and it's not smart. And, you know, to my point, it's very important to understand how to navigate Sales Navigator. So here's an example. I'll go through this and happy to run an example for any of your use cases. So let's say that one of our clients We have a client, BlueSleep. They're an apnea solution, and they're targeting much like you are. They're targeting doctors, right? And so in their— for their use case, there are 3 kind of main kind of segments. They're cardiology, ENT, and we have primary care practices and weight loss clinics. So let's just take, for instance, for case of demonstration or for purpose of demonstration, let's take cardiology. Right? So we're looking for independent cardiology practices in a given geography. In this case, I believe it was New York and the New York metro area and Jersey City. So how do we go and build these lists? And as you know, and it sounds like most of you are targeting surgeons, but whether they're surgeons or primary physicians, it's much the same logic. It's very difficult to find those exact decision makers on LinkedIn and online because as a whole healthcare and medical are not too tech savvy and not very active themselves on LinkedIn, right? So for case of demonstration here, let's say that we're targeting medical independent cardiology practices So we go out and, you know, what you're looking at here, this is just a Boolean string search, right? So we— and I'm going quickly here, so then we can, you know, if you'd like, I can go in more in depth in how we built this list. But we verify that all of these are in the target audience. So Midtown Medical, City Medical Associates, PC, and so on and so forth, right? So then what do we do? We first and foremost, we kind of figure out, you know, who at Middletown Medical, who are the cardiologists themselves, and we can do that mostly through their website search, right? So these are the primary decision makers. And obviously then we can go and find their respective LinkedIn profiles and begin to engage them. But as you both, I mean, as you all know, at any medical practice, there are a lot of gatekeepers, right? Those are practice administrators, secretaries and revenue folks, finance folks, and so on and so forth. So what we do as an example, so we take Midtown Medical and then we do a search for everyone who works at Midtown Medical and then manually, and this is all done manually, this is the best way to use SalesNav and that's really where we come in because there's a lot of, there's a lot, this takes a lot of time and you know you don't have time in your day to to do this, nor, nor should you. But here's kind of how it works, right? So we do that search and then manually exclude everyone who doesn't fit the target audience, right? So in this case, the target audience are clinical, our clinic managers, directors, operations managers, and so on and so forth, right? So we kind of narrow down that list to get a list of prospects that could lead us in, that could be that introduction or conduit to, um, the primary physician, um, uh, herself or, or himself, right? So, you know, folks like healthcare revenue, um, cycle specialists, office managers, receptionists, and so on and so forth. So far so good? Haven't lost anyone?

Yeah, no, keep going.

Yeah, uh, so once we build out, uh, these lists, well, then we have to engage them, and we engage them on a, in a very custom curated fashion where we personalize each and every engagement, right? So here's an example to the primary care physicians or to doctors. This was the message, you know, their, their doctor, their Dr. Jones, we're digital sleep apnea diagnosis treatment platform, yada yada, and with a call to action and so on and so forth. Pretty straightforward there, much like any drip campaign or email campaign. That you may be running now. And to the support staff, this is where this personalization comes in, right? Where we come in and we let them know that we've done our due diligence, like we know who their cardiologists are, right? And what we found works really well is to open the message to the support staff. Once again, the support staff are the secretaries and such with, would you be willing to review the proposal below? And then we list all of their doctors, right? So they immediately, they see, hey, you know, wow, this is, you know, this, this, this individual has done, has done their, their due diligence just to kind of, you know, make sure that we get through that, you know, the, the, the LinkedIn noise, as it were, right? Because what we all hate is going to our, into our LinkedIn message box and just filled with, you know, copy paste messages, right? And at that point when they respond, then we, we curate those responses and, and your teams to make sure that every response is curated and germane to that specific prospect. And yeah, that's in a nutshell, this is the approach, right? So once again, it's building the right list. Well, first and foremost, understanding the target audience, which, which we do here. This is actually our onboarding process. It's a, it's a very, it's a very interactive doc where you just come in very simple, say here's whom we're targeting, We go out, build those lists of target accounts and the respective decision makers at those accounts, and then engage them, engage them on a one-to-one basis. As far as who's doing the engagement, we dedicate reps. Then this was what brings me to Ukraine. We have a team of SDRs here in Ukraine, much like if you were to go and hire an SDR stateside, except at a substantial price point difference. So we have that economic arbitrage factor working in our favor. And the reps are, are the face and name of the campaign, and they're the ones that are doing that top of the funnel outreach, of course, with our, with our quality control, right? So here's an example for another client of ours, BlueDop Medical. They're in the vascular space. Daria is dedicated to BlueDop, right? So her background image, the post she shares, her experience are all branded around BlueDop. And then, and it would be the same if we were to work together, right? So liking to if you were to go and hire, you know, a couple or a few, a few reps, uh, stateside.

So when you say that you're, you're engaging the decision makers, are you engaging them on LinkedIn or are you tracking down their contact information?

And great question. Yeah, so we engage them on LinkedIn, um, and what you're looking at here is a reporting and campaign dashboard. This is shared in real time where you can literally go in any given day, week, or anytime and see what, you know, how that campaign, you know, whom we've engaged, basic prospect information as well as all of the messaging that we've sent them and all of their responses. But yes, it's on LinkedIn. We do have an email component. You know, no one hates a cold email these days than ever before. So what we usually do is we first connect with folks, right? And then that subset of prospects who didn't accept the connection request, then we email them, and then in the subject line, we reference that we connected with them on a certain date, right? So they— there's that, that reference, that reference point where it's not— it's still a cold email, but it's— there's a little more context there.

Good, good question. Yeah. Do you ever do simultaneous LinkedIn messages and email? Just like—

we do.

Some people just don't, some people never check LinkedIn.

Yeah.

We do. And, you know, email is pretty, pretty straightforward. We use a tool, a really great tool called Snov.io. You can basically take any list on, on LinkedIn. There's a, they have a browser, a crawler. You can basically within, within the browser, you can download all the emails and then it also does email verification. So it tells you which emails are verified or not. Then you, of course, you want to send out only to get the verified emails. But most, you know, most, most are verified. And also with the email, we don't automate that. We do that manually, right? Because LinkedIn, I mean, email clients are very, in this day and age, they're, they're, they're very sensitive to automation. So everything we do is manual, right? Everything that you see here is done manually. We are against automation. We are against AI because to, to get through that noise, You need that personal touch, and the only way to get that personal touch is by doing things manually.

Got it. Yeah, that's the other thing I've learned is that LinkedIn's not set up for automation. No.

Yeah. No, I mean, they, they fight it tooth and nail. Yeah.

Anybody wanna throw out a, their, their, uh, an example of—

Yeah, let's do an example. Ready when you are.

What do you need? What do you need, Josh? You need a company name?

Um, yeah, I need target— a target audience. Um, okay, I can do it.

Uh, so I'm looking for patent attorneys that are in-house at spinal companies.

Let's— okay, perfect. Let's, let's do that. So patent attorneys, I would go to current job title. Most often with their title, would they have patent patent attorney in their title?

Well, patent attorney, VP of IP, something with intellectual property.

Yeah, at spinal companies, right? So spinal companies, um, the, uh, um, can you give me an example of a spinal company?

Like, uh, let's do, I don't know, Spinal Elements, C Spine.

Uh, let's go to Spinal Elements.

VB Spine.

Oh, VB is a good one.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's go down.

Spine would be a good one.

Yes.

What I'm, what I'm looking for.

Switch.

Let's switch to VB Spine. Yeah.

VB.

VB. And then—

B as in boy. Yeah.

Spine.

Yeah.

That's it. LLC.

Perfect. Perfect.

Yep.

Let's go.

That's it.

So what I'm, what I'm doing now is, you know, LinkedIn, LinkedIn category, you know, they, they, they classify by industry. So, and every, every website has their LinkedIn page, and then what I'm going and looking at for is medical equipment manufacturing, right? So that's the industry classifier. Then we go back over here, we go to industry, and then we go to medical equipment manufacturing. And this is a very rudimentary search. I would do spine over here. This is just once again a Boolean Boolean search doesn't return many, many, many results there. Patent attorney. Let's do—

Ed, I think intellectual property would be somewhere in a lot of titles.

Yeah, but the question is intellectual property. Let's just do spine. I don't think that any titles there's going to be spine. But let's just see here. Let's see what we get. Yeah, here. Yeah, this is, this is, this is, this is a good, good example. Yeah. So let's say we go to director of spine services at PhysicianDirect. Now let's look at PhysicianDirect. You see, PhysicianDirect is not, you know, a good example. We're searching for medical equipment and for some reason LinkedIn gives us hospitals and healthcare. Right. This is a great, a great example of what I'm, what I'm talking about. Let's go to, let's see, let's look at biocomposites. Yeah. So, of course, that's, that's in the UK. Let's also do US, right? Or do you have a specific geography? Or US?

US is fine.

Yeah.

Let's go over here to United States and see what comes up here. Let's go to—

So you now excluded intellectual property. Is that what you did?

Oops, sorry.

And patent attorney.

Yeah, yeah. But that's the thing, because we're looking for spine companies. Let's exclude them for now. And then once we find an example of a spine company, we'll go back and search. We'll search for those decision makers at that respective spine company. So let's see here. So Camber Spine. Yeah. So let's say we take, for instance, Camber Spine. Just based on this preview, does that look within the audience?

I've never heard of them, but sure, it does look like it.

Yeah. Let's look at it.

They've been around a long time.

Really?

Yeah. But that's a small company in Pennsylvania.

Yeah. So it looks good, right? So we go over here and then we go back to LinkedIn. I always do this in new searches. We go over here to Sales Nav, go to lead filters, put in current company. Camber Spine, right? And this gives you everyone who works at Camber Spine, 40 people, nice and small. And then here, so we don't need to do location anymore because they're all going to be stateside. And then here is where I would put in those keywords, right? So patent, nothing comes up. And this happens a lot.

Yeah, it's too small. It's probably too small of a company to have its own. Yeah, that's— VB Spine is probably better because they, they have IP people.

They're the small company, the patents are handed by the VP, I mean VP of R&D, or maybe the CFO.

Yeah, so, um, and this is a good example when we can go back to, to VB Spine, right? But so we do Camber Spine, there's 40 people, and then we just go through, right? So we gotta get a good sense, right? So we're looking at, you know, um, we're looking at, uh, VPs and the, and the C-suite We go over here, right? And then, you know, chief executive officer, it would make sense to— it's a small company, it would make sense to engage him. Area vice president of sales, probably not, probably not that good of a fit, right? And then let's do finance, for instance. Here we go. Like director of product strategy and marketing, maybe not. I would always exclude sales consultants, but let's just do finance over here. Current job title, let's do finance. And see, see what comes up. Nothing came up. Another way you can do it is through function, right? So we go over here and include finance. Nothing came up, right? But, and this is, I'm really happy that, that, that we're reviewing this one, right? So we would just go in here at, you know, the smaller companies, you know, it makes sense to target that once again, the, the, the CEO or maybe even the director of operations and then tell them, look, you know, Even if those titles aren't perfect fits, we can still say, hey, would you be willing to discuss this with, let's say, we message Kyle and ask him, would you be willing to discuss this with Seth? Right now, for now, let's, let's look at VB spine just to, just to set VB spine, right? Yep. Let's see how many people come up.

Should be a few hundred.

Hundred. Let's go to patent. Let's see what happens here. Nothing. Let's go to intellectual property. Let's just see what happens with that keyword search. Yeah, and we have one person come up, intellectual property manager. Now, do you think that Jesse would be a good fit?

Yeah, I know Jesse very well. I hired him once.

Yeah, so, and this gives you a good example, right? You know, a good, rather a good insight. So then we would go in and then we would target, we would target Jesse for the intellectual property search. And then we have the other searches, you know, the other kind of categories of decision makers whom we would go through. And I'm showing you how I do this, how I do this. And you know, at RapidReach, I myself, when we launch any campaign, I myself sit there and do all these lists until, until, until you're confident And I'm confident that I understand the audience and understand the, you know, your unique selling proposition. And then to scale, you know, to scale the search, then I pass it on to our team here in Ukraine. And, you know, and once again, you know, you don't be encourage that they're in age, uh, with LinkedIn. It's— yeah, go ahead, Tiger.

Oh, you froze for a second.

Um, sorry, sometimes I'm lucky, I'm lucky that I have electricity. I mean, there are blackouts in the city. Um, I just, uh, sorry, somebody came into the door. Welcome to Ukraine. Um, you just never know. I didn't lock the— I didn't lock my door and somebody could confuse the rooms. Um, but, uh, so I'm lucky because, uh, you know, there's blackouts in the city, but, uh, I'm staying at the Fire Inn, which is just a nice 2-star inn. Um, but right underneath me is, um, the fire— a fire station. Because there's a fire station, they have— the whole building has electricity. Cool. Yeah. Um, anyway, so this is This kind of gives you a sense of how we would do this. And once again, the, you know, once we understand the ideal customer profile, then we would go in and build, you know, build all these, build all these lists in this manner, as well as personalize all of them, all the copy in this, in this, in this manner as well. And we would work in tandem, and by we, that's me, right? So I'm very, very hands-on with, with making sure that we have the right, the right messaging and positioning.

Cool. Any other, another example? Anybody want to target surgeons? So this is, so it, it's, I see why it's so manual because you have to build the sort of have to build the, the big database and then you cut it down into the piece you want and then you, then you communicate through LinkedIn or email, and then everything's shared on in Google Sheets for the, for the client, I assume?

Correct, correct. Yeah. So we have, we have the, we have our dashboard. There's a lot of information here, and everything, everything in this Google Sheet or reporting campaign dashboard is work made for hire, right? So it belongs to you and completely to you. Nice overview tab, your standard operating procedure, all the prospects whom we engage. Across the different message versions and segments, which we delineate here just for our A/B testing, just to see where, where the lowest hanging fruit across the different tests that we're running. It's very important to run many, many tests in the beginning, representative sample size, and that's what you see here across the whole cadence. I know, Kyle, you have a question. I'm happy to, happy to, to take that right after I walk you through the reporting dashboard. And we have a status by type where you can see how the message versions compare relative to the segments and so on and so forth. As far as— yep, please, before I jump into our kind of more of a, more of a, more of a schematic view, Kyle, you had a question?

Well, if you want to do another demo, I have a breakdown for you, but if you want to move on from that, that's okay.

Please, let's do it.

So I would be looking to find US-based upper extremity surgeons that are fellowship trained but have been in practice 5 to 10 years.

Okay.

And I would like to have some that have consulting experience, and clinical publications.

Amazing. Like it.

I love it.

So if they have fellowship, if they have fellowship experience, that would probably be previous in their career, which is fine because they list that on LinkedIn. Let's do once again, let's just go through step by step. Extremity, extremity. Sorry, let me mispronounce, misspelling it.

Extremity.

Yeah, that's it. Extremity surgeon. Extremity surgeon in the US, right, Kyle?

Yes. I think the— I would say the industry says extremity, but the surgeons say hand or shoulder or something, right?

That hand surgeon. Can you show shoulder surgeon?

Are there fellowships in extremity, or is it—

I, um, so we'd have to go through each profile. So here, here's a, here's a good— let's, um, I don't know, are there—

I'm asking, yeah, I'm asking the group. Are there— I know there's hand fellowships. Are there upper—

there are shoulder fellowships. I don't know if there's anything general as upper extremity. I'm not sure about that.

I don't think so either. I think it's shoulder or hand.

That's okay, let's leave it in for now. And then you said, Kyle, how many years of experience?

I'd like for them to have been in practice more than 5 but less than 10 years.

More than 5.

There you go. 6 to 10 will work.

Mhm. And, um, so outside of fellow— outside of the, the fellowships, any other parameters that I may have missed?

Well, I'd like for them to have some demonstration of educational experience where they've, they've spoken from the podium and where they've published something.

Okay, so we can look at, we can look at— so I wouldn't do this. I would look at their individual profiles. But let's look at fellow first. Let's see if they've had— this gives us— yeah, there we go. Right. So postdoctoral research fellow, plastic and hand surgeon. So in this previous, let's look at Yoav. And I bet you there's gonna be a fellowship. Yeah, there we go, right? So here's a good example, hand and upper extremity fellow. Now he is a plastic and hand surgeon at Kelsey Seabolt Clinic. So that he fits those parameters. And now let's look at publications. And I think the best way to do that is by looking at his LinkedIn profile just to see just to see if he's shared any publications here, there, and— or let's look at his profile over here on LinkedIn just to see that, and then we can do a Google search as well. Activity— no, it doesn't seem like he shared anything, but let's go over here. And then let's look at publications. Yeah, so might have to check him directly on PubMed. PubMed, uh, is that a— I haven't heard of PubMed. Maybe I have, but, um, yeah, so here we go, right? So this is, this is just kind of gives you a sense, right? We would just go I mean, go over here, do a Google search and say, hey, does he have publications? He obviously does, right? He obviously does. He does have them. So, and then we would verify that he has them. And if, in fact, if you want links to those publications, we can likewise scrape those links as well and put them in the spreadsheet.

So, Kyle, what's your goal? Would it be to just find a database of potential customers or potential R&D idea generation? What, what, what's the goal?

Yeah, in, in this example, it might be I'm looking to find the crop of the next generation of surgeon designers.

Okay.

You know, so there might be a— I might be able to gather a group of a couple hundred out of these parameters, and then the next layer filter might be to try and find who doesn't have existing conflicts, and then another layer after that might be who's interested in design of some sort. But yeah, that would be the idea here.

Yeah. And, you know, all those layers, we can engage them and ask them, right? I mean, are they interested in, you know, layer 1, layer 2, layer 3 in the cadences, right? And then we can kind of do that. In fact, that's a little, a little more, a little more, you know, a little less salesy and more trust, trust, more trustworthy. Kind of intent versus just like trying to sell them. Yeah. So we can absolutely do this. That's a really great, great use case. And it sounds like you've dabbled with LinkedIn, Kyle.

A little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I could tell.

So the old way of doing that would be go to medical conferences and look for young surgeons presenting for the first time, you know, that haven't been engaged with a company yet. That's where somebody that's the 8th name on a white paper, you know, that's kind of the old way of doing it. That's interesting.

Yeah, so absolutely, and great, great use case.

Hey, Mark, welcome, welcome aboard. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what Josh has done for VenOps?

Hey, thanks. Sorry I'm late. And, you know, LinkedIn is of course the world's best acknowledged business platform. And for VenOps, which sells an extremely boring product, compliance, for years we tried different services to mine LinkedIn for connections to medical practices and hospitals, people in compliance, people in command, and never really had great results. Promised the moon. Most of them turned out to be automated. And, uh, just didn't speak doctor, didn't speak administrator, were not very effective. And then about 5 years ago, I met Josh, and his approach was just completely organic. And, um, I managed my, my, I managed my expectations, uh, when it comes to this kind of marketing pretty well. You know, the secret to sort of happiness is low expectations. Our target markets are practice owners, administrators. These are people that if they don't know you, they don't answer the phone call. If they don't know you, they don't read your emails. They're, they're really challenging to hit. They have gatekeepers and handlers, you know, you know the breed. We're all in the same business. But his organic approach, uh, was not only the most effective, um, But it was also easily tailorable because, you know, Josh is a, he's an English major. He understands good language. And anyway, I've just enjoyed working with him. So, and I think whenever somebody asked me for a reference, I just say, well, it's really all about character. If it, if no campaign starts right, if you don't, if you, you know, if you're not patient enough to give it a reasonable amount of time, don't even start. And the ones that I see go sideways are those that expect doctor leads in a week. That this— it's, it says more about their intelligence than it does about the program. Uh, so anyway, I'm just real happy that Josh was able to join us today because, you know, LinkedIn is like a language. Uh, and it's kind of like speak— learning to speak Google. People that do that, there's so many different dialects and so many different ways of using it. And not every— how can, how can any of us possibly be an expert like this? So anyway, that's, that's how I know Josh, and I'm happy to recommend him, uh, because I still work with him.

Cool. And how much— here, help us with how much time it takes from you starting a new VenOps campaign, and there's obviously got to be some reviews at the beginning.

I write in plain language like I was doing a macro to a really smart AI. Okay, in this case, I just write in plain language what I'm— what I want, and I let Josh worry about, you know, the Boolean formula and how to put together the lists and do all of that. And really, all I do is once I kind of It's kind of like, you know, it's kind of like that movie Field of Dreams. You, you just sort of imagine the field in your mind and then you just sit back and one day you're the catcher.

That's it.

Cool. Yeah, but you know, still, it's, it's marketing. You gotta— your expectations— it's not like you're paying a rep to knock on doors and make 15 sales calls a day. You gotta tailor your expectations to what it realistically can do, if that makes sense.

But still, and does it, does the, do the IMs come from VenOps or your profile? Where do the, where do the IMs come from?

So they come from the reps' profiles. And the, and the reps say that, that they work for, for VenOps.

Got it. So that's, that's, yeah, that's really good cuz I get pinged all the time with, oh yeah. You know, bots, people that aren't real people, you know, trying to sell you something. Yeah, interesting.

Yeah, these are real people. Uh, like the one that worked with me in the beginning, her name is Katya. Uh, Josh calls her Kate. Uh, she was a school teacher. She does this part-time.

So anyway, heard she's full-time now.

Yeah. Oh, she's full-time now?

Yeah, yeah, she's not full-time. Yeah, she quit. She was working for a call center before, and the Polish call center. And now, uh, you know, she's been really great, and she— we definitely have the work.

So, but you know, uh, Tiger, see, people go to conferences and learn how to use LinkedIn and do this and do that, and that's great, but who has time for that?

Exactly. And there's, you know There's nothing complicated here. It's just sitting there for hours, hours figuring out these searches. I mean, just like what, as we, as we reviewed, and then, you know, you know, there's a misconception that the most important part of any campaign, whether it's LinkedIn or email, is the messaging. That's not true. It's the prospecting. It's whom are you reaching out to? You got to make sure it's the right person and that right person. With the right message converts.

Yeah, it's kind of like what's going on in Ukraine right now. It's all about targeting and it's all about the message, you know, or in this case, you know, whatever the armament might be. But if you're not, if your targeting is not precise, you're not gonna hit anything.

Yep. That's interesting. So what are, so wow, it's way more manual than I thought it was gonna be. But that's, that's why it's effective. Because it's real, it's real people writing messages to real people, uh, with real detail on it that, that matters to the recipient. I like that. Yeah, yeah, everybody, you're right, everybody tries to automate it. They try to use AI to blast 100,000 messages, and that just never works.

No, no, it doesn't. Um, and while we're on the topic, um, this is how the— this is a schematic of the funnel. Right. So this is our funnel and I'll share this with— I'll share our, our, our presentation and our deck, but this kind of gives you a sense of all the different possibilities, right? So new prospect, touch one is we engage them, get them interested, and then do, do, do the handover. Got it. Yeah.

Yeah. What, I mean, what percentage make it to the lead column? Is it 1, 1%?

Half to 1%.

That's really good, actually. That's actually really good.

For us, a lead is a qualified lead, right? It's somebody who has— who responded, who's interested, has the budget, and wants to talk, right? It's, uh, for somebody who says, yeah, thanks, uh, let's, let's explore this in, you know, Q3 of 2026, is not so much a lead. Of course, we feel that individual, but for us, lead is somebody who's who genuinely has that need and is ready to, you know, is ready to do their due diligence and sign NDAs and get things rolling.

All right, Raymond or Laura, Laura Lynn or Doug, any?

Super helpful. I was going to ask the question you just asked about the percentage, but this is super helpful. I had a little bit of exposure to it, but haven't actually ever used it. So I think as we— and we're not looking for surgeons, right? We're more like Andrea, kind of the business-to-business thing or looking for people. So this is really helpful. So anyway, thank you. Thank you very much.

Of course. And by the way, the offer stands. If anyone wants to send along your, you know, your ICP, your ideal customer profile, whom you're targeting, happy to go in and run these searches for you so that you can see it, you know, how it looks like on LinkedIn's side. Happy to do that. On the house. Thank you so much, Mark, for introducing me to Tiger. And Tiger, thank you so much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to meet everyone. Very smart crowd.

And it also sort of brings back to— it also— I'm sorry, it sort of also brings back to the point of how much of this you have to do, right, in order to get qualified leads. I mean, you can't just you can't do this like as you're doing other stuff.

You can't.

Which I am the, I am the queen of multitasking. And this is not something that you can probably do as a multitask, right? This is something that you've got to sit down and do and plan out and make sure that you're getting out to all of the right people. And then the results are still going to be, you know, kind of a direct result of how many people you can, how many qualified leads you can actually reach.

Yes.

Yes, I mean, it's anytime a new campaign begins, I mean, I spend hours, I spend hours sitting, sitting there and just, you know, building out these lists. And I do that all myself. I could, you know, we have a very smart team, but I, I prefer to do it myself just to make sure everything's copacetic before getting our team involved.

Hey, Josh, can you, can you zero in on the campaign that I started for Tempita a couple of weeks ago?

Sure.

That's all. We started this in December and, uh, show the prospect list and maybe the number of connections.

Tell, tell everybody what Tempita is, Mark.

Tempita is an AI scribe designed by an orthopedic surgeon in Phoenix, Arizona, named Kishore Tippernini. Kishore and I have been working together off and on since 1999. He, uh, wrote the first software for the, uh, digital imaging orthopedic practice business that we built up and then sold to Stryker. And his AI Scribe uses 3 different AIs. It's really smart. And it even, it'll even allow you to take a picture of an X-ray or a patient's wound and work that into the note. Anyway, I won't go into it. But anyway, we're looking for reps that have doctor connections. They want a side hustle. That's the, that's the, that's this campaign right here. Like, you know, and I call it a side hustle. But so what Josh did was he built the list. Yeah. And we've only been doing it a couple of weeks.

Uh, well, we've been, we've been doing it since, tell you right now, we've been doing it actually more than a couple weeks. We've been doing it for about 6, was it 6 to 6 to 7 weeks?

Yeah.

Okay. We started on the 3rd of, of November. Yeah, so we built the list with Mark. These are titles, orthopedic sales rep, total joint rep, so on and so forth. As you can see, all reps, sports medicine, orthopedic across, I mean, in Florida medical, you know, we overlaid with industries here, scrubbed those lists just to make sure we're targeting, you know, the reps themselves and engage with them. And here are the stats. Stats speak for themselves, right? So, you know, we're working on the first list. We engaged, we engaged 414, 400, actually no, 834 contacts. And actually, why does that say 834? I would always reference this. This is a mistake over here. So I would always reference the connection request. We engaged 420 folks, and when we engage folks, we send them blind connection requests. That works a lot better. LinkedIn used to be great where you can include a note. You can't do that anymore unless you're a premium member. So there's been a backlash with folks saying, hey, why are you trying to make money everywhere, every way you can? So people have been just blindly accepting connection requests because they don't know. I mean, for instance, there's a student that wants to, you know, start that, that wants to get hired and is targeting an HR manager and, you know, they can't afford $120 a month. Right. So there's been— there's kind of been this general consensus where everyone just accepts connection requests, which is great because here we had 51 accepted, 6 responded, and of those 6, 3 were interested. And Mark, you spoke to how many of those 3?

I mean, I reached out to all of them, invited them to the webinar.

Yeah.

And then there's a list with names on it. Yeah.

Yeah. So these are all the folks who responded and you can go in here and you can see what their responses were. Right. So, you know, from prequalification to qualification, you know, feel free to send. I mean, here are the responses. Sound interesting. Good evening. I would be interested in hearing more details.

No thanks. Go to hell.

Yeah. This happens all the time because we're in Google. Yeah. So that's a good example.

Yeah, but just, I like it because it's just, it's working in the background and we've got a couple people that show up at the webinar because of it.

Who knows? Hmm. Yeah.

Thanks, Josh.

Of course. Of course.

Thank you, man.

Well, yeah, I mean, um, can you give us a flavor for what that costs? Is it, you know, it's 3 weeks, it's 6 weeks of work to get—

Yeah.

Yeah. So we always start small and we keep it very affordable. So the way we, the way we price is per rep, you know, LinkedIn caps are 500 unique engagements per month across the board. So we keep it simple. It's just $500 a month per rep and you can, there are no rep minimums so you can start with one. We always encourage you to start with one and then you can go once you, once you see the results and we know where, you know, which, which verticals we need to scale, then we can grow accordingly. Onboarding, there's a very nominal onboarding fee, which is $500, just the same cost as with OneRep. And once again, that's just to help cover my time. And as I said, I spend hours, and Mark knows this. And I, you know, last night, even though I was writing Mark, I work US hours, and Mark's like, I'm going to dinner with Sharon. But I get very— my point is that I, you know, I'm very— and as Mark would attest to, Communication is very paramount. So, you know, if you give me your WhatsApp or your cell phone, you're going to be getting a lot of emails and text messages, of course, within reason. So if you want to say just tone it down, I definitely will. But yeah, that's our pricing model. We keep it very, very affordable. It's always month to month. We also, you know, there's a performance element. And the idea is that if we're getting you good leads and you're closing them, well, you're going to want more good leads, which will bring more work, more work for us and more results for you. And we take a very small, small percentage on the close. And that's, you know, and that's discussed on an individual basis. Usually that percentage is anywhere from 1 to 5%, right? For the, you know, of course you're mostly all in medical device, so that's going to be on the lower side. And once again, that's just an extra bonus. To that rep who got that lead.

Got it. Thanks.

Raymond. I had a comment that really in response to Kyle's questions, is Kyle still here?

You're on.

I'm here.

Yep.

I'm back.

I'm here.

And I really appreciate, Josh, you interrupting actually in the middle of the night to present. It was definitely educational, and I hope you don't— you're not offended by me making this comment, but it's specific to Kyle. There are, I'm sure, lots of other situations where what you're doing is very useful and applicable, but I want— I didn't— I feel somewhat obligated to let Kyle know if you're not already aware of a different software that may be a little bit more efficient for the sake of surgeons, because you can drill down based on CPT code. The software is called Alpha Sophia, and it even has visibility to open payments. And yeah, open payments, so you can see who they're connected with and how things have changed with time. It's a reasonable price. As compared to, I forget what it's called, Acuity or something. I can't remember the name of the other software, but it's something that might be a little bit more suitable for what you're trying to do. And if you want offline, I'd be happy to share or do a Zoom and kind of show how it works, or you just get ahold of them and they'll do a demo. Thank you.

No, thank you, Raymond. I, I suspect there's something here for me, but my gut with knowing what I'm looking for and, and how the— call it network element of it— I actually think what Josh is doing is probably more likely to taper into a list that then I would vet separately, um, different than this, because I'm not going to get into billing codes or volumes or things like that. I'm looking, I'm looking for pedigree and, and name recognition and clout. So there's gonna— at some point I'm gonna be looking for a, a direct line of, uh, connection for like someone I already know and trust says, yes, out of this group of 10 people that fit all of the pedigree thoroughbred details you need, talk to these 5. Um, so I'll take a peek at this. It's a great suggestion, but my gut sense from what Josh was doing is he's on the right track with the type of thing I might ask for.

Yeah. Well, that's good. And maybe, Josh, this could help you. I'm not sure. Just to get to know a little bit better.

And I haven't taken a look, and I also love to kind of get an inside look, Raymond, if we can do that. But it strikes me that Alpha Sophia is more of a database. It doesn't do engagement.

No, no, but it does spit out their LinkedIn page or whatever a link to their page, and I think their addresses, phone numbers, all of that, email addresses, things like that. So you can mine that information. Yeah, I don't think you're supposed to use it for commercial purposes though, so you gotta read the fine print.

Sure. Yeah, okay, I, I can see that. I can see why. I can see why too. So no, this is great.

Yeah, good, good tool.

Also, by the way, uh, Kyle, uh, or anybody really, Tiger, uh, part one of the, one of the, uh, things that VenOps does is we run open payments reports for all of our clients. They're designed so that a, a board chair or a practice owner would know who's paying all their doctors. Okay. But if you send me, we have a, we wrote software You send me a list of 100 doctors and I'll send you a report in an hour that tell who, tell you who's paying them. I mean, and I'm, I'll do that for any of our members at no charge.

There you go, Kyle. So they, you can, can you tell if there's a medical device contract with a surgeon?

It just tells you what the, the open payments data tells you.

Does it name like Zimmer Biomet, or does it say—

here, let me, let me show you. Yeah, let me show you one. This, this is an old one. It's like 5 years old, and the new ones are much nicer, but it gives you the doctor's name, the direct link to the CMS report. It tells you their general payments. You know, like $161,783 research payments, associated research, value of interest in investments or investments in interest, which is good to know. Are they in total quality of undisputed total payments? I guess this is their address over there. These guys are all with the Boyce Williams, Willis Clinic, anyway, in North Carolina.

Anyway, interesting.

Yeah, yeah. So it's really cool, like, because you just feed it— feed a bunch of doctors' names. Let's say that you're interested in a particular city or a particular group of doctors, and it immediately tells you who they're in bed with. And some of the— sometimes you're, you're shocked at how much money they're making.

It's Great. Not as much as the old days with the royalties.

Yeah, I was just digging in on that and it sounds like 95% of the money goes to 5% of the doctors.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think I should fix that. I would be humbled to fix it with you, Kyle.

I got a lot of work to do.

You know, Tiger, you were talking about, you know, the way we used to do it. We go to the Academy meeting and so forth to meet kind of the young guns looking for a name for themselves or whatever. I used to— and I developed a habit from my first meeting to spend a lot of time, more time in the poster exhibits than anywhere else.

Yeah, yeah, they were standing by their poster. Yeah, the real— the the young physicians just standing by his or her poster. Yeah, that's great. There's so many great stories. I mean, the Natural Knee that was developed by Intermedics, the first Texas surgeon said, I can't do this anymore. He was a designer. And so they literally pulled out the PCA Knee white paper and they went down to the very bottom and said, Aaron Hoffman, who's this guy? And he became, He became the natural lead. Wow. Yeah, it's, and that's where you used to find the, you know, the guys that weren't first, you know, referenced first on papers, but did all the work. They did all the research work.

Well, the first product that I designed and sold to J&J in '83, I stole the idea from a poster exhibit by Dr. Harris in Boston in 1982. Excellent. He had, uh, he'd been, he had been centrifuging bone cement, but he didn't take the bubbles out. Yeah, he was using a laboratory-grade centrifuge and gas sterilizing it. So I said, well, that's a good idea but dumb. So I made one out of stainless steel. He didn't, he didn't patent the idea. And, uh, anyway, I don't— he's still mad at me.

I don't think he's alive still, is he?

I don't think so.

No, I don't think so. We— every— everybody call him Dollar Bill. Really? Yeah, I used to work with him when I was at Intermedics. We're getting— we're getting way off topic now, but, uh, he was brutal. He would— I was an engineer, and he would— every time he talked to you on the phone or in person he would get out a note card and he would write notes on what you promised him. And you'd see him a year later and he would say, oh, Tiger Buford, he'd pull out the— you owe me this. I didn't get it. I mean, he was, he was, he was brutal. He was in bed with Zimmer for a long time. Yeah, well, this has been great. Any, any parting questions? And you know, most people when they think of LinkedIn, they say, how do I improve my profile? You know, but they don't think, yeah. And they think there's magic's gonna happen because they have a better profile.

Not anymore. 20 years ago, but now it's, yeah, it's a dime a dozen. All these tools that will improve your profile. It's all about, you know, the, it's all about the message box and, and sifting through that noise.

Most people don't want to spend the time to sit there and search for topics and then comment on the topic and, and, you know, actually strike up, uh, relationships on LinkedIn. Most people won't do that.

No, no, it takes a lot of time.

Yeah. Well, this has been great, Josh. Thanks.

Yeah, thank you.

Open my eyes.

Yeah, thank you, Josh.

Thank you.

Thanks, Josh.

Thank you.

All right, no bone chat next week, obviously. We'll see you in January.

Thanks. Thanks everyone.

Happy holidays.

Happy holidays.