Utilize Linkedin Like a Pro

Utilize Linkedin Like a Pro

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome back to the Business Development Podcast, episode 19. Wow. It's hard to believe sometimes how far we've come in such a little time. And in today's episode, I'm gonna break down something that I've had some questions on that there seems to be a lot of curiosity about, but maybe we're not quite sure how to utilize it.

How the heck do we use LinkedIn? Stay tuned. I'm gonna show you how.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more. This is the Business Development Podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners. CEOs and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business. Brought to you by Capital Business Development Capitalbd.ca . Let's do it. Welcome to the The Business Development Podcast.

Podcast. And now you're expert host. Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome back to the Business Development Podcast. We have made it episode 19. Sometimes it's a little bit hard to believe how far we've come in such a little time, but here we are trucking along week after week, and I couldn't do it without all of you.

So let me start this episode by saying thank you to all my listeners. I appreciate each and every one of you, everyone who's given us a shot, given us a try. And I hope that we are delivering great value to you and that you have subscribed, and that you're coming back week over week to hear us chat about entrepreneurship and business development.

And I appreciate you. So if you have been listening, if you're a current listener or a new listener, or heck you are a veteran business development podcast listener, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you for all you do. I appreciate you. Today, I wanted to kick off a little bit about Linked. LinkedIn is kind of a strange space that I feel like not too many people have quite figured out how to utilize just yet.

So I've been using it for quite some time. In the beginning I didn't use it very much to be honest. And over time I feel like I learned the tips and tricks about how to utilize it more effectively, how to make better connections with it, how to make connections with it, how to not come across like a robot, like we all hate our stupid InMails and our just like horrible unthoughtful messages that we get from people and salespeople on LinkedIn.

So I wanna teach you today how to be different. How to be more effective with LinkedIn, but ironically, it's something you already know. It's just being human. We talk about being human all the time on this podcast, and I think you're gonna get a little bit more of that today as we kick off this episode.

I just wanna say a quick shout out to Colin Christensen. Colin Christensen was our last week guest. We had a two-part series with him and it was absolutely incredible. If you have not had a chance to listen to the previous well, I guess not the previous two, but say the last three episodes per se, you should definitely look into that because we had a two-parter with Colin Christensen, serial entrepreneur.

Amazing story, amazing man. And we were so thankful to have him on. So call in if you're listening to this. Thank you so much. It. One of the most amazing interviews I've had the privilege to host and just wanna say thank you so much. Your story is incredible. It is hopeful, and I hope that we've inspired a lot of entrepreneurs to take a leap with that.

As we kick off today into the show, let's let's talk a little bit about what LinkedIn is. Is it an active or passive strategy? I think you guys know where I sit on a lot of passive strategy. I'm very much an active marketing proponent. LinkedIn is a little bit of both In my book, it can be used in two different ways.

It's kind of like you get to choose your own adventure with LinkedIn. So we are going to learn a little bit today about how to go about doing that. LinkedIn can provide so much information, guys, so much information. LinkedIn is probably one of the best business resources that we have been given, frankly given to utilize as entrepreneurs, new business owners or business development people.

It is truly. It is the only real network you guys should be on if your business sells to other businesses or relies on creating real person to person relationships. LinkedIn is the bar, bar none for business to business or business socials. And if you are not on it, let me just tell you right now, you need to be pausing this, starting an account and then coming back to it.

Because if you're not on LinkedIn and you are listening to this business podcast, believe me, you need to be. Do I utilize LinkedIn as part of my digital strategy? Yes, yes, I won hundred percent. Utilize LinkedIn on a daily basis, guys, on a daily basis. I am on LinkedIn. You guys can find my businesses on there.

You guys can find the Business Development podcast. You guys can find Capital Business Development and you guys can find Kelly Kennedy because. It is important. It truly is this modern space for business and entrepreneurs and business people to just make connections with each other, build relationships, find synchronicities, find partnerships.

It is such an amazing space, guys, and 100%. You need to be utilizing it as part of your daily business strategy. What are some of the ways that we can utilize LinkedIn? We can utilize LinkedIn to search for target people in an organization. Guys, you guys have heard me talk about this so many times.

Target lists are critical. Finding the right people are critical. Where do you find them? LinkedIn guys, you find them on LinkedIn finding similar people in different organizations. This is like a really cool thing that LinkedIn does. So let's say you find somebody and you're looking for quality managers.

Let's just, I'm talking to my quality companies out there, my people selling inspection services and non instructive testing. You guys are looking for quality people, right? Great. When you search a quality manager on LinkedIn and you click on their profile, look to your right, you're gonna see a list of other people in similar roles.

You're gonna see a bunch of quality managers at different companies. Boom. Now you've just got five more new people to reach out to. It's truly amazing in the idea that it can look at who the qualities and the qualifications of what you're looking for, and it can recommend you people that are very similar, which I find are incredibly effective and quite a bit of the time accurate.

You can connect with similar groups. This is another really cool thing that LinkedIn does, especially for us business owners, entrepreneurs, people trying to market our information out, right? Like with the Business Development podcast, I utilize LinkedIn quite a bit to try to market out to broader audiences because obviously you guys know if you're listening to this show, you guys know the business that we talk about.

You guys know we we're about, we're about building people up, we're about providing systems and things that work that allow people to grow their businesses. And I wanna get that. I wanna get that out there. I wanna expand that reach across the LinkedIn space. A great way to do that is to join LinkedIn groups, and this can work well for your business as well.

Depending on what type of business you do, what type of service you provide. You can join similar groups, start discussions and gain a little bit of interest in your product or service, right? So it's really great at doing that. You can utilize passive marketing strategies. LinkedIn's really great because I'm gonna walk you through how to do this a little bit later in the episode.

But if we are, if we are utilizing it properly and we're adding our a hundred contacts a week, I'll get into this in a little bit later guys, but we're adding a hundred relevant contacts a week. You are growing this gigantic list of connections. Who are people that are relevant to what you're selling.

It's, this is frankly better than any type of LinkedIn passive ad strategy you guys could use. Those people are constantly scrolling their LinkedIns and they're looking at posts from people they've connected with. Well, if you have a relevant service that they need, it makes sense. Just post it on your page, post your service stuff on your page, and utilize that as a passive strategy that frankly works versus this like random, broad stroke strategy where you're just shooting it out to the world and hoping for someone to bite.

If you guys wanna learn a little bit more about active and passive strategy, I have a previous show on it. Active strategy is a hundred percent way to the way to go and, and the way that you want to go because you wanna make sure that you are making it as easy as possible for your customer to find you.

Well= trust me, it's, it's no easier than if you want to use a passive strategy, you need to use one that's effective. Well, one that's effective is one where you already have that connection where you can reach out to them directly after. So utilizing LinkedIn passively, but smartly is possible. The way that you do it is you add all the right people that you need to have, or people that you're interested in marketing to.

And then you start posting stuff on your page utilizing ai, AI content generators, or utilizing, heck, maybe an advertising agency if that's what you want to go with. But there are other ways to do it that are incredibly effective utilizing LinkedIn. How important is your LinkedIn profile? Okay. You guys have heard me talk about it before, right?

A webpage to a company is, its face, it's the skyscraper in the modern day, right? In the 21st century. Your website is your, is your 30 story skyscraper. Okay. Well, LinkedIn is your personal skyscraper, okay? Because it's unique to you, right? It's unique to you as an individual, as you as, as a, as a business person, as an entrepreneur, as a business development rep, okay?

Your LinkedIn needs to be on point, guys on point. Don't put, don't put your barbecue photo with you and or you holding your fish, okay? Don't worry. I love fishing too, right? I love, I love barbecuing too. I'm an advocate. But what I'm saying is it's your face. It's the way that people see you as a business person, as a business rep.

Okay? So hire a professional photographer, guys. Get some professional photos done. Look, Top look mint and not just your profile picture. Okay? The whole page needs to be set up nicely. You need to make sure that you have your accurate information on there. Your current job, your current position, maybe some of the skills and stuff associated with that.

You need to have your background on there, okay? If, if you're consulting for five different companies, make sure every one of those companies is on there. Make sure your, your relevant information to your business yourself. Your schooling. Make sure everything that can make you look like a million bucks is on your LinkedIn profile.

Because guys, I don't care who you are, they are looking at that. Even if you're, even if you're out there job hunting, okay, people are looking at your LinkedIn profiles. Why? Because cuz frankly, your resume is on your LinkedIn. I don't know if you guys looked, but it's literally telling people where you've worked, what your positions were and how long you were there.

It's literally a resume. It's an online resume. So I want you to look like a million bucks. I want you guys to stand out from the crowd, have a professional photo, do a double check to make sure all the information on your LinkedIn is, is on there. Maybe remove your, your job from being a teenager where you worked on Burger King.

Okay? Let's keep it relevant to our space. Let's keep it relevant to our current industry, to our chosen profession, right? To our, to our businesses, to, to the companies we're doing representing or, or anything like that. But let's just make sure that we are cleaning up our LinkedIn, that it is tiptop.

Okay? I want all my business development podcast listeners to have absolutely amazing LinkedIn pages because it is your skyscraper. It is the skyscraper for you personally, and it does matter. LinkedIn is the only business social that I use. Why? Because it is the best for business to business period, guys.

It really is. There's nothing else people tell you. You know, I mean, Instagram's great for like B2C or like just kind of generating some information stuff, but I'll be honest, I don't even use Instagram. Not for capital, not for the business development podcast. That could change in the future, but right now I've chosen to use very much a LinkedIn strategy.

Why? Because I'm marketing to business people. Where are business people? They're on LinkedIn. I get it. I get it. We're on social too. We got our Facebooks or whatever else, but I like to keep my Facebook for my personal life. I like to keep my LinkedIn for my business life and I think most of you are probably the same way.

It truly just is that place where we get to connect as business owners, as entrepreneurs, as people trying to change the world. It's our professional space. So it is the best. It truly is the best. Most people are on there. Most of the companies you guys are trying to market to have a LinkedIn page. Most of the people that you need to find in those companies are on LinkedIn.

Not only are they on LinkedIn, their title is there too. So if you're looking for quality managers, if you're looking for safety managers, if you're looking for plant managers or distribution center managers, they're on there guys, they are on there with their titles. They're easy to find, especially as you start to grow your network, cuz remember, you can always connect to people that your network is connected to.

So, while in the beginning, let's say you're just starting out and you only have 25 connections, sure. Your, your range of people you can connect to is a little bit limited. But as we go on and we start to add a hundred, 200, 500, a thousand connections, your reach starts to get further and further and further. And next thing you know, you can connect like the CEO of McDonald's.

Trust me because I am. Do you need a premium account? Well, it depends. Okay. It depends on who I'm talking to right now. Although I do believe that most of the listeners of the Business Development podcast are probably either in sales and business development, or they are entrepreneurs and business owners.

So speaking to people in sales and business development entrepreneurs, business owners, people trying to grow and market a hundred percent. Hundred percent. If you guys do not have a premium account for LinkedIn, you 100% need one. You need one. Why? Because you need to search a lot of people, and LinkedIn restricts your ability to search at a certain amount of people.

If you don't have a paid account, that can really bite you in the butt, and I will explain to you why in a minute. Premium. The premium business account is the best value, so there's multiple business accounts you can get with LinkedIn. I think one is called Career, one is Premium business, one is Sales Navigator, and I think there's one more after that.

In my experience, premium business is the best value for your money. It is the one that we utilize at Capital Business Development. All of my reps have. Have premium business accounts and I also have a premium business account. You get some extra things if you go with the other accounts. Mostly more InMails though, and I'll explain to you a little bit more later about what I think about InMail, but just trust me on this.

The business, the business premium business account is truly the best value and the one that I would suggest that each and each and every one of you go with. No matter what account you choose though, you can only add a hundred contacts a week. LinkedIn has this like rule, it's like this golden rule of LinkedIn.

You can only send a hundred invites a week, so you gotta be. You gotta be specific about who you are inviting to your network, which should always be people that, especially if, if you're trying to market something, you should pick a certain demographic of people, whether they're plant managers, quality managers, whatever.

You should search them up and add those per week. So that you're constantly building that list of people that you can reach out to, but you also have a bulk overhead limit. I've never hit it. I don't know anyone who's hit it. I believe it's 30,000 connections. So from what I understand, when you hit 30,000 connections on LinkedIn, you either have to start deleting some of your connections, or you can only start following people from that point forward.

So it's important that we. Being very specific, I guess is what I'm trying to say here. We need to be very specific about the connections adding on LinkedIn. Why? Because eventually, yeah, 30 thousand's a lot. It might take you a decade to get there, but you will get there. And so we need to be very particular about who we are adding on LinkedIn.

Will they add value to your LinkedIn profile page? You need to be thinking about that. Will they add value to connections? You can reach out to further down the. All I'm saying guys, is let's be particular, let's make sure that we are adding only people who are relevant and are gonna bring value to our LinkedIn.

Because if you just start adding everyone and their dog there is a limit. And at some point you're going to have to go back through and and delete some of them. With company pages, you have the ability to add up to 250 people a month. So this is, I'm speaking to my entrepreneurs out there. I'm speaking to my people with companies, okay?

If you don't have a LinkedIn company page, you 100% need one. You need to hop on there and create a page for your company that is relevant, that's got your profile, got your logo, got some nice background art, and and you need to start, you need to start adding stuff to it. You need to start making posts.

But remember when you create a company page, you can send. 250 invites a month. This resets at the end of the month. So if we go April to May here, May 1st, I will have 250 more invites I can send. The cool thing about the company page invites is if somebody accepts your company page invite, you get that credit back and you can now send it out again.

So even though you can only send 250 invites if all 250, accept you now have another 250 you can send out. So it's a really, really cool system where that encourages you to send it to people who will accept your company page invite. So as we're trying to grow our company pages, as we're trying to grow our personal pages, it is important that we are using all of the available sends that we can.

So it's important that weekly, we're sending a hundred invites personally per week, and it's important that we are sending our 250 per month as business owners to make sure that we are growing our reach to relevant contacts. Okay. InMail is not effective. Okay. You know what, and you know what? I might get a little flack from this.

Some of you might have found InMail to be effective. I have never found it to be effective. I get a little bit ticked when people InMail me. I'll be honest, I'm a business development person, right? I am a business owner and a business development person, and I am so sick of inMails, what are InMails to people who don't understand?

InMails is something that LinkedIn allows you to do that allows you to message somebody you're not connected to, so you can reach out to like somebody you don't know or not connected to, and you can, you can just send them a random message, but it's kind of a pain in the butt. I'll be honest, on my LinkedIn, a lot of it just gets, it gets just filtered out into other, so it's like going into the junk mail folder.

I'm gonna just reiterate on something here though that I want to talk to you about. LinkedIn suggests that you should only send invites to people you know, my opinion is, that's bullshit. Excuse my language. You should be sending out invites to relevant contacts. So whether you know them or not, if you need to connect with quality managers, my opinion to you is don't worry about that.

Connect with them because you need to connect with people who can buy your product or service, right? You need to connect with people who are relevant to your industry that's gonna make sense for you. So I would disregard what they're saying about, you need to know them because you don't. And you need to connect with people who are relevant.

You need to be sending those hundred invites per week. Okay. So please please disregard. I know, I know what you were kind of saying. It's the InMails that, that get filtered, guys. It's the InMails that don't get read. So in my opinion, the InMail isn't that valuable. Could LinkedIn do some stuff to make it more valuable?

Sure. But under the current iteration, the way it works today it's pretty much going to your junk mail, so it's not really valuable in my opinion. So I wouldn't base your premium subscription on how many InMails you get, which is something that LinkedIn kind of tries to, tries to rope you into, well, hey, we'll give you 45 InMails.

If you get sales navigator, great. The problem is they're not really that effective, so I'm cool with only getting 15 in mails that I frankly don't even use. So in my opinion, what you need to be doing is you need to be connecting with people. You need to be connecting with relevant contacts, and we will kind of go through that as we get get further down here.

Connecting with them is the most effective way to make contact on LinkedIn. Okay? So you need to find the relevant contact, you know, whether that's quality managers or whatever you're after in, in your industry, the person you need to connect with, and you need to send a connection request. Guys, don't be sending in mails.

Send your connection request. This is 100% going to be the most effective. You need to wait a day before you contact. I know that I have BD people on here that have some stupid programs that are automatically messaging these people when they connect with you guys. That is so unprofessional. Okay, I'm sorry if I'm knocking you.

If, if you are on the other side of this line and you have this robo call, basically that sends out the moment somebody accepts your invite, that is the most unprofessional thing you guys could be doing. It is the least in it has. It is, it is not genuine. It is not authentic. It is not human. It is annoying.

I get peed when somebody connects with me and I get this like robo introduction. I pretty much want to just un unconnect with them and I don't know. I don't know. Maybe that's just me, but I definitely find it. I, it drives me crazy. Okay. Because I like personal connection. I like to connect with some, somebody authentically, so.

If you guys are doing this, please stop doing it immediately. If you guys get one thing out of this, stop sending the auto-generated introductions. Please wait a day before you message me or you message somebody else because. Give them a minute, give them a minute. It's more real, it's more human and it's going to be more effective for you.

Okay? Wait a day before contact and don't be a bot. Send a very short and sweet introduction guys. Very quick. LinkedIn, especially if you're marketing to somebody, especially if the goal is to create a connection that is going to be a business to business connection. That is going to be a sales call down the line.

Let's, let's be respectful. Let's be kind. Let's be human. Let's just send a quick introduction. An introduction that I would maybe send would be like, hi, my name's Kelly. I'm working with this safety company. We provide these safety services. Thought you might be interested. It's great to connect with you.

Thanks for accepting my invite, best regards, Kelly Kennedy, my contact details. Okay. And then I'll attach a brochure. I'll attach a brochure with regards to the company that I'm doing marketing for, whether it's my company, Capital Business Development, or whether it's a client company. Okay. I'm just gonna attach a quick brochure and that's it.

You don't need this like gigantic 17 page introduction guys. Nobody's reading them. You don't have time. They don't have time. Nobody is reading your insanely long introduction messages you're sending on LinkedIn. Nobody's definitely, nobody's reading your robo introductions. Okay? Keep it short, keep it sweet.

We don't have attention spans. We're short attention spans. You got somebody in a message. Just thank them, first off, for accepting your invite. Give them a very short introduction of who you are, why you connected with them, and thank them for their time. Attach a quick brochure. And that's all you need to do, guys.

That's all a soft introduction is that's all you need to be utilizing LinkedIn for. It's not for, it's not for going back and forth a thousand messages. It's not your texting, it's not you texting with your girlfriend or, or your boyfriend, right? It's it's just a very quick introduction. Give them just something quick that they can read.

Give 'em a quick introduction and thank them for their time. That's all you need to be doing with your LinkedIn. So you wanna send a short and sweet introduction, then you wanna add the contacting company to your CRM for direct follow up later. Okay? So this is your very first step. This is your first step in the sales pro.

Well, it's not, not the first step in the sales process, right? Like hopefully you've done your target list, you've qualified the right people, and now you're searching for them, adding them, connecting them, sending introduction messages. So you're a few steps in. This is kind of the first step in the C R M process, if we want to call it that.

So in this case, now that you've sent that LinkedIn introduction, you've connected with the right person, you add them to your LinkedIn digital introduction space on your C R M. It should be the very first spot on your C R M program path. Okay? Should you pay to promote your business on LinkedIn? Well, you guys know my opinion on this, guys.

My opinion is absolutely not. Absolutely not. A passive strategy like that is literally throwing your money away. It's throwing your money away and it's expensive. LinkedIn, LinkedIn advertising is not cheap. I can't remember who I was talking to a while back, but basically a month's LinkedIn strategy was gonna cost him something like five to $6,000.

It was a considerable investment guys, and there was no guarantees, right? There's no, there's no guarantees that you're getting it in front of the right people. There's no guarantees they're even looking at it. And in my experience, they're not. Here's my proof. Hop on your LinkedIn right now. Scroll down.

I bet you the first five posts you see are ads, ads, ads, ads post. Did you even remotely look at the ads? First off, like that's, that's all I'm telling you. What I'm telling you is a passive marketing strategy is for brand recognition only. People are not buying your product on LinkedIn. I've talked about it in in previous episodes.

Feel free to go back to a few episodes back. I'm sure I talked about this, but what I was getting at in that episode, If you make the customer jump through too many hoops, they're just not going to do it. Why? Well, I'm a customer. I'm not gonna do it. You're a customer. You're probably not gonna do it unless you are in dire straits.

The problem with those ads is they only get people when they are desperate. And the reality is most of your customers are not desperate. They have options. They have other companies. They have companies, they are maybe already established with. Guess what? If you wanna break into that, guys, you need an active strategy.

You need to go hunting for them, not make them hunt for you. They're not going to hunt for you. They're not gonna click your ad and be psyched to buy your product. It's just not going to happen. Okay? So, We need to be utilizing LinkedIn for brand recognition. We do this by creating our own posts. We create our own posts, utilize utilizing ai, AI programs.

I like to use predis ai. There's lots of other AI companies, you know, I mean, I hear about chat, G P T I'm hearing about all sorts of other AI companies that you can utilize. Jasper, whatever, pick whatever you want. But the reality is you have the ability to create your own posts now, schedule them very easily and cost effectively, versus hiring a marketing company like you used to have to, or an in-house person to design your stuff.

Like graphic design, right? So there's lots of options now that are cheap, effective, and when the job is just brand recognition and having a post every Monday, Wednesday. Easy peasy guys. You can do this on your own. You don't need to pay Facebook premium ads to do this stuff for you, in which case you actually have to generate the pr, the stuff.

Anyway, so my point is, is that you are far better off to utilize a passive strategy. Connecting to groups on LinkedIn that are relevant to your industry, are relevant to the people who could buy your product, connecting to people who could buy your product, and then slowly creating this gigantic list of people you can market to.

Like on LinkedIn for instance. I'm sitting at, I think I'm, I'm closing in on 13,000 connections guys personally, 13,000 connections personally both my businesses I think are sitting around the thousand connections point, but we're getting there. It's still got some room to grow, but you know, I mean, it's fairly new with regards to the way that I've been marketing those businesses.

So the point is, is that you can do this very effectively. Actively utilizing your own social programs, and this is what I would recommend that you do. This is definitely the best way to go marketing your business. You should be hunting for the connections, reaching out to them, having an active marketing strategy, which includes, you know, these LinkedIn digital introductions, moving them into a contacted stage, finding their contact information, reaching out, making a formal introduction via phone or email, and moving them to a meeting.

Guys, because you are going to close your deals in meetings, we have to be moving them to the meeting stage. All right guys. LinkedIn rules to live by. I put just a few rules that I think if you guys note this down, if you guys get one thing from this episode specifically, I want you guys to write down these little LinkedIn rules to live by.

Maybe just print them out. Post it on your, on your computer or on your desk. But if you follow these rules, you are going to be utilizing socials effectively, guys, and that's what I want. I want you guys to be effective. I want the people listening to the Business Development Podcast to be the best business development people out there, the best entrepreneurs out there, the people who know the right strategies to market their business effectively and genuinely create human to human interaction. To stand out from the crowd in a world of passive marketing and no human interaction. Okay, so LinkedIn rules to live by. Number one, get yourself a premium account. Yes, you need a premium account.

I know it's expensive. I think it's about 900 bucks a year. Canadian. I it's, yeah, it's a couple bucks. I get it. It's worth every penny. It's worth every penny. If you utilize the strategy, I'm gonna tell you. Add 100 relevant contacts each week. You have 100 credits. They don't roll over, so if you don't use them, they're gone, guys.

They're gone. You don't get 'em back. You get a hundred invites a week. Use them every week, every single week. I don't care if you're sick. I don't care if you're on vacation. I don't care. You can do it from your bed. Okay? I add, I re I regularly add LinkedIn connections from my bedroom in the morning before a day of work.

Okay? So, It's not hard to do. It's not hard to do. Get yourself in a cadence of adding a hundred new contacts every single week. Okay? Number three, in mail is not effective. It is not effective. Guys, you know you can try it if you want to give it a go, go for it. I'm not gonna slap your hand, I'm not gonna tell you no, but I am telling you right now.

Most people are not reading your InMails, including me, including everyone that I've ever sent an in mail to. They're not getting read. They're basically going to a junk folder, okay? They're basically being sent to other, they're not relevant. People aren't looking at them. People don't want to look at them.

They know that InMails are advertisements, and we don't want to be advertised to that way. Number four, make direct connections. This is the most effective way to market on LinkedIn guys. You need to physically add them. You need to add the right connections with the right companies. You need to be doing the target work upfront to make sure, okay, this company can buy my product.

Great. This person, this position in this company can buy my product. Great. Find that position, find that person, add that person, and reach out to them directly when they accept the invite. Number five, wait a day before you reach out. Give it a little time. Don't be a robocall, don't be an ai. You're gonna get weeded out immediately.

Right? Nobody likes that. I don't like that. I hate responding to anybody who's, who does that to me, and I don't think I'm alone in this. I think a lot of people get kind of peed off if they, if they accept an invite and immediately they have a message. So give it a day. It's just, it's a day, guys. It's not the end of the world.

Give it one day. Okay. Number six, be human, not ai. Okay? Don't be a robot. Don't be a salesperson. Thank them. You know, introduce yourself. I'm John, I'm with ABC Company. I'm reaching out to you cause I think maybe this is something you could use. And I appreciate you connecting with me today. Here's a, here's a brochure and would love to chat further later.

Take care. That's it. Be a human. Be human. Like. The key to good business development guys is to not be a robot. It's to be sweet. It's to be kind, it's to be human. It's to, it's to connect with people. It's to be somebody, somebody would want to call back. Right. You know, I'm always sweet in my business development, in my calls, right?

My calls are always, thank you so much for your time. I'm just looking to connect with you. I'm representing this company. They have a product that I know you guys can use. Would love to chat further. Gimme a shout back. And I give them my phone number. And it's just, it's connect like a person talk sweet, talk kind.

Don't be a robot, don't be monotone. Be human. The more human you are, the more effective you are going to be. And number seven, make. You are importing your soft introductions to your crm. You are wasting time guys, if you are doing all these LinkedIn digital introductions and you are not tracking it, okay?

A CRM is utilized to track our work, to help us move things to the next step. So if you guys are doing your LinkedIn digital introductions, but you don't have a CRM set up, go back right now, create a crm. I have a, I have a podcast episode on how to create a crm. Okay? Or what is a CRM. Go back to it.

Listen to that. I, I outlined the steps, the ways to set up a CRM effectively. Go back, do that, and then come back to this one because once we are doing our LinkedIn digital introductions, We need to, we need to take this back to the crm. We need to take this back import this data into the first stage of the crm as, as a LinkedIn digital introduction, and that way we know what person at what company, we need to find their contact information and, and move to a contacted stage and either disqualify them or move them to a meeting where we can sell our products.

Okay. All right. Well, LinkedIn is a critical resource for business owners, entrepreneurs, BD personnel, but you must use it correctly to get us true value. Okay? That's the, that's the takeaway, right? There's a right way and a wrong way to use this. I hope that I've outlined this in a way that you understand that that is easy for you to follow, and I guarantee you that if you use it in this way, in the way that I've just taught, You're going to be a hundred percent more effective.

You're going to be able to use LinkedIn as a, as a critical, you know, immeasurable tool versus just something that's a social platform. It, there is a right way and a wrong way to use this. If you use it in the way I just showed you, you are gonna be incredibly effective. You are going to be incredibly effective with LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is amazing. You just have to use it, right. So I hope today that that's the takeaway, that you are using these skills that I've given you to utilize LinkedIn more effectively. All right, well that is the end of our episode today. I wanna just give a couple more shout outs. We've been doing this, it's been great.

I've had lots of great reach outs, so some of the people who reach out to me, I'm just gonna name you out and say thank you so much. So I just want to give a shout out to Mike d Woodford, Sevil Kayla, Sandra Petraskaite Hons, I'm sorry, Sandra, if I messed that up. And Rikin Bhavsar. They all reached out to me this week and encouraged me and said that they are loving the podcast and appreciate the work I'm doing. And I just wanna say thank you guys. Thank you so much. And I, and I apologize for, for messing up your names. Names are one of those things that, my gosh, they're just always so hard.

Something new this

week. Just want to just wanna throw it out there. So the Quill Awards, the Quill Podcast awards have opened and I have submitted the Business Development podcast. So what are some ways you guys can help me? If you guys are listening to this podcast, I need your support. I need your support.

There's a couple ways that you guys can do this to help me out. Please rate and review our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Guys, please, we, we need your reviews and ratings. That's how the algorithms boost us out to other people. So if we want to grow the podcast, I need your ratings and reviews.

So if you guys can hop on to your, your podcast, your Spotify, your Apple podcast, and just give us a rating, leave us a review. It helps immensely with the growth of our podcast, so I really appreciate that. Another, That you can help us today is that the Quill Podcast Awards 2023 are open. They're open for the next month.

You can find the link on either the The Business Development Podcast, LinkedIn page, my personal LinkedIn page, or you can go to quill podcasting.com. That's quill podcasting.com, and you can nominate us there for new business. New Business podcast. New podcast, as well as any of the business categories.

We would appreciate that. Thank you so much for listening to the Business Development Podcast. This. Episode 19 and we'll catch you on the flip side. Take care.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his special. Is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca see you next time on the Business Development Podcast.