The crystal ball is showing us that 2023 will be a huge selling year – if you utilize LinkedIn, that is. According to the LinkedIn social selling index, leaders in social sales are 51% more likely to reach their quotas.
To make this percentage a reality for your sales team, knowing the best LinkedIn sales tactics are key.
During this episode of Evolved Sales Live, host Jonathan Fischer welcomes Monika Ruzicka Kenter back for the second time to continue the conversation about social selling on LinkedIn, how LinkedIn can help early stage companies reach objectives, the ins and outs of Sales Navigator, how to use the algorithm to your advantage, and much more.
Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more engaging sales insights and discussions! Happy watching!
Meet Monika Ruzicka Kenter:
Monika is co-creator and host of B2B social selling podcast "Straight to Business" & co-founder of Ready For Social, Thought Horizon's proprietary social selling/content distribution platform. She's used her expertise to help businesses, community organizations, NGOs, and not-for-profits profit by using social platforms more effectively.
Check out the transcription of this webinar episode below!
Jonathan Fischer 0:00
hey it's time once again for another episode of Evolve sales life. Welcome back. I'm Jonathan Fisher. According to the LinkedIn social selling index, leaders in social sales attract 45% more sales than their peers, and are 51% more likely to reach their quotas? So how's your social selling game? Well, if you'd like to get the most out of LinkedIn in the coming year, you're in the right place. Because here to help us with that is social selling expert, Monica rose Zika. Kanter, Monica, career of helping community organizations, NGOs, companies of all kinds learn to use social far more effectively. She's a highly regarded speaker podcaster. She's a trainer. And she's also the Business Development Officer for ready for social a proprietary social selling content distribution platform. Monica, fantastic to have you back on the show with us today.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 1:01
Hi, Jonathan. Great to be back here. Thanks for having me.
Jonathan Fischer 1:06
Yeah, you you're a great voice in this topic. And it's obviously something that's super important to, to us and to our audience. And if you would, just for some of the audience members who might be new, tell us a little more of what you do every day.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 1:18
Yes. So there's two things I primarily do I do business development for our own SAS company. So as you said, Jonathan, we have a social selling content distribution platform, we are a small business ourselves, and we sell to large companies. So it's a b2b sale into mostly the enterprise space, actually, for our software and our social selling program. So that's a big part of my job. And the other part of my job is to create content. And I have a podcast as well. And I train salespeople and executives, as well as business development and marketing people in how to use LinkedIn efficiently. And effectively.
Jonathan Fischer 2:05
So you spend a little bit of time on this topic sounds like,
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 2:08
yes, a lot since about 2016 on the teaching side, but I've already used LinkedIn before for my own purposes of developing business.
Jonathan Fischer 2:19
Very cool. Well, as we get into some of the content today, I may be interested interested to hear some before and after stories from your work with companies. And but and our topic today is getting the most out of LinkedIn in 2023. It's the final quarter of 2022. Hard to believe time to start planning everybody. Right? Before we get into that. So I do want to ask you, Monica, do you feel like, you know, tech company founders and business development, people are still missing the mark on LinkedIn, to a great extent.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 2:47
I feel over the past two years, people have gotten much more LinkedIn savvy, just because they had to, I think, I mean, obviously, we've talked about the pandemic, I think, maybe enough, but it's just changed the ways that people do business. And there's one thing that started before the pandemic already is that the buying processes have just changed, just as we individuals buy mostly online, we inform ourselves online, but that's happening in business buying as well. And of course, especially in the tech, SAS Industries, a lot of companies have recognized and understood that they need to be on social media or on LinkedIn to be where their buyers are looking for information. Yeah, so I feel a lot of companies have recognized it. But I think a lot of people still don't know how to use, especially LinkedIn, to their best to get the most out of it.
Jonathan Fischer 3:52
So it's getting more attention. But there are still some gaps to be filled. When it comes to execution online. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see being made?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 4:01
Yeah, some one of the biggest mistakes I see people is just too talking too much about themselves, and being too aggressive and too salesy. And while of course, it's not bad to be selling, I'm selling or you're selling is just a good business function to be in, especially with the pandemic decision makers have gotten sick of being sold to. And one thing that I hear from the executives in the companies that I consult, every single time I speak with them, is that they get sold to too much in a too little personalized way that people don't even take the time to do a bit of research about them. And that's just there's just too much of it and it's not getting anywhere. I mean, if you scale that enough, right, if you scale your not so great sales outreach enough, you will always find some people you know that will respond or something, but it's not a very effective way. And I feel you can burn a lot of potential on LinkedIn by just being overly aggressively salesy and not enough personalized.
Jonathan Fischer 5:14
Is this in the tone of the messaging? Is it just going straight to a pitch too soon? What are some of the ways that this is manifesting?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 5:22
Yeah. So the first thing is actually, yes, doing too little research and the tone? I mean, you wouldn't believe so I sell social selling solutions and consulting, you wouldn't believe how many message and I'm not even the decision maker in that sense, right? You wouldn't believe how many messages I get from other people trying to sell me exactly what I sell. That's just so pointless. Like, they didn't even take the time to check my profile. Or maybe they set the you know, their search parameters badly. Like, what's the point? Yeah, it's like, maybe I'm happy to connect with them. But what are they trying to sell me? And, and I think like the tone of voice, if you're trying to sell something, it's okay to be transparent about it. But then, you know, try to tell the people why they should talk with you. It's not only how great your solution is, and what all your your software can do, but invest a bit of time and to understand your customer pain points and addressing them in your outreach.
Jonathan Fischer 6:24
Well, thanks that makes a nice segue into my next question is what what should we be doing? What are some of the main ways we can up our game, you've already made an entree into one area of doing some research, before you begin to reach out now there's this sort of there's I don't know if it's a balancing act, or maybe it's more of a tension between the need to have enough volume of activity, but to make sure that that that the activity, is it at the right quality? Would you talk to that a little bit? How can we effectively research and still hit some good numbers in terms of activity?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 6:54
Yes, so one thing so basically, the whole space of social selling, so using the, you know, your personal social media, as a sales or business development person, as part of influencing your buyers, right, so it's a game out of various elements. So it's the first thing is you have to have a good looking LinkedIn profile. And that's where it starts. I mean, if you don't have a good quality picture on your profile, and you're trying to sell, you know, high value, or even, you know, anything, like what do you expect? Like, you look at yourself on your LinkedIn profile, and ask yourself, if you didn't know yourself, would you buy from you anything? Would you even talk to you in a professional context, and I'm not trying to insult anybody. But unless you're a super like hip marketing person, like take off your sunglasses, you know, don't have a person with a don't have a picture with somebody else that you're hugging, and you cut yourself out, that just doesn't inspire a lot of trust in you as a person. That's the very simple thing. On your profile, also, don't talk about just how great of a salesperson you are, and how you've made the winner's circle or the quota every single year, for five years in a row, but talk about what you have to offer. What problems are you solving. So really focus on your audience not on yourself, then that's the first thing your your profile needs to look good, right? Build the right network, you need to be connected with the right people, and also build relationships with people beyond a one off sale. You know, if you're selling to small businesses, you can't build relationships with as many people as if you for instance, sell in an account based approach, you have a smaller list of targeted accounts that's easier to build relationships with your decision making unit, right but build some develop some relationships on LinkedIn with people and just come across as a real person. It's a social network, and people expect you to somehow appear not like a robot or somebody who's just pushing out messages, but a real person who has real conversations on the platform.
Jonathan Fischer 9:13
When you talk about reaching out and building that network, is that another area where you can be a little too salesy. I know that sometimes someone reaches out to me and the initial request looks good. And I'll be like, okay, cool. They looked like a cool person. And then boom, here comes the sales pitch, like the very next message is probably automated. Yeah, talk to us about that.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 9:32
Yes. So that's one thing that decision makers also hate, right? If you approach them kind of in a friendly way, and then they accept your connection requests. And the next boom is the sales pitch. So it's, in my opinion, again, as I said, you can be transparent that you're trying to sell something, but at least then you know, really, if you even if you use automation software, really narrow down the audience to whom you Send a certain type of messages. And you know, really be very specific and very targeted and address a specific pain point that you're helping them solve. And make it clear in your messaging that you are trying to help them what they can expect for you, and what's in it for them to engage with you. And yeah, don't try to be on the one hand side, don't try to make it look like a casual networking, and then hit them with your sales pitch as soon as they accept your request. You know, I mean, I genuinely, yes, and it annoys people. Really, it annoys people. And then you know, if you want to have a bigger sales outreach, then it's better to use a tool like the Sales Navigator, and have, you know, dedicated, dedicated sales messages, which can people which people can recognize as such, have a good subject line. So that motivates people to open the message that you send to them, and be very concise, and do that at scale, that you know, the people who you hit at the right moment of their buying journey, they will open your message, and they will want to have a conversation with you. So I
Jonathan Fischer 11:15
have some good examples, maybe some bad examples, without setting real company names. But
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 11:20
yes, no, one of the one one bad example is a lot of people, I don't know, a lot of the emails that I receive, they have a subject line that says Quick question. I'm like a person who I don't know who wants to ask me a quick question that sounds like that smells to me, like somebody who didn't take any time looking into who I am? And what kind of quick question Could that be those of the things I don't even open, be very specific use a relevant keyword. For instance, if you're selling something automation, or you're selling to the automotive industry, use just a relevant keyword that you think interests these people, like automotive automation, use that in your subject line, something that is top of mind for those people, and that tells your audience, okay, you have targeted this to them somewhat, you know, quick question just doesn't cut it.
Unknown Speaker 12:12
Right, right.
Jonathan Fischer 12:14
So when when you're talking about sending these messages using Sales Navigator and having a relevant subject line? Can you unpack that a little further for us? Like maybe give us the ABCD steps? Like I've reached out to them? Give us an example of what that should sound like maybe give us an example, then what is the follow up looking like am I don't want to have like a white paper that's relevant to them and give it with no strings? Do I want to make them aware of a live event I'm doing? Should I have something like that is that important? Like, maybe give us a little more of the nuts and bolts?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 12:43
Yeah, so I think it I think it can be like, so let's say if you are selling account based relationships, and you make it very specific, so for account based selling into large accounts, I would say make it as personal as you can, okay, and then build the relationships, connect with the relevant decision makers, and really start building the relationships. Okay, you can start with a connection request to individual selected people. And ideally, you have looked at their profile before you write a connection request, and you have something specific to say to that person. Okay? I've seen that you have enjoyed that you have posted something about this topic or you know, you know something about that company and say, I know, this is top of mind for you know, for your company, for your industry, and you go with that, and then you strike a conversation, maybe in the follow up, you can just ask them a question, you know, how is it? Is this something that you are currently dealing with? Is this something that is important for you in the you know, your current strategic priorities or something, or how do you deal with this and that topic, so something that doesn't smell too salesy, but that helps you show interest in what they do, but at the same time, open a conversation with them. Okay, and then take it from there, then you can offer them some material, if you have a white paper or something, don't put it I say don't put it behind any wall where people have to register, share it and say, Hey, I thought you might like this resource, or you have maybe an interesting blog post, and invite them to have a conversation with you. And depending on if so if you use the Sales Navigator, which is this premium sales tool from LinkedIn, you can put smart links into your messages. And you can like get analytics about people opening your lead documents that you attach. So that's a clever ways you can see if people have shown interest in your document. So that's an approach I would say for the enterprise account based sales like be personal and really think about the person that you are trying to sell to. Now, if you're selling at scale to like the SMB market or something you I mean you Can't go as personal because you just have too many targets out there. But then, as I said, have either a connection request to as many people as possible, and just say, hey, you know, I'm in this industry, I would love to connect with you, and send it out to as many people as possible. And then to the people that accept your connection requests, you can have a follow up message and say something like, I understand a lot of people in your position are currently dealing with this. Would you be interested in a conversation about that? So make it about the pain points, and not about your pitch?
Jonathan Fischer 15:44
Yeah. Okay. So there's a, for example, if there's something ended here, where they could maybe still take some action that could benefit them. Maybe it's a government program, and you're a CPA or something like that, that could be relevant, if you have a business service that, you know, they're probably coming into their q1 expenditure, maybe, you know, what their, their, you know, what their fiscal year is? Something like that. Is that helpful, by the way, as well, if you have like, sort of a time horizon, and that can create a little bit of urgency?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 16:11
Yes. You say, you know, it's the end of the year, you know, a lot of people in you know, a lot of finance, decision makers and small business are currently you know, trying to figure this out, or, you know, there's a big industry event, you say, I know, a lot of people are getting ready for this event or something like this. I mean, just something that is part of their thinking space at the moment that you reach out, I think is very helpful, instead of just talking about what you have to offer.
Jonathan Fischer 16:40
Great, great. And, by the way, a quick little sidebar reminder, we have some of our audience members sending in questions on chat, we appreciate that we're gonna, we're gonna bank those and get into those here shortly in our q&a section, which will come here on the half hour. So thanks for that. Keep them coming. Audience members. So, Monica, when you're talking about Sales Navigator, everyone kind of knows about the tool. And I think everyone has at least kind of put it to some use, who's in sales? or they know someone who has right, it's part of the conversation, I'll bet it's really highly underutilized would be my bet. I know, I'm not maximizing it in my own efforts with with our company. What, what are your recommendations for that? Are there some Can you give some tips and tricks and best practices with that tool?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 17:25
Yes, so the Sales Navigator, you're right, it's highly underutilized, even by those people that pay the monthly subscription fee. You know, one of the things honestly, I believe, because it's not a very sexy tool. If you look at it, it's not fun to interact with it versus like LinkedIn, you have a lot of pictures. And there's a lot of things going on with your feed videos, and so on, the Sales Navigator just isn't the user interface is rather boring, honestly. So the functionality is really in the detail that you can get out of the Sales Navigator, the information that you can get out of the Sales Navigator, and for me, one of the keys to using the Sales Navigator is to set it up well, to use the features that it offers to first of all zero in to the to the people that you really want to target, like your ICP, like really find those people and set the right search parameters, then define your leads lists and keep them relevant. If you don't make sure that they are kept relevant, then you all of a sudden get all these notifications from people that are not relevant to your animals. So invest the time in keeping your lists organized and relevant. And then go into it every single day. And follow up with the notifications that the LinkedIn Sales Navigator gives you. That's one of the main benefits that I see in it, that you can cut out all the other noise from LinkedIn that is maybe fancy and interesting, but it doesn't help you achieve your sales goals. But in the Sales Navigator, you can focus on just yours, your your prospects and your main accounts and get notifications about what decision makers have been changing? What is the latest news about the company? Are they growing? Are they not growing and those are all triggers for you to reach out to them or you know, to categorize them accordingly to say okay, this, this is the people I want to reach out to today or you can follow up with their content or you know, comment on what they are posting on social media. So I'm sorry go ahead. No, I wanted to say so. So those are the main things is like keep it organized and relevant and interact with a daily because if you don't, then you have all these like hundreds of notifications that you feel like you're falling behind and then it's like not really worthwhile paying the money also
Jonathan Fischer 19:59
rather that daily engagement is gonna keep you sharper keep that list a little bit more focused and doesn't seem like you're, you're just turning into a chore. Rather, you're actually truly engaged. When it comes to to building these these lists, when you're doing an account based play versus something more in a more enterprise level, what, what are some thoughts on how that might differ? Give us some some pointers on that, please.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 20:25
What do you mean? Well,
Jonathan Fischer 20:27
when, like in your targeting, like are there because it's tougher to build a list sometimes when your sale is more complex, right. So maybe building using the these navigator tools, when you have stakeholders that are in five departments is a little bit challenging, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. I didn't ask that very well, hopefully. It's okay, so operator error, my apologies.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 20:48
Don't worry at all. So um, if you sell more to like a mass market, like SMBs, then I would say you organize your lists more by a specific job title, like the head of it, or the VP of develop product development, whoever you're selling to, then maybe across a certain region or across a certain industry, okay, versus if you're selling enterprise, then you organize yourselves by accounts. And there's a nice feature in the LinkedIn Sales Navigator where you can create account maps of your account where you can organize the main decision makers, according to the you can create a three tier system out of the main decision makers in your organization. And then maybe you have a leads list of that contains, you know, your top three accounts, and have the main decision makers that are part of your decision making unit and that leads list.
Jonathan Fischer 21:52
I'll bet this audience members who weren't aware of what you just said, so there's a lot of functionality inside of Sales Navigator that you can use to organize your and target yourself when there are these different departments, you'd like to sell from the top? Do you recommend that? Or is it sometimes good to hit, you know, somewhere in the middle of the organization? If there's a departmental head who may or may not have final decision making authority? What are your thoughts on on that?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 22:15
Yes, so yes, so I, I believe that it's, it really depends who you're selling to, right, if you're selling into the enterprise, then selling to the C level people is extremely hard. If you sell to smaller companies, then it's a little bit easier. If you have a company with like 20 people or 100 people, it's probably easier to get to the top levels, then have you have like, a 50,000 employee company, but what I believe to selling to the people that are within your reach, and building relationships with them, it could be the director level, the head of level, the VP level, just build relationship with them. And just try to get to I mean, so let me take a step back. If you're selling enterprise, that would be my strategy. If you're selling to the SMB market, then I would say go for the people that you really want to go after, and scale your efforts.
Jonathan Fischer 23:20
Okay, that makes a lot of sense.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 23:21
But you need to be targeted. Again, just don't make it. As we said, everything I said before is true. Don't just send out like random generic messages, they will not get you very far.
Jonathan Fischer 23:33
Well, let's talk about the difference in scale on the other side of the table. So if you're prospecting from a company that's newer, maybe you're in your first second, third year, and you're trying to hit some big, some some big wins. What are your thoughts? Are there some special advantages that you have as a smaller company? I mean, they haven't. They don't know you've met them? Right. But here you are in this social network. Are there some advantages? Are there some challenges for the startup in, say, their third year? You know, round a got it got to grow fast? What can they do?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 24:01
Yeah. So I think for small companies, it's yeah, it's definitely hard. Because people typically don't know you, you don't have made a name for yourself, unless you are one of these companies that everybody talks about, because you have like invented something really cool that, you know, or some very well known people have invested in you. But let's say that's not the case. Nobody knows you. So in that sense, I would say you can do a lot and you typically have also small budgets, like you don't have like big money available. So I think that LinkedIn and social selling are very interesting tools. Because you don't have to spend a lot of money, but you can get a lot of impact by reaching out to people and also by putting interesting content out there. So we haven't really talked much about the content, content marketing, and you know, the intersection of content marketing and SEO Hale's has become such an important factor, because as I said earlier, the buyers are more and more self. How do you sell it? How do you say it sorry, they they determine themselves when they want self selected, yeah, self selected Exactly. So it's harder to sell to people people want to buy. And when they are ready to buy, they want to find their own information. So it's really important as a smaller company to have relevant information out there information that educates people about what you're doing, that helps people that helps your target audience do a better job at what they do. So you want to position yourself as an expert out there, that people can find your content when they are doing research, when they are doing their own research. And you can leverage your team, you can leverage your sales team, you can leverage your executives, you can leverage your entire all of your employees by getting that content out on social media. And that's where social selling you know, comes in that you can really leverage everybody in your company makes it interesting content that you produce available to everybody and also get you know that content distributed much further than if you just for instance, put it on your company, social media channel. Yeah. So that's, that's one of the things that's really important for small companies be smart about the content, and about leveraging the social media to get that reach.
Jonathan Fischer 26:38
Excellent. Well, so that sounds like sales enablement is something that you should invest in earlier rather than later, if you're in the startup phase.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 26:45
Yes, and you know, that was so our company, we have a tool that that we typically provide to larger enterprises that then put all the content in there for hundreds and hundreds of salespeople to share. But, you know, there are tools that are free like Hootsuite, for instance, that you can use to put the content in there and share it with with your employees and they can, yeah, just share it on their social media.
Jonathan Fischer 27:12
Give them some tools, instead of just say go, go make something happen. Give them give them some leverage that they can use. I love it. Well, Monica, our conversation is rapidly flown by we're going to have a little more conversation here in a few moments. But first of all, if our audience would like to take things further with what you're discussing with, especially content and social selling, what can they do?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 27:33
Yes, sorry, Can Can you just say that again, I was already getting ready to answer some questions from the audience and
Jonathan Fischer 27:42
our audience in especially if they have to go. But for the free staying behind stick around. But for those who want to take what you're talking about to the next level, what can they do?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 27:51
Yes, so you can connect with me on LinkedIn. Monica, then my last name is Ruzicka, R U Z I C K A. And you can also visit our website at readyforsocial.com.
Jonathan Fischer 28:05
All right, excellent. Well, and before we get to that, I want to remind everybody that we are proudly powered by Overpass, and Overpass is really the leading platform to find pre vetted talent. If you're trying to build your team quickly. If you're in that startup mode. And you need quality people that are pre vetted, have great phone talent. And you can even hear voice samples, quickly screen them by industry, get them interview and get them hired, you can do that in days on overpass.com. So check it out. It's free to create your own account. See for yourself, check them out. over@overpass.com All right, well, let's jump in. We're gonna get into our q&a with our guests. We've got a couple of questions here. Monica, what caught your eye Feel free? hold forth, what was the quote question you were about to answer?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 28:46
Well, I just saw the first question because I started reading top down Ruby high. Where's the best place to post the content? And how often should you post content? Is it best to just offer the content for free or ask them for their contact info. So when we talk about LinkedIn, I always recommend posting the content on your personal profile. I mean, if you have so typically small businesses or even larger business you have, you should have a LinkedIn company page that has your company logo on it and where you, you know, have the basic information about your company and occasionally share updates of your company because that just helps build the credibility, especially for small companies that are not yet very well known in the market. But the power does never come out of your small companies LinkedIn page, so it comes out of your personal profile. So when you post content, make sure you post it on your personal profile, so it gets shared with a maximum number of people. That's one thing and then yes, offer the content for free, I would say on LinkedIn, or on social media. I would recommend to share the content to make it aware level for people to educate people to really show that you are the resource that can help them solve their problem. I believe that's, that's a better invest than you know, collecting people's email addresses that stress. If you're a large company, then okay, you can collect people's email addresses maybe a little bit easier. But if you're a small company, I would say, give the content and build that solid leadership for yourself.
Jonathan Fischer 30:31
Well, if you if you have the right kind of conversation, there's going to come a logical point where they're going to need to give you something further anyway. Right. That can happen organically.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 30:41
Yes, yes.
Jonathan Fischer 30:43
Okay, and here's a question from here's a question from Andrew, do you recommend initiating connections to weigh in and engage via private message with post? Like you're putting content out there? Should you individually ask for people to go check it out? And give you?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 31:01
Yes, yes, I do recommend that. I mean, that's hardly scalable. Because that just takes a lot of time. But I just did that this morning. I had some interesting webinar that I saw, that is taking place in December. And I thought, that would be an interesting one to attend. It's not my webinar, but it's still an interesting one to attend. And I sent it to several of my contacts, and said, Hey, I recommend you, I just posted about this webinar, and I sent them that post by message and say, Hey, I think this would be interesting content for you. That's a very, very well, valid strategy. If you have key decision makers that you're trying to reach, you can scale that for hundreds of people, obviously.
Jonathan Fischer 31:45
Is there a little nuance there? I wonder like, if, if I'm being asked to go there to put to give a reaction, I feel like I'm being asked to do something for them. And that may be fine. But that may or may not be the impression I want to create in the prospect like I already know the person and their friend that I don't mind. Right. But the target for business? That right? Is there a nuance there? So they just asked me to check it out and leave it at that, rather than ask me to comment, post and comment.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 32:13
Yeah, so there's two things. So the one thing is that if you post something that's important to you, and maybe it's a certain piece of content that you share on social media, and you have certain people in your prospective audience in mind, right, that they are in a certain stage of their sales funnel, whatever, you have had initial conversations, and these are the questions that come up, and you kind of can't follow up with them right now. But you want to have some sort of content that they can engage with, and you can show them here, this might be interesting for you, then this is a piece of content that you can just share with them with direct message to make sure they see it. Yeah. Don't ask them for engagement. Asking for engagement is something you can do with people in your network that you are closer with and say, Hey, I've shot this post. Would you mind giving me a like for additional engagement? Yeah, don't ask your prospect to engage with your content.
Jonathan Fischer 33:06
Because I've seen it. I've seen it both ways. I don't mind if if if a buddy asked me to do that. But if somebody I don't know is asking them like, seems a little. I don't I don't know you yet. I don't know why I know that to you. But okay, maybe, yeah, think about it.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 33:19
No, don't do that. And there's one interesting thing that I would like to mention for everybody who's on this call. So if you look for like the little like bit of details on how to, you know, get more engagement, get more reach, get more visibility, there is a guy on LinkedIn that you should follow. His name is Richard founder bloem. I'm not affiliated with him at all. He's just in my network, Richard van V A n d e r blown. So you M O M, probably be L O M. B? Oh, yes. Okay.
Exactly. Or you can just enter in the LinkedIn search, the algorithm report. So he analyzes like LinkedIn really how the LinkedIn algorithm works with a team of researchers and his network. I think they analyzed like 9000 posts, and he has like a 57 page report on how to get like the best engagement, the best reach and what kind of tweaks you can make. So you don't have to ask like the people in your network for engagement like all the time,
Jonathan Fischer 34:27
right, all right. Which is which is good. That's a good thing. Yes.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 34:31
All right. Some more questions I saw below there was an interesting questions for an account based approach by gonna Haganah foreign account based approach many sellers go up to the CEO but totally miss out the board level who often make the final decision? Yes, I think that's a good one, two, I mean, that's an enterprise you sell really not to one person but you sell to a whole decision making unit. And I think for that again, the LinkedIn Sales Navigator is A great tool to map this decision making unit out for you and to build the relationship with multiple people in that target account.
Jonathan Fischer 35:09
Here's a good question from Rudy as well. She's asked Ruby, I should say, sorry about that. Yes. Where's the best place to post the content? How often should you post content? And is it better to ask for free? Or ask them? You know, what we dealt with that?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 35:21
Was that one? Oh, that's okay. Maybe
Jonathan Fischer 35:22
we're gonna double dip on Ruby. So I had no one wanted to hear from Greg. Here we go, Greg, this is the one want to show. So how long should the message be? And how many follow ups? Are there some best practices? Obviously, it's probably more art than science at this point. But what are your thoughts?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 35:36
Yes. So I think the link, I need to think I'm not a numbers person, honestly. So I think the LinkedIn when you are in the LinkedIn Sales Navigator, then they tell you, I think it's 500 characters or something, it's fairly short. And you need to realize that by now, I think 58% of people use LinkedIn on their phones. And then you imagine you scroll through a long message on your phone. So I would say keep it short and sweet. Like maybe two or three paragraphs, don't bother with a long introduction about yourself or your company, but really talk about what you have to offer. And then if that sparks people's interest, then they will come to your profile and check you out.
Right, right, for sure. Yes. And then the follow ups, there's also various like, you know, I think people have different opinions about that, as sometimes, you know, there are some people who like to follow up until they get a clear yes or no, even at the risk of like annoying people. But I know people that are very successful with like five or six sequences that they have, I would recommend, if you do like a repeated, like structured follow up process with messages to people, then always have on not always, but most of the time, have like an additional piece of content of value that you're offering to the people. I mean, don't do six follow ups that just read or buy, I think I just want to bring this back to the top of your inbox or something like that. But Shan interesting piece of content, and just leave it with that and offer offer to have a conversation. So build out like your follow up journey with REL relevant pieces of content and value that you can offer. Yeah, and yeah, I personally, because I again, I sell into a large accounts, I like to do my follow up also through LinkedIn. So I have a list of people that I have mapped in the Sales Navigator, and I always get a notification when they post something on LinkedIn. And instead of reminding them to come back to me or to have a conversation with me, I add conversation to their LinkedIn posts, and buy them you know, it's always remind that I pop into their conscious conscience, and I have done something for them. Because I have commented on that post, that's a different way of following up. But again, that's not scalable about across 1000s of prospects, that's more something you can do when you have like a targeted list of accounts.
Jonathan Fischer 38:11
Love it. That's a double benefit in that in that regard. I have a question for a LinkedIn user. And I wasn't asked about video messages. This user is asking about a concise, but casual audio message to your first level connects, would that help you stand out? And would you be inclined to listen? Since that's relatively rare, what are your thoughts?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 38:30
I think it definitely stands out. There's very little, very few people that do audio messages, or even like recorded video messages. I think that's definitely something worth trying. Because people will remember you that way. And they have a different aspects of your personality. They have your voice they have seen you. Does it necessarily make you sell more? That's a good question. I mean, it really depends on if you have a matching product, but it's definitely obviously I think it's definitely a way to try to engage with people, though not everybody. It depends also on your target audience, not everybody might really understand it's like, okay, well, why is this people? Was this person sending you a video message, right? It's like, depends a little bit on your target audience if you feel they would be receptive to that.
Jonathan Fischer 39:21
That's great. I've got some follow up questions. I'll go ahead and throw in myself. One is the phone was the center of b2b selling for generations, literally, right? Yeah. And now we have this whole other world where a lot of us are a little annoyed with our phones. And it's very difficult for business development people to I think, even know what to properly do with it. We got sales managers still expecting dials. Can you talk a little bit about that tension? And where what is the role of telephone communications in 2023?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 39:52
Yeah, that's a good one. So I'm not by any means an expert on phone sales. But what I can say from from our company So we sell services to the enterprise space. So we still use phones. Okay. But it is very, very, very, very, very hard to get people on the phone. And once you have them on the phone to actually hear something else, then take me off your list. I mean, I guess it's worth a try. You have? I don't know what to say about it. I think there might still be a place we still do it. But that's not really where our business comes from.
Jonathan Fischer 40:31
Yeah. So is the in terms of structuring your funnel? Do you find that most of more successful efforts are trying to drive a basically a zoom call or whatever platform some sort of a video interaction as a, like the logical step to begin discovery? Is that what you're seeing, are there other other patterns out there that also work?
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 40:51
Yeah, no, I mean, what I meant to say is that phone I think, as the very first touch point is hard. It's, I think, becoming harder and harder. I think if you have a strategy that combines various channels, and I'm sorry about the life, I'm getting, like the sunlight, and it looks like funny, well, you're you're a
Jonathan Fischer 41:10
very bright person. And now you just look all the brighter. So
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 41:15
I think, to have a combination of channels. So you know, we combine email, we combine LinkedIn, that's a lot of referrals. Like don't forget about your existing customers, right, having conversations with them and seeing who they can refer you to. But yes, ultimately, you do want to get the people on the phone, be that the phone call be at the Zoom call. Unless you have a Self Service website where people can go and buy your service. You you will have to speak to them eventually. Right. So that's the point of conversion you are trying to get through LinkedIn or through email, you do want to speak to the people and have the opportunity to sell to them eventually.
Jonathan Fischer 41:59
Yeah. So maybe to drive toward a phone call can be effective, maybe for like super early discovery, get the get the ball rolling towards something more, especially if there's other stakeholders, get one or two key people on your phone. Get them in agreement, there's value to continue the conversation. That's still that that would be recommended in many cases, as you see it.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 42:18
I think so. Yes. I know that fits that
Jonathan Fischer 42:21
have actually abandoned the phone, almost entirely. They literally it's all texting. It's all to a zoom. It's all online entirely. And it's probably too much of an extreme. And I still see companies trying to pound the dang telephone to death. Yes.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 42:34
And you're right. Yeah, I think so. And the technology and the phone space is also evolving. I mean, now you have technologies where you can dial, you have a software on your computer, you can dial like five different numbers at once. And if one picks the phone, they get placed on hold. So I think there's a lot of happening in that space. And I'm not dismissing it, but I think it's getting harder and harder to
Jonathan Fischer 43:01
reach. It can be effective. Just it's all it's all how it goes back to targeting which has been your one of your key points today, among many great key points, Monica, so we really appreciate you being with us. It's been as every time we talk with you it's a very valuable conversation. So I want to thank you once again for being with us on the show.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 43:17
Thank you so much for having me and thank you for everybody to listen to for listening if you have still conversation questions that we haven't answered yet. Feel free again to connect on LinkedIn and do a one on one follow up.
Jonathan Fischer 43:32
Yeah, I love it. Check out Monica on LinkedIn and get a conversation started with her and take it to the next level. Yes it to our audience for all of us here on the team. We do thank you for making the show such a success without you. It's not possible. So hey, keep the momentum rolling. Tell a friend and come on back here. Same Same time, same station for another episode in Friday's to come we'll talk to you soon. Thanks for being everybody.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 43:53
Bye bye now.
