In this episode, you learn 5 strategies to turn LinkedIn connections into conversations with prospects. If you use LinkedIn effectively, you will build credibility before your prospects ever meet you.

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This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.

Hey, welcome back to the Bullpen Sessions podcast. My name is Andy NEARY, and this is episode 270.

Today, I’m going to share with you five tips to help you grow your business on LinkedIn in 2024. Well, welcome. I am excited that you are one of my kind listeners who tunes in every single week, and you probably have noticed that the last few weeks have been going solo. Well, we are just creating a backlog right now of interviews that we are going to start rolling out here in the next few weeks.

So if you are sick and tired of hearing my voice, you’re about to get some great guests on the Bullpen Sessions podcast. But today you get me one more time solo. We’re going to talk about LinkedIn. We’re going to talk about how you can be successful using LinkedIn to grow your business. And what you’re going to learn today is, number one, how to use LinkedIn to business.

Develop to develop business. Number two, how to create effective content on LinkedIn. And number three, how to turn connections into conversations. Now, if you’re watching the video version of the podcast today, you probably might be questioning my garb. I’m in a sweatshirt stocking cap. It’s cold. Here I am recording this on a Sunday and it is about negative two degrees out in Wisconsin today.

So I am bundled up. I am enjoying the relaxation of sun, but I can promise you the content you are going to get today is on fire. This is one of my most favorite topics to talk about. I actually have done a podcast on LinkedIn. It was at least a year, year and a half ago, so I thought it’d be worth doing this again because a lot of things change on the platform and things evolve and that means strategies evolve.

So I’m going to share these five tips with you today. And if you take these tips and you apply them here in 2024, I guarantee you are going to have success creating business opportunities. So before we dive in to the Five Tips, let’s level set. Let’s talk about why I feel this is a topic worth sharing. When I look at the insurance landscape today and I look and observe how insurance producers are using the LinkedIn platform, 98% of them are not using it the right way.

And you might be one of those folks who have taken advice from a peer. And you’re wondering what that advice was because nothing’s working for you. It doesn’t seem to be creating any opportunities because you’re probably getting the wrong advice. And I will preface what I’m about to share with you by saying I believe we have one of the most effective strategies in the game today.

I really do. I don’t say that to brag. I say that because I’ve seen it. What it’s done for us and what it’s done for our clients. Now, the other reason I really want to talk about this and I’m passionate about this is it drives me nuts when I see people out there who are pontificating about how to use LinkedIn and they’re not practicing what they’re preaching.

I was at a conference six months ago speaking at a conference, and I can remember days before the conference I looked at the agenda and I wanted to see what other workshops or topics were going to be spoken about because I might have an interest in attending one of them. And there was a topic on social media. There was a specific workshop at this specific conference about LinkedIn, and I saw who the workshop host was, who was put in the workshop on.

So I went on LinkedIn, looked him up and to my amazement, here’s what I saw. Number one, I realized this conference was having a career rep do a workshop on LinkedIn. No offense to my career reps out there, guys, you are not focused on LinkedIn like many other people are. Number two, when I looked at his activity on LinkedIn, I noticed he had made two posts in the last six months.

Here is a guy being asked to teach people how to grow their business on LinkedIn, yet this guy hasn’t made a post in a matter of weeks. He’s made two posts in a matter of six months. What? This is the guy you’re learning from, okay? And that’s when I realized, All right, I have got to share what we’re doing more often because I see too much bad advice being given when it comes to using LinkedIn.

What I’m going to teach you today is very simple. It’s very practical and it works. And most importantly, it’s exactly what we’re doing today. The other problem I see right now is how most insurance producers are using the platform. I apologize, by the way, what I’m sharing today I know, is probably ruffling some feathers, but things have to be said.

If we’re going to make it better. I want you to use LinkedIn more effectively. The other problem I see right now is too many are going on the platform and they’re chasing dopamine hits over dollars. You’re so concerned about the likes and the comments and getting affection from your peers that it’s taking you completely away from the entire purpose of using that.

And so you’ve got to be careful that you’re not getting sucked into creating content specifically for the likes in the comments. Likes and comments don’t pay your bills. The other thing is you’re doing too much selling. I see too many insurance producers right now who come on the platform and they want to create activity, They want to grow their business, but they’re using it no differently than they would a cold call.

They are literally just spamming people with sales pitches left and right. Somebody accepts your connection and within minutes you’re trying to pitch them. You can’t use the platform that way. And the last thing I see that is hurting so many insurance producers right now, it’s hurt some of our own clients is expecting your content to create all the activity.

Just because you create content doesn’t mean you’re going to somehow generate all these inbound leads. You still got to do the work behind the scenes, and that’s what I’m going to talk about today. And these five tips I’m going to share with you. Part of it’s doing the work, the work behind the scenes that is going to help you turn connections into conversations.

So with all that being said, why am I talking about this? Well, when I look at what we have been doing on LinkedIn to build our own business, a complete game consulting, I feel we are doing a lot of things the right way on LinkedIn and it’s easy to get caught up in the metrics and all the analytics, the algorithms.

But I feel like we take a very simple but practical approach to how we use LinkedIn, and it’s been very effective for us. In fact, we’ve been posting content on LinkedIn for years now. I started my LinkedIn journey way back in 2014, and today we’re generating more than one inbound lead per week on LinkedIn. And so I don’t share that to brag again, I share it because what I’m about to tip them about to share with you work if you put it in the work, because they’re working for us, they’re working for our clients.

I’m sure I have some clients tuning in right now who can raise their hand and shake their head saying, Yes, this is exactly what I’m doing and it’s working for me. So let’s talk about these five tips. Now. I share this because things evolve. Things change. Six, 12 months from now, I might do another LinkedIn episode because things have changed once again.

But as I record this in January 2024, I’m going to share five tips that I think are going to be very effective for you today. Tip number one, if you want to be effective growing your business on LinkedIn, I believe the day has arrived that you should invest in either premium or sales navigator. That’s my first tip. I used to tell people, you can win easily on LinkedIn without by by using the free platform.

There’s still people out there who tell you you can’t. I’m sure you can, but if you really want to use it effectively and you really want to grow your business, I think you need to think about investing in premium or sales navigator. We use Sales Navigator here. It’s about $80 a month. I think premium’s just shy of $40 a month, but it’s worth it because it gives you access to some additional metrics, which I will talk about.

The metrics I think count in sales. Navigator is such a great search tool and it allows you to save searches that I think Sales Navigator can be a great weapon for building a list of leads, a list of prospects that that list. What I love about Navigator is as you create list, the lists evolve as people come in and out of job titles and companies.

So the list that you create on Sales Navigator are ever evolving with you, which is nice. So if you’re listening in your sales manager at an agency or an insurance partner, I would recommend investing in Sales Navigator for all your producers. I think it’s worth it today. It is a it’s a as important of a prospecting tool as a CRM, as hiring a cold calling service, whatever.

So that’s tip number one. I think you do need to invest in one of the paid platforms. I probably wouldn’t have said that a year two years ago, but I do believe today, if you really want to use it the right way, you have to think about investing in some kind of paid subscription for LinkedIn. Tip number two, this is the practicality side.

They give you a profile like a personal website. This is key. When you look at your LinkedIn profile, Imagine that profile is your personal website because if you think about it that way, a lot of what I’m about to say is going to make sense. If you look at a company’s website today, what are the key pieces of a website that are effective?

Number one, the looks, the esthetics, right? Every good website has a headline. The second you hit that website, they’ve got a headline that tells you what they do, who they do it for, how they’re going to help you survive. That’s how they catch your attention in an effective website. Also has call to action buttons everywhere. Hi, it’s Andy NEARY and thank you for listening to the Bullpen Sessions podcast.

Did you know the ideas shared on this show are things we actually specialize in health implement? If you’re an insurance professional and you want to turn your credibility into consistent client acquisition, visit complete game consulting dot com and schedule a free strategy call again that’s complete game consulting dot com to request your free strategy call. All right. Let’s jump back in to today’s podcast episode set because you want to make sure you make it easy for people to do business with You make it easy for people to schedule an appointment with you.

So you’re going to see call to action buttons all over a good website. So now a supply that concept to your LinkedIn profile. Number one, you need to have a LinkedIn banner. That’s the image sitting behind your profile picture. If you don’t have a banner today, you’ve got the generic shades of gray that LinkedIn gives you, or you’re using one of LinkedIn’s generic banners, which looks like the cartoon image of a library or a bookshelf.

You’ve got to invest the time, maybe even the money of getting a good LinkedIn banner. Now we use a tool called Canva.com Canva to create our banners is a free version of Canva, but you got to have a good LinkedIn banner. That’s the picture sitting behind your LinkedIn profile photo. I think of it as an electronic billboard. This is a chance for you to share maybe an image of your office.

Maybe you put up your company’s logo, some contact information to reach out to you. But that banner is really your electronic billboard and you’ve got to use it the right way. So that that’s the first part of a profile that you’ve got to start considering. The second part is the headline. That’s the sentence, the statement that goes right below your name.

If you look at most advisors, they use that space to tell you what they do and where they work. So employee benefit consultant at ABC Smith Agency, I don’t believe that’s important to put in that spot today. Here’s why. If you look at your profile and you go just to the right of your name, you’re going to see the name and the logo of the company you work for.

And if I scroll down to your experience section, I can tell what your job title is in a matter of seconds, what you want to use that space, that sentence under your name for is a good tagline, a good headline. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to tell me what you do and who you do it for.

Use that statement just like a company’s website. Tell me what you do and who you do it for. Now, the third part of your profile. I want you to lock in on is the call to action button. I bet you didn’t even know it’s there. But if you go and turn your creator mode on, I can’t do an in-depth presentation right now, but if you go turn your creative mode on probably says off today.

But if you turn creator mode on, you can go in and edit your headline profile section and add a call to action button. So if you have a calendar service you use where prospects can put themselves on your calendar, this is a great spot to insert that link because that call to action request a call or request an appointment is going to show up in your LinkedIn profile.

So think about this. If a prospect lands on your profile now and you have a good banner, I see who you work for. See your contact information. You’ve got that headline, that tagline that tells me what you do and who you do it for. So I know you can help me in a matter of seconds. Now I see that call to action button sitting right there.

I can put time on your calendar. I can schedule call with you, and you’re sitting there going, Man, how did I get this prospect on the calendar? This is how to use a LinkedIn profile effectively. Good banner, Good tagline, Call to action button. That’s what you want to focus on to have an effective profile today. Tip number three, you got to be posting content least once a week.

I have advisors ask me all the time how much content should I post? Is post post as much as you want. I personally believe if your mission is to help bring value to your prospects, not sell them, help bring value. You can’t post enough. You got to post at least once a week. And remember when you’re posting content, there’s two types of content you want to focus on personal stories and education.

Personal stories give your prospects a chance to get to know you and A creates the likability with your prospects. You actually can have prospects who resonate with you, who like you, who align with you before you ever meet them. If you post the right content, personal stories allow you to do that. That’s one reason we post a lot of personal stories is we want to connect with our advisors.

We want advisors who feel like they know us and we want advisors to start aligning with who we are because we know that means are probably going to be good clients for us. The second type of content education is where you get to display your credibility, and if you post good educational content today, you can build credibility with your prospects long before you ever have a first meeting with them.

Imagine walking into a meeting with a prospect for the first time, and that prospect already feels like they know you and you have already built trust and credibility because your content. It’s possible our clients are doing it all the time and educational content has to be simple. When you’re posting educational content, do not try to show your prospects how smart you are because you will lose them.

You will talk over their head. You have to remember your prospects. Level of knowledge about what you sell is much less than yours. You got to keep the education simple. Remember our credibility velocity formula value times volume equals credibility velocity. So the more value you bring with your content, the more often you bring it, the faster you will build credibility.

So with content, you have got to be posting personal stories, you’ve got to be creating educational content. And that’s how you build trust and credibility, their prospects before they meet you. It is a game changer if you do that effectively. And my tip is you got to post at least once a week. Tip number four Use link in newsletters.

I love this feature. A LinkedIn newsletter is nothing more than an article. All you got to do is go into your profile and turn on LinkedIn newsletters. By the way, To do that, you’ve got to turn creator mode on creator mode, on which I talked about earlier. But here’s what I knew why I love newsletters. If you’re somebody who likes to write articles, what makes a LinkedIn newsletter a bit different is you obtain subscribers.

So when you write in LinkedIn newsletters, you’re going to build a list of people who have chosen to subscribe to your newsletter. The first time you post a newsletter, all of your friends connections get an invite to subscribe and you’ll be surprised how many people actually subscribe. Now the key is when you write your newsletters, remember, they’re nothing more than articles.

If you write newsletters, be very clear about who you’re speaking to. Target your prospects in your articles, in your newsletters, because the right people, those people, are going to start subscribing to your newsletter because you are very clear who you’re talking to. And here’s why that list of subscribers is so important. Number one, you get to see all of your subscribers every time somebody subscribed, you see it and you can view your entire list of newsletters, subscribers.

That’s a lead list. Now, I’m not telling you to go pitch them and go sell them, but this is an opportunity to see who has chosen to subscribe to your newsletters, and it’s an opportunity to go have a conversation with them. Hey, I hope you’re enjoying the newsletters. Is there any topics you’d like me to write about? This is an opportunity.

Engage with that list that is a lead list, much more effective than just using LinkedIn articles. Now tip number five, It’s kind of the crescendo of all these other things. If if you have premium or navigator, you’re going to be able to search for more effective prospects. You’ve built your profile like your personal website. You’re posting content at least once a week.

You’ve got a newsletter that goes out once a week. The last thing you need to be doing is turning connections into conversations. This is the work behind the scenes I’m talking about too many advisors get stuck hoping or thinking their content alone is going to create inbound activity. You’ve got to do the work behind the scenes. You’ve got to send the direct messages or what they call DMS.

Right? And one of the biggest game changers I’ve noticed, even in our own prospecting, is how we use the one metric who’s viewed your profile. So if you look at your LinkedIn profile, you’ll see a metric under analytics that tells you who is viewing your profile. Now. And if you’re creating content consistently, that number is going to stay pretty high because you can have people who are looking at you, people who are checking you out.

Now I got this idea from a client and we’ve been using it for about a month and a half now, very successfully every week, at least twice a week. I’m going to go into that metric. Who’s viewed your profile? I’m going to take a look at who’s looking at us now. When I look at that list, I’m going to see two different types of people.

I’m going to see first connections and I’m going to see connects second connections. So my first rule of thumb is, as I’m looking at this list of who’s who’s doing my profile, if they’re a second connection and they look like they could be a prospect, I’m going to sentiment invite to connect. However, it’s what we do with the first connections who are prospects that I think could be super helpful for you.

When I look at the people who are checking me out, who are I’m already connected with, I apply what I call the store clerk methodology to them. I want you to imagine you’re walking into a store. The first thing that happens when you walk into the store is you get greeted by a store clerk and they ask you, Welcome.

Is there anything I can help you with? Well, if you’re just looking, you’re not really there to buy anything specific. What do you say? You say, No, I’m good. I’m just looking right. However, if you’re at the hardware store and you’ve got this hexagon shape, not that you have to get or screw, and that store clerk says, Can I help you with something?

What are you going to do? You just say, Yes, I need a dozen of these. What are they? The point is, you go to the store either with a very specific mission or you’re just there to look around. Take that approach with the people who are looking at your profile. Are they there? Did they come to look at you for a reason or are they just checking you out?

So here’s what I do. I send those people a message. Remember, these are first connections who are looking at my profile. I send them a message and I say, Hey, I noticed I was looking at my metrics. So you jumped in my profile. Is there anything I can help you with? Just like a store clerk. Now, if they were just there to check me out, here’s what’s going to happen.

They either won’t reply or they’ll say, No, madam. Good. But if they were there for a very specific reason, there’s a very good chance they’d say, Yes, I want to talk to you. And we have scheduled so many appointments out of that little feature right there, living in the DMS, not pitching people to say, Hey, can I help you with anything?

And that’s how we’re turning connections into conversation. So you want to use the analytics the right way tools like who’s viewing your profile to your advantage? How do you do it? You’ve got to have a paid subscription, but too you’ve got to be looking at those metrics. Take a look at who’s looking at you and then send them a message.

Turn connections into conversations. If you apply these five tips, you will be amazed at what LinkedIn will do for your business as long as you stay consistent every week. I’ve seen what it’s done for our business. As I mentioned earlier, we’re generating more than one inbound lead a week because we stay consistent, consistent with these principles. So the first thing let’s go back over those five tips.

Number one, you probably should have a paid subscription if you want to take LinkedIn seriously. That’s either premium or sales navigator to upgrade the profile. Think of it like your personal website. You have to be posting content at least once a week. That’s tip number three. Remember, make the content, focus the content on personal stories and education. Number four, use the LinkedIn newsletter feature to build a list of subscribers.

Those are leads. And number five, live in the dumps. Look at that metric. Who’s viewing your profile? Send messages to your friends. Connections, Turn connections into conversations. If you apply these tips, you are going to have a fun and very plentiful year using LinkedIn to grow your business. Now I want to mention one more thing before I wrap up today’s episode.

You may have noticed news coming out about our new Complete Game university membership site. We are super excited about that. It is out, it is public. If you want to know more, let me know. But the one thing I want to mention here on the heels of this today’s episode, today’s topic, we have completely rebranded our academy, our popular academy brokers have been signing up for the last two or three years, starting in February and on February 14th, Valentine’s Day, we will be running our first social media sales academy.

It is a six week course where I am teaching you how to use LinkedIn and how to create content for LinkedIn to grow your business. I believe this will be the best linked in sales workshop you have ever been a part of. It is I am teaching you exactly what we’re doing. You are going to get a 30 page link in Diamond Playbook, which is our strategy, which has a step by step video tutorial teaching you what to do, let alone you get to learn for me for 6 hours how to grow your business out like that.

So if you want to know more, I put a link in the show notes. Go check it out. Become a member of Complete Game University. But most importantly, take what you learn today. These five tips on how to grow your business on LinkedIn. And if you apply them every single week, you will create activity. You will turn commerce connections into conversations.

And before you know what, you will have inbound leads, prospects coming to you. And there is not a better feeling than that. Be good. Thank you for taking the time to listen to today’s podcast episode. Remember, if you find value in this episode, do me a favor. Give it a like, share it, post about it. Go subscribe to make sure you get every episode from us every single week.

And my only ask from you is that if you have anybody in your life, whether it be a teammate, a peer, family member or a friend, please share this podcast with them. That’s how we grow. We only grow through word of mouth and I would be forever grateful if you take the time to do that. All right, now it’s time for you to take what you learned, and it’s time for you to go out, Share your message with the world. Execution, Clarity and consistency is everything. Be well.