LinkedIn Response Series - LinkedIn Profile Views To Appointments | Donald C. Kelly - 2020

Getting a notification that someone viewed your LinkedIn profile can be exciting, but most sellers don't know what to do next. In this episode of the LinkedIn Response Series, I am sharing how to turn profile views into meaningful conversations that can lead to appointments and new business. Instead of ignoring those notifications or sending an immediate sales pitch, I'll show you a simple process that helps you engage interested prospects the right way. Why Profile Views MatterA LinkedIn profile view is often a sign that someone is interested in learning more about you or your business. They may have found you through your content, received a connection request from you, or be researching your company before reaching out. In many cases, prospects are doing their homework before booking a meeting. That makes profile views an early buying signal that should not be ignored. Avoid the Wrong ResponseIt is tempting to react in one of two ways: send an immediate sales pitch or do nothing at all. Neither approach is effective. Instead of rushing the conversation or letting the opportunity pass, use the profile view as a reason to start a genuine connection. The goal is to build a relationship before discussing your product or service. Start the Conversation NaturallyA simple, honest message can open the door to a meaningful conversation. If someone views your profile, take a moment to review theirs. If they look like a good fit, send a connection request with a friendly message acknowledging that they visited your profile. Asking why you are not already connected feels natural and often encourages a response without sounding salesy. Once they accept your request, continue the conversation by asking what prompted them to visit your profile. Their answer may reveal a need, an opportunity, or an interest in working together. Focus on People Showing InterestNot everyone who views your profile will become a customer, and that's okay. Some people will decide you are not the right fit, while others are already interested in what you have to offer. Focus your time on the people who are engaging with your profile, content, or connection requests. Those are the conversations that are most likely to turn into appointments and future business opportunities. Make Profile Reviews a Weekly HabitFollowing up on profile views does not have to take a lot of time. Set aside time each week to review who has visited your profile. Reconnect with people you've already engaged with, and send connection requests to new prospects who fit your ideal customer profile. A consistent follow-up process helps you start conversations before your competitors have the chance. "The profile view gets overlooked, and it is a critical spot." — Donald C. KellyResources Keep track of your sales activity and boost your results with the Prospect Pro sales tool https://prospectpro.io/. Step up your sales game with Sales Mastermind https://thesalesevangelist.com/sales-mastermind/. Get accountability, stay motivated, and tackle the blockers keeping you from hitting your goals. Visit Blue Mango Studios https://bluemangostudios.com/ for help in creating podcast production content. Sponsorship Offers This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot. With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales https://www.hubspot.com/products/sales. This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn. Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your emails? Sign up for a free 60-day trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator at linkedin.com/tse https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/cx/20/09/sales-navigator-podcast?src=re-pod&trk=tse&veh=tse&mcid=6897323946090332160. This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation. Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linkedin https://tsesales.typeform.com/to/UCMfjZbX. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey http://thesalesevangelist.com/survey. https://tsesales.typeform.com/to/lc5yAa8P We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sales-evangelist/id788738885, Google Podcast https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3RoZXNhbGVzZXZhbmdlbGlzdC5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj5kaXI3Pj2AhVKcjABHW5PDVwQ9sEGegQIARAC, Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-sales-evangelist-sales-trainingspeakingbusiness-marketingdonald, or Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1NjzsFjQwVrgboUfDvbzd5?si=LdQOJDc1T-WBPMxr1h3RsA. Audio provided by Free SFX, https://freesfx.co.uk/ Soundstripe https://soundstripe.com/, and Bensound http://www.bensound.com/. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and produced by Brightseed and Hill.

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  You get a LinkedIn notification that so-and-so viewed your profile. Man, this is exciting! You get pumped up, adrenaline starts rushing. But then all of a sudden, it dies and wanes because you don't know what to do, so you do nothing about it. How do you best work with people viewing your profiles? If you've listened to the first episode in our response series, well, this is going to be perfect. If you haven't listened to the first one, come back and check this one out. Let's dive in.

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  Hey, hey, hey, everyone. Welcome to another great episode of the Sales Evangelist Podcast. I'm your host, Donald C. Kelly, the Sales Evangelist. And I'm so excited for another great episode. I'm so excited to be here with you today. And on this episode, we're going to be talking about getting responses on LinkedIn. This is a part of our LinkedIn Response Series. We're doing four-part episodes on this in this series. Previously on the Sales Evangelist, we spoke about your headline and how that helps you to get responses and to get engagement. Number two, today, we're going to be talking how we give an example of how my team members getting actual people messaging them about potential opportunities because of the headline is just so descriptive. Number two, today, we're going to be talking about the profile views. What happens now when people start looking at your profile? If you listened to the past episode, you know exactly

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  what we're talking about. If you're a first time listener to our podcast, please thank you so much for being here and subscribe to the show as well as check out the previous episode in the series. Only four episodes in the series and they're short, so you'll be able to tackle that one really easily, but it's going to help you when it comes to the profile views. If not, you can still listen to this one and get benefit from it. But the profile views on LinkedIn, this is remarkable and some levels of LinkedIn provide this. If you have LinkedIn Sales Navigator, par for the course, you get that. If you have some of the next upgrades, you get it. If you have the basic LinkedIn, you get some views and the notification who's looking at your profile, but it's going to stop after a while. It's going to say somebody from so-and-so industry, have it blurred out, but you want to get that. So I would encourage you to upgrade to do that. If you are trying, thinking about LinkedIn, go to my LinkedIn link and they sponsor this podcast,

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  but I'm not doing this episode because they sponsor it. It's because it just works. But go to the LinkedIn.com/TS e LinkedIn.com/TS e and that will give you access to LinkedIn Navigator for 60 days rather than the 30-day trial. And that way, you can also be able to test out some of these cool things that we're talking about and you'll be able to see the profile view. But listen to the profile view now. If somebody lands on your profile, you want to be able to, there's several things that's going to happen. Either one, they're falling into a couple buckets. Somebody who is searching for your product or service, or two, maybe somebody trying to sell you something, or three, it's perhaps somebody that you send a connection request to or you're Engaging on their content and they're coming back to your profile. Number two, we're going to ignore that. People who are trying to sell you something unless you're in need of it.

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  That's great, but more than likely it's either someone that's searching for your services and they're like interested or you're finding someone that you engage with, whether through a connection request or you engage on their profile. And then now they're looking at your profile. Now, why do profile views matter? This is intentional. Based on what I shared with you, these are people who are literally looking at you and that's a pretty big deal. They're saying, Mandy is an awesome person. And yes, she is. You are Mandy. Or yes, Jacob is fantastic. Yes, you are Jacob. More importantly, they're probably saying, I'm interested in what you have. Your headline grabs my attention. I want to see what else you do. And look at that. Also, I've given episodes about this already, the dark funnel. It could be a dark funnel scenario where they're looking at your organization

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  or probably looking at you from an email you send and looking at your LinkedIn profile. And they're just trying to see, can I get a little bit more about this person? I'm kind of sus on this person. And they're trying to get a little bit more insights of who you are. And they're looking at your profile doing the research. And that could be the dark funnel. Or perhaps they're looking for products and services in your space. And you talk about that often on LinkedIn. So they're looking at your profile. They're doing the research before they even book an appointment with you. That's intentional. That is great. That's why profile views matters.

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  Now the next step I want you to focus on is what not to do. Now here's some things that I want you not to do. Do not go and blast these people and tell them your product and service and that you want them to buy from you. Like, that's not cool. Don't ignore it either, because that's what most of us have done in the past. I'm like, I don't know what to do. I mean, they're looking at my profile, I'm looking at their profile and then, you know, hopefully they'll figure something out and buy from me. But that's not great. The instinct is to overreact or not do anything. But I want you to go right down the middle and that is where we're going to teach you on how you maximize a profile view. I'm going to tell you something that I do and this has worked tremendously well. So let's say if it's somebody I send a connection request to and they're looking at my profile, I'll go back and look at their profile or engage on some of their content.

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  Now, if it's somebody that when I, who is it that's looking at the profile? I take time to look at that on a daily basis. And what I will do is I see people who either maybe it's a past colleague or maybe somebody in my network, or if it's some prospect that I'm trying to go after, I try to go back and engage with them. And maybe it's a prospect that I'm not even engaging with, but maybe it's a VP of Sale at another company, at some random company. Bro, you know what I'm doing on that one? I am isolating that and I'm going ISO on that one and I'm going to engage with them. This is what I say. Now you can take it and you can tweak it according to your process, but this is what I say. I say something to the nature of, Arnold, I noticed that you were looking at my profile. I'm just straight out the gate being blatant, blatantly honest.

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  I looked at your profile, which I do, and I'm like, why in the world? I literally say it like that. I'm like, why in the world are we not connected? Permission to connect here on LinkedIn. That just causes them to respond right out the gate. And they'll be like, yeah, you know, they'll accept the connection request and then I can start the engagement from there. And we'll talk about that in a further episode, but that gets them in rather than me getting wasted in this profile view. VP of Sale looking at my profile? Dang it, bro, come on. I might say, now if they accept my connection request, what I will do at that point, I would say, you know, hey, I appreciate it. Out of curiosity, what prompted you to look at my profile in the first place? That is going to start a money-making conversation. I might say, well, Donald, we're looking at some speakers for our next coming event, or I saw you in. Heard you on a podcast or I saw you in my feed.

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  I'm going to continue that dialogue because I just got a ideal customer. I didn't do a cold call to who started looking at my profile, who was engaging with me. Brother, I'm going to keep that conversation going somehow. And I'm going to see if that can turn into some money. But we'll talk about that in future episode. But that's how you start that engagement with that profile view and it works tremendously. So that system is what I do. So here's what I would tell you. If you don't have a whole lot of views, just do it once a week. Just once a week, look at people who are viewing your profile and then go back. And if you send them a connection request already, go back and engage with some of their stuff. And if you have not sent them a connection request yet and they're brand new, bro, that's where the money is at. You engage with those folks and you send them a connection request. You can steal my line that I shared with you.

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  You can find, you know, I'll say it again, but something to the nature of Arnold. Saw that you looked at my profile, being honest there. And then I will say the next part, I looked at your profile and I was like, I use it that way. Why in the world are we not already connected? Permission to connect here on LinkedIn. It breaks down the barriers. People start having fun. They start talking and blah, blah, blah, telling me all their secrets. But this part works. And if somebody that I've sent a connection request to and they're coming back to look at my profile, here's what's going to happen. They're going to self-select, so to speak, and say that, yes, I want to learn more about him because his profile heading and stuff that he's sharing looks really cool. I can learn from that. Or two, smells like a salesperson. I'm running from them and that's cool. If that doesn't fit them, then by all means, let them go.

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  But the ones who are engaging on my profile, those are the people that I'm going to start that conversation with, that engagement with and start a conversation. I can't focus on the people who are not going to like the music. I'm focused on the people who like the music, like what they're hearing, like what they're seeing from the profile. But that simple process works.

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  professionals. The most dynamic buyer network, working just for you. Accelerate your sales with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator now with a free 60 day trial at LinkedIn.com/sell. That's LinkedIn.com/sell. Terms and conditions apply. Since 2013, we launched this podcast. The goal of the podcast was to share wealth of information and I feel that we've successfully done so. As a natural byproduct, listeners like you would reach out and ask, could I coach them? Could I train their team? Could I come and speak in an S K O? Could I consult for them? And that is how we gain the majority of our business and

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  still to this day. So in 2019, one of our clients saw what we did and asked, could we do that for them? We experimented with it and we started a podcast production agency. Now we create podcasts for some of the biggest brands in the world and it's amazing. I would love to show you and your team how we can create podcasts for you and use it as an entertaining source, but also educational and a lead generation. If you're interested, go to bluemango studios.com. Again, bluemango studios.com and our team can show you exactly what we did. It's amazing.

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  But let me give you an example, like this happens all the time to me where I follow up with somebody and they tell me they heard me on a podcast or again, maybe they're looking for one of my services or one that and it's amazing how that always turns into some opportunity, whether now or in the future. And we have many different examples of how that has worked and how I've gotten consulting clients. So the real examples are countless out there and I've seen it time and time again where somebody views my profile. I engage with them and this leads to a conversation. They turn into an appointment. It turns into an opportunity for our organization. But what would have happened if I did not engage with that person? What would happen if I just sat back? This could be also speed again. This is even before they, the prospect, they're doing their dark funnel research.

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  This is before they even book an appointment with anyone, any of my competitors with any of us. But because they looked at my profile, I engage with them. One of them actually was a recent one. It turned, I can't remember the exact client's name, a prospect name. But they were literally doing the research. It turned into a real opportunity for us. And turned into business for the organization. And I just always go back, I can go back and look into our, my communication. I can give you more specific examples, but this real stories like this happen all the time for us. And it is a real thing. People have viewed my profile. They have responded to my connection requests, started a conversation. And it literally turned into opportunities because they've been doing research for us on our brand. There's one that I just had a couple of weeks ago.

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  Turns out this person and their husband have a company. They could be a client for us as well as we can do some collaboration. But it's more so on the services side that they're interested in with this, doing some stuff with us. But they're looking at my profile and that literally turned into money. And I'm just telling you time and time again, the profile view get overlooked and it is a critical spot. Now, if you've changed your headline and you're doing the profile view process. The third step that I'm going to tell you about is now what you can do with your connection requests. This ties together. I'm going to go over that in our next episode. But listen, I want you to thrive. I want you to succeed. I want you to raise the level of thinking. But most importantly, I want you to go out and do big things. If you want to use LinkedIn and you want to maximize LinkedIn, go check out my LinkedIn prospecting cohort. We have five slots left. You can find more details about it.

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  It's LinkedIn.com slash T S E. Again, LinkedIn.com slash T S E. It would be an absolute honor to have you join us. LinkedIn.com slash T S E begins on July 30th. Next episode, a part of the series, we have two more. Next one is around the connection requests and the third one is going to be around the engagement and conversations. You're going to love it. See you on the next one.

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  The Sales Evangelist Podcast is created by the Sales Evangelist Sales Training Organization. It is produced by TSC Studios. Our podcast production manager is Nancy Paul. Our audio engineer is Jershun Obayal. Our video engineer is DeSahn Kunado. Guest management is done by Jill Vito and Kristy Virtus. Our content writer is Carlisa Galberith. Our graphic designer is Yurvish Savalia. And I'm your host and executive producer, Donald C. Kelly. Sales Podcast Network.