Ning: All right. So hello to anyone joining us. We’ll wait a few minutes to make sure that everyone who wants to join gets to join. So we’ll properly start this webinar in about four minutes. Until then, Murphy, would you like to chat? Maybe tell me what you’ve been working on?

Matthew: Sure. Absolutely. Well, hi for the early birds who’ve made it to the session on time.

Really appreciate you being here. Matthew we work with software and technology businesses to help them sell more to the right people. I’m really LinkedIn is actually one of my well, actually I think it’s probably the most effective way that I go to market with my clients. And I teach, I get all of my clients to use LinkedIn as well, because you know what?

There’s almost a billion people here on this platform. So, why wouldn’t we try to find our target customers through that way and certainly when selling in a B2B environment. So, yeah, what we’ve been working on we’ve actually changed direction in the organization. The last 12 months, we’ve gone for more of a performance marketing style where because I really wanted to think about what our clients really want.

Took a bit of a customer centric or a client centric focus and Most of our clients, or most, most anybody really, all they want really want is to be able to understand how their marketing and energy is being spent to attract a customer. A lot of people in the software and technology space are specifically, they’re, they’re, they’re ones and zeros types of people.

They know that if they build a certain bit of code, it’s going to run and it’s without fault, it’s going to run well. Whereas marketing falls into the situation where it’s a little bit, a little bit spongy, a little bit hard to, There’s an old saying in marketing where they say that 50 percent of your marketing dollars actually works.

You just don’t know which 50%. And so I’ve turned my business to focus really much really, really, really clearly on that performance marketing piece, knowing that a dollar goes in. Two or three dollars comes back out. So that’s what I’ve been really constantly working on to refine and define over the course of the last, the last 12 months, we’ve been doing this agency for about four years.

And prior to that, I’ll introduce myself properly when we really go live. But I’ve been in software and technology for about 20 years now.

Jason: That sounds good, Matthew. Thank you so much for having you here. Well, we are spending another two minutes we’ll start exactly at 10. 05 so that more people can hear what you have got about to say and all the wisdom that you will be sharing.

But I just want to point out one thing that you also to share is that not only there is a billion user on this particular platform there is no other social platform where they tell you exactly What your prospect and what your clients do for a Leaning for work. I mean, if you go to Meta and they go to x.com or you go to Facebook or Link uh uh, Instagram or even if you go to TikTok now, not only Yes, I do agree that you can still get traffic at either on those, you just don’t know who exactly.

Those people in terms of that I, yeah. Getting from where is something in. How bloody amazing that is that they tell you exactly what your prospect and what your client and so you can be super super duper targeted but equally With the content that they are sharing, what is inside their mind that is excited with about that They are excited In their professional life.

What a channel, don’t you agree?

Matthew: Look, it’s, it’s, it’s the, it’s the place that I get most of my, well, all of my, well, I won’t say all, but most of my sales from it’s, it’s a great path to to, to go to market. And you know what, it’s really, it’s, it’s outrageously cheap as well. So we’ve got clients who do spend, I got clients spending six, 10, 12, 000 a month on actual advertising through the other platforms.

And really, if somebody is trying to engage with their clients, engage with their target customer. They can do it for even if they use sales navigator, which is about a hundred and something dollars a month, that’s really, that’s a, that’s the lowest cost, highest impact activity that you could do.

Absolutely.

Jason: Well, it’s 10. 05 now without further ado, we are going to get start sharing the session very, very soon. But before that, I’m going to go into the background and let me take over to tell you guys a little bit more about the Engage and what we can do and how you can. Leverage engage AI for your business, especially on LinkedIn.

And then we will get right into hearing all the wisdom Matt has got to say. Well, thank you so much for everyone who’s starting in and I look forward to be speaking with you guys and also giving a few prize for, for everyone who is attending. If you want to win the prize, make sure you comment to get additional entry.

I’ll fix it. I’m going to go into the back up. Yeah. Thanks, Jackson. All right. So I just want

Ning: to say a warm welcome to everyone who’s joining us to our series on webinars on the sales and prospecting in B2B business proudly brought to you by Engage AI. Throughout this webinar series, our expert guest speakers like Matthew will share insider tips and strategies that they’ve successfully employed to propel the growth of their own businesses.

By bringing experts in the B2B space to you, Engage. ai hopes you’ll gain valuable insights on expanding the visibility of your B2B business, acquire actionable prospecting strategies that yield tangible results, and discover proven methods to boost sales performance and drive revenue growth.

And for those who stay until the end of the webinar, we will be giving away 10 free pro subscriptions, each valued at 720. So every comment or question you leave in the chat earns you bonus entries. So I hope that we’ll be able to talk more there. Plus, if you would like access to our A prompt to library.

All you have to do is take a screenshot while you’re in this event, and then you can write any kind of text you want saying what you love about the event or anything like that, and then post it to LinkedIn or to Twitter slash X and then tag us. So on the screen, you’ll see our social media for LinkedIn as well as Twitter.

And when we get notified, we will send you the prompt to library.

So before we dive in further, let me introduce you to a game changer in the digital landscape, Engage. AI. In an era where traditional communication method often falls flat, Engage. AI empowers you to break through the digital noise. People don’t always respond to messages or read emails or answer calls, but they do respond to meaningful comments on their content, especially on platforms like LinkedIn.

So try out an extension for free. I’ll share a link to download it in the comments now.

All right.

So Engage. ai simplifies outreach with a three step strategy to kickstart meaningful relationships and get responses from your prospects. We start with breaking the ice with insightful comments on LinkedIn posts. And then we get their attention through consistent and meaningful engagement. And then lastly, we ensure that your LinkedIn profile acts as a compelling lead magnet for when they visit you.

If you would like more details on this strategy, you can check out the article linked in the chat, which I’ll send in a moment, or you can scan the QR code on the screen. And again, don’t forget to leave your comments and questions in the chat for those bonus entries. And so we can have a quick Q& A at the end of the webinar.

So without further ado, let’s dive into the second edition of our webinar series, Code to Connection, building influence and driving sales through social selling on LinkedIn. Okay, Matthew, over to you.

Matthew: Thanks very much. I really appreciate the intro. So, hi everybody. As I said earlier, my name is Matthew, and I’m Chief Strategist here at TechTalk, and we work with software and technology businesses to help them sell more to the right people.

Now, if you’re not in software and technology, that is absolutely okay. The tips and ideas and strategies I’m going to be sharing with you today are going to work for you. So, that’s my niche is software and technology, but you don’t need to worry about that. Just go through, take some screenshots and, and and ask questions throughout the process, more than happy to answer them.

We’ve got a bit of a tight schedule today, so I’m going to be going very quickly and I speak very quickly. And the only advice I can give anybody in relation to me speaking quickly is to try to listen faster. I don’t know how possible that is, but let’s see how we go. So today it’s all about code to connection.

So we want to actually create a connection with our customers. Specifically, we’re going to look at LinkedIn, obviously, and with that, we’re going to make sure that we really understand who they are, because when you talk about sales and talk about business often we, we describe ourselves as B2B businesses, business to business like me, or B2C, business to a consumer or customer.

But if we think about this, when it comes to LinkedIn, I want you to think H2H. So just communicating and building a relationship is, is really a great key here and which takes me to my, my first slide and I’ll just dive into it now. Okay. So quick LinkedIn facts, almost a billion people on LinkedIn, 200 countries worldwide, lots of people around there.

Now, the first thing I want you to think about here is the complete and active LinkedIn page of five times more impressions and interactions. So do a bit of house cleaning, a bit of house, a bit of, but it’s tidy up around the place. Look at your profile and I’ll take you through what a good profile looks like, what a pretty ordinary one looks like.

It will, we’ll build on your knowledge from there for this 40, 000 skills. So your bits, your skills, their three new members every second and 63 million companies. You know what? Your customers are here. Now speaking of the B2B or B2C or H2H And and really understanding who your customers are.

Once you think about, here’s a quick question. What do you think’s the most followed profile or what’s the most interacted with profile on LinkedIn? And you’d be wrong if you said a company, because remember, LinkedIn is about H2H, human to human. So the most popular. People are Bill Gates at 34 million followers and Richard Branson is 16 million followers because you know what Microsoft and Virgin whilst interesting, they don’t have, there’s no personal connection there.

So the first thing, the first tip I would like to give you is post on your personal account and then share it to your business account. So that’s really important. So I wouldn’t worry too much about if your business account doesn’t get Very many followers. Obviously you get a couple hundred credits or you better 100 credits every month to invite people to follow it.

Still do that if you like. I’ve got about 12 and a half thousand followers on on linked in and on tech talk. I think it’s like four or 500 people. So really the people that care about you. And not necessarily your business. Let’s let’s carry on. So hopefully that’s a, that’s the first little tip there for you.

Let’s define social selling. I love to start, start every webinar with some sort of definition. And I like, I like this definition. So social selling is like making friends online who happen to need what you’re selling. It’s about using social media to chat. Help and connect with people, turning those virtual coffee dates into real business deals.

And as I said earlier in the intro, I’ve made almost every single sale in the last couple of years, quite a few million dollars worth of business. Just simply through LinkedIn. And then my customers over the course of time have done the same. And I think the numbers up around about a hundred million dollars worth of business over the years just through using that personal connection, but being a billion people on the platform, how do you stand out in a crowded market?

And how you stand out in a crowded market is simply by doing these four key things. So the four key things is, first of all, what are you going to do? How do you actually get here? I know that people, everybody’s here on, probably on LinkedIn. We’re streaming on LinkedIn. It’s pretty good chance you’re on LinkedIn, but let me have a think about your profile.

Let’s take you through one step at a time. So number one, spruce up your profile. This includes a professional photo, compelling headline and detailed summary and highlights that highlights your expertise and accomplishments. Number two, know your target audience. And that’s so important, just spraying and praying and putting it out there to almost to everybody in the world is, is not going to work.

Unless, yeah, well, actually there’s, there’s no circumstance in which not knowing your target audience is going to not benefit you. You need to know who your target customer, and I’m going to talk about that in this upcoming slides. Number three, provide valuable content. So you got to share insightful content, addresses common challenges and trends from the trenches.

So people want to know that you’re one of them rather than just trying to try to make money off them or sell to them. So you, that people want to know that you’re one of them and of course, engage authentically. Not just a good job or, well done. It’s actually, why is it a good job?

Why was it well done? How do you, how can you add value to the conversation? Because it’s a conversation in those comments section. It’s a conversation, not just an opportunity for you to blast your sales message. Because I actually got a sales message today or a message on LinkedIn via direct message.

First interaction, person requested my connection. I accepted it. And the first thing they said is, if you want to make millions in crypto, join my webinar. I thought this is crazy. And so I went back with a little bit of help. I said to the person that this is a heavy sales message. How to look at your profile.

You probably need to do some work around that to really genuinely engage. as a human rather than just seeing me as a number. And, and of course, everybody feels that way when they get those long emails or long messages from people often from, from engineering houses that have, 50 different skillsets don’t send that list to people that is, I can’t imagine anybody buying off that game.

You know what? I really want a PHP programmer for 12, 50 cents. It’s not, it’s not great. You’re going to get blocked. Please make sure that you’re actually engaging authentically or LinkedIn will block you or you’ll get blocked and your score will go down. It’s actually going to be less valuable in the long term if you don’t engage authentically.

So your profile, the importance of a professionally curated LinkedIn profile, credibility and opportunity and branding allows you to do quite a lot. And I’m not going to read all this stuff to you, but you know, you can read, you get the idea. Your tagline, descriptive and succinct. Your tagline should capture the essence of your professional identity in a few words.

include some keywords. Think about SEO. Think about how you want to be found. Somebody types in what you do or who you are, what your name is. You’re going to be found on Google for those pro your, your, your title will come up at the top of Google. So you want to make sure you’re really thinking about your title and general manager, whilst it is your official title, nobody cares what title you’ve given yourself.

What they care about is how you help them. If you can get really clear about the value you present, To the world, then your target customer will engage with you more effectively. So include keywords, think about the terms people might use when searching for a professional with your skills, use these terms in your tagline to increase your visibility.

A great pro a great structure that you could use right now is I help X to do Y through Z. Okay. I help software and technology companies to grow through performance marketing. That’s one way of thinking about it. So I help X to do Y through Z. So think about your business right now. It’s I’m giving you homework.

This doesn’t, this wasn’t just a Ted talk. You’re going to actually have to do something here today. Think about what you do, who you help, how you do it. All right, let’s carry on. Here’s a couple of examples I’ve used myself and one of my clients actually. So helping software and technology companies scale through strategy, sales, and marketing.

Michael over here, he wanted to put founder in there. But then we put in, we help engineering and environmental consultancies transform their mobile data collection and reporting processes. The other key areas here is the, is the, the top image. You can put branding in there. You can do almost anything.

This actually is your time. This is your front page. Of your shop, your virtual shop. So you might want to make it inviting, interesting, and welcoming. So have a look at that. Your profile and background image matter. And so your pro your photo should be a high quality headshot with good lighting and you look approachable and professional.

Now because I a bit of a sense of humor, I found a few that don’t really. If you, if you’ve had a few beers on the beach, maybe it’s not the right LinkedIn profile to go with, or of course, a bathroom selfie might want to think about that. A blurry nightclub photo probably doesn’t really say that, you’re, you’re a professional somebody looking like out of American psycho.

And he’s having a great time there. And of course the the, the photo is probably more appropriate for Instagram. So these are examples of bad ones. Don’t take a screenshot of that and say, Matthew told me I need to do a bathroom selfie. That’s not the case. And you know what, with a, with a, with a good phone these days and with a with a little bit of lighting, you can give yourself a reasonable.

And you know what? I think there’s even AI tools out there. Seeing as we’re talking about AI today, there’s even AI tools out there that can help put together a reasonable photo for yourself. So don’t make these mistakes. This is not your, these are not, this is not your time to just be more creative.

This is your time to be professional because people, when they’re engaging with you, they’re going to look you up. All right, let’s carry on. Recommendations. Think about who you’ve recommended, how you’ve recommended. If you’ve not provided many recommendations, you probably won’t get very many back.

There’s a law of reciprocity. So if you give something, people will feel more inclined to give you something back. So quantity over quality. Sorry, quality over quantity. I can’t read my own writing there. But there needs to be heartfelt and detailed recommendations. Not many generic ones. A good person is not, is slightly better than nothing.

But we want to make sure that you are actually So really making an impact here. So a recommendation that tells a story and give specific examples of your contribution is always more impactful. Yeah. Matthew’s nice, not great. Matthew helped me understand my business generate leads and sell my company to an investor.

That’s a great recommendation. So reciprocity, don’t hesitate to write recommendations for colleagues. This not only strengthens your relationship, but also encourages them to return the favor. Write recommendations for people that you know, like, and trust. They’ll do the same, most likely. And if they don’t, well then that’s you’ve done the right thing.

You’ve put the positive stuff out in the world and you’ll get it back. So action step. As I said, there’s going to be homework today, write one and ask for one. Simple as that. So just write somebody a a recommendation. It’s easy. It takes five minutes. You could even use some type of AI bot to help you write that recommendation.

If you’re not sure, put in the structure and, and if you’re not you’re not entirely comfortable doing that, but just do that, you’ll find an amazing response, endorsements. This person is good at sales or this good. This person is good at a software development. Remember LinkedIn allows you to rearrange your skills so you can actually go into your profile, edit the profile and look at all the things you’ve been endorsed for.

Now, if you’ve been endorsed for team building, but team building is not really something you want to get out there into the world. You can actually grab the little burger menu, like the three lines and drag that down and bring up, maybe you’re a programmer, or maybe you’re a salesperson, or maybe you’re, you’re, or you’re a personal assistant or a general manager.

You can bring those skills up to the top and drop down the ones that you don’t necessarily want to be found for. They’ll still be there. They’ll just they’ll reorder. So I found because I’ve been on LinkedIn for a long time, they max out at 99 plus. And if you have a look at the endorsements that I’ve got.

show five all of mine are maxed out. So do that. So, so once again LinkedIn allows you to rearrange your skills, ensure your most relevant, important skills are at the top. That’s what I just said. I’m getting ahead of my slides here. So engage with your network by endorsing their skills. Once again, give, give out to get back.

This is often prompts people to, to, to, to provide that reciprocity. Once again, action step, rearrange your skills, endorse somebody who’s made an impact. And I won’t let me show you how because I actually cut that slide out because I know that we’re a little bit short on time. So now we’ve done the housekeeping here with when it comes to your profile.

Let’s really think about what your customers and what are the four keys. So when I train my clients and I work in consulting, I think about the four critical impact areas that make a genuine impact when it comes to making Building a relationship and essentially making a site. So number one is your target market, knowing your target market.

And it’s not just name, rank, and serial number that you can find on LinkedIn. Great place to start, but that’s not the only thing you need to really identify your best fit clients that aligns with your business goals. Cause not every client. Not, not everybody’s created equal. Not every client’s equal. You want to look for a specific type of organization.

Feel free to say the people who aren’t right, we’re not right for each other. That level of confidence in your business will drive a great level of profit and, and also reduce the level of pain and customer service and and, and support in the backend. Finding A class clients is always a better way to operate.

Second thing here is your circle of influence. This is where LinkedIn comes in again. So your circle of influence is then not your obscurity is the enemy. The simple fact of the matter is thinking about your business. And I don’t know what your business is. The simple fact of the matter is if more people knew about you and what you did, you would make more sales.

Sounds like a really obvious thing to say, but then there’s so many businesses out there who you go, well, I just need to complete the next feature and everybody will be the path to my door. Or I just need to do this. You think about what engage AI are doing today. They’re putting, they’re asking people like me to help them promote their brand.

Once again, growing their circle of influence, specifically talking about LinkedIn and growing their audience. So that’s exactly what these guys are doing. Well, how can you in the next, say 30 days, get known by more people in your target market? It’s a little challenge for you. The fourth thing is your relationship.

Now getting known is step one, but actually then having a relationship is, is, is even more important because now they know you, they want to know if they like you. So building a strong relationship guiding your prospects with content that highlights the benefits. So you’ve got, you can do social selling, which is what we’re going to be, which we are talking about today.

Your social selling needs to be based around actual real life communication. Build that relationship. Demonstrate that you’re like them. Now the fourth part, and lots of people forget about this, is they’ve got, they know their target market, they’re known by a bunch of people, they’ve got a great relationship, but they actually forget to ask people to buy.

I forget to ask people, so you need to think about crafting a personalized offer. I was working with the salesperson just last last month and I said, Oh, this person’s decided to go ahead, but they are they go waiting for the end of next month or they’re white. I said, well, what sort of offer could we create for them that actually has them come on board now?

And we, we come up with an offer and it was pretty simple. They, Literally, they genuinely had a gap in service. They had just service people, not sitting around, but that service people underutilized. So I said, well, what if we made an offer where we gave them a small discount or more service? We actually provided more service for this one.

And I said, well, if you come on board now, we can provide you X, Y, and Z extra. The client came on board. The salesperson hit their number and the business is now got a new happy customer and all we need to communicate with that client and bring them on board. Now this was a reasonably high price deal, that 50, 000 worth.

But you need to make sure you’re constantly making offers that are valid and useful to your market. All right. So thinking about your target market, going back to LinkedIn, this is one of the challenges that LinkedIn has that you need to overcome by being Doing social selling is not all customer profiles tell the full story.

So these two people are probably the same as far as far as most data is concerned. They’re male, born in 1948, raised in the UK. They’ve been married twice, live in a big house and they’re wealthy and famous. So as far as most of the people, most of the world’s concerned when it comes to data, these two people are exactly the same.

Unfortunately, well, or fortunately, they’re not necessarily the same people. And I don’t know the demographic of who I’m talking to here. Hopefully you know who King Charles is and not everybody’s going to know who Ozzy Osbourne is, but from just looking at him, you can probably guess what sort of person he is what sort of, he was in a band.

But yeah, these are different people. One’s going to be probably buying, more calf skin riding boots than the other. All right then. So think about your target customer. Understand, get in their head. So how do we do that? We do that by thinking about your top five to 10 client organizations that you really want to sell to.

What makes them ideal? What makes them easy to satisfy and work with? How are they profitable to serve? Do they pay on time? Are they, do they refer you? These, of course, these are great outcomes, but how do we. Identify what makes them perfect for you. And so I, so I like to think about this ideal clients are always best fit for your service products and company and the reverse is true.

So if they’re not ideal, they’re going to take up more time. Let’s say you are a great salesperson or you’ve got a great offering, a great website, great marketing, they buy. But then they just don’t get it. And they just drag the chain when it comes through your customer service. And they, they all, they churn out of your organization.

You’ve spent money, time acquiring them, and they’re actually low value. And of course, so once again, some action steps for you list those top 10 clients, what features do they have in common? Why do they choose you? What triggered the need? Now I’m going to give you a template. So take a screenshot of this.

If you like, here’s something I use for my clients to really get clear about your target customer. Because this is okay. Well, I’m not teaching you how to use LinkedIn today. That’s not the use of the, that’s not the reason for this session to exist. This is about social selling. That means understanding your customer really well.

Write down your customers. What do they have in common? Vertical size, location, complexity, ownership, structure, that sort of stuff. That is findable on LinkedIn. And of course we want that. That’s must. But then why did they choose you? And if you don’t necessarily know why they chose you, you might have a vague idea.

Oh, well, we’re good service, we’re referred, whatever. Call your clients. The more times and more, more interaction you have with your clients, the better off you’re going to be, the more successful you’re going to be. Because and also every time I’ve done this with a new client, every time more businesses come out of it because the client goes, Oh yeah, well, what if you could do this?

Or have you thought about that? Or maybe I can get you guys to help me with this thing. So that’s that now when it comes to selling and once it comes to marketing, the event that triggered the need is really interesting. So event that triggered the need, once again, we can track some of these things on LinkedIn, change of role, change of legislation, change all of these different things.

So a new person comes into the business, the business gets acquired, whatever it might be, was there an event that had the person because if they’re dealing with a problem that you solve. There’s got to be a point where the, where the, where the problem is bigger than the resistance to not doing anything about the problem.

And so if somebody’s new comes into a role, you can see that on LinkedIn and then communicate with them. So event to trigger the needs important. Who have you beaten as a competitor? If you don’t know who your competitors are, you’re in trouble because your competitors know who you are. And if they dunno who you are, then your customers aren’t gonna know who you are.

So, and then also think about, genuinely think about your top 10 customers and think about those vulnerabilities. Why where are you in threat? Okay? Know your buyer and their problems. Guys obviously got some sort of caffeine problem but know your buyer. So what makes your decision, your buyers and decision makers tick.

And so. With that, a really a great tip that I came up with a little while ago, and I’ve been trying to teach as many people as this is possible. Have you ever thought about their jobs and the criteria in which they’re judged, your target customer? Now, if you think about your target customer, just by the way, we’re going off script here, but I wanted to share this with you because it’s important.

If you think you sell to CEOs. And you go, well, I, I sell to CEOs of organizations that the CEO might raise the purchase order or sign the check or approve the purchase, but the CEO is typically too busy in the organization to actually engage with salespeople. So you need to think about who in the organization is actually in pain, engage with them and provide them the tools, knowledge, and experience to be able to go up to the next level.

Going directly to the CEO, you’re going to be rebuffed and it’s gonna be really difficult to actually engage at that level. So think about this. So you might work, you might know the project managers are in pain. And then of course they make a purchase because the CEO says, yep, fix that pain. So I want you to think about that.

What’s the relay race? Cause the person who starts a relay race, hands the baton over to the next person, to the next person, the next person. You need to think about what’s the process somebody goes through when making a purchase decision really deeply. Okay. Think about your buyer persona. Think about your target customer, write down their role, write down their job description.

Then if you’re in Australia, go to seek. If you’re overseas, maybe monster or indeed, or one of the other job sites, look up that role. You’ll see a bunch of jobs listed for that role. And then they’re also going to tell you, Their education, how they’re measured, what they’re, like the KPIs what their duties are.

You actually can build a really, really strong profile of your target customer based off adverts on, on job sites. Cause the company is going to tell you exactly how you, how to measure these people, and if you can solve that problem with your solution, your software, your service, you’re actually going to be way ahead of the game.

If you say, Oh, we, we do this, do X, Y, Z, you’re going to find yourself really way more in a way more powerful position because you know specifically who they are and what they do. So you seek or use indeed or monster, or what are the, one of the job sites and and you’ll be, you’ll be way ahead of the game and understanding your target customer.

How does this relate to social selling? Understanding the person. Okay. Buyers of technology are people like you and me or buyers of any, so this is my slide. So I sell to technology people but for you, it doesn’t matter what you sell. Your buyers are people that roles, responsibilities, hopes, and fears.

So here’s your action steps. I’ll give you the template, which is on the next page. You can take a screenshot of it. Oh, let me just do that right now. So for example, we, we know that by persona number one is CIO chief information officer. So what’s three questions, keep them awake at night. And I like to position it as a, how do I, or how will I, that’s the sort of the mysterious thing that keeps me awake at night.

So how will I ensure releases? And then you want to go through what’s the, what’s the, so step one, go through the three questions. Step two, I understand how they’re solving it right now, DIY or in house or Excel or, or getting somebody outsourced to do the thing, whatever it might be, what’s the drawbacks of that, scalability, speed, accuracy.

Those are the drawbacks. And then how do you solve for that drawback? How do you solve that problem without that drawback, automation control process, whatever it might be. Fill this out, be as verbose as you like, be really, write as much as you can in this, in this document, because that is the.

Gold nuggets that will form your marketing communication, your sales script and communication, your words on your website, your emails, because you understand deeply the problems and what their alternatives are and your solution. Now I’ve brought this slide in here just to show you how do you understand about sales?

I know this is more about LinkedIn, but I want to really share something with you because I’ve seen this problem like that chap that I mentioned earlier, first communication, first message. He reached out to me. He said, Hey Matt, do you want to get rich using crypto? Join my webinar. Like, ah, that’s too much already.

What he was doing is he was expecting me expecting that I’m down here at seeking solutions or even considering my options. I want to find a solution to getting rich using crypto. But maybe that’s not even something I’m not even aware that I need to be. I do. I care about crypto. Do I, so I want you to think about where that person is in the buyer journey, because then deploy the correct tool for the job.

So if a person’s unaware or a high level, first level connection with you, which is great. And, but they don’t really know who you are. Don’t start offering them case studies or comparisons or ROI calculators, because that type of stuff requires effort and time to read and go through. And then, and so if you are, if you demonstrate that your hard work, your effort to engage with, they’re not going to engage with you.

The first instruction needs to be light and breezy, listicles, blog articles, videos, infographic stuff that can be consumed very quickly and easily. And as the person starts engaging with you down the process, as they become aware of the problem, they start thinking about the solutions and what options do I have, then you can deploy further and greater and greater levels of detail because you want to engage the person in the process.

So I grabbed this screenshot from demand gen demand, demand gen squared. What are their top recommendations when social selling curd, the sales messages, support content with data and research, add insight from industry thought leaders, and you’re allowed to be a thought leader as well. And I’ll show you how to do that in the next slide, make content easier to access.

You don’t have to gatekeep all your content for me. I give away all my best ideas. You go, if you, you look at my blogs and my videos and my webinars that I do, I literally give everything away and our company gets paid to, to actually do. We get paid to do the thing. We don’t get paid to think about the thing because you know what?

There’s enough products out there in the world that can tell you in general terms, what to do, but actually doing it is where you get paid. And of course, don’t overload people with too much copy, too much info like this slide. This is probably the worst slide I’ve got too much info on this one slide. All right, but you get the idea.

I wanted to show it to you because I want you to think about, well, how am I, how am I engaging these people? Am I asking to join my cryptocurrency webinar when I’ve just met them? That’s too much. That’s something to think about there. Engaging content ideas. I’ve used LinkedIn as the example here today.

If you go to creator mode, click on creator mode on LinkedIn you can start a newsletter, you call it anything you like. I call mine technology, marketing, and sales. Dedicated to helping software and technology companies sell more to the right people. I have 2000 subscribers and I haven’t paid, I paid 0 for that.

So why would you not try to get your ideas out there in the form of a newsletter? And I encourage literally every single one of my clients that if I’ve got a blog and I’ve got ideas, I’ve got thoughts that come up. Engage with the copywriter, put pen to paper, put hands on keyboard, and write. People will subscribe to it.

And the great thing is LinkedIn will create that as a newsletter. People who subscribe to it, whenever I publish anything, it goes directly to their inbox. They can mark your email. You’re at your company. com email or it’s a spam. I don’t want to see your stuff, but they won’t mark LinkedIn stuff as spam because they, they want that, they need that.

So that’s going to still get through. Another thing is I did a webinar last month in March or a couple of weeks ago called the ROI revolution, building your tech sales engine, very specific for tech people. I do these webinars every single month. And so. The idea there is to continually put useful and valuable content out there.

And then you will expect the return. And we’re growing our business at exactly the speed I want to. So we only, we only allow two new clients a month to come on board because we have a capacity. If we do bring on more, the machine’s going to break. My eight staff are not going to be able to deliver it. So I want to make sure the quality is still very, very high.

So understand your capacity to deliver and do activities that will provide you with that a class number one customer. I know we’re running over time. I’ve got a couple more slides. Please stick with me. If this is a value, let me know. I want to make sure that I’m giving as much value as possible here.

Carousels. There’s the, I made these in Canva carousels are the most engaging format when putting content up, what’s the best tech and then but I won’t go into how to do a carousel or what care, but go ahead and Google carousels, please. They’re really useful people engage with them way time, way, way, way higher for putting content out there onto, onto LinkedIn.

The last thing is commenting. Now we know that engage AI does that, but I want you to think about the quality of your commenting and that’s what the product does. But even if you don’t use their product, I want you to think about what you’re actually doing, providing insightful comments. Make sure it’s actually somebody if you were to read your own comment based off this thing Is this useful or just a just a good old great post.

Well done. That’s not useful. That’s not interesting. Make it interesting I had value add your spin on it I see what you did there now do this or I see what you did there Have you thought about that or in my experience we saw X Y Z Really useful stuff. A good approach is to find your own voice, find, communicate, become recognized for the quality of your thoughts.

Obviously read further comments, obviously stay with that. As soon as you comment, you should have your should have LinkedIn switched on so you can. Create a that you’ll get messages saying, Hey a new post or somebody is like the thing you can actually go back and continue to engage in that conversation.

Now I wanted to give you an example of somebody who has actually turned communicating on LinkedIn into a job. And I had a friend of mine named Gunnar. He Master at this. He’s actually written a book about social selling. She messaged me. I can, I’ll send you a link to it. I’ll introduce you to him.

But he does, he does a lot of social selling, a real expert, but I used, I grabbed one of his comments here. So he put something up. So a person he made a comment. The response to that, I couldn’t set it better as I work on my own brand consistency, because I’m a true North star. So Gunnar has had various communications.

This person continues to have conversations, go through the whole process. Now, so what, why would you do this? Well, Gunnar was able to turn social selling, and this is why it’s probably the key message that I want you to think about this from today’s conversation. Gunnar communicated with people from Hootsuite, communicated with, which is a giant global brand.

He’s living in Australia, giant global brand. He communicated. engaged social selling, did commenting, did what he needs to do, and now he works for Hootsuite at an executive level role. So really think deeply about your value you’re providing in those comments, in that engagement, in that social selling piece.

Be visible and get out there. Ladies and gentlemen, I know I’ve gone way over time. Thank you so much for joining. I’ve got time for some questions if you like. I think that there’s a way for Ning to to, to show us how that works. If there’s no questions, I’ll, I’ll leave it at that. I might have just gone ahead and spoke at a thousand miles an hour.

Everybody’s reeling from that. Need a cup of tea and a lie down. Here we go. We’ve got one as a business owner with limited time and resources. How can I prioritize and streamline my social selling efforts on LinkedIn to maximize the impact? But that’s bringing myself to thin air. Oh, Jason.

Great question. Very important. There’s, how do I say this nicely? If you find any time in the day to watch Netflix or, or, or be on other social media platforms you’ve got time to at least go into LinkedIn, read through that and follow a certain number of people. Who do you want to do business with?

Follow them and using sales navigator, you can be notified when they are. And, if it’s just a like or a bit add value, I think that’s the most important thing I would streamline it. But also there are tools out there. There are tools out there that can actually do those things for you because, yes, you can get really bogged down in, in the, I guess the, I guess the roundabout of what you’re actually doing.

So Jason had the same question. Yeah, cool. So yeah, use the tools that are available. Actually engage AI obviously. That’s who’s sponsoring today’s event. But you know, just go on there, target those customers, make sure you’re communicating effectively. Hopefully that helps. What are some effective ways to nurture relationships and prospects and LinkedIn without coming across overly sales oriented?

Yep. Don’t ask for the sale. Just build the relationship, add the value in. That there are, that you, that you have in yourself. Now, a great way to think about the value that you add is go to your sent items in your email box. What questions have your customers asked and what answers have you provided?

Your, your sent items, you’ve probably got, I don’t know, if you’re anything like me, probably a hundred emails that you’ve sent this week. But you’ve probably answered a bunch of questions. You probably sent a bunch of information. Go to your outbox, find that stuff and put it on LinkedIn. Another great way to engage with people is to do polls.

They were very, very popular about six, eight months ago. I haven’t seen that many at the moment, but polls are still a very good way as well. So nurture relationships, think about what you’re actually care about, what your customers are going through. Why do they put it up? And then add your value. Yeah, humor is, is, if you can, if you can be funny on demand, Jason, absolutely, that’s what I found as well.

What are effective, sorry, are there specific engagement strategies that tend to yield better results on LinkedIn? So I go with So my first three or four messages on LinkedIn when I’m outreaching to my target customers, and if anybody here is not in software and technology, you might not have been outreached by me.

But if you are in my target market and I’ve outreached to you, I have a, I have a process that I go through. Very rare. I don’t do much selling at all. The messages and I write those messages. I’ve got a page of scripts and I use a I actually don’t necessarily write every single one individually, but those messages are not sales based messages, their help based messages.

How do we help customers or now that I know my target customer. I’m making sure that I’m actually delivering value. So add help. Don’t sell, don’t sell. You know what? If people are ready to buy, then they’re ready to buy. Don’t do selling. And so when I make an offer, so the fourth key is making an offer, of course, but then I make that offer usually on email or I make that offer.

Okay, how do I handle objections or skepticism from prospects when utilizing social selling tactics on LinkedIn? Usually because I’m not trying to sell. So social selling is probably a misnomer. If you go back to my first slide, it’s about finding friends. You don’t want to sit down with your friend at a cafe who might be a prospect and saying, Oh, have I got a deal for you?

That’s not, that’s not what I’m going for here. Social selling is about building that relationship. And. If you’re clearly articulating through your content what you do, people will come to you. Simple as that. If there’s no more questions as I said, I’m happy to answer them. Hang around for the five minutes if you like.

But if there’s no more questions, I do have an offer. In my so if you are in software and technology, I’ve got a process, the value that I give The value that I give to people is I try to provide some consulting without really adding a sales option or a sales offer once again. So what I do is I look at the four key areas.

Remember those four key areas of, knowing your target customer building your relationships. Building a building your sorry, target customer, building a circular influence, building the relationship and making an offer. I’ve broken that down into what we call a scorecard. Even if you’re not in software and technology, you can still do that.

You’ll find ways of we’ll, we’ll provide you back with like an analysis of your answers and the the AI and that will then write up. This is what you should do to fill those gaps. So that might be useful to you. And also, once again, it’s free. It provides you insight into your organization and how you operate.

And that could actually help you grow your business. Ladies and gentlemen, I think that’s all the time I’ve got. I’m probably getting a wrap up here from the team at Engage. All and happy to help if you, if you want to message me outside of this or find me on LinkedIn. You probably could find me on LinkedIn pretty easily.

Ning: All right, so thank you so much for sharing your insights today, Matthew, and thank you to everyone who joined. So as for our giveaway, keep a close eye on your emails or your LinkedIn messages in the coming days. And if you’re among the lucky winners for our two year Engage AI Pro giveaway, then we’ll be reaching out to share the news.

And if you didn’t win or if you don’t want to wait for that email, then we still want to give you something as thanks for your support and your participation. So we’re offering a special discount for half off your first move of Engage AI Pro, making it only 15. And don’t forget to screenshot this event, share and tag us on LinkedIn or on Twitter, and you’ll get a free gift in your inbox.

So that will be exclusive access to our AI Prompt library. And for we don’t want you to miss our next session in this webinar series on B2B business tools. B to B sales and prospecting. So next time Vinay will be exploring how to master online influence with a guide on establishing your authority on LinkedIn.

And just like today, we’ll be hosting another giveaway for 10 two year pro subscriptions to Engage AI. So join us on May 15th for mastering online influence steps to establishing authority on LinkedIn. And that is a wrap for today’s webinar. We look forward to seeing everyone again next month. You have any final words, Matthew?

Matthew: No, thank you very much for having me. Really appreciate it. Have a great Friday.

Ning: See you all then.

Matthew: Bye for now.