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EPISODE 212: LinkedIn Americas Sales Chief Alyssa Merwin Discusses How Her Sales Managers Elevated Their Performance When SHE Became More Vulnerable and Authentic

ALYSSA’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Make sure that you’re able to add value in every conversation – even those that have nothing to do with the solution that you sell. Find out what your buyers and prospects care about, whether that’s on LinkedIn or elsewhere, and go in and help them get better at their jobs because they’ve spent that time with you.”

Alyssa Merwin is the Vice President Sales at LinkedIn and is the Head of LinkedIn’s Sales Solutions business for the Americas where she leads a multi-national commercial organization dedicated to helping sales and marketing organizations leverage the power of digital selling. 

She was also a sales leader at CEB which is now part of Gartner.

Alyssa can be found on LinkedIn here.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you tell us a little more about you that we need to know?

Alyssa Merwin: Thanks, Fred, it’s so great to be on the podcast with you. Something that I’ll share that is an exciting thing on the personal front is that I just made the move back east from San Francisco where I had been for the last 6 years. I followed my heart, I fell in love and I moved back to Washington DC so it’s been wonderful to be back here getting re-acquainted with this great city. I’m super excited to be here today to chat more about sales.

Fred Diamond: We’re doing today’s interview in Downtown DC, we have Sales Game Changers listeners around the globe and we’re doing this at the LinkedIn office which is about maybe 2-3 blocks from the White House. It’s a nice little vibe around here, it’s a lot of excitement and a little bit of trivia: it’s not too far from Bernie Sanders’ office as well. Did you ever see him on the elevator, walking around or anything?

Alyssa Merwin: I haven’t seen him yet but I’m keeping my eyes peeled. I think it’ll be a nice little celebrity sighting to see him in the hallways one of these days.

Fred Diamond: Again, welcome back to DC and I’m excited to talk to you today about LinkedIn and Sales Navigator and your career. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you sell today and tell us what excites you about that.

Alyssa Merwin: I lead the Sales Navigator Business for North America for LinkedIn which really means we are providing a sales solution for sellers around the globe across any industry to be able to identify who are the key prospects, decision makers and influencers that they need to be engaged with. Equally importantly, how can they engage them in a way that gets the foot in the door? We know that so much has changed in the world of sales and prospects and buyers are so inundated with information and outreach, so one of biggest distinctions today is figuring out how can I separate myself from everyone else that’s knocking on their door and be able to get a seat at the table and have the right conversation. That’s really what we’re helping our customers to do with Sales Navigator.

Fred Diamond: We also did a show back in 2019 – again, this show is broadcasting in 2020 – with Brynne Tillman who’s a LinkedIn expert, she calls herself the ‘LinkedIn Whisperer’ so go check out that show, we’ll provide a link to it, we have a lot of great tips on how to use LinkedIn. Alyssa, for the people who aren’t necessarily using Sales Navigator today, tell us what differentiates Sales Navigator versus LinkedIn Premiere or just standard LinkedIn.

Alyssa Merwin: One of the things that we all know as sales leaders and sales professionals is that sales productivity is one of the most important distinctions between a really high caliber and highly productive salesperson, yet we could spend so much of our time spending energy on activities that aren’t actually customer facing or driving revenue. Sales Navigator allows reps and leaders to go into the platform to be able to do things like build lead lists, save accounts and automate a lot of what I would call insights finding information that you would need to again, understand how to get in the door, what your prospects and customers care about and find those nuggets of information that allow you to really peak their interest enough to engage with you directly.

Fred Diamond: You run the Sales Navigator sales for LinkedIn in North America, you must be a power user of LinkedIn. Tell us some things that you use LinkedIn for as the head sales person for LinkedIn in North America that maybe our users will be interested in hearing about.

Alyssa Merwin: As an example, being able to go and identify the top accounts that we want to either acquire as a new customer or those accounts that we want to expand the relationships. I will go in and save those particular individuals as leads or those accounts and be able to get alerted to key news, times that they might be mentioned or things that are going on in their company in business that allow me to be more educated, more prepared and again, get engaged with them in a different way than I might by just scouring the newspaper or other things that we do to find out information. It really drives those alerts right to you.

Fred Diamond: Interestingly, is LinkedIn Sales Navigator your primary sales tool that you use throughout the day?

Alyssa Merwin: It is, of course.

Fred Diamond: I’m just curious, how often do you post?

Alyssa Merwin: I go through phases. For a while I was doing my own series, so little video posts on tips and tricks but it depends on what’s going on in the business and where my energy is. I definitely like to comment even if I’m not writing original content or doing videos. It’s easy enough to go on and comment on someone else’s post or article.

Fred Diamond: How did you first get into sales as a career?

Alyssa Merwin: I actually got in by accident. I was graduating from college and I thought I wanted to go into consulting. It turns out that the job at the company that I was interested in – as you mentioned, it was the Corporate Executive Board here in DC – their entry level role was basically a BDR role, sales development role. I thought I was getting into consulting, turns out I was actually getting into sales but what I realized very quickly is that it was such a great fit for me. That is something I would have been surprised by, I didn’t think I was necessarily a competitive person or someone that would have found themselves in a sales role but I loved that you could get into this industry and you could be as successful as you wanted to be based on your effort and your willingness to learn and grow.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the key lessons that you learned from your first few sales jobs?

Alyssa Merwin: I learned that I was not as naturally a great seller as maybe others are by nature. I did learn that sales is all about the art of learning, about growth, about active listening and about solving customer problems, and when you can do that and you’re willing to put in the extra effort – especially if it doesn’t come naturally to you – you really can be as successful as you want to be. I think it’s all about the inputs you put in every day making sure that the right activities and the right behaviors are going to drive the right outcomes. That has translated, of course, to leading a sales business as well and a sales team.

Fred Diamond: Just curiously, you said it was an accident moving into sales, you wanted to be a consultant. Looking back at the pre-college high school Alyssa, could you see yourself now as being more suited for something like sales? Again, you’re running the Sales Navigator sales for LinkedIn in North America, it’s a pretty substantial job. Looking back, did you think in retrospect maybe you did have those skills?

Alyssa Merwin: If I were to look back, it makes a little bit more sense in some ways in that I’m very extroverted so I love being around people, I love talking about and root causing and diagnosing challenges whether that’s in people’s personal or professional lives. The part that is less obvious is I played in a varsity’s tennis team throughout high school and while I was a reasonable player, I was not actually great at the head game part of tennis. What I realized is that I found tennis to be a zero-sum game, one person wins and the other person loses.

What I realize now getting into sales at the beginning of my career is that it was such a different environment because we all could be successful. Again, that was the part that I think if I looked back I would have said, “I don’t know that I would have wanted to be in sales because I don’t find myself to be hyper competitive” and the elements I think I had traditionally had thought about as a sales career and then come to learn that it’s actually very different in practice. It’s one of the few careers where again, you can be super successful and so can everyone else.

Fred Diamond: I have a quick question for you, you mentioned active listening. What are some tips that you would recommend for the people listening to the podcast to become a better listener?

Alyssa Merwin: I think often times we as sales professionals get a bad rap because people perceive us as wanting to sell, manipulate or convince someone and I think sales at its most fundamental is really all about how effectively can you understand the customer’s problem and help to solve it. You can only do that if instead of looking for the next hook to be able to get in and sell your product or pitch your product you’re really trying to understand what is this person challenged with and what are the reason that’s happening, what are some of the implications of those challenges and really trying to understand that at a deep level.

Why is this presenting a problem for this individual and how can I help? Tips, I think a couple would be one, being really attuned to word choice, taking notes as you’re in a conversation and making sure you can really recall how did they talk about the challenge or the opportunity. Making sure that you’re going to those second, third level questions, deeper discovery as we all are familiar with in this industry but really getting to understand beyond the surface level what are the drivers and again those implications and what’s at stake for the individual.

Fred Diamond: Who is your customer? Who does your team sell to? Is it an IT sell, do you sell to the marketing team, do you sell to the sales team? Who are the main people that you target?

Alyssa Merwin: It’s actually all of those and a few others but I’d say that the primary and sort of obvious buyer is certainly a head of sales because this is one of those solutions that really helps to increase sales productivity. Which by the way is pretty neat after all these years of being in this industry to be selling a sales solution to sales leaders to help them increase their sales, it’s really neat to be at the center of the bull’s eye. In addition, we have a lot of CMO’s and marketers that are key buyers or influencers in the deals. Then I’d say increasingly CIO’s because the technology gets so embedded across, it can be hundreds of thousands of sellers and making sure that the CIO is engaged as we’re thinking about a large technology deployment.

Fred Diamond: Alyssa, tell us what you’re an expert in. Tell us a little more about your specific area of brilliance.

Alyssa Merwin: That’s a big question, I don’t know that I’d go so far to say brilliance but I will say that an area that I’m super passionate about and that I spend a disproportionate amount of my time as a sales leader is actually on leadership development. It’s certainly leadership development for my own growth and that has translated as well to really focusing on how can I help our sales managers to be the most effective leaders for their people. I’ve learned over the years in having hired and led many different managers the difference between an effective sales manager and an ineffective and it’s just night and day.

I think when we get into sales leadership roles we stop coaching and developing our managers, we set them free and I think they’re the forgotten middle, often. You get coaching and development when you’re a rep and the minute you get into leadership we stop investing and that has been an area that I have spent a lot of my career the last couple of years trying to figure out how can I help my leaders to be the best versions of themselves for their people.

Fred Diamond: To get to the level that you’ve gotten to you must have had some great mentors along the way similar to how you’re looking to mentor your leaders as well. Why don’t you tell us about an impactful sales mentor and how they might have impacted your career?

Alyssa Merwin: I’ll share one that I worked for early in my career and that was Susan Miller. She’s become a very close friend and she was my manager across a number of years at CEB. She was this incredible combination of inspiring leader and incredibly process driven and analytical. She could go toe to toe with the best strategic minds and she could inspire a group of right out of college graduates and be able to engage equally well in any of those audiences which is super important in the roles that we’re in. She’s been someone that I have really tried to emulate over the years, and then I’ve also had a great executive coach, Andy Kelly of Sundial Consulting and he’s been someone that’s helped me so much on my own journey of personal growth and development.

Fred Diamond: Do you still use an executive coach?

Alyssa Merwin: I do, we work together often.

Fred Diamond: Give a commercial, if you don’t mind, for that. That comes up not infrequently on the Sales Game Changers podcast. Again, you’re at the highest level here, you’re VP of Sales at LinkedIn, you’re running the sales side of the Sales Navigator Business in North America. Give us a little bit of an insight into what coaches help you achieve.

Alyssa Merwin: I’ll speak to what Andy has helped me achieve. Personally I think everyone probably has a different reason that they might engage a coach but what I’ve come to learn is that here we are as people and what our backgrounds have been and our upbringings and our beliefs about ourselves are exactly how we show up in our professional lives. Often times that’s not the best version of ourselves and I can assure that when I was earlier in my sales career and my leadership career I think I put on a lot of fronts and it wasn’t a very effective way of being able to inspire and connect.

I didn’t have a lot of followership so it took a lot of breaking down what I believed were the ways that I needed to show up as a leader to better understand why I have this armor on, why I’m wearing these masks and getting to a place of being comfortable, being vulnerable and being the real authentic version of myself. It has transformed my ability to inspire, connect, to lead, to have the tough conversations and to build a followership.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great example, it’s come up not infrequently. We’re talking to the top sales leaders around the globe on the podcast and we’re continuing to find ways that they’ve achieved and they’ve gotten to the highest level and how they’re bringing it back. What do you think the two biggest challenges are today that you face as a sales leader?

Alyssa Merwin: One thing that is always challenging as a sales leader is of course hiring and developing great talent, although the thing that I find more challenging is finding opportunities to observe. As an example, I have a few hundred reps on our team across North America and about 40 different sales leaders and we’re in different locations. If you’re going to invest deeply in coaching and developing your people, you need to find ways to be able to observe and identify where are the opportunities for growth. That’s more practically one of the things that I think can be challenging to do unless you’re really deliberate about building in practices to be able to see people in action.

That’s one and the second is something that we’re going through in our business. We’ve had a really entrepreneurial culture over the years and it’s allowed us to be massively successful and as we scale we need to continue, like many sales organizations, to build really strong sales process. Going through any kind of change management like that can always be a challenge because you’re asking people to do things differently than they might have done them in the past and asking for a bit more commitment to certain activity metrics or sales process than they’ve needed to do in the past. That’s something that I think is an ongoing opportunity and challenge.

Fred Diamond: I want to go back to the first one that you mentioned because that’s come up a couple of times, too. We have a lot of people where a sales leader is based in Chicago but the team is spread out or something or based in headquarters, if you will. A lot of the sales leaders we’ve spoken to aren’t necessarily based where their people are anymore, especially when you get to the level that you are. Without giving any trade secrets, what’s a thing or two that you’ve done to solve that problem?

Alyssa Merwin: I’ll share maybe two or three that we do actively. One would be when you develop close enough relationships with your direct reports and your managers and team where everyone believes the intent is good, you can create an environment where you can shadow one on ones, even. You can create an opportunity to sit in whether it’s virtually, by VC or in person, a manager and a rep one on one which is a great insight into how is that manager actually coaching and developing or are they using that one or one as a forecasting meeting which is a very different way to use time. Trying to actually observe by sitting in the meeting doing the same thing with team meetings, most managers will have staff meetings each week and so sitting in, being a fly on the wall.

I also do a lot of skip levels so I will meet with reps without the leader there, again just in the spirit of ‘how can I help this manager to understand what they’re doing well in any development opportunities’. Lastly, there’s some great technology today to be able to review calls and I love to do that on my way to work, listen to a few calls, find things that I think the reps are doing well and opportunities for growth and all. I won’t pass this on to the reps directly but I’ll pass them on to the managers and ask them to lean in a bit more.

Fred Diamond: Before we take a short break and listen to one of our sponsors, take us back to the #1 sales success or win from your career you’re most proud of. Again, you were at LinkedIn for 9 years and prior to that you were with CEB, now Gartner. Is it still called CEB now Gartner or is it just Gartner?

Alyssa Merwin: Gartner.

Fred Diamond: Take us back to the #1 sales success or win from your career you’re most proud of.

Alyssa Merwin: I would say that it’s less about a specific deal and more about a time of a real turnaround and it actually wasn’t that long ago. Just last year the team had gone through quite a bit of change as we were constantly evolving and scaling our business. We’d gotten out of the gates relatively slowly and that was because we had done a lot of territory turnover and hired a ton of new folks so we’d come out of the first half in a pretty big whole which is a scary place to be as an individual contributor and certainly as a sales leader. I wasn’t sure that there was light at the end of the tunnel, I wasn’t sure that we were going to be able to dig ourselves out by the end of the year.

I brought the leaders together and I brought the broader team together and we had an honest conversation and I shared how I was feeling. I used a lot of feeling words, I was disappointed, I was scared, I was a bit unsure, things that you don’t typically think that you’d be sharing with a large audience and I really wanted them to know, “Here’s how I’m feeling and here’s how I’m guessing you’re probably feeling, and here’s some of the things I think we can do but I’m not sure we’re going to get there.” I asked everyone to find a new year and we were all able to start to think about how we’re going to show up differently, where is our head space and then found an amazing path out. It ended up being one of the best years we’ve ever had, so that was something I was really proud of, how the team rallied together.

Fred Diamond: What do you think made it happen? You used the word ‘vulnerable’ a couple of times on today’s podcast. Was it just timing? I’m just curious, looking back now starting the year in a whole, you said you were afraid, you said you even thought you might not even get out of it. What do you think were the key things that triggered that for the people listening on the show?

Alyssa Merwin: I think so much about this function that we’ve chosen, in this career that we’ve chosen is about winning the hearts and minds, it’s so much a mental game. I’m sure timing was part of it but I think a big part was each of us sitting back and taking stock of where am I mentally? Because if I’m showing up as a leader not mentally engaged and not really believing that there’s a path out and that I have control over some of the outcomes, then I disempower my team. I think that every one of those leaders took a step back, they evaluated where they were mentally and they decided to show up differently the next day. I think that was a huge part of it.

Fred Diamond: I’m just curious, I’ll ask you one question before we take the break. When did this conversation happen? Was it early in the year, was it June? For the people listening to see when the transformation can take place.

Alyssa Merwin: This was just after the first half, we were six months in the year staring down what was going to be a very big second half. Again, that’s why I was very concerned about our ability to turn it around because we had half the year behind us and we were coming into the home stretch.

Fred Diamond: Did you ever question being in sales? Did you ever think to yourself, “It’s too hard, it’s really just not for me”?

Alyssa Merwin: I’ve had many of those moments over the years although mostly when I’ve had challenges as a leader. Again, I shared that earlier in my career there were some really challenging moments of not showing up the way that my team needed me to and not being the best version of myself and those were some of the darkest moments. Since then, of course you have times when you wonder, “I probably could have chosen a different, perhaps less volatile path in my career” but it’s never been about the outcomes and the performance, it’s always been about, “Am I showing the best version of myself?”

[Sponsor break]

Fred Diamond: What’s the most important thing you want to get across to the Sales Game Changers listening around the globe to help them take their career to the next level?

Alyssa Merwin: Fred, there are probably a couple of things that I’d recommend especially to earlier career professionals. One is I don’t think we do enough of shadowing and learning from the very best in our businesses. I know that when I was an early sales professional one of the primary ways that I learned was by doing some joint calls or tagging along in a live meeting and really understanding how the most successful sales reps were talking about and positioning the solutions, some of the process that they used.

Then I’d say the second most important was actually learning and thinking about, “What are the words that my customers and prospects are using to talk about their challenges?” It gave me so much credibility when I could walk into my next meeting talking about some of the challenges in the way that our customers talked about it as opposed to how we wanted to be talking about our solution. That was another thing that was really important and then the third that I’d add, there’s a lot of talk these days about work-life balance and making sure that we’re doing a great job of prioritizing everything and I have to say, I’m not sure I’m as big a proponent of that at all times in our career.

I think there are times in our career where we really need to put gas in the fire and I think early in the career is an important time. That’s the time we start to separate ourselves from what the majority of people might be doing and how they might be running their businesses or spending their time. For me, I mentioned I wasn’t always the best most natural salesperson at the start but I was always willing to make the extra calls, I was willing to do the extra work, I was willing to go do the extra meetings and that was what made the difference and allowed me to be more successful, because I wasn’t going to have it through just natural capabilities.

Fred Diamond: Tell us about one of your selling habits that has led to your continued success.

Alyssa Merwin: I think in terms of selling habits it is understanding at a really intimate level what are the behaviors that I’m doing that are leading to the outcomes? The great thing about sales is that it is art and science, but I think it is as much a science as we allow it to be. We have so much intelligence these days about what is our conversion rate at an individual level, what is our average sales price, how long does it take us to close a deal? We can all back into on average what are the types of behaviors and activities that I need to be doing that are going to get me the right outcomes?

I think that if more of us were really focused on understanding that on a personal level, we could back into what I need to come in and do every single day. It’s not always fun to do that outreach or get that extra no that you were hoping was going to be a yes but it’s the willingness to put in the work in ways that aren’t super fun that I think gets the outcomes. Then I think also being willing to ask the tough questions. I think there’s a saying that ‘no is the second best answer’ and it’s so true, we can’t have happy ears in the businesses that we’ve chosen to be in, we really need to make sure that we are validating. Is this a good fit for our customers and prospects? What are all the reasons they might not do something? Really bottoming that out instead of just hoping that it’s going to be a good outcome.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great tip to think about the words that your customer is using and that comes up so many times on the Sales Game Changers podcast, that it really is about the customer. It’s not as obvious, to a lot of people listening, in the beginning part of their career, they’re trying to get the features out and the benefits out, they want to make sure that they don’t miss an opportunity to say something but it really comes down to the customer and speaking to them on the language about the challenges that they’re facing. Of course, you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast that you just moved back to the Washington DC area but tell us about a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success.

Alyssa Merwin: One thing that we’re really focused on ourselves is actually doing even more of the speaking to the customer in their language and getting away from getting to a place where we’re pitching a solution. It really is all about co-creating value with our customers, so what that means is getting into a conversation with customers where we’re really able, with them, to make sure that we’ve identified and qualified that this is a challenge and a challenge we’re solving. Then figuring out, “Let’s agree together whether this is a solution that could help or not.” We’re going through a whole initiative to help our sellers and our sales team to be even better at this. I’m excited to see but again, change in management is always an interesting journey as a leader.

Fred Diamond: Before I ask you for your final tip for the sales listeners listening around the globe, we talked about this before, you’re selling to sales professionals so if anybody that we’ve spoken to in the podcast is in deep understanding of the challenges that they face, it’s definitely you and the team at Sales Navigator for LinkedIn. But sales is hard and it’s gotten harder, again you worked at CEB for a long time. Were you there when the Challenger came out or was it a little bit before your time?

Alyssa Merwin: It was just around that time so I’m super familiar with it.

Fred Diamond: You’re super familiar with the work and a lot of the statistics that they’ve come up and all the stuff that Matt and Brent have given us but why have you continued? Again, it’s harder and harder. What is it about sales as a career? Again, you didn’t originally think you were going to go into sales but now that you’re leading great sales teams around the globe or at least in North America, what is it about a sales career that has kept you going?

Alyssa Merwin: I think like so many different industries, sales is evolving. You mentioned Challenger and they’ve come up with some incredible insights about the changing dynamics of the sales landscape. Any sales organizations that are just relying on cold calls and cold outreach are likely going to really struggle in this new era of tons of information available at the buyer’s fingertips and they don’t really need us in the same way that they needed us before. Buyers and prospects can find so much information available online, they can get peer recommendations so our job as sellers has really evolved to one where we have to find a way to add value. I think that’s what’s been so fun in this role, that Sales Navigator is a solution that’s allowing reps at scale to find those nuggets of insights that allow us to get in front of the right customers, buyers and engage them in a way that brings value. I think it goes back to we’ve all got to be evolving. This is an industry that the more we grow and learn and adapt, the more successful we’re all going to be. I like to do that in my personal life and it’s certainly played out in my professional life as well. I just think there are no other careers that I know of that allow you to have so much clarity about what you can achieve and that you have so much control over the outcomes. I think that’s a cool career to be in that you can say, “I’m going to earn as much on my W2 or have the outcomes I want or to be able to provide for my family and also support our customers in achieving their goals and objectives.” It’s such a nice, symbiotic relationship that I think is so cool.

Fred Diamond: I like the way you just said before, the sales industry is evolving and as sales professionals we need to constantly be thinking and constantly learning. One reason why the Sales Game Changers podcast continues to grow is that people are looking for nuggets, tips, ideas, new ways of thinking, new ways of interacting with the customer and again you’re on the front line. I want to thank Alyssa Merwin for being a great guest today on the Sales Game Changers podcast. Alyssa, you’ve given us so many great ideas, why don’t you give us one final tip? Again, we have Sales Game Changers around the globe. Give us one final thought to inspire them today.

Alyssa Merwin: One tip I would share with everyone is to make sure that you’re able to add value in every conversation that has nothing to do with the solution that you sell. Finding out what your buyers and prospects care about whether that’s on LinkedIn or elsewhere and being able to go in and help them be better at their jobs because they’ve spent time with you.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 212: LinkedIn Americas Sales Chief Alyssa Merwin Discusses How Her Sales Managers Elevated Their Performance When SHE Became More Vulnerable and Authentic first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview took place on March 3, 2019. Some of the pricing details and other comments about LinkedIn features might have changed since this interview took place.]

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EPISODE 154: LinkedIn Whisperer Brynne Tillman Shares the Three Things You Must Be Doing to Optimize LinkedIn for Sales

BRYNNE’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “We are ignoring our new connections all the time. Put together a great welcome message that has an insight, a piece of content – not a sales pitch, don’t talk about you or your business. Give them some really great value that leads back to your solution but isn’t leading with your solution.”

This is a special episode with Brynne Tillman, the CEO at Social Sales Link.

She’s known as the LinkedIn Whisperer and is of the top LinkedIn for Sales experts on the planet.

We’re going to be talking about optimizing LinkedIn for Sales.

Find Brynne on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: You’re really well known, you’ve thought through so many things about LinkedIn. We’re going to cover a couple different things so let’s get started, let’s talk about the profile. Let’s talk about one thing that you like to help people understand and apply which is converting the profile from your resume to a resource. What does that mean?

Brynne Tillman: When you’re in business development, your resume is not nearly as interesting to your buyers as content and insights. When you convert your profile from that resume to a resource, you’re really attracting and engaging and teaching your ideal buyers. They get curious, they start thinking about things differently, they start seeing you as the thought leader and subject matter expert and it leads them closer and closer to your solution.

Fred Diamond: What does that mean, what should people be thinking about? What are some things people should be doing to make best advantage of LinkedIn?

Brynne Tillman: That’s a great question. Remember, this really is if you’re in sales. If you are in a career transition or a recruiter, all of that can be very different but if you’re in business development, this is your landing page. The ultimate goal is to get more phone calls with targeted buyers, so that becomes the job of the profile. I often talk to folks when they’re thinking about switching their profile to a resource from the perspective of, “Imagine yourself on stage. People paid $150 dollars a ticket to come learn from you. What would you teach them if those were your buyers in the audience? You can’t pitch to them, you’re not going to give them a list of your specialties when you’re up there. What are you going to be helping them with? Focus on who you help, how you help them and why they should care. Dive into what really matters to them and then provide real tangible insights that they can use even if they don’t hire you.”

Fred Diamond: We talk about this a lot on the Sales Game Changers podcast, the whole notion that you need to really think about your customer. One of the huge things that keeps coming through in the Sales Game Changers podcast when we talk to sales leaders is that they’re constantly thinking about the value that they’re bringing customers. It’s always been about bringing value, but even more so in the last couple years because the customer can get information on the internet and they can get information from social media. They don’t need to speak to you, Mr. and Mrs. Sales Professional. We constantly tell people, “Think about the value you’re bringing to your customer to help them achieve their goals.” Can you translate that to LinkedIn?

Brynne Tillman: Absolutely. You made a really good point which is they can get a lot of information without us. Back in the day, before there was email in sales they had to call us to get that information so if they are researching, who are they learning from? Is it you or is it your competitor? We also know LinkedIn did a study in that 74% of buyers do research on LinkedIn before they make a buying decision. Where are they getting the information? Who are they getting it from? Is it leading to your solution or someone else’s? We need to really take a look at what is the content that your buyers are looking for and using to help make their decisions. What thought leaders are they going to to help to mold that? In fact, the stat is 67% of the buying decision – it’s a serious decision stat – is made before the sales rep even knows they’re in the market.

A couple of things: one, we need to be the ones influencing that 67% for a few reasons. One, we want them to think of us as the experts in the area, that they’re impressed by the content that they’re learning from us. The other piece is when they do reach out to make a phone call, we want to make sure that we’re the first vendor that they’re calling. How does that relate to LinkedIn? One, they’re looking at our profiles. Is there a profile pitching our services or actually providing insights and helping to move that buyer closer and closer to us as an option? And the content that we’re sharing, it’s so vital that we’re sharing insights that are really valuable, that have an impact, that get our buyers thinking a little bit differently, that plant some seeds so that they’re understanding how to buy.

The ultimate goal is for them to raise their hand and say, “I have learned so much from this person and this company that they are the people that we want to go to to help us solve whatever issue we have.

Fred Diamond: I have an interesting point here. A lot of times through the Sales Game Changers podcast, the sales leaders that we interview say that you need to be a better listener as compared to someone who just goes into a sales meeting and wants to talk about them and their features. One of the ways that most of these people have become successful is by becoming expert listeners, which means you need to ask questions, you need to prepare. Can you have the same corollary with your LinkedIn profile where it really is focused on not you or your company or your product, but can you apply it so that it really is focused on the customer you’re trying to serve?

Brynne Tillman: The way that we position profiles is really a resource. Almost look at the summary like a blog post where you’re providing real value. You talk about the questions that you ask and one of the things that we’ve learned with social is we can learn so much about our prospects before our meeting that we should go in so prepared knowing much more than they’d expect us to know, not sitting back and asking, “What keeps you up at night?” Talking to them about, “I noticed at a press release that your company put out about 3 weeks ago around X. How is that affecting you?” Then they’re like, “They really did their homework, they really looked this up, they really learned more.”

There’s a little secret hack that I do if I’m really looking at a prospect, a big company I’m trying to get into. I’ll do a search for people that were in similar roles to the person that I’m meeting with at that company. You can search past roles at past companies, so I can connect with folks. Maybe I’m looking to speak with the VP of Sales at ABC Company, I can search who used to be at ABC Company as the VP of Sales and reach out to them and I can get a ton of insights from former employees. That’s a little hack on how you can use LinkedIn.

Fred Diamond: Obviously you’ve probably looked at tens of thousands of profiles. You help companies around the country optimize their LinkedIn, not just their profiles but their usage, if you will. Is there anything that you see that sales professionals are doing on LinkedIn on their profiles? Obviously it’s probably, “Me, me, me” but is there anything else that you see that they’re egregiously doing incorrectly that’s harming them?

Brynne Tillman: That’s a great question. One of the things that we’ll see, the aggressive sales people that will list President’s Club, Top Negotiator. No prospect wants to work with a really great negotiator so although those are the attributes that they may want when they’re looking for a job, it’s certainly not what a client is going to be attracted to. You really have to get into the shoes or the eyes of your audience and say, “Is this something that’s going to lead them to me or lead them away from me?”

Fred Diamond: Before we move onto the next category, is there anything else that you want to talk about? About the best way to optimize your profile.

Brynne Tillman: You can add some key words to be found for sure, make sure you know the key words that your prospects are using when they’re searching. The other thing that I think is really important is LinkedIn has a recent update to experience where they thread positions together. If you’ve had three  or four positions in one company, they come down into one list and I’ve hacked that a little bit. Instead of adding an actual title, you can actually add your deliverables which will really highlight the solutions that you provide so when they skim down, they know exactly how and what they can buy from you.

Fred Diamond: How about projects that you’ve worked on or certain teams or those kinds of teams as well?

Brynne Tillman: If you have some projects, there is a project section in LinkedIn that’s buried that no one ever gets to, unfortunately and you can’t move that up but you can add rich media to each of your positions. If you have case studies or projects you can actually create PDF’s or mini-videos about them and adding them in that section gets a lot more visibility than the actual project section.

Fred Diamond: I have a quick question. We’re going to be talking about how to leverage your existing connections to gain access to targeted buyers. Can we talk about your status for a second? When people use LinkedIn, of course they can update their status and video is a big thing right now. Can you give some advice to the Sales Game Changers listening here about things they should or shouldn’t do on your status?

Brynne Tillman: Are you talking about nurturing with content?

Fred Diamond: In your daily status where you can post a picture or a link to an article or an event or something like that. Give us some ideas on what sales professionals should or shouldn’t be doing.

Brynne Tillman: Ultimately when you’re posting content to your news feed, you’re nurturing your existing connections. As you connect with a ton of people, some of them will convert to conversations, some of them don’t but you want to stay in front of them with really valuable content. A lot of people think of content and blog as the same thing, but there’s so many other ways to have content which I think is your question. There’s Native Video which LinkedIn is loving right now and that’s video that’s anywhere from 6 seconds to 10 minutes that you literally upload – not a link – into LinkedIn and that’s enormous play. 10 minutes is way too long most of the cases, but anywhere from 60 seconds to 3 minutes, even 3 minutes can get long but if it’s real value it can be some of the best content that you put out there.

Fred Diamond: You can produce the video and then upload it?

Brynne Tillman: It’s not live yet although I understand that’s coming. It’s definitely uploaded.

Fred Diamond: A video file.

Brynne Tillman: Right, so MP4, you can upload that. One thing I highly recommend with your videos is get captions put in them. There are a couple of things, you can upload a video to YouTube and get the transcription and then you can use anything like iMovie or any inexpensive video editing tool. Once you do that on YouTube, you don’t want to take the link from YouTube and share that. You want to now upload the video to LinkedIn as well. The other free website is called otter.ia, O-T-T-E-R dot A-I. You can upload a video and it will transcribe it for you, it’s really fast and easy to do. You want those captions because most people are looking at LinkedIn at work, they often don’t have audio on so they will stop and read. You want to make sure that you’ve got that.

Fred Diamond: Obviously you’re an expert, we have you on the show here, very excited about that. You’ve won numerous awards for your LinkedIn consulting and thought leadership. How often do you upload something to LinkedIn on your news feed?

Brynne Tillman: I want to be on my news feed – and this is me – 3 to 5 times a day. That sounds like a lot, it doesn’t mean I’m sharing original content 3 to 5 times a day. #1 I’m recycling content, #2 I search hash tags. For me, #SocialSelling, #LinkedIn, #LinkedInForSales, so I have certain hash tags that will pull up content from other people talking about topics they care about. I can engage on their topics, on their content and start to leverage other people’s content to be seen as a thought leader in that world. I curate content, I use feedly.com, if you’re familiar it’s a dash board where I take content from lots of places, I share podcasts, I share interviews. It’s not all original content, but I am leveraging other people’s content often.

Fred Diamond: Today’s Sales Game Changers podcast it’s a special episode, we’re talking to Brynne Tillman, she’s the LinkedIn Whisperer. Brynne, let’s move to a different topic now inside of LinkedIn, of course. Talk about the notion of leveraging your existing connections to gain access to targeted buyers. What are some of the best practices that the Sales Game Changers should be doing to make that happen?

Brynne Tillman: This is why I really love LinkedIn, this is the differentiator above and beyond any other social platform out there. LinkedIn allows us to filter and search our connections’ connections to identify who in our network knows our targeted buyers. We can leverage those relationships to get warm introductions, and there are a few ways to do this. Before you search, if you’re using the free LinkedIn you’ve got to create a bullion search string which is a series of titles that you want to go after using modifiers like “or”, “and” and “not” to create a search string of ultimately your decision-makers, influencers, stake holders.

Once you do that, we now can go into LinkedIn and actually even before you search people you don’t know, stick them in with all the right filters location and then choose “first degree” in your search which is going to show you everyone that you’re already connected to that you’ve been ignoring that you shouldn’t be. Then you can engage by sending out content that might be relevant to them. After you’re done with that, switch it from firs degree filter to second degree which is now allowing us to search all of our connections and it will show us hundreds if not thousands of people that we are only one person away from. It will show us who our shared connections are, so now we have the ability to reach out to our network and ask for introductions. “How well do you know this person? Would you be open to connecting me to them? Would you be open to me mentioning that we had this conversation?”

That’s when the magic starts. Now, you can also search individuals. I can go and do that same search in a person’s connection so if it’s a client or networking partner I can make a list of the people they know that I want to meet, run the names by them and ultimately convert that conversation into meaningful introductions.

Fred Diamond: What do you see, are people willing to? What’s a common thing that you see today where, let’s say, I go up to someone who I’m connected to and I search on VP’s of Sales. I interview VP’s of Sales for the podcast typically in the DC mid-Atlantic but also across the country. Let’s say that you have someone who’s a VP of Sales in DC that I was not aware of. What should I do to get you to be inspired to make an introduction?

Brynne Tillman: You have to look at the relationship. In some cases, I’ll text the person or email them or go on Facebook, it just depends on how I would normally communicate with them. You can also send a note on LinkedIn, “Fred, I noticed you’re connected to Jane at ABC Company, I’m not sure how well you know her but I’m trying to get in front of her. Do you have 10 minutes for a quick chat?” If it’s a real high level person you want to get in front of. It could be simply, “Would you be open to make an introduction? I can even offer you a little paragraph that you can just copy and paste and put us both in a message.” You really want to look at your relationship with the person you’re asking and approach it the way you would in the real world.

Fred Diamond: Is that something that we should be thinking about? I know you and I have talked about this before. Obviously LinkedIn is just an unbelievable platform, it’s obviously beyond amazing the ability to connect with almost anybody on the planet. Do you view it beyond the technology? The point being if I sell to my customer, it’s basically accelerating the process but I still need to have the relationship and I still need to provide value to them. How quickly should I go from LinkedIn to a phone call or to trying to get into the person’s office, or is that the goal?

Brynne Tillman: The goal is the phone call but if we pitch too soon, we don’t get the phone call. We have to have some patience and it’s about consistently providing insights. Social selling is not linear. What we want to happen is I connect with them, I send them some insights, I ask them for a call, they schedule a call, we run discovery, I send them a proposal, we close business. All of us are like, “Yes, that’s what we want” but the reality is not that. The reality is we connect with them on LinkedIn, we send them a blog post, they don’t respond. Then they see something that we post on LinkedIn and they click through to our website and maybe they download something and go into our drip campaign. Then all of a sudden I see they opened an email and they looked at my profile and now I’m really excited so I send them a personal note and they ignore me again.

It can go on for months and they just ignore me until my solution becomes a priority in their business, and then I get the call. There is some patience. If you get an introduction to someone, you can certainly ask for a call. “Fred thought we should chat, I’d love to jump on a call, explore ways we might be able to work together.” It came from a warm introduction and that’s fine, but if you’re just connecting with someone and you pitch to get a phone call right away, you just totally black-listed yourself.

Fred Diamond: Related to that, I see a big trend where companies are using some type of automation via In-Mail to send requests right away for the sale, and it’s usually a junior sales professional behind it, if you will. Maybe their company has implemented where all of a sudden you get this In-Mail, “Hey, I was looking at your website and I really think you could use my SEO process” or some type of data analysis type of thing. Does that work or is that really just a total waste of time? Or if you get one out of a million, is it worth it?

Brynne Tillman: I don’t really want to answer if it works or not, I just think its icky. For some people it may work. A couple of things: #1 automation breaks LinkedIn’s agreement. Fake profiles break LinkedIn’s agreement so right away, it’s wrong because you have a privilege of being able to use LinkedIn. Even if you pay, you don’t have the right, it’s their business. That’s first off, second to that is in my opinion, sales is still a relationship and if you’ve got automation that’s running your connection requests and your messages and you think that’s building a relationship with someone or worse yet, they think they’re having a conversation with you and you’re not, that is so inauthentic that to me, it breaks all the sales rules, not even just social selling rules. We’re not selling trinkets on Amazon. If you want to use automation to sell a thing and you never have to meet your client, that’s fine but if this is ultimately a relationship sale, don’t start that relationship under falsehood.

Fred Diamond: Brynne, I’ve got one quick question for you. This could probably be a long question but I’m going to ask one quick question before we take a short break and listen to one of our sponsors. You mentioned that LinkedIn is a platform, there is a free version and of course you could pay for LinkedIn as well. Could you explain for the Sales Game Changers listening to the podcast today why should they invest and should they invest in Premium Membership?

Brynne Tillman: Premium or Sales Navigator are really the way to look at it.

Fred Diamond: Should they invest in Sales Navigator, should they invest in Premium or just keep going with the free version?

Brynne Tillman: I happen to be a huge Sales Navigator fan. Premium has a few features that are nice, like you can see who looked at your profile for the last 90 days and you can do more searches than you can without paying anything, but Sales Navigator is so incredible. The ability and the features, the way you can organize your connections and leverage your team members to find out who they know to get you connected, I can go on and on. If you are prepared to truly use Sales Navigator the right way, I think it is the most valuable tool a salesperson can have in their stack.

Fred Diamond: What does it typically go for per month?

Brynne Tillman: There are two versions for individuals, there’s $79 dollars a month for Sales Navigator and $129 a month that has Point Drive which is my favorite tool right now. You can create personal landing pages with content that when people visit to look at your content, you are notified what they downloaded, how long they were there, the stats are amazing and I have closed a lot of business simply because I know what my prospect is interested in based on what they’re looking at.

It’s an amazing tool, but don’t jump in without a plan. It’s like joining a gym and not knowing how to use the equipment. Make sure that you have a plan in place, you’ve got your templates in place, you know exactly what you’re doing and that you don’t fall under random acts of social.

Fred Diamond: We’re talking today on the Sales Game Changers podcast, it’s a special episode, we’re talking to Brynne Tillman, she’s the LinkedIn Whisperer. She is one of the true LinkedIn experts for sales professionals. Where can people find you, do you have a website? Of course on LinkedIn.

Brynne Tillman: I do, but start with LinkedIn [Laughs] I am still the only Brynne Tillman on LinkedIn which is great. My website is socialsaleslink.com, I’m on Twitter as Brynne Tillman.

Fred Diamond: Brynne, let’s bring it home, this has been a great conversation on ways Sales Game Changers can be optimizing LinkedIn for sales. Give us your final thoughts on nurturing your connections. Again, this is another topic within LinkedIn we could probably talk for 4 or 5 hours, but to summarize in a couple minutes as we wind down today’s podcast. Nurturing your connections with valuable insights and content that moves them closer to your solution, talk about that and some of the best practices that the Sales Game Changers should be following.

Brynne Tillman: As you’re creating valuable content, we talked about video, there are so many other ways to create content, get it into the inbox. Not just on the news feed, identify maybe 10 or 15 people every week that when you have a new piece of content, let them know. “I created this content, it’s specifically for VP of sales, I thought that it might be helpful for you if that’s your target market, I’d love to hear your thoughts. As always, if you have any questions, I’m always happy to chat.” Leave it open for a conversation but don’t push the conversation. If you can do that on a consistent basis and stay in front of your network, your targeted market with content that moves them closer to your solution, when it’s ready for them to make a decision you’re the one they’ll call.

Fred Diamond: I’ve got a quick question as it relates to that, you may or may not know the answer to this but if you use LinkedIn to communicate to somebody, let’s say somebody does connect, one of your prospects. They accept your invitation, you send a nice note, “I saw the article that you were published in” or something like that, should you continue the conversation on LinkedIn? When should you reach out? For example, when you send emails it’s either best first thing in the morning or towards the end of the day. What are some ideas on using LinkedIn to communicate? Does it really matter?

Brynne Tillman: I teach LinkedIn so I tend to stick with LinkedIn and what I like in Sales Navigator is I can tag them in categories so I know what I’ve sent them. I can look and tag them under “sent April 7th, 2017 blog post” and I’m like, “I already sent that to them, what would be the next thing?” Or however I’d want to do that. I can take notes and I can tag them so I know exactly what would be next. I tend to do everything there, but that’s not necessarily the only right answer, I think emails are great. You’ve got to get them to opt in if you’re going to put them into mass email, don’t just add their email from LinkedIn, it’s just wrong.

You can offer them content – and I do it all the time in my Point Drive, in my landing page there’s one or two things where they would opt in, so now they’re choosing to get added to my email list. Individual emails, if they have their professional email listed as their primary email, I think that’s fine if you want to try it that way and reach out. Most people have their personal email listed, though.

Fred Diamond: Like the Gmail account or something like that. I’ve got one final question before we wind down here, let’s say you link in to somebody, you send them a request to connect, they seem to be a good prospect for you, someone recommended you should link in to them and let’s say they never accept. What’s the process? I think you can withdraw the invitation, what is the process, what are your recommendations? Do you withdraw every week and keep going after them or how much time do you usually give?

Brynne Tillman: I’m actually 4 to 6 weeks and then I go back and start to withdraw some invitations. If someone really did recommend that I reach out, I would send an InMail which is different than a connection request, it’s a paid message that would go to them that says, “Sorry we haven’t been able to connect but Fred said that it would make sense.” I would go that route, but I would not give up just because they didn’t accept your connect request. Often they’re just not active on LinkedIn.

Fred Diamond: That’s interesting, we’re both very active. Are most people very active? People that the Sales Game Changers who are selling to VP’s of IT or CFO’s, are they also as active as we might be or is it mostly a sales tool?

Brynne Tillman: Maybe not as active, but a lot of them are there. The two areas that are slow to adopt seems to be K-12 educators, they’re just not on LinkedIn because they don’t get hired that way and medical doctors. Chiropractors are there and dentists are there, the ones that have to go hunting for business, but your typical surgeon or family doctor just isn’t on LinkedIn. If you’re selling to anyone else, they’re there. They might not be very active, but they’ve got accounts and here’s the thing, if anyone outside of those professions has looked for a job in the last 5 years, they got on LinkedIn.

Fred Diamond: They should be. Again, we talked today with Brynne Tillman, she’s the CEO of Social Sales Link and of course she goes by the LinkedIn Whisperer. Brynne, you’ve given us so much great content today. Why don’t you give us one final thought to help the Sales Game Changers listening to today’s podcast take their usage of LinkedIn to the next level?

Brynne Tillman: One thing is we are ignoring our new connections all the time. If I were to say change one thing now, put together a great welcome message that has an insight, a piece of content – not a sales pitch, don’t talk about you or your business. Give them some really great value that leads back to your solution but isn’t leading with your solution.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 154: LinkedIn Whisperer Brynne Tillman Shares the Three Things You Must Be Doing to Optimize LinkedIn for Sales first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.