Recently, LinkedIn asked me (since “you’ve been posting some great stuff on LinkedIn” – wow, pretty cool!) what trends I see for 2019.

My answer: MORE

Strategy-level:

MORE mobile, digital, social and more data-driven and customer-centric decision-making and experimentation with innovations like AI and AR.

Tactics:

MORE social selling. I get so many spam calls, I don’t budge when my phone rings now, and I get so much spam email that I only view my Focused folder in Outlook. Social media will go from a “nice to have” to a “must have” for sales + business development.

MORE creativity with advertising. TV and traditional display ads get less eyeballs by the second. Companies will get more and more creative with advertising. For example:

• “In-game” TV ads – so you can’t DVR past them – that appear during sporting events today. These will become more prevalent,
• Ads on voice technology like Alexa – or even sponsored results, which gets dicey because you wouldn’t know if it’s the “best” answer or a sponsored answer
• “Anti-beacons” like Burger King’s new Whopper campaign. I’ve never understood why mall stores don’t have anti-beacons set up for their competitors’ stores. If I’m running Gap, I’m sending someone an offer every time they walk into H&M.
• Ads inside of video games – Roblox already does this. I saw an Aquaman movie ad on the wall of a building inside my son’s Xbox game recently. Integrated video game advertising!
• As automatic cars start to take off, how long will it be before we start seeing ads on our windshields?

MORE automation, and not always in a good way. Everyone wants to automate everything in marketing and sales, but many companies lack processes to support the automation, so they end up spamming the heck out of people, or they never follow-up outside of their automated sends, and thus, miss opportunities.

MORE video. As video comprises more and more of the internet’s content, everyone will be doing video in 2019. Facebook and LinkedIn already favor video over all other content. Those that are reluctant to do video in 2018, will be forced to do it in 2019 to sustain their current reach.

This will be an exciting year with a lot of big leaps forward in marketing in sales. It will be fun to watch it all unfold!

1.  To spend more time with my family
2.  To work with a variety of exciting clients
3.  To HELP people, especially non-profits.

So, I looked back over the past year. This year we were able to:

• Work with 23 clients including 3 Fortune 500s
• Help 4 non-profits make a real difference in their communities
• Set 5 start-ups companies up for success in both the short-term and the long-term
• Give away a lot knowledge that will help a lot of people via content and speaking events

And at the same time, I was able to:

• Pick my kids up from school almost every day
• Coach my sons’ soccer team (not once, but twice – including an all-star game)
• Take family vacations (plural – you can’t do that in corporateland!)

THOSE are the things that matter to me. Thus, I’m calling this year a landslide success.

Maybe you should too.

I’m not saying rest on your laurels, but I am saying to appreciate the good times – they don’t always last for long.

And most importantly, there are more important things than revenue.

Since the launch of the new LinkedIn user interface, users have lamented that the Advanced Search is gone, it only exists in Sales Navigator now, and you have to pay for it.

I was upgraded to the new user interface last night, and I noticed something interesting: Advanced search isn’t gone.

The “Advanced” button that used to be next to the search bar is gone. That’s true:

OLD top nav:

NEW top nav:

However, you can still do advanced searches in regular LinkedIn. They are just more integrated into the regular search functionality.

To start, type what you are searching for in the search bar. For example, if I wanted to find VPs of Marketing at Wells Fargo in the St. Louis area. I would start by searching for “Wells Fargo,” waiting a second, and then clicking “People who work at Wells Fargo” from the possible options. Here are the results I get:

Okay, so 394,392 results. If I’m looking to find, connect, and start a relationship with VPs at Wells Fargo in St. Louis, that is an unmanageable number.

However, if you look on the right side of the page, you will see many of the filters you used to see in Advanced Search. They’re not gone, they have just been moved.

So, I will filter by 1^st and 2^nd for Connections, the Greater St. Louis area as Location, Wells Fargo as the Current Company, and finally, Financial Services or Marketing and Advertising as the Industry. (Note: you can also filter on Profile language, Nonprofit interests and schools).

Once I add these filters, here’s what I see:

Now, we are down to 170 results. That’s muuuuuch better. If I needed to, I could review this list one-by-one and find those VPs that are in Marketing roles, but that would be time-consuming.

The biggest challenge is that the title filter is no longer available in the regular version of LinkedIn. With the new LinkedIn interface, it’s only available in Sales Navigator.

BUT…actually, that’s not entirely true. If you click on “Structuring your search,” LinkedIn gives you helpful tips on how to write your search queries:

The page overlay that appears shows you how to do complex searches…in the regular version of LinkedIn, AND YOU CAN STILL SEARCH BY TITLE!!

(Here is the URL for that page: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/76015  – note: besides that page there are also a lot of other helpful tips in that same section of LinkedIn Help)

So, let’s start over. With this new information, I would type my search like this:

title: (VP OR Vice President) AND company: “Wells Fargo”

Here are my initial results:

My new initial results set is a much smaller number (29,209 vs. 394,392), and they are all VPs, meaning: I JUST SEARCHED BY TITLE IN THE NEW LINKEDIN USER INTERFACE!

Now, if I run the same filters I ran before, my results look like this:

I could trim this further with more advanced Boolean searches (e.g. exclude Assistant Vice President and Senior Vice President), but even without doing that, I’m down to 86 opportunities, which gets me much closer to my target audience.

My advice: I always recommend that my clients upgrade to Sales Navigator. I’ve been using for years, and it keeps getting better and better from my perspective. However, if you can’t afford it, or don’t want to make that investment, I recommend you get really good at writing Boolean searches. Once you get the hang of it, then they roll off your tongue/fingertips. LinkedIn even has videos that help you write them on the LinkedIn Learning site: (https://www.linkedin.com/learning/search?keywords=boolean%20search)

Key Takeaways

• Advanced Search is not gone from regular LinkedIn
• You can still search by title in regular LinkedIn

If you find any other hidden nuggets in the new user interface, please share!

About the author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping organizations GAIN + RETAIN clients using digital strategy and social media. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling. To learn more about how to evolve your marketing and sales approaches for the digital age, reach out to Robert.

Photo: Rafiq Sarlie

Recently, I spoke with a friend of mine who is an insurance salesman. He predominately sells life insurance and property and casualty insurance. When we talked at a local bar, he confided in me that for the first time since the financial crisis in 2008, he is not going to hit his sales goal.

He talked about how he has a solid client base. However, every year he loses life clients to lapses and old age, or property and casualty customers that change policies based on $5/month difference.

In the past, he has always been able to replace this yearly runoff. However, this year, he’s had trouble replacing these customers. He complained about his inability to get prospects to talk with him.

“No one picks up the phone when I call, and no one ever calls me back.” He said. “When I email people, they rarely write me back – even if I’ve been referred to them by someone we both know!” He lamented.

After a couple of beers, he said “I don’t understand – I’m doing what I’ve always done.”

“That’s the problem,” I interjected “you’re doing things the way you’ve always done them.”

I’m writing this piece because my friend isn’t the only one having troubles making his sales numbers this year. I’ve been hearing this same story a lot in the past few months.

So what’s the solution? You have to modernize your sales toolbox.

Here’s how to do it:

1)     Have a strategy. Many individuals (and even some companies) don’t have a strategic plan for sales. They just target people in their territory that they get from a list they bought, a tool their company uses, or folks they get as referrals. Are these the RIGHT people to target? Maybe … maybe not. The product you’re selling may not be a fit depending on what life stage the person is in currently.

Here’s a quick way to create a strategy and go to market plan:

• First, define who your ideal customer is – who typically buys your products? Who is your product designed for?
• Next, segment your customers into different groups based on different behaviors like what type of products they typically purchase or where they are in the purchase journey.
• Then, find where they live and breathe and go there with messages that are tailored to their needs via channels where they spend their time. For example, if your target audience is recent college grads, are you going to more successful with direct mail or Snapchat? (Hint: You better start learning how to use Snapchat!)

2)     Remove cold calling and blast email from your toolbox. Notice I didn’t say remove calling and email. It’s the “cold” and “blast” adjectives that are the problem. You need to do research on your prospects before reaching out to them.

These two acquisition methods have declining in value for years, and a recent study by Baylor University showed that cold calling results in a meeting about 1% of the time. I read an article last week that touted the “success” a cold caller had by calling 1,250 people to get 18 meetings. That’s a 0.01% meeting rate!

3)     Add social media to your toolbox.  I get over a 50% meeting rate for some my clients using social media and social selling. Thus, at that rate, they have to reach out to 30 people on LinkedIn to get those same 18 meetings that the cold caller generated (and without annoying and alienating 1,232 other people to do it)!

Social media is also great for getting signals such as buying a home, birth of a child, getting married and switching jobs. These are big pivot points from a needs perspective, and you can get notified when your current and prospective customers hit one of these milestones.

4)     Personalize your outreach. In today’s world, it’s all about the customer experience. Everyone has bought from Amazon or Zappos or has used an American Express credit card or flown on Southwest Airlines. They know what great, personalized customer service looks like.

When you reach out to a customer via phone, email, social media or even by sky writing, if it’s the same generic message, you’ve lost most of them before you’ve started. Go to LinkedIn. Go to Twitter. Go to Facebook. You can find out an enormous amount information on a potential client, and it’s all free.

Use this information to tailor your message to that person. If you can’t think of a problem your prospect has that your product solves, then maybe you shouldn’t reach out to them.

5)     Tailor your message to the medium. Not only personalize the message to the individual, but to where it will be read as well. You wouldn’t use the same words in an email as you would in a face-to-face conversation. However, many business just cut and paste their direct mail pieces email into social media. Don’t be surprised when those messages don’t work! Direct mail and social media readers are different audiences, so the voice, tone and content need to be adjusted accordingly.

In addition, most emails and social media posts are now read on a mobile device, so when you are crafting your message, make sure it is in a short, easily-readable format. Tip: send emails and phone messages (and blog posts too if you are daring!) to your phone before you send them. Do you have to scroll and scroll and scroll to read it? Would a prospect actually scroll that much in an email from a stranger?

Conclusion

Add these tips to your toolbox, and you’ll be well on your way to hitting your sales goal for next year. Remember, you are not reinventing the wheel, you’re just moving the race track.

(Note: I’m happy to say that my friend has enrolled in some training that his company offers to help learn modern selling tools. He’s a great salesman so I’m confident he’ll hit his numbers next year.)

About the author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping organizations accelerate new customer acquisition and increase client retention using digital strategy and social media. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling. To learn more about how to evolve your marketing and sales approaches for the digital age, please fill out the form below:

[contact-form] 

Photo: Tara Hunt