193: Hear The Expert Advice For Gaining Ready-To-Buy Leads

Melissa:

Hey. Hey. Hey. I hope you guys enjoy these, what I'm calling, podcast shorts for my burnout to all out community. This is just a little peek behind the curtain of the coaching that goes on inside of my programs. We're bringing to you Some of the best nuggets and coaching I'm giving, within hot seats of all of our different programs, whether it's our LinkedIn Method Academy, our mini mastermind business basics all the way up to our higher level mastermind. If you're hearing some of these questions and you're like, man, I wish I could get my burning question answered by Melissa. Hey.

Melissa:

Guess what? You could be featured on my podcast. If you've got a question that you want answered and you submit it to my team and we pick it, we will bring you here to the podcast for our podcast shorts and, do a hot seat with you. Where can you submit your questions? Send them to team burnout to all out .co. We'll make sure we drop that in the show notes for our podcast shorts, and I hope that You guys find as much value in these shorts as our clients do inside the program. Need some effective tactical advice that actually helps you get results and makes a real difference in your life and business? You've come to the right place. If you're finding yourself here today, it means you're getting ready to gain serious traction in your business, rapidly multiply your income and impact, and you're ready to make it happen while living all out. Guys, I'm Melissa Henault, your trustworthy corporate dropout turned 6 figure business burnout turned happy and healthy CEO of a multimillion dollar online business, and you're listening to the burnout to all out podcast. On this show, we're serving up innovative growth strategies, simple implementation methods to put them into practice and action stimulating inspiration tailored specifically for the modern entrepreneur.

Melissa:

Let's dive in. Alright. Lauren.

Lauren:

Hey, Melissa. Thank you so much. This is, like, perfect what she just shared because it's In a similar vein, and I'm seeing in the chat, everyone's like, this is so good. So I too have been spending a lot of time in connections, and I had what is it? LinkedIn premium. I but I recently just canceled it thinking maybe I don't need it. But then For me, just with my business, I need to batch this type of work. And my understanding was that I should try to be connecting with, like, 5% of my audience every week.

Melissa:

Yep. So that puts me in

Lauren:

a like, I have a: 22100

Melissa:

I mean, technically you could connect with a 110 people a day.

Lauren:

Oh, per day. Okay. Even more.

Melissa:

Yeah. But here's the thing for all of you guys, if you're doing this math and you're like, oh, crap, I can be connecting with more people. I want you to keep in mind that even though that's like the average threshold, if you have not historically been growing at that pace for your network. I would say, like, Lauren, don't jump out of the gate this afternoon and go connect with a 110 because There is a threshold. Ali has experienced this herself because we had a LinkedIn agency with clients, and so she can speak to this firsthand. If you jump from 0 connections to a 100, 110 connections on this, like, one day from 0 activity, They have some type of algorithm software AI that actually picks up on the fact that there's been 0 activity to a 110 connections. And what LinkedIn is looking for is potential bots. And when you go from no activity to a 110 in one day, your account will still get flagged because it's not your normal activity.

Melissa:

Right? Mhmm. So I would kind of prime yourself up to that so that LinkedIn, their system doesn't throw a flag. So maybe you add 20 or 30 today, pay, 40 to 50 tomorrow, and, like, ease yourself up in that network growth so that it doesn't flag you. And the second thing is, well, you guys have your LinkedIn checklist. And if you get to the network growth strategy module, which, By the way, Tiffany Sosa, I know you've been around the block for a little while. I recorded a new network growth strategy module, like, about a month or 2 ago. And I also recorded a new content marketing module, like totally fresh. So definitely check it out because you were with the earlier cohort that may have watched the OG, the original one.

Melissa:

So go check that out. In the network growth strategy. We have templates and stuff for, like, scripts that you can use to make it somewhat templated. Also be careful there. Right? Because if you're copying and pasting the exact same thing really, really fast, it also picks that up too and thinks you're a bot. Right? So and you're like, I'm not a bot. I'm a human. I'm just in Melissa's Academy, and she's taught me how to be really efficient.

Melissa:

Quit blocking me. I'm a real person. So the way that you can kind of I hate to say it, but I know you wanna work in batches and be efficient. But If you can customize the message just a little bit, each one you send and or move not quite as fast, you're more likely to not get flag. It's not a problem for a lot of people, but for those of you who are really efficient and you're really fast, I'm just warning you now that if this happens to you, This is what's going on. LinkedIn thinks that you're insanely too efficient. They don't realize you've been through this program and we've taught you how to do this. They think you're a bot.

Melissa:

Okay? So that's my fair warning. So I'm sorry. What was your question?

Lauren:

So for me, Well, it's good to know at least the numbers are written that at least we're thinking the same way because then that's the goal to get to. Where I'm hitting a wall is Even getting to, like, 20 outreaches feels like a lot. And so I work with women dealing with billable hour burnout, So accountants, attorneys, consultants. So for me, it's like, I don't have to do as much digging to find where they are because The odds are all of them are. Right? But as I'm priming like, what I'll do is, let's say, I'll look at PwC, and then I'll look up a certain title. So PwC senior manager, and then I start reaching out to women since I coach women. And so I'll get a page of, like, 10, and it'll include men and women. And then I say, remove the men, and so maybe I'll reach out in that page of, Like, 5 women.

Lauren:

And then I look at the activity based on, like, that section on the profile. And if it says, like, more than 2 weeks, I don't reach out. Does that feel like the right funnel? Because I'm like, that is a little time consuming, but it seems like I'm trying to the right person, or is there a way I should be doing it better?

Melissa:

When you say more than 2 weeks, You're looking at their activity for likes and comments?

Lauren:

Yeah. I'll look at, like, anything either a post, a comment.

Melissa:

Yeah. So here's the sticky widget there. Depending on your industry, here's the thing that you have to think about is the average user of LinkedIn, in, only 4% post content, and the majority hover and say nothing. And so your net might be a little hype in the sense that some of these attorneys and accountants may be scrolling, but not necessarily engaging. They may be in and out for, like, a job post. There's a lot of people on LinkedIn that are super stealth. Like, my husband never comments or likes anything, but he's in there all the time as a senior vice president, like sniffing out other people's stuff. And if you went to his profile, I bet it would say is that he hasn't been active in like a month.

Melissa:

Foot. I know he was in there, like, this Saturday. Right? So I would say and I know I tell you guys to do this. Right? Like, you wanted to go do a quality check. I think that you might want a larger window with threshold, maybe give yourself a month, interaction. Like, A red flag is someone who's not engaged or interacted in the last, like, 6 months to a year. Right? You just know they're totally off form. But if they've been active in the last month or 2, chances are here, let's look my husband up right now.

Melissa:

I just wanna I want this to be just like an n of 1 example of somebody who's on it literally

Lauren:

a lot. And as you're pulling him up, is there another way to identify activity than the activity section in their profile? Do you know what I mean? That's it. Right?

Melissa:

Yeah. No. Not really. Okay.

Lauren:

Okay.

Melissa:

My husband has not made a post in 4 months, And then the post before that was 10 months ago. Okay? But he was on this weekend. But this, like seals the deal for me that like, I would give yourself a larger window for sure of people's activity. Maybe, like I said, not a huge window.

Lauren:

Like, a month. Yeah. Totally. Okay. I was wondering if that was okay because I don't want to pull all the wrong people, but I agree. My industry, like, is more readers, not fame, Mike. Mhmm.

Melissa:

Right. And that's Jill makes a really good point. Right? Like, the reality is the higher their title, like, the less time they have, like, to engage and, like, network and likely that they may be in the higher level. Like, my husband, he's looking at people they're interviewing for positions and stuff. So, yeah, give yourself a larger window.

Lauren:

Okay. Other than that, I was good in terms of, like, how I'm going about it, I guess, qualifying and calling them in. Okay. And then my last question for you is in terms of keeping track, do you and maybe this is in some of the modules. Well, I haven't seen everything, but I've been trying to, like, go through. But is there a way to, like, track these people you're having these conversations with? And is there a place to find it.

Melissa:

Yeah. So we have a module on this. What I train you guys on in the module is Asana. We've actually shifted to HubSpot, but that's just because of the scale of where we are with leads now. Asana is great When you're a 1 man show managing LinkedIn, what I encourage is that you don't actually start tracking conversations until there's curiosity. I mean, In the beginning, if you feel like tracking everyone you've contacted, feel free to. I find that it became a huge waste of time and, like, cluttered up the Asana board. And so in what I coach is once you get to the point of if I, would you.

Melissa:

It's a simple question. If I, would you? Like, no matter what it is. You've gotten to a point of conversation where they have a problem, you have a solution, They're curious about what you're doing. They're curious about what you have to offer. You've asked a question. Right? If I sent you some information, would you? If I sent you my link for us to have a a chat, would you? Right? Like, we're looking for an affirmative where they're saying, Why? Yes. I am curious. Like, whatever that looks like, and I highly, highly advocate for this in the academy to not just dump Calendly links, dump information into people's text, like, message before they've acknowledged they're interested.

Melissa:

Because we can get really excited and do that, but it really comes across as like spam. Right? So just asking that if I would you. And once they say, yes, I'm interested, yes to me that thing, it's like, once we get the affirmative, then I would put them on the Asana board. Right? Basically, I'm not tracking all the outward bound messages that no one has responded to. I'm not tracking all the outward bound messages that were responded to with a thanks. I'm glad to connect. Like, to me, that's still, like, not worth tracking. The tracking starts when you're saying there's a chance.

Melissa:

Right? Like, there's some type of affirmative that's worth tracking. Does that make sense?

Lauren:

Yeah. That does. Amazing. Thank you so much, Melissa.

Melissa:

You are so welcome. And there's a whole module on that. And then my follow-up formula. Like, I've always used the 2 by 2 by 2. So once they do say yes, I'm curious. Right? We follow-up in 2 days, follow-up in 2 weeks, and then a follow-up in 2 months. And that's why I love Asana because it'll help you stay on target. It's really hard.

Melissa:

I have been in all of your shoes. It's really hard when you first get started not to circle around like the 1 person who said they were interested because every crumb is a meal, and it's so easy to follow-up too much. And so that's why I do, like, the 2 by 2 by 2. It's like, Give them 2 days, then give them 2 weeks. And then by the 3rd follow-up, my favorite thing to say is, hey, I don't wanna be a nag, But I haven't really heard you were interested, but then I haven't heard either way. And I'm just cleaning up my follow-up list, and I'm curious if you'd like for me to take you off. Right? And this is a really great free pass for people to be like, I was interested, but now I'm not, and, like, celebrate that. You're able to take them off your list.

Melissa:

But it also gives a little motivation to people who just haven't pulled the trigger yet because they've been busy, they weren't quite ready. That was me for my trip with Bali. Like, I had planned on going to Bali all year, but I never actually signed up. I had the calendar blocked, but I didn't hit purchase. Right? And she followed up, and I was like, yeah. You're ready to go. And then I, like, ignored her message because I just wasn't ready to make a decision. I was nervous about traveling across the globe.

Melissa:

kids for so long. There are a: 100000

Melissa:

Don't wanna be an nag, but are you coming? Because the trip's in 8 days. And I'm like, shit. Yes. I'm coming. So had she not followed up with me, She would have missed someone investing in that trip, but it was just a matter of readiness and when I was ready. So follow-up formulas are important. People many times don't respond because they're just not ready to respond, but it doesn't mean they're not willing to invest. So they need us to follow-up with them.

Lauren:

May I ask 1 more follow-up question then? Sure. Okay. So this is my 1st month, and I'm, like, loving it. And I'm finding the rhythm, and I think that's probably just, like, the last piece is, like, I know there's the checklist, and I've been going through that. But I'm looking when I'm thinking of connections, there's just a part of me that's like, oof, this feels like a lot because you, like, get Austin, the connections of okay. Well, now these 10 people I've added and then but it's the 2 by 2. And how do you find the flow? Do you have any, I guess, best practices of taking what we have And then, like, bringing it to life.

Melissa:

So what I found very, very quickly with Asana, when you first get started and you've got a couple leads and you assign it in your Asana board, you'll get emails that it's, like, time to follow-up, and they'll be, like, scattered throughout the week. Right? And nobody has time for that. So what I started to do is even though I have the 2 by 2 by 2, basically, where I ultimately landed was, like, Fridays were like my cleanup day of everything in Asana that's been assigned to me to follow-up that week will be on that day. And so you'll ultimately get to that place because you're just you have so many leads, like, that are in the pipeline in different phases of follow-up That the 2 by 2 begins to kinda fall by the wayside in the sense that it's really like every Friday, whoever needed to be followed up with that week, whether it was the the 1st 2 days or the 1st 2 weeks or the 1st 2 months when it lands on that Friday, I'm following up with them based off of Asana. So I also highly recommend I mean, as you start to build your pipeline, some of you may already be experiencing this, where you start to grow connections. And before you're even out of the account, you've got people responding, and you kinda like squirrel because you're like, do I go answer that? It's like, am I time blocking for this? There's 2 methods to this. Right? So when you're growing your network, You're following your checklist. There's 2 methods, and I will speak to both because I think it depends on where you are in scaling.

Melissa:

When I first really got started with LinkedIn and I was really trying to generate leads and get my business going, you and I both know that People are in and out of LinkedIn much more quickly than they are the other platforms. They're not in there to mindlessly scroll all day. Right? Sometimes they're in there once a week. So when I first really got started, I'd be on 1 task and I'd see something come up in the DMs and I would immediately respond because I knew that they may not be back for another week. And so I wanted to catch them while they were there to have that conversation. That is a okay for a little while until you really get running on the platform. It's really bad for time management, and it's flight, you'll squirrel all over the place and lose your mind. So now I got to the point where I would time block, like, 2 to 3 times a week where I would literally clean out my inbox and then get back to some other income producing activities.

Melissa:

And so you can schedule into your calendar when you're gonna re be responding to all those messages. And you can do the same thing with what Ali and I call the Friday cleanup. And I still have an account manager do this now. Every Friday, she goes through every post that has been made that week. And she looks for 2nd and 3rd degree connections that have engaged in my post. And some of you guys, this is gonna change your life because you're not doing it right now. These are free connections, okay? Because they engaged in your content and they're not currently connected to you. The only reason they saw your content is because someone they know engaged.

Melissa:

And so these are your warmest leads, especially when I say leads, I mean, they're your warmest connections. For those of you who are cold connecting right now, and you've got, like, a really low response rate to to your cold connections. Know that when you reach out to people who are in your 2nd and third degree network, who engaged in your content, The accept to request rate goes through the roof because what you're saying is so just fancy me this. Right? So let's say Renee is a 3rd degree connection and let's say that Becky is a 1st degree connection and I made a post on Monday. Becky liked it and she commented on it. And I'm not connected to Renee, but Renee is connected to Becky. And Renee sees that Becky engaged in the post and really liked it. So Renee reads it and she hits the like button.

Melissa:

On Friday, I see that a 3rd degree connection Renee engaged in my post. And so I reach out to Renee. Hey, Renee, thanks so much for supporting my post about fill in the blank, whatever it was. I see that we have a common connection with Becky. I would love to add your energy to my feed. How likely do you think it is that Renee is gonna accept that request to connect compared to a cold message, cold connection. It's significantly higher. And so a lot of you guys are missing this right now, and I highly recommend every Friday, You go back through all of your posts for the entire week and look at the engagement in the comments, not just the comments, but the likes.

Melissa:

When you click on it, especially when you click on the engagement, LinkedIn, pro tip, list your 1st degree connections first. So all you do is scroll down to the bottom of the engagement, the likes, the thumbs up, the hearts, and your 2nd 3rds are at the bottom. And you wanna message them every week. And if you're strategically creating content that's putting you As the authority, as the thought leader bringing value in your space, these are the people to add to your network because they went out and engaged in the content that you put out in that subject matter. A, they're active. B, they like what you're putting out. Like, it can't get any better. These are the people you want in your network.

Melissa:

That make sense?

Lauren:

Thank you so much.

Melissa:

-: 2285

Melissa:

Can't wait to see you guys. Come find me over on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, wherever you like to hang. Cannot wait to here, how you are enjoying and applying what you're learning. You guys reach out to me over on social because I love hearing what's resonating with you. When you reach out to me and you send me those personal DMs, they really do impact the content I continue to bring forward to you. So, again, come find me, melissa_henault over on Instagram, melissahenault over on LinkedIn and Facebook. Can't wait to see you guys over there.