7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
- Audio name pronunciation next to your name
- Addition of Stories to LinkedIn
- Calendly to set appointments
- Join Groups where your customers are to keep up
- Send a direct message to fellow group members without Inmail
- Set up events to notify others
- Post and comment on others post
Listen to previous podcast www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com
Full Podcast Transcript Below
Roy Barker (00:02):
Hello, and welcome to the business of business podcast. I’m Roy Barker, your host. We have an awesome guest with us today, Jessica Kotch. She is a speaker trainer sales and marketing consultant. She has worked with high profile fortune 500 companies, government agencies, as well as small businesses. Jessica. Welcome.
Jessica Koch (00:26):
Thank you for having me.
Roy Barker (00:28):
You bet. You bet. We’ve been trying to set this up for a while. So glad we finally were able to connect. Um, today. I think we had talked a little bit about maybe, uh, kinda diving into LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is well it’s, uh, underutilized by a lot of people and it’s misused by a lot of people. So kind of hoping that you can give us some tips of how we can, uh, you know, use LinkedIn better and make it work for us.
Jessica Koch (01:00):
Well, I do have some fun things to talk about for LinkedIn. Um, just, uh, uh, I don’t want to bore the listeners to stay with us winning there, but a little bit more about me is I am the Italian mother of seven. I have five girls and two boys. I have an active duty army son who I am incredibly proud of, has been deployed over six different times. And he is, um, growing in the ranks and he’s still just so young. He’s 26 years old and he’s done amazing things and six different tours overseas. He’s red brace, special ops, and I’m proud of all my kids, but you know, I gotta brag a little bit about my brave, my brave man.
Roy Barker (01:43):
Yeah, well, we appreciate his service and of course we appreciate y’all support of him. You know, being in service.
Jessica Koch (01:51):
Of course it’s scary, but you know, I don’t have a choice. I just leave it all to the man upstairs and say a lot of programmers. But our youngest is nine. She was our soccer star today. And so you can imagine if someone has been in sales and marketing for more than 25 years with seven kids can organize, manage just about anything.
I would say in the sales space, aside from, you know, we talked about the three, four letter word on our last podcast, besides the CRM, LinkedIn should be in every single sales person’s toolkit. And some interesting things are happening in this space right now. They have, they have finely. So just to understand LinkedIn, that’s going to always be a little bit behind Facebook and some of the other technology I know, I’m sorry, Microsoft, it’s you’re listening, but the engineers have been slow to develop this platform.
Jessica Koch (02:46): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
They bought it. I believe, I think it was 2017 that Microsoft purchased it. And so little, little, little small company, you know, bunch of software engineers, they got a new toy that had been done with nothing but play with so things when they first got their hands on it, it was hysterical. Cause I was teaching it pretty much multiple times a day for different organizations. Sometimes governments, sometimes private corporations have found the platform in the middle of a class webinar. Right. And things would move and change as we were talking, we’re like, Oh, this is something new. Let’s all learn together here.
Roy Barker (03:23):
That’s dynamic teaching right there when it’s changing right in front of your eyes.
Jessica Koch (03:27):
And I also got really good at knowing what its particular glitches are because I stay in it so much. I’ll say, okay, sometimes you can find the information that we’re talking about right now, here, here, or here. So just look for it. Cause they keep moving it the top three spaces to find it.
Roy Barker (03:44):7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
I did notice it’s been a week, 10 days ago that I guess they came out with a whole new, the interface look different. They kind of darkened up the blue and I really liked it. Yeah.
Jessica Koch (03:56):
I started running, I started that sentence to say, they’re always going to be a little behind the rest of them because they just added stories. So now on your phone, on the app piece, um, I don’t see the interface for it on, uh, on the desktop just yet, but you can from your phone and from the app at a story like you could, you can add a story on Facebook. So they have that. I mean, not there,
Roy Barker (04:25): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
If you don’t mind, can you just, I mean, I’ve been using Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn for the better part of 10 years. I don’t know. Let’s see. I’m thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause I was one of the first ones to hop on Facebook when I was in grad school. But um, so what is the story thing? I’m not sure that I get that or how that you would use that.
Jessica Koch (04:50):
You know, it’s, it’s just an interesting, um, kind of a flash in the pan thing. So if you’re making a quick announcement or you want to try to catch people’s attention, or if you got some stuff you already posted on Instagram or somewhere like that, you can throw it up quickly and easily from your phone on a story base, the story space, uh, they, it does evaporate. It’s like I’m going to show my age, but then that inspector gadget, this message will self destruct. That is what a story is. Say, this message will self destruct because it is not going to stick around. Now he make a post that stays on, um, on your timeline. You can find it in either whether you’re on Facebook, on LinkedIn, you can go to your activities under LinkedIn and you’ll find your posts. You’ll also find your articles.
Jessica Koch (05:36): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
Um, but now you also have the story piece. And I think people like it again because they can, um, put some of the things they’re posting on Instagram anyway and throw them up on the storyboard for Facebook and now LinkedIn as well. I wanted you to know that that was there. And now they’re saying you can another new thing. It’s not brand new, but it’s not been there very long as from your phone again, next year name there’s a little speaker and you can record it’s there. It was put there originally. I think it’s a really smart idea. It’s like one of the few things I was pretty impressed with Microsoft.
Jessica Koch (06:16):
They put a little a speaker event next year name. And when you’re on your phone, you can talk into it and it’s for pronouncing your name properly. Cause not everyone knows how to pronounce your particular name. For my example, my name is Jessica Kotch. A lot of people think it’s Coke or cook or you know, lots of other ways, but it’s catch like scotch, right? The tape of the drink, your choice. But you can push this button and they give you actually enough time to say a bit more than just how to pronounce your name. So you can, you can make that personal voice intro, which has kind of nifty and cool.
So I liked that. Yeah. Right. So we have stories. We have the, um, the name now a huge, uh, tool inside of LinkedIn that gets overlooked is if you’re having a webinar or an event or an a class or you’re launching a book or an online course or whatever it is you’re doing, Hey, maybe you’re going old school and you’re going to have a get together where people actually meet in the building and they’re all in person and they can shake hands and things.
Jessica Koch (07:26): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
I know who does.
Roy Barker (07:27):
I was gonna say that, well, that’s given your age, that’s given your age away, right there. A meeting in person though,
Jessica Koch (07:35): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
Maybe they’ll tap elbows or you know, the chicken dance is going to get more and more. I mean, we’re all going to be look like we’re doing dancing, whether we are or not. Cause we’ll be doing the elbow bump, but
Roy Barker (07:45):
I’d actually have to put clothes on. If we did that.
Jessica Koch (07:49): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
Naval is the say, uh, events, the people can’t forget to set up their events inside LinkedIn. And you’re able to send 500 messages to direct connections that go right into their message box, which is a really important tool. And so this is somewhere you don’t want to forget to be posting your events. So that’s another really big, um, piece that you want to do.
One of my other suggestions is, and I think there people were screaming from the rooftops when social media kind of first, I don’t want to say first going up high up midway, they’re saying, you know, make sure you’re commenting on other people’s posts. If you have someone who you, um, would really like to work with or has a large following, or is really in line with what you believe or there’s some sort of collaboration, especially for you, the two of you make sure that you’re making comments and, and replying and replying to anyone who comments on yours.
Jessica Koch (08:56): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
I know it’s something everyone’s already heard. So let me just tell you comments matter and then think about when you’re posting, what other people want. So if you, so for example, I just ran across, um, I’ve been a national speaker for the 25 years. I’ve been doing this and I’m actually, I’ve been recently speaking internationally as well. And a lot of that in the old days was in person. Now most of it’s virtual, I actually have something booked in person for January and Denver again, but I don’t know. We’ll see what up. I’m not gonna hold my breath and my suitcase is not packed. So, but anyway, um, the speaking, so the different speaking engagements, um, I started to talk about something and then lost it. Oh, for comments. Oh, that’s I ran into an opportunity for a call for speakers for different technology topics.
Jessica Koch (09:57):
And so one of the things I posted was to let people know, Hey, you haven’t until October 16th. If you get back to me, I will send you the link in the contact there because I spoke in person at their annual conference about two summers ago in Nashville, Tennessee. And they’ve had me do webinars and training courses for their members for the national. This is an association of lead government purchasing officers where I was asked to speak.
And I’m, I’m asked to speak at all kinds of different entities. So I hear all the time about speaking engagements. Well, if you know about an opportunity like that, or if you know about a really great free networking virtual event, or do you know about something that can help someone else post that and then have them reach out to you or put something special in the comments in order to get it, because then you boost your engagement, right?
Jessica Koch (10:50): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
Cause if you help other people get what they want, you get what you want, Zig Ziglar, Dale, Carnegie, all the grades told you that, but nobody tells you what that looks like. So what does that look? What does that mean to help someone get someone that they want, then I can get what I want. Well, I want more engagement on my posts. So if I can find things and I know other people want and then ask them to engage and then happily share that reciprocity with them, that I’m getting what I want and they’re getting what they want. Right.
Roy Barker (11:19):
Exactly. Yeah. And I think we lose sight of that, that in the beginning, um, you know, all social media is very selfish, liquid. I’m eating or look where I’m at or the seed man, whatever. But I think, but I think that
Jessica Koch (11:34): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
Called but eater. I mean my canola and I’m not going to tell you about it,
Roy Barker (11:39):
But I think that we, you know, I had learned this it’s been many years ago is that, you know, the intent is we should be helping others lifting them up. That is what, you know, I guess it’s the karma that comes around and ends up helping us when we are just basically acting selfish people into typically end up turning you off after awhile when you’re just thumping your chest all the time.
Jessica Koch (12:05): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
Well, I’m, that’ll that elitist to a couple of my other points. So we’re covering seven points so far, we talked about the name audio. We talked about comments. You talked about events. We talked about story. The other one I want to talk to you about is interesting on that. Not on LinkedIn. If you get, get an auto calender, you know, on the pineapple upside down girl, I always teach things from the other track. You asked me in another podcast, what’s a tool you use that you love. And I told you about a tool. I love that I don’t use.
Jessica Koch (12:38):
That’s how I roll. So get an auto calender, whether it’s the free version of Calendly, something, get something where people can easily schedule with you. It’s becoming at first, when I first came through, I went all really I’m feeling like I’m their secretary. If I book account, you know, rarely am I going to use that thing? How do I, I wasn’t comfortable with it. I was, you know, awkward giving them at least the option, say, Hey, if you’re comfortable, here’s my counter link. If you’d like reach out to me with time, days and times that are good for you, that works too. Right. But have something and more and more people are in love with it. They’re asking for it. I have people say, Hey, do you have a calendar link? So I can book some time
Roy Barker (13:20): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
Say I’m like you, when for a long time, I was like, Oh my gosh, am I, you know, I’m being their secretary having to look through here. And then, then you go through and you book a time and then you get an email like, Oh, I’m really busy. Well, okay. It was open on your, so anyway, I’ve been there, but just this morning, me and Terry were talking about that. I said, you know what? We really need to think about investing in Calendarly again and getting it on there as bad as I hate to say that we need to do it. But it’s, it’s an intrical part. And I think a lot of people they’ve just gotten used to asking for it, you know, a lot of people like, Hey, can you
Jessica Koch (14:02):
Yeah. Send me your link. And so I’ve just made sure I’ve made a point to have some etiquette about it. I’d say, you know, I’m happy to schedule on your link. You can use my link if you’re like, if you’re not comfortable with links at all, let’s just jump on the phone and she’s the time. So I’m still allowing the human interaction and for the individual preference.
Cause not everyone is again comfortable with that technology. You don’t want to lose an appointment with a valuable cloud client or referral partner because they’re uncomfortable with the technology you’re using. Right? So keep that in mind, at least have some etiquette around it, but get it because my next conversation is messages. Now, first thing we’re going to do is have everyone. I’m hoping everyone who’s listening. Take a deep breath and consider thinking differently. Cause I know I can hear you.
Jessica Koch (14:55): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
You’re saying, Oh my gosh, Jessica, my message box. And LinkedIn is full with all these people with sound on me stuff. They’re 10 paragraphs long. I don’t even read them. I just delete those people on. I’m not staying connected to this. You, I don’t want anything to do with it. Well, I’m going to say, say that you just might be missing a huge opportunity.
So here’s the deal. I look at LinkedIn like the global chamber of commerce and okay. I’m old school and myself again. But back in the day, when you had a chamber networking meeting at the chamber of commerce, you’d hang out with a beer in one hand, Navy or water and a pocket full of business cards. And you walk around shaking. People’s hands saying, Hey, what do you do? And hope that they ask you what you do and Hey, what do you do?
Jessica Koch (15:42): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
And you have a couple of ideas in your head. You’re open. They’ll be your customer. Be a great referral partner. Some other way you guys can work together, right? This is the point of a chamber of commerce. That’s the, you’re gonna spread the word about them. That you’re going to work with them or they’re going to work with you or some other great thing is going to come from your relationship.
And you know, as long as you don’t sprinkle too much alcohol and those chamber networking things, you walk around out, okay. LinkedIn is a global chamber of commerce. So when someone, you know, just hasn’t been trained by Roy Barker or me to have the right etiquette, to not verbally vomit on you, inside your inbox and tell them all the things that you they do so that they hope that you’ll be a customer, give him some gray, respond with, I’m always happy to meet new people.
Jessica Koch (16:34):7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
Now look at their profile, make sure this is worth your time and consider is this person potentially my customer or I’m theirs? Is this person potentially referral partner for me? Is there something they, someone they know or something I don’t know that might make this worth, uh, getting to know you call and then make that suggestion say, I’m always happy to meet new people.
What for you to learn a little bit about me and to learn a little bit about you. Here’s a calendar link. If you’d like to set up a time so we can have a brief getting to know you call now only do this. If it makes sense for you, but I’m saying you’ve got an inbox full of people willing to have an appointment with you granted. Yes. They want you to know what they do for a living. But you know, I’m pretty sure your your know w still works.
Jessica Koch (17:19):
No, thank you. I don’t need that right now, but I’ll keep it in mind. Or I’d like to learn more. I’d like to get some of your references or credentials before I refer you to someone or, you know, maybe I know about a networking event or summit I could share with you. Maybe that’s the way I could help you in the future. Right? Because maybe you don’t feel comfortable referring this person just met don’t know to your customers, but you could tell them about a free networking event that’s coming up. It’s virtual that you heard about, or you could tell them about a summit or you could share or like, or on one of their things. Right? Right. So just think about the easy inexpensive things you can do that can turn that message space around and attach it to that calendar link. Right.
Roy Barker (18:02): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
Right. Yeah. And I think it goes to the same point we were talking about in the, you know, commenting and what we post out there is that, you know, our goals should be to try to help others because unfortunately there are selfish people in the world that will send you the email that they, they have no intention of ever doing anything for you. All they want is what you can give to them. But there are people like us that, you know, if we do reach out, I’m, you know, I really want to know, Hey, how can I help you? What can I do for you? And we can try to reciprocate that that’s the best kind of relationship out there.
Jessica Koch (18:41):
Yeah. I’ve actually built. Um, so for the, all these one on one calls, you’re having to the, getting to know you calls, I highly encourage you to consider how can you be sure every single one of those calls is worth your time because your time and your energy are your most valuable asset. And so I have built, I have built a recap email that outlines ways that I am willing to help them that are like inexpensive free. Take me a hot minute, you know, subscribe to their YouTube channel.
I, I liked their Facebook page. I could share with them a list of the networking, um, virtual networking events that I love. And it’s handy. I have a nine page list. I share a link with them to it. So I, I think of these things that are simple, fast and easy that I, or my virtual assistant can do for me that are reciprocity of centered.
Jessica Koch (19:31): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
And then I think of three to five ways that they could potentially help me if they felt like it. What I tell them, here’s my YouTube channel. And you could subscribe if you felt like if here’s my, um, Facebook page, you could like it. If you wanted to, you know, like I give him a few things about me so that that’s prewritten and I can send that the second we hang up the phone and said, they have a recap of our call. Now I customized the first few sentences saying what I liked learning about them, what our next action items are.
If there happened to be any for that call, depending on the value, you know, all these other things. But now I, at least I’m growing my YouTube subscription. Um, you know, you know what I mean? I’m doing some good things with my time. And so I think that’s important for everyone who’s listening to think about as well. What would an email like that for you look like, and how can you have that ready? Because having a whole bunch of one-on-ones, you know, um, it’s going to lead you to more customers if you’re doing it right. It’s not, you need another class, give us a call, Roy Barker or me, we’ll help you.
Roy Barker (20:34):
Exactly. Exactly.
Jessica Koch (20:40): 7 LinkedIn Tips to Improve Your Outreach With Jessica Koch
And then I have one final tip to share, and then we can chat a bit more about LinkedIn, cause I can pretty much talk about it for a month or so. Um, I’ll let you, I’ll let you decide how long that role, I guess people just got really scared. Don’t worry. We’re really not going to talk that long. Um, but my last big important tip of what gets mostly overlooked is the power of groups inside LinkedIn.
At this point, I believe you can join for free and everything I do by the way on LinkedIn is the free version. And you can, um, join up to a hundred groups. I believe in the free version. You don’t necessarily have to join that many, but you should be in at least 50 because it broadens your circle of connection, right? So that person who’s connected to you or not connected, she made it their second or third, but if they share a group with you, then that moves them, them closer to you.
Jessica Koch (21:38):
And those groups usually have thousands of people in them. The other really special thing you can do is when you’re inside the group, you can direct message anybody in the group for free, even if you’re not connected to that. And so there’s no InMail or, you know, anything like that needed you really? Yeah. You really want to be sure that you’re taking advantage of that.
And then again, really think about the people you’re reaching out to and messaging them for a meeting of what it is you can do for them. Make sure you know, what their mission and vision are, make sure you know, how your connect, you know, even if your cousin went to the same university as they did, that’s something to talk about, man. People care about their university, Oh, your cousin went to my university, white here. Like they’re all about it.
Jessica Koch (22:28):
It doesn’t even matter as not you. I, my husband wants to university of Maryland. And I talk about that all the time. I mean, you know, I, I just went to the community college. I want you to university of hard knocks and wore the shoes, those. So off the bottom of my shoes, accomplishing things, that’s my university of a mom of seven kids. So, you know, I have huge respect for people who don’t get me wrong.
I go and get a formal education. And it just wasn’t my, my path. I have some college and really specific niche things that are directly connected, like government contracting and you know, things like that, um, from a marketing standpoint. But, um, I don’t have a university, our motto. So I leveraged the heck out of my husband’s all this, I’m the wife of a university of Maryland alumni go turf.
Roy Barker (23:17):
Yeah. I’ve actually got a book and I wish I could recall it, but there’s like, it’s 183 ways to start a conversation. And you know, that’s the thing that, you know, I’m always looking for myself, especially when you meet somebody and listening, you know, where did they grow up the school they went to. And this lady that wrote the book, she actually recommends that you wear something a little bit odd and I’ve got, um, uh, I was in Boston back at the time of the, uh, you know, when they had the bombing at the, at the marathon.
So I’ve got this little bracelet that says Boston strong that I wear quite a bit, but it’s a conversation starter. And you know, I look for that on other people, something that they may have, but you know, always look in for that key, especially in face to face meetings of something that you can, you know, start up with genuine conversation about.
Jessica Koch (24:15):
Sure. Absolutely. And nice thing is social media and all the different platforms we have in Google and with the PD and all that jazz, we have this, um, CSI stalking, uh, informational handbook right before our eyes. So there’s no excuse, not knowing what’s required.
Roy Barker (24:34):
It’s funny you say that I was, we were watching a movie the other night and the guy was basically telling his prospect, like, I’m going to follow up with you quite a bit. So if you’ll just let me know when I crossed the line into stalking,
Jessica Koch (24:47):
That’s right. That’s right. And then I would say, but on the topic of stocking, and this is a bonus eight point number eight, we’ve already hit, my seven is, um, Google alerts. So if you want to work with a company, um, or you want to work for me, uh, for years, a new, a brand new CFO at a company was like candy. For me, it was nine times out of 10. I, and really, I want to say 10 out of 10, but I know no one’s gonna believe me. I could close that deal for a large corporation.
And so I would get in my inbox and my email, all the notifications about the press releases that would go out and scan through them. And guess what happens when there’s a brand new CFO at a new company? What’s that mean that old guy is a new CFO at another company. Yeah. So I got a two for one, right? Yeah. You better believe I reached out to both. That is awesome. And yeah, I never thought about Google alerts. Google alerts is your friend.
Roy Barker (26:07):
Cause I have used them before, you know, like one of my bigger soap boxes is employee retention. And so I love to talk about it, study it. And I said, um, my Google alerts for employee retention, employee turnover, just things along that line and yeah, but I’ve never thought about setting it to, you know, positional new HR director. Exactly.
Jessica Koch (26:32):
Yeah. That’s why you had me on the show.
Roy Barker (26:40):
It’s always a good day when he learns something.
Jessica Koch (26:44):
Right. That’s awesome. That’s awesome.
Roy Barker (26:51):
Yeah. And uh, you know, LinkedIn, the other thing, and this, I guess this will be talking to people, sending out messages is be careful who you send them to when I didn’t have as many connections, I tried to answer everybody no matter if, you know, if they were a good fit, bad fit, I’d just say, thank you. I don’t think I’m interested. Or, you know, some note, but lately, you know, I’ve get, I get messages from people that they didn’t even take the time to see what I do, what position I’m in, what audience I may be. It’s something that’s totally, you know, off the charts.
And so I think that gives people that sours people on the function that could be very good. So just, I would just say, please make sure who your target audience is and make sure that your message is for them, even if they say no, that’s okay. But, uh, you know, you don’t want to try to be selling a spaceship components to a guy that drives a Ford Fiesta somewhere.
Jessica Koch (27:54):
Well, and that’s true, but so on the sending part, do your very best to make sure you’re sending that more unique message when you can. Um, but then on the receiving end, realize that that person may be, even though Microsoft better not be listening, they might be using a third party software to send auto messages. They might be using a virtual assistant that you built a custom message for that, you know, you tweaked it to be as personal as you could, but then it’s going out to, um, quite a few people on that. It might hit someone despite like custom searches and trying to make sure it gets just the right people. It might go to someone it shouldn’t go to. So if you’re on the receiving end of that, this person’s trying to scale and grow. At some point you can’t do everything yourself.
Jessica Koch (28:47):
You’re going to need to scale and grow. And with that being said, having an appointment, if they’re, if you look at their profile and go, you know what, they didn’t send me the very best message ever. However, I think there’s some synergy here potentially, you know, for right, for both of us, let’s respond with a, Hey, you know what?
I always like meeting new people. Let’s set up a one on one, see if we can’t help each other and send them your link. They don’t reply. You toss the ball back on their side of the tennis court. You know, no harm, no foul. They’re not all these messages are not going to come through perfectly despite, um, effort and less, all they’re doing is checking out your profile and writing these personal messages. Most people don’t have that much time, um, depending on where they are in their business growth right now.
Jessica Koch (29:36):
I can’t always do that anymore, sadly, but I do try to be careful to make sure we pull categories. For example, we recently my team and you and I talked about this, one of the programs they offer as a virtual assistant membership program. So it helps take some of these things off your list. We do build a sales strategy and a social media content plan. And I had a, um, a connection that is really looking for massive amounts of speakers, um, because she’s organizing and getting hired to organize tons of virtual summits, normally that have 30 to 50 speakers per summit. So I did a custom message directed towards authors, speakers and coaches who typically like to get a speaking engagement.
Right. Um, and that went out, um, one at a time by my virtual assistant to those different categories based on that being in their title or in their profile somewhere. So no was each individual profile read or carefully looked down and did we craft something really personal? Unfortunately now, however, we’re trying to open a door and make an invitation introduction to them. So, because I’m trying to give, I’m hoping there’ll be forgiving if we maybe reached out to the wrong person. So now we’re not asking for anything.
Roy Barker (30:58):
Right, right, right. I had, um, maybe mistakenly thinking that most of the tools that used to you could broadcast stuff, that they had pretty much the different platforms that kind of turned them off, but there’s still some out there that you can, I guess do,
Jessica Koch (31:18):
Oh, there is a lot of them, but I don’t use them. I use real people because I don’t want my LinkedIn shut down. I try to follow all of LinkedIn’s rules and don’t integrate different things. Now people do it. People, I mean, even Hootsuite is supposedly not allowed, but sounds the people use it and there’s lots of other platforms like it. So, you know, I don’t know. I don’t know on the platforms, I don’t understand all of that.
I would think, you know, most softwares make an open API, so integrations and, um, can occur. You know, that’s why Zapier is the King of that. Right. Connecting softwares and having that when it has an open API. So I don’t know. I mean, I can’t overthink that and nor am I, like I said, giving you financial legal or medical advice, I’m seven people’s mama, but I am not your mom. I said, go find out your own role and run your business accordingly.
Roy Barker (32:14):
Yeah. Cause I don’t remember back, you know, it’s been, Oh my gosh, it’s probably been three, four, five or six years ago when the, you know, the hoot suites and a couple others were big because you could basically look at all of your platforms and push messages out, but okay,
Jessica Koch (32:30):
They’re still out there. People are still using them, but it’s based on, you know, personal decision. Because again, then there are lots of people crying up a river they’ve been locked out of their accounts or Facebook shut them down or whatever, because I mean, if you read their terms and conditions, which I know is like having your fingernail pulled out because it was so darn long, but if you did read them, um, you know, to find that that’s in there, I wish they would just remove it and play nice, you know, just play nice. So people can have a life and post on your platform to, you know, they want to be with their families. They don’t want to be one by one manually posting everywhere. So cut them some Slack.
Roy Barker (33:14):
I’ve got another question for you. Um, you brought up, uh, the LinkedIn groups and you know, I used to make it a point to try to, you know, peruse through there and put a post out or answer post and, you know, make sure I was connected, but did they change the notifications? Because it seemed like used to when people posted a new, uh, or put a new post in a group, if you remember you got a notification and it seemed like that quit and I’ve kind of lost track and interest in the groups because of that. So it was at a change or is that something that happened on my end?
Jessica Koch (33:53):
You know, I, I think that you can, and I’m gonna, you know, I’m always going to be honest. I don’t know what everything I think that you can customize, whether you’re notified per group, because absolutely I’m in a hundred groups and would not want to be flagged for all a hundred points. And I’m going to say join 50 or more groups, but participate in two or three.
I mean, really you’re doing that because it, it, uh, that whole, you know, what is it, six degrees of separation from Kevin bacon. It’s three degrees in the world of LinkedIn and the world of social media of separation from anyone. But she really tightened that up. Um, well, and have something in common with people. If you join these groups, like I’m suggesting, and you want to join things that people are highly loyal to. That’s your first category.
Jessica Koch (34:43):
So things like your out college alumni, your causes, your charities, the boys Scouts, the anything you truly love, love, love. And then anything that you’re diehard about like hunting or, or sports or running or swimming, or save the whales, what Benji, horse jumping, like the people who are into it are into it. And when I find out your into it, Oh my gosh, this all I want to talk about.
Right? Exactly. And then the next category to join is where are your customers living? Where are they hanging out? So you want to join the groups where they are and you need to figure out what that is and look at some of your best customers profiles and see what groups are a member of that will help. And then, um, after that, uh, let’s see, Oh, your industry, you to have a handful no more than three to five.
Jessica Koch (35:40):
Okay. What your, and don’t go crazy there. 10 is your max. I know people who are like, I’m in groups. I’m a, I’m a, you know, I’m an author and I’m in every author’s group there as well. All these officer’s going to find your book. Are they going to be writing their own book? You know, like you need to be thinking about who are you, you know, really want to be engaging with and building relationships with it.
Is it the same person who, you know, if you’re in the vacuum sales man club and that’s all the clubs you’re in, well, everybody there is selling a vacuum. You’re not, you’re not selling a vacuum to someone who’s selling a vacuum. So don’t hang out there too much. But the reason you do want to have a few it’s because you want to know what’s going on in the industry and what’s trending.
Jessica Koch (36:23):
And what people are talking about, what are the problems they’re having? What are they facing so that you can begin thinking about creative solutions for your customers, that you can offer things, um, better and cheaper. And so I listen to my clients and I heard so many pains. It’s like, there’s too many things to do to stay relevant and consistent on social media. There’s too many things to do to keep your pipeline full. You know, you, you, you do all the things and then you get a whole bunch of appointments and you get a whole bunch of customers and you’re serving your customers.
Then you’re not doing all the things to get a whole bunch of appointments, you know, get a whole bunch more new clients. And then once you’ve served those customers, you waned down and you have a dry spellers. What is telling you, like, why is this happening? Because you don’t have time to consistently roll out all the things and tasks that have to get done. And so, you know, that’s where my, my program that got born. And so if you pay attention to what you’re even what your fellow industry people are complaining about or is a challenge, and then you think outside the box to create a solution for that, then you may have something.
Roy Barker (37:27):
Yeah. That is a definite challenge. Especially for us solo preneurs is, you know, it’s the boom bust cycle. We market market market get a few jobs and then we’re so busy working them. We don’t do what we need to do. Yeah.
Jessica Koch (37:40):
So I felt fulfilled, fulfilling, right?
Roy Barker (37:43):
Well, Jessica, if you don’t mind do this, can you just recap our seven points that we talked about? And then the other question I will ask and it’s okay to give the same answers last time, but give me a, you know, the one tool that you can’t make it through the day, whether, I guess whether I’ll clarify, but whether you use it or not use it, if you think it’s a good tool, I’m going to put you off. Give me off the hook on that one.
Jessica Koch (38:11):
I actually, I have a new one for you, so we’ll, we’re good. Let’s get you over the seven points. Um, I gave an eight and I have no idea what it is. You’ll have to listen to the podcast, but, uh, the seven different points of things to make sure you’re paying attention to on LinkedIn are, uh, record the audio pronunciation next to your name.
You use your phone through the app, but you can also introduce yourself or say what you do. They give you quite a bit of time there to play with that. It lets you play it back. Um, make sure that you’re checking out the, on again on your phone right now, the story app, make sure you get yourself account only so that you can have, you know, reply to messages and get things booked, know that you can do that in groups. Um, even if you’re not connected to them on the free version, make sure you’re setting up all your events and LinkedIn. And lastly, make sure you’re commenting and posting things that are helping others, uh, on your, on your feed there. So I think that is our, our main seven.
Jessica Koch (39:21):
Now let’s see, I’m going to give you two. So I teach this internationally and I have found this to be true even outside of our country, but most definitely inside our country. So if you have a problem finding this, you reach out to me cause I will find a solution in your state or in your area, but there is a free database service that your library is paying for, for you. That is not free.
It’s a very here, let me rephrase that. There is a very expensive database research tool that your library, our library somewhere near you is paying for. They’re very, very expensive, but you get access to them for you as a business owner using your library card. The three main ones that the library systems buy are a to Z, which is my favorite. And it’s the one you should be hunting for.
Jessica Koch (40:16):
Cause it’s the best that has social media, um, information and links about the companies it’s often gives email. Sometimes it’ll have the LinkedIn and their YouTube channel and their Twitter. I mean, it is just fantastic. It’s the best of all three. The other is reference USA, not my favorite, but it’s the only one you got it’s better than nothing. And Hoover’s, those are the three that the library chains are often buying and this can help you really drill down into, um, the next code, the keyword of the business, how many employees they have, what’s their annual revenue, what zip code or streets are they on? You can search and filter and Maine. When I first found it, it was like finding a candy store is awesome. That is awesome. It is awesome. It really helps you target market, who you want to have communications with.
Jessica Koch (41:10):
And, you know, I suggest to my clients really drilling down to one to 500 people on a company’s on Excel sheet that we’re going to go after with the direct decision makers are there, their email addresses in some cases are there and we find them on LinkedIn and we have, this was whole process. We use to really go after them.
But if you have a wishlist, a destination, if you know where you want to go on vacation, then you’re more likely to get there. If you have this list as Excel list, you know, print it up, man, stick it on the, um, on the wall in your office and start highlighting them as you get appointments and highlighting as you close the deals. And over the course of three years, you’d be amazed. How many of those, if you begin to develop a really high level targeted strategy towards those companies and those decision makers, it’s huge.
Jessica Koch (42:01):
It’s really huge. And that visual’s really super helpful. The other tool that I coupled with that is another service that genuinely has a free version. So not just a trial as your credit card owners are charging later, know you get 50 free emails every month when you run out, you have to wait and then the next month comes and they refill your little inbox of 50 more free ones. You can just stay on that free version. You don’t have to pay anything ever every month, you’ll get 50 free emails. It’s called a hunter.io. So for example, if you did a search in that database and you couldn’t find their email address, you can use Hunter that IO and that will allow you to help you find the email address of the direct Sufjan decision maker you’re looking for.
Roy Barker (42:50):
Okay. That is great. Cause that’s half the battle is, you know, trying to find the right contact to, you know, get your foot in the door. So that’s great advice, right? Well, thank you so much for your time, Jessica. It’s been interesting and I’ve learned a lot, even though I use LinkedIn quite regularly, uh, I’ve got some things that I need to do to get caught up here. So I’m gonna get after that. But, uh, if you don’t mind tell everybody how they can reach out to you to, uh, get some more expert help.
Jessica Koch (43:23):
So hopefully they’ll reach out to me and we will build them a sales strategy, a social media content plan, and we’ll provide them with a virtual assistant to help them get them millions of micro tasks that you need to get done to accomplish all those great things. We have packages starting as low as 20 hours a month, so really reasonable pricing. And you can find me at Jessica L [inaudible] dot com. So www.jessicalkotch.com, by the way. That’s my email too. So it’s jessica@jessicalkotch.com and that’s K O C H.
Roy Barker (43:58):
All right. Well thank you so much, Jessica. And that’s going to be all for our show today. You can always find us@wwwdotthebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com and look forward to speaking with you next time. Thank you very much.