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Jeff has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs and senior digital marketers on how to generate significant increase in leads and sales through the enormous impact of LinkedIn. The key is to learn how to use it effectively. In this podcast, we’re going to hear the system that Jeff uses on LinkedIn  to identify key decision makers within his target market, how he engages with them one on one and convert them into qualified business opportunities. Let’s get started into the podcast.

 

Liza: Good morning Jeff!

 

Jeff: Good morning Liza, how are you?

 

Liza: I am excellent thanks for asking.  Thanks for joining us today, I am very excited about this interview!

 

Jeff: Me too.  Me too, happy Thursday!

 

Liza: I know, we have known each other for many years and we are both in the digital marketing space and you’re doing some pretty spectacular things using social media for lead generation.

 

Jeff: Thank you very much, yes. It’s something that’

s relatively new and a different mindset on how to use social media in terms of generating leads and being able to measure your social media activity to, which is pretty tough to do on most social media channel.

 

Liza: Yeah. Exactly. That’s why I was really keen to invite you to our podcast so that you can share with our listeners, things that they can do, from a social media stand point especially for lead generation.  Before we get into it, can you maybe tell us your background in relations to social media?

 

Jeff: Sure, my background is a bit unique, my experience with social media was actually born out of my hatred for it.   Going back three years ago, I got fed up, I saw social media as a complete waste of time, mainly because I really didn’t have much of an interest in what people are eating.

 

I’m personally am a people person and if I want to know what they are up to, I will just call and talk to them. Seeing people’s pictures of babies and the pets and what they are eating I feel is too much information shoved in my face and taking up too much time, really. So this painted social media in a bit of a bad light for me. So I disconnected myself from Facebook, I never registered on Twitter, my LinkedIn profile was dormant.   I think I had 26 connections for a period of three years, so yeah, really had no interest in social media whatsoever.

 

Whenever I tell this story, it’s surprising how many people go, “Oh my God, we’re exactly the same way,” but how I got into it in terms of using social media is when my business, I’m a digital Director at E-web Marketing and we’re one of Australia’s  most awarded search and online marketing agency, so we help businesses drive more traffic, more leads, more enquiries through their websites and other online channels.

 

Now, over the past five years, online marketing has become a lot more challenging, mainly because the education factor, more people know about search engine optimization, you’ve got mobile devices now that has changed the game.  Social media has certainly changed the game and the way people can access your business is a lot greater, they’ve got far more channels that they can access you business now whereas five years ago it was just through search networks like Google and Yahoo.

 

So, because the landscaping became more challenging, E-web decided to target a larger client, a different audience. We were specializing in the small business sector and then we decided to move into the enterprise phase and to cut the long story short, we were unknown to like the big four banks, and we were unknown to the large accounting firms and the large consumer brands like Coca-Cola and that was who we wanted to target.   How I got in was through social media when all the other channels just didn’t work.

 

I did cold calling, I did emails, I went to networking events, spent a lot of money to get exposed and they generated very, very poor results and very very poor leads. I got introduced to social media as a means to find my ideal audience. The change I did was creating my personal brand online so that my audience would view me as an expert in a particular subject matter or a particular industry and then I found a way to actually move relationships from online to offline and that is where the secret lies.

 

I think that’s still one of the things that frustrates me about social  media is that no one actually gives you a way to move relationships from online to offline and when you’re talking B to B, I mean business to business, so when you’re talking business to business lead generation, you really need to know how to do it effectively. You know the sale doesn’t happen online, the sale happens offline. So how well you can engage your audience online and then offline is the secret sauce.

 

Liza: Yeah, so basically, it’s really your personal experience and what you have done to generate leads through social media, and from there it has became one of your expertise.

 

Jeff: Yes definitely, mainly because no one else seems to be doing it.  Everyone else seems to be more focused on generating more likes and building their online communities but very few companies make millions of dollars using that method, whereas I have been able to bring in millions of dollars worth of new business revenue into e-web marketing by not focusing on those things and by focusing on just a core target audience, a niche audience, a niche industry, and being able to effectively move that relationship offline.

 

Liza: Yeah, that’s brilliant. Jeff what is your favorite social media platform and why?

 

Jeff: My favorite social media platform is definitely LinkedIn. The reason being is because out of all the other social media channels, it’s the only one that relates best to B to B. It’s business to business social media channel, so that’s one of the reasons why I love it. Another reason why I love it is because in LinkedIn, you don’t get the distractions of fluff you get with the other social media networks.

 

You won’t see people putting up what they had for breakfast this morning.  On LinkedIn, and you don’t get people putting pictures of themselves or, videos on their drunken nights out on the weekends, so it cuts a lot of that personal conversation out of the business conversation that’s why I love it.

 

Three Common Mistakes People with LinkedIn

Liza: I agree with you and I’m sure the listeners who are listening to this go, “Yeah, I know LinkedIn is awesome for business but I don’t know how to do it. A lot of people don’t do it right.” Jeff, what do you think are the common mistakes that people make when they’re using LinkedIn?

 

Jeff: There’s quite a few. But I’m going to focus on just three. So the first one is definitely, people don’t have objectives for social media so have a purpose for it. Understand what you’re going to use it for.  My objective is to generate leads and sales using social media and therefore there’s a tangible result I often to measure my activity to.

 

For example if I spent an hour a day on LinkedIn, I can measure and go okay, this hour I’d done on LinkedIn has equaled to me bringing in on a million dollars this quarter. So, by having a clear objective on what you’re going to use it for and what part of the business you’re going to enhance by using this social media at all, you then can identify what is a measurable outcome.

 

Liza: Yes.

 

Jeff: And having that mindset or having that view you then measure it. Instead of measuring things such as your likes and your comments. That’s the biggest mistake. Likes and comments don’t make you money.

 

Liza: No.

 

Jeff: Having it for an objective and being able to have a tangible outcome is where it really benefits your business. So, you might use it to build your database, you might use it to find new employees, you might use for sales like I do but each of those objectives you have a clear outcome at the end of the day.

 

Liza: Yeah, I agree with you and I think in addition to that is with having the objective is then how much time you’re going to plan to invest in it and what is the quantitative measure of the action that you’re going to take.

 

Jeff: Exactly.

 

Liza: So, for example, I’m going to target five people or ten people in this hour that I’m going to put in this so you can actually put a number towards that.

 

Jeff: 100 percent, and that’s the secret. Once you have that number then you can measure whether the time and investment you’re spending is equaling a result for your business.

 

Liza: Yeah whether it gives you a good R.O.I.

 

Jeff: Yes, Yes.

 

Liza: Yeah, are there any other common mistakes that you see people make?

 

Jeff: Yeah, the other common mistake that I’ve seen people doing on social media, especially on LinkeIn is to try and be everything to everyone.   Now, there’s an age old saying that you’re not going to please everyone, so, why even try. My successes come from targeting and eliminating the audience as much as possible, so that I hone in on a niche audience, a niche industry and that way you can be sure that all of your communication to them is for them and you can please them. I hope I’m making sense in that direction.

 

Liza: Absolutely, Yes.

 

Jeff: So, by focusing on a niche, you will find that results come a lot quicker and faster and then chose to branch out from there.

 

Liza: Yeah, in marketing one of the most powerful words is called niche, when you’re focused, then you can target your communication a lot clearer for that specific individual or that specific market. We talk about this thing called the avatar, you know your perfect customers, what do they look like, what do they do, what do they enjoy, what is important to them, what are their problems, and all your communication focuses on that and it’s do much easier to do that rather than you know having a general chat. General chat is just fluff and really get you nowhere does it?

 

Jeff: 100 percent, yeah. For a second there I thought you were talking about big, tall blue people running around a planet called Pandora. You said Avatar but I think I get what you mean.

 

Liza: Yes, that movie Avatar.

 

Jeff: Your ideal customer, yes, just figure out who your ideal customers, who do you make most of your money from, who do you enjoy working with best, who do you have the most amount of success with, and just focus your attention on them.  I guess the third thing that I touched on before is, the other mistake that people do is they put all this time and energy into building their online communities but they do nothing to move that relationship offline. So, that I would say would be the third biggest mistake people are making. They have no plan or strategy to move the online relation into an offline one.

 

Liza: Yeah, or it’s kind of like moving these prospects I guess, at the initial stage along the sales funnel. Actually before you’re even a prospect, it’s a suspect. From a suspect to a prospect to then becoming a lead so having a really clear path and what action you take to move the individual from one end to the other and ideally you want them to then become a customer.

 

Jeff: 100 percent. Actually, there is one more, very very important one, which is the mistake that most people make is they sell and promote themselves too much.

 

Liza: Yes.

 

Jeff: They try and sell their products and services or promote themselves too much and what happens then is that you just come across as someone who’s just a seller or a promoter.

 

Liza: Yes.

 

Jeff: You certainly don’t come across as a thought leader or an expert, so my rule of thumb is I never sell, I never promote any of my services. What I choose to do is share information that is educational and it adds value to my target audience and what then happens is because I’m not trying to sell anything or promote anything they see me as a thought leader, they see me as an expert, which helps me then to move that relationship offline.

 

Top 3 Things to Do Genrate More Leads from LinkedIn

Liza: Absolutely! Having talked about the common mistakes that people make on LinkedIn and on social media, what are the top three things that people can change in their LinkedIn profile to better position themselves.

 

Jeff: Sure, the three main things. The first thing is definitely the profile photo. It’s the first thing people notice when they hit your LinkedIn profile, so you definitely need to update that first and a good profile photo looks like a passport photo. That’s the best way I can explain it. Something from the shoulder up, you’ve got eye contact, there are no distractions in the background. Make sure you wear professional attire. You make eye contact and then you’re smiling as well, show a little bit of personality in that photo.

 

Liza: Yes.

 

Jeff: That’s something that people don’t get right. The main reason why this is the important thing is because people are very short at attention spans. So, when they come to your profile you want to convey to them as quickly as possible who you are and what you’re about and the only way to do that in a millisecond is through your profile photo so that is definitely in the first tip that I can make sure to do.

 

Liza: Yeah that’s a great point. What did they say? A picture speaks a 1,000 words?

 

Jeff: 100 percent yes and more importantly you know, when people, I mean LinkedIn is a web page at the end of the day and static. Studies have shown that when a visitor hits you web site or your web page it takes them 0.2 of a second to decide weather they like your site and whether they want to continue using it or not. So when you work with point 0.2 of a second you want to make sure that your photo conveys the right sort of message. You don’t want to  make people think when it comes to your profile what you’re doing in your photo or you don’t want to not be engaging when they hit your profile. So, I can’t stress enough how important your profile photo is.

 

Liza: I was going to say a nice smiley photo is inviting and that’s what you want them to do, you want to invite them to read more on your profile.

 

Jeff: Definitely, definitely! You’ll be surprised Liza, that I travel around Australia sharing this bit of information and teaching people how to use social media to  generate leads and I always play a game with them.  I always show five or six different LinkedIn photos and I ask people, would they connect just based on the photo and the stuff people pick out it’s phenomenal. The hair this and you know… I like the earrings or I don’t like how, the shirt the guy is wearing, just in a split second they are able to digest all this data subconsciously.

 

 

So, that’s why it’s so important to update you profile photo first and when someone looks at it, it doesn’t make them think, they just go right, I get it and they move on to the other areas of your profile.

 

So, the second thing that you need to update on LinkedIn is your LinkedIn title. Now, don’t make the mistake that pretty much 95 percent of people make on LinkedIn is that they put their title in the title area.

 

The reason why you would not use your title is that most titles are not that descriptive. If I’m a Director of E-web and I just have director E-web Marketing it doesn’t clearly express to you what I’m an expert in. So what I do for my LinkedIn headline is I chose to use key words. So, I use key words like conversion rate optimization, e-commerce optimization, generate leads and sales online because using descriptive key words like that, it very quickly and easily conveys to you what I’m an expert in.

 

Liza: Yes

 

Jeff: That’s quite important.

 

Liza: Yeah, well the other thing is the search engine indexed that when people go online and actually search for professionals that do specific things, that get indexed and then your profile shows up as well so the keywords are really important.

 

Jeff: Yes, yes, yes, that’s right yeah. That’s a side benefit as well but the first benefit is definitely to be more intuitive to your target audience so that when they come to your profile, it very quickly shows what you’re an expert in and yes, as you said, excellent point, that headlining area is a main feature area where the search engines find data to index and are likely to show up when people are searching for your products, services or skill set.

 

Liza: Yes and what is the third thing that our audience can do to improve their LinkedIn profile? We’re getting some really good stuff here.

 

Jeff: Oh, thank you, thank you! I always do my best to add value. The third most important thing is the professional summary. Now, the biggest mistake and this is pretty much 99 percent of people on LinkedIn make this mistake. Their summaries sound like a resume.

 

Now, if you’re using this as a sales tool or a lead generation tool I’m going to share some golden advice that I was told from my sales mentor many many years ago. Your customers don’t care about you, what they care about is what you can do for them.

 

Liza: Yep.

 

Jeff: Yep, so when you’re writing out your LinkedIn profile, don’t write it like a resume, because all you’re doing is you’re talking about yourself. What you need to do is you need to look at using your professional summary area as a marketing tool and what you need to do is that, that section, you need to start talking about your customers.

 

You need to talk, you need to identify who your customers are, you need to talk about their pain points, you need to talk about their pleasure points and then once you’ve co

vered up those items, then they’re gonna want to know who you are and what you’re an expert in and that’s when you can talk a little bit about yourself but certainly in the first instance you want to be talking all about them and not about yourself.

 

Liza: When you say you talk all about them can you elaborate a bit of that or maybe give us an example?

 

Jeff: Sure. The first thing that you should do as soon as someone reads your professional summary, you should address your target audience.  This means that you need to be clear on who your avatar is. My avatar, are digital marketing directors, heads of online, e-commerce managers and Chief  Marketing Officers because  I’m targeting enterprise businesses.

 

Now, they are the titles that belong to the roles that manage their digital and advertising.  I start my professional summary off qualifying, are you a digital marketing manager, head of online or e-commerce manager who’s involved in your organization’s digital strategy? That is the first sentence that someone will read when they come to my profile. Automatically it’s about them, I’m addressing them and basically, I’m saying if you’re not…

 

Liza: Don’t bother reading…

 

Jeff: Exactly, you’re in the wrong place. Yeah, yeah, which is the case because it’s exactly what I want to happen. The next part of the summary, I would look at highlighting a pain point and market statistics are a great way to highlight a pain point. I could do something like a recent Ad study showed that the average conversion rate of an Australian website is only one percent. This means that, all your hard earned dollars to bring a customer to your website only one out of a hundred is turning into an enquiry or a sale.

 

I’m highlighting a pain point alright? So, then what I look at doing is highlighting your pleasure point. Imagine being able to test and measure elements on your website to improve that conversion rate from one percent to two percent to ten percent.   Imagine what that would do to your bottom line profits and online revenue generating activities.  I’m highlighting a pleasure point there. Imagine it was two percent, you’ve doubled your profits.   I’ve not talked about myself at all in that period. I’ve talked all about my clients and I’ve highlighted the pain point and I’ve highlighted what their desirable outcome is.

 

After that my prospects are going to ask this question, “That sounds great, but why should I listen to you Jeff?” That is where, I call you must earn the right. This is where you’re allowed to talk about yourself once you’ve addressed who they are, their pain points and their pleasure points then you have the right to talk about who they are because they want to know who you are. At this point you just answer their question.

 

You talk about your qualification, you talk about the results that you’ve been able to achieve, you may want to talk about your company and the clients that you work with. So, this is the section that you can talk about yourself but in the very beginning it must all be about your target audience, your avatar.

 

Liza: Oh, I love what you just shared there. It sounds like some sales copy writing there but, and that’s what it is. You’ve got to focus on the person who’s reading it. It is about addressing them and it filters too when you talk about are you and the different titles of the people that you target. It helps you filter.

 

Jeff: Yeah, 100 percent, you’re 100 percent right. It is sales copy and it’s designed for them to say yes at every single stage. Are you a blah, blah, blah? Yes…

 

Liza: Do you have this pain point?

 

Jeff: Yes! Would you like…

 

Liza: Would you like to…

 

Jeff: Would you like to look like this? Yes, you’re getting them to say yes, as they move through that professional summary. Now, if your summary read like a resume they certainly wouldn’t be answering that question.

 

Liza: No, it would be boring wouldn’t it?  You’d be just like everyone else and what you want to do is you want to stand out.

That’s great, now I know Jeff, one of your specialty is helping businesses generate leads from social media and from LinkedIn. Can you maybe show the audience what are, some of the things people can do to get to know you, and how they can generate leads from LinkedIn?

 

Jeff: Yeah, well we discussed a few of the common elements. One is being clear on who you are advertising to because then it makes it very easy to find them on social media channels you know. LinkedIn has an advanced search pool, allowing you to search by titles yeah? If you understand what titles belong to a target audience they’re very very easy to find. You can then filter those results down to location, you can filter those results to industry as well.

 

You can filter them down to, you know, how they’re connected to you, what distance they’re connected to you, either first degree, second degree, or further and you can also use keywords.  If you’re targeting a particular prospect that works with particular software systems or a business groups, you can also use a keyword field to filter those search results even further.  Being really clear on you avatar is imperative because it makes then very easy to find on social networks.

 

Once you’ve found them, this is the area where people make the most amount of mistakes. Personalize your messages to them. Don’t just send them the boring, standard, I’d like to connect with you on LinkedIn. Actually address them, hi Liza I hope you’re well. I came across your profile and notices that we’re both connected to John Smith from e-web marketing. For networking purposes I’d love to invite you to my business network on LinkedIn, regards, Jeff,  I always send a personal message like that.

 

Liza: Yeah, I would say well, 98 percent of the invitations I get on LinkedIn are standard ones.  When you actually write something personalized right away you stand out.

 

Jeff: 1 100 percent. Now, there’s a number of reasons why you must, if you’re going to be using it as tool to generate leads why you must personalize. LinkedIn has very stringent anti-spam regulations. They don’t like you linking with people you don’t know and most of your success will be from connecting with people you’ve never met before. All it takes is five people to say they don’t know you or report you as spam and you’re account gets restricted. How do I know this? I’ve been restricted five times, so I have tried every trick in the book to speed up the connection rate and nothing, nothing beats a personalized message. Unless you’re into groveling to LinkedIn when you get restricted, go ahead, send a standardised template message.

 

If  you’re someone that wants to add value to your community, want to be seen as an expert, want to have as close to a 100 percent connection rate as possible and want to have a personal brand or someone of substance, then you would write a personalized message each time and look, at the end of the day I use a template.

 

I’ve got 20 or 30 templates that I use for different scenarios and different connections and different reasons for connecting and I just fill in the blanks. I just fill in the name and title and company and reason and how we’re connected. It’s still a very speedy process but by personalizing your message, you make the other person feel good and it also means, it also shows that you’ve paid some attention to their profile.

 

Liza: Great!  Once you’ve connected with them what can you do to bring them from online to offline.

 

Jeff: Once you’ve connected with them it’s very important that you educate them now, so this is where I would use status updates to share information and not just any old information. I only share information that I love, so if, I’m always actively looking at educating myself. Now, if you’re a successful entrepreneur you would be doing the same thing. Always look for ways to educate yourself and watching you on the marketplace and how you can add more value to your community.

 

Everyday I’m reading blogs, I’m watching videos, I’m reviewing content. Now, when I come across something that I love which is, quite often, I go wow this is a wonderful article, I really love it and so I know my audience is going to love it and what I do is I share that content and I’m consistent. I tend to do a status update at least three to five times a week so that’s about one a day yeah. I do at least three a week. Ultimately you want to do a status update once a day on LinkedIn and what that does is, people start to link your name with awesome content around a particular subject matter.

 

They see it often enough and they read some of these articles and they’re great articles, you start building yourself as an expert because remember you’re not selling, you’re not promoting. You’re educating and you’re positing that you are a thought leader on the stuff that you read and people will then naturally start to build you up as an expert or someone of value. Now, once you’ve given that enough time,  normally it’s about four weeks that I will you know, add value to a new connection and after that four week period I’ll literally get back in touch with them and ask them for a coffee. Again, it’s a social setting, I say hey, we’ve been connected for a few weeks so I thought I’d get in touch and would love to have a face to face connection. Would you be open to having coffee in the next couple of weeks? You’d be surprised at what the response rate is. I get anywhere between 20-60 percent response rate to my coffee invites. At any give week that’s two to five, if I send out 10 connection requests, 10 coffee invites I’m sorry, that’s anywhere between two to five meetings per week…

 

Liza: That’s great, yeah, that’s…

 

Jeff: Yeah. I don’t know any other generation platform that can put you in front, face to face, in front with your target audience free of charge except for your time.

 

Liza: Exactly and the thing is these days it’s really hard to get through gate keepers so by doing this you are totally going past the gatekeeper unless they got the gatekeeper to look after their LinkedIn profile, which I doubt. Then, really allow you to establish a direct connection and they get a sense of who you are and what you do even before the coffee.

 

Jeff: Yes! 100 percent and the beauty of social media is that people still feel that they’re in control with it because they have the option to remove you or report you as spam or delete it or whatever it may be so, it does keep the power in their possession so the more you can make your communication valuable the more open they’ll become in terms of accepting your communication.

 

I get people waiting. If I miss a set of updates for a couple of days I get people messaging me going, “Hey, you’ve gone quiet, where’s all the… Where’s this awesome information?” You know what I mean. So, you do get people hanging on, you do form your own community in that sense. They want to hear communication from you.

 

Liza: I totally get that, I’ve got people on Facebook they go, “Hey Liza you’ve gone quiet, we haven’t seen or heard from you lately.”

 

Jeff: Exactly! Yeah,  particularly when you go on holiday. My community is a little bit quiet. I tend to get private messages but it’s such a good feeling. It’s a good feeling knowing that you’re adding value and that there’s a community out there, you know, that…

 

Liza: Looks forward to your…

 

Jeff: Yeah, yeah, looks forward to your communication and to me that’s the most important thing. The meetings and the sales and all that stuff come later. My main objective is to add value to my community.

 

Liza: Absolutely! Now, with LinkedIn, there’s this thing that’s called a premium account…

 

Jeff: Yes.

 

Liza: Tell us a little bit about it Jeff. I mean, is it worth it? What’s your opinion?

 

Jeff: My, it’s yes or no answer. It’s worth it if your activity is consistent. So if you’re already using LinkedIn to generate leads and opportunities and you’re doing regular status updates and you’re adding value and things like that then yes! Having a premium account certainly does benefit you because you’re able to view more search results and you’re able to unlock some more search filters in your advanced search.

 

You get other tools like what they call a profile organizer meaning that you can save different people’s profiles to different folders and use it like a bit of a bit of a CRM system. You get features like that but that’s only beneficial if your activity is consistent. If you’re not a

lready generating leads, if you’re not already doing status updates consistently, if your not already making connections consistently with your avatar then it would be a complete waste of money.

 

Liza: It’s really when your activity is consistent and you’re using it like, pretty much on a daily basis, like what you said then it might be worthwhile to consider…

 

Jeff: On a consistent basis yeah. Only if you’re using it and you’re already generating measurable results. Remember, if you’ve got an objective and your using it and you’re meeting those objective as outcome then pay.

 

Liza: Awesome! Ok, cool. So, just take a step back, how do you see, with social media and what’s happening in that space, would it impact the way people do business moving forward in the future?

 

Jeff: It’s not a matter of will, it already has. Social media has impacted not only the way we do business but the way we live our lives now a days you know. So, how it’s impacted business well you know there’s always two streams. It’s impacted business it a positive way because it allows people to have a more scalable communication system that can add value to your communities, to your customers and to your prospects providing you use it in the right way.

 

Social media makes the world a smaller place so you know, a lot of people that I’ve shared this knowledge with they’ve used it to actually open up opportunities internationally. Yeah, because you got to remember, this LinkedIn and Twitter is a global social media network. There’s no reason why you can’t use it to benefit the lives of people overseas either. So you’ve got wonderful wonderful opportunities if it gets used in the right way.

 

But on the flip side I see it used and impacts people in a negative way as well.  People using it as way to you know, spook and sell and, send spam and all that stuff and I receive that. I receive that communication on LinkedIn on a daily basis. Knowing that LinkedIn has tough spam regulations I just report them as spam. Sooner or later they’re going to get restricted, so I have the pleasure in knowing that bit of information.

 

Another way social media has impacted businesses and things is, you know, having people spending a lot of time and energy on it and not realizing return of investments, wasting time. Again, people using it in a way to devalue their brand and their company brand and their personal brands by being too spammy and being too promotional.

 

So it’s already impacted our lives. It’s just a matter of you know, do you use it to make a positive impact or do you use it to make a negative impact.

 

Liza: Yeah. Well and that’s why, professionals such as yourself adds a lot of value to the marketplace because you’re educating people, businesses how to do it properly and how they can get a real ROI. So, Jeff, tell us, I know that you’ve got a business that helps businesses, well you’ve got a business that helps businesses…

 

Jeff: Yes, I do. A tongue twister that one isn’t it?

 

Liza: Yes. Can you tell us more about that like what services do you offer and how people can learn more about you.

 

Jeff: Yeah sure. Look, I mean, I’m all for education. I do run a lot of public education classes and I get invited to business networking groups and wonderful sessions like this where you know, I can share this information to benefit a wider audience but when I comes to my agency, which is SocialGen, my agency unfortunately I can only work with a select group of people. So, the businesses I can help the most are those businesses that have a high value type of service and target a high value client. It must be B to B as well. So, unfortunately I can’t help from a B to C perspective for ongoing or managed services.

 

For those business owners or business development managers, or sales directors that are working in businesses where they have very high sales amounts, like of your sales are worth, you know, $10,000, $20,000, $100,000,  then I can help you best. What I offer is a do it for you model. So instead of you as a business owner or a sales director who has to put their attention in many other different areas of the business, what I offer are managed services. So I’ll do it for you, I will manage your personal brand.

 

So think about it like a famous movie star or rock star, someone like Brad Pitt, they don’t manage their own personal brand. They pay publicists, they pay stylists, they pay managers and these people are in charge of representing Brad Pitt to the public.  It’s in the same fashion. What I do is I manage your personal brand so that you are a seen as an expert in your chosen subject matter or your chosen industry.

 

The second thing I do for you is I then connect you with your ideal avatar. I’ll find your avatar and I’ll appropriately connect with them and I do all of your status updates. This all falls in part of managing the personal brand. What I then do is I also organize the offline meetings as well so my clients all they need to do is worry about meeting with their ideal customers.
ow I’ve got to do this, and having someone professional like yourself who know what you’re doing who already is getting results to actually manage their profile and get it done for them, it would just be like, you know, it’ll be fantastic, it’s awesome!Liza: That’s fantastic! As you share a lot of gems today, there’s still a lot of work involved and one of the biggest challenge people have is the lack of time. You know, it’s like oh n

 

Jeff: Yeah, they love it, those that are busy. I mean everyone’s different. You get some people that are really excited about this and want to do it themselves and then you do have those people that, are very time poor and prefer to work on the business rather than in the business and for those entrepreneur and those business owners and people in their sales roles they love my services because I just do it all for them and all they need to do is turn up to the meetings and bring in the money and also at the same time their personal brand gets managed and they get seen as an expert in their industry.

 

Liza: Exactly.

 

Jeff: Which is a byproduct.

 

Liza: So what I’m hearing in your offering is you’re really helping them with two things. Number one, which is generating the meetings which is fantastic. But also you are helping them to invest in their personal brand and that really is an investment because that goes with you everywhere from then on so there’s a real value in that.

 

Jeff: Exactly, yeah because it all comes down to your personal brand. If your personal brand is strong, think about someone like Richard Branson or Steve Jobs and think about their personal brand and because of that brand what they’re able to achieve and who they’re able to connect with.

 

Liza: Exactly.  How doors they can open.

 

Jeff: Exactly, now you’re getting the picture, so having a strong personal brand will outright eliminate your competition and also it helps to accelerate the sales cycle. This is another byproduct in terms of why people love using SocialGen services is that it accelerates the sale cycle. Some of these clients that have high value businesses, they have a sales cycle that are three months, four months, five months, six months, yeah?

 

Liza: Yeah.

 

Jeff: By having a strong personal brand to the right audience, by the time they meet you they already know who you are, what you do and what value you can add to them. So in many cases it cuts the whole sales cycle in half.

 

Liza: Yes.

 

Jeff: Something that takes only three months, a month and a half, something that happens only in six months, three months and that in itself is you know, adds massive value to.

 

Liza: Totally! Cool! Well Jeff you have been super generous in this interview. You have shared some really, really good insights, some action items that people can take right after listening to this podcast. I really appreciate it and I want to say thank you. So what we’re going to do is we are going to include a link to your website in the show notes so people can learn more about you and the services that SocialGen offers.

Jeff: Wonderful

 

Liza: Jeff , thank you so much.

 

 

Jeff: I’ll link this to my LinkedIn profile as well so those interested in connecting with me on LinkedIn that will be wonderful as well.

 

Liza: Awesome, so Jeff thank you so much for your time, really appreciate it and you have a wonderful rest of your day.

 

Jeff: Thank you Liza, thank you for inviting me, a lot of fun and I hope you have a great day as well.

 

Liza: Cheers! Ok thanks Jeff.

 

Jeff: Take care, bye!

 

Resources

• Know you need to be in Social Media but don’t have the time? We can help you. Check out our Get Social Service
• To connect with Jeff Yang on LinkedIn, Click Here

 

 

 

 

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