Brendan Barca, a coach, speaker, and consultant at Brendan Barca Solutions, returns to the podcast with tips for financial professionals using LinkedIn Sales Navigator as a business-building tool. He discusses why it might be worth it for advisors to pay for the service rather than using the free version of LinkedIn. Barca also explains how LinkedIn Sales Navigator has built-in customer relationship management tools that can help advisors concentrate on the most promising leads while best serving existing clients in their practice.
John Bryson:
Brendan, welcome to the podcast.
Brendan Barca:
Thank you so much, John, for having me. Great to be back.
John Bryson:
Yeah, so you've been on our podcast before. Last time we talked, we talked about LinkedIn. Today, I want to go deeper and discuss LinkedIn Sales Navigator and how investment professionals can use it to grow their business. So if you think about comparing and contrasting LinkedIn in the free version, versus the Sales Navigator version, which you have to pay a fee for, what's the advantage of using the Sales Navigator version?
Brendan Barca:
Yeah, that's a great place to start, and I get this question a lot in a lot of my LinkedIn group trainings and presentations. So on the free version of LinkedIn, as many of you have probably used that for many years, it's really built for general networking. You can add people to your network, you can see what everyone's posting, whether they are a colleague of yours, or someone that you've known for 10 or 20 years. But one of the things that the free version of LinkedIn is missing, it's missing any way for you to track your leads, and to track your conversations. And this becomes important if you are trying to use LinkedIn as a business-building tool. Many times when you're trying to build a business, you have to keep track of all the folks you've had conversations with, what they've said, who you want to stay on top of, essentially having a CRM, or having an Excel spreadsheet where you want to understand who to kind of stay on top of.
Brendan Barca:
Now what LinkedIn Sales Navigator provides, one of the biggest advantages that it has, it's going to have a built-in CRM, so a relationship management system. You can save up to 1,500 leads within Sales Navigator, and you can run different messaging campaigns within those sort of lead organization boxes. So within Sales Navigator, you're going to be able to organize leads better, you're going to be able to run some more advanced searches as well. But I'd say the number one thing that we're seeing that advisors take advantage of within Sales Navigator, is taking all their leads off of spreadsheets, or outside of external CRMs, instead of bringing it all into LinkedIn Sales Navigator for more smooth LinkedIn sales campaigns. So that's going to be the biggest advantage, and there's going to be some additional filters on Sales Navigator, but we can talk about those more a little bit later on.
John Bryson:
Okay, great. So if people are on board with Sales Navigator, what would be the first thing you'd advise an advisor to do to get rolling?
Brendan Barca:
So if you're just getting into your Sales Navigator account, you've probably had LinkedIn, the regular version, for a number of years now, so you have some people in your network already added there. But within Sales Navigator, I mentioned the ability to save leads. So you definitely want to start by saving different types of leads, for both individuals and companies. So yes, you can save both leads, which are essentially individuals or accounts, which are going to be the companies that you want to monitor. So what I would recommend advisors start doing before they even start using LinkedIn as a sales tool is going to be saving your current clients. So any client that you know already, who's maybe your top 10, or top 50 clients, save them in Sales Navigator, and the main benefit of that is that you're going to be able to monitor what they're doing.
Brendan Barca:
So the biggest problem with the regular version of LinkedIn is your newsfeed is going to be covered with everyone in your network. It could be your college roommate, it could be your number one client, but you don't want to miss what your top clients are posting. So by saving them in Sales Navigator, you're then going to start to see different alerts within your Sales Navigator homepage about what your clients are doing. This is a great way for you and your team to build constant rapport with these clients, and to make sure you're staying on top of that relationship. I'd also recommend starting to save your clients' family members. So one of the biggest challenges advisors face in the years ahead is the generational transfer of wealth, so as your clients may pass on, you want to make sure that you're friends with their children, and their grandkids, so you can find them on LinkedIn, save them as leads, and again, start getting alerts of what these people are doing, so you can build rapport with the clients and their entire family.
Brendan Barca:
So that's going to be a great place to start when it comes to individuals; this is before you even start prospecting with the tool. But the second thing you want to do is then start saving companies that you want to try to get into as an advisor. So whether you are trying to get more affluent clients, or you're trying to get some 401(k) plans at different companies in your area, you can go to a company page on Sales Navigator, for example, maybe you want to find companies such as Grubhub, out in Chicago, and then you can save that company, and when you save the company, you will then start getting alerts about any company news. So maybe they're going through an IPO, or there are layoffs, you can see what's going on at the company, and then you can be the advisor who's providing information, or ideas, to the employees based on the company events. So those are the main things I would do, save your current clients and their family members, and also save any companies you want to try to go after within Sales Navigator.
John Bryson:
So how is that different with the saving component, versus just connecting with a prospect, if you want to use this as a tool to prospect? Is there any benefit of the saving approach, versus simply connecting?
Brendan Barca:
Yes, there is a difference between saving and connecting with folks on LinkedIn Sales Navigator. The regular version of LinkedIn doesn't have the saving feature, so within Sales Navigator, when you save someone, this means you can save anyone despite if you're connected with them or not. So let's say for example, when you're doing prospecting, you find a list of 100 CEOs, and these are all great people you want to try to stay on top of. You'd love to get all these people as your clients. But when you go through, and you try to connect with these individuals, not all of them, and actually just a percentage of them, are going to accept your invitation to connect. But what you can do to make sure you don't forget about them is save them to your Sales Navigator.
Brendan Barca:
So if I went through, in a morning, and I found 20 CEOs that I wanted to connect with, I would probably send 20 connection invitations and hope that they'd accept. I'd probably get about five or so that actually did, and the other 15 though, I would make sure I have saved, and that way, in a month from now, if I wanted to go and try to prospect them again, I'd have their names. I could try to send them an InMail, which we can talk about that in a little bit, or I can even send them an email.
Brendan Barca:
But if I don't save them in my LinkedIn Sales Navigator, I'm going to forget about them completely. So the biggest difference between saving and connecting is that saving is sort of a secretive thing you can do to make sure you're tracking your prospects and anyone in your network, whereas connecting is more of an active thing where you're going to be sending a message to someone, hoping you can get into their network. So I would connect with every prospect I can try to connect with them, but then I would save the ones that I want to come back to a little bit later on, that way I get alerts, I can also track them for future outreach attempts.
John Bryson:
That's really interesting, I didn't know about that feature, and it makes the prospecting process easier. Let's talk a little bit more about prospecting. So for advisors that are trying to find quality prospects on LinkedIn, what are some of the ways you can search so that you can be as effective as possible?
Brendan Barca:
So on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, there are a number of advanced search filters that are not available on the regular version of LinkedIn, on top of the fact that you can save up to 1,500 leads. This is another major advantage, and essentially, one of the things you're paying for when you subscribe to Sales Navigator. So one of the top ones I've seen many advisors leverage is the postal code filter. So when you go into your LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you are going through your filters, one of the challenges people had on the free version of LinkedIn is, let's say they don't live in a major metro area, so maybe you're in the middle of Georgia as opposed to Atlanta. Well, on the regular version of LinkedIn, you can really only run searches for Atlanta or Georgia as a whole, but if you're out in the middle of the state, you're really kind of out of luck.
Brendan Barca:
But within Sales Navigator, it's going to allow you to do a postal code search, so all you have to do is type in the postal code of your town, and then from there, do a radius search of people that are in within five miles, or 50 miles, or up to 100 miles, from your hometown. And that's going to help you to find people that are closer to home, and not find someone who's over in Atlanta, Georgia. So that's one of the top filters you can find that under the geography section within your filters, just select postal code, type in your zip code, and then you can do a radius search from there. So that's one of the top ones I've seen many advisors leverage, especially if you live outside of a major metro area.
Brendan Barca:
On top of that, there's a number of other filters a little bit lower down, under the role and tenure section if you're looking in your Sales Navigator. One of the ones I've seen advisors leverage is going to be the seniority level, so you can actually select if you want to filter down by people that are owners, or in the C-suite, or they are VPs, or directors. And the benefit of this is, is that if you're an advisor, you most likely want to find more affluent clients. So by filtering out anyone who's an entry level, or a manager, you can make sure you're getting people that have higher salaries, and therefore probably more investible assets.
Brendan Barca:
So you can go there, and make sure you're filtering down into the C-suite, that'll be under the role and tenures portion of your Sales Navigator, in the left-hand corner, again, if you're following along. And the third one I recommend looking into is going to be the years at a current company filter. One of the biggest questions I got last year and during a number of trainings was, advisors wanted to know who has recently switched jobs. On the free version of LinkedIn, it's very difficult to detect this, essentially, you have to kind of stay on top of your notifications. But within Sales Navigator, they're going to give you a filter that's called years at current company, and you can select who has switched roles in the last year. So this is going to enable you to find people that have switched jobs, perhaps find a way to help them through their transition. So another great filter for you to leverage when you're doing your prospecting. Those are three that I'd recommend, it's going to be the postal code filter, the seniority level, and then the years at current company.
John Bryson:
Wow, some really good tips there on how to make your prospecting more effective and efficient. Earlier, you mentioned LinkedIn InMail, can you talk to us about the difference between InMail, and the normal messaging, and maybe what's the advantages or disadvantages of each?
Brendan Barca:
Absolutely, John. So LinkedIn InMail, is something you're going to get with Sales Navigator, and you want to think of InMail as LinkedIn's version of sending an email. Now, when you open up an InMail, or you try to send a message through Sales Navigator, it's going to show you a subject, and also a body, just like you'd send in an email. You get up to 30 InMails per month, that you can send out to your prospects, or to anyone on Sales Navigator. And the key thing with InMails is you can send those even if you're not connected with the person. So let's say you try to connect with the CEO about a month or two ago, they haven't accepted, and you say, "Well, they haven't accepted, but let me at least try to send them an InMail as a secondary approach." So the benefit of InMails is that you're going to be able to send them to anyone, even if they haven't accepted your invitation. Whereas messages on Sales Navigator, and on the regular version of LinkedIn is, you're going to be able to send those after you've connected with the person.
Brendan Barca:
So if a CEO, or maybe a doctor accepts your invitation, you can then message them for free, from now, until essentially the end of your career, or until maybe they drop off LinkedIn. So essentially, the biggest difference is, InMail, you can think of as sending a cold email, but doing it through LinkedIn, and messaging more like sending a private message to someone who's already in your network.
Brendan Barca:
Now the question then becomes, how do we use either of these? So in my opinion, in my experience, we still want to use messaging as the key way to build rapport. So we want to try to connect with our prospects first, once they're in our network, we can start to send the messages of valuable things. The only time that I would consider using InMail is if someone, a great prospect, doesn't accept my invitation, and I want to try a different approach, a more direct approach of trying to get in front of them, that's when I would go to InMail. And I would probably choose InMail over email, because as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, or as I mentioned in a previous podcast, perhaps, is that five times as many InMails are going to get replies, versus standard cold emails. So if I had to think of my pecking order of what to do, I would try to connect and message first, InMail second, and then email third.
John Bryson:
Yeah, I remember you mentioned that before, that five times the impact. And I also remember you said, "Offer with value first." Offer up something valuable, and then build a relationship that might be a great way, like you said, to build that relationship. So, let's talk about the advisor that's on board, says, "You've dropped enough knowledge on me that I'm really interested in Sales Navigator." If they only had one hour per week to get it, to use it, and then use it effectively, how would you coach an advisor to spend that one hour on Sales Navigator?
Brendan Barca:
And this is one of the biggest challenges I think advisors face as we know, as someone who's trying to build a business, you are constantly pulled in different directions, you have your current clients, you have different in-person events, maybe different marketing going on. So you have to really have a focus and dedicated time to be doing this LinkedIn outreach, or having a member of your team be doing this for you. So if you had one hour per week on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, what I would be doing is setting goals for myself in terms of how many outreaches, and how many touch points I want to create with my prospects.
Brendan Barca:
So the first goal you should have on Sales Navigator is finding a list of prospective clients. So as you log in, you want to go to your filters at the top, and you want to search for your ideal prospects. So if you're trying to find physicians in Orlando, or if you're trying to find CFOs in Chicago, you want to type those keywords into your search, filter down by second-degree connections in your city, and then have a list of maybe 100 or 500 different prospects, and then go through them, and connect with a certain number each time you log in.
Brendan Barca:
My goal when I was building my business on LinkedIn was to hit 20 per morning. So I think that's a good place, if you're really dedicated on LinkedIn, you have an hour, try to connect with 20 new prospects in that hour, and that's going to really get you to a good enough volume, where you're going to start to see a certain percentage of those people come into your network each week.
Brendan Barca:
So that would be my first half hour on LinkedIn, finding the right prospects, sending connection messages to get them into my network. And the second half hour would be building rapport with people who have already accepted my invitation. So all those leads I've saved, or all the people that have come into my network, maybe there are CFOs who I have to follow up with, or there's doctors I can send an article to, I would think of one idea, maybe an article, or some sort of seminar invitation I could send them, and go through, come up with one sort of basic template of what to send each person, then customize the template with their name, and send to each prospect individually. And these are the people that are already accepted my invitations, so I'm building rapport, or if the opportunity arises, I'm asking for a meeting.
Brendan Barca:
So in the course of the hour, what I've done, the first half hour, I have found a list of prospects, I've sent about 20 connection invitations. And in the second half hour, I've thought of one messaging campaign, and sent that off to about 20 prospects who are already in my network. So that would be my recommendation if you had one hour on Sales Navigator, do those two things.
John Bryson:
That's really helpful. So, so far you've highlighted a lot of the value that Sales Navigator can bring, whether it's saving prospects, or different search filters, and the InMail option. Can you talk about the worth of it? Is it worth paying the fee for a financial advisor, in your opinion?
Brendan Barca:
So the question really depends on where you're at as a financial advisor and how comfortable you are with LinkedIn. For many advisors who I've worked with over the last couple years, they're still really in the beginner stage of LinkedIn and maybe aren't ready to use such a robust tool. I mean, think about it, if you're able to drive a car, maybe you can drive an automatic car, but you don't know how to drive a stick shift. So I would consider Sales Navigator to be more advanced, maybe that more stick shift, you need some training. Where's the regular version of, LinkedIn's going to be a little bit more straightforward. So if you're just getting started, if you have to build your profile, or if you just want to create content on a weekly basis, you can still send messages on the free version of LinkedIn.
Brendan Barca:
I think that's a great place to start. It's going to be free, and what you can do is start to gauge your success on the free version, and if you start to see that you're landing meetings, or you're getting clients from LinkedIn, that's when you may want to rationalize the spend, because you're already seeing the ROI. And that's when you can go to Sales Navigator, you've already learned the basics of how to sell through LinkedIn, you've learned some of the soft skills, now you just need to organize, and essentially scale your approach. So I would start, for many advisors on the free version, that's where I started on LinkedIn, and I had a lot of success there without ever using Sales Navigator, but once you've really done LinkedIn, you want to do it more at scale, and you feel like you're ready for a better organization system, that's when you can use Sales Navigator to really, I'd say, amplify your LinkedIn strategy.
John Bryson:
That's really helpful. So the way I would say it is, if you're already a power user with LinkedIn, you might want to consider Sales Navigator for the next level. And if you're not a power user, Brendan and I, you and I have recorded a podcast a little while ago, so people should go back and listen to that because there's a lot of great tips on becoming a power user on simply the free version of LinkedIn. So last question I have for you, if an advisor is on board and sold, and is excited to get started on Sales Navigator, what advice would you give them to get rolling right away?
Brendan Barca:
Yeah, so to sort of summarize some of the main tips we've talked about in today's podcast, the first thing you should do on Sales Navigator is you need to save your current clients, your current clients' family members, any current prospects you've been trying to get in front of, and also any companies who you already know in your area that you want to target moving forward. The more leads you save in Sales Navigator, the smarter the tool's going to work for you. Because actually, once you save a lead, they're going to start sending you different lead recommendations based on the leads you've already put in there. So the better you can put in your ideal clients, or your ideal prospects, the easier it's going to be for LinkedIn to work with you, to be able to give you more recommendations. So the first thing you should do is be able to save those existing clients, any prospects you've already been working on, and any companies in your area that you want to start to monitor moving forward.
Brendan Barca:
This is going to set up your accounts, so you start getting alerts and start getting more recommended leads. So that would be the first thing, and the second thing would be, to sort of go through that one-hour workflow I talked about a few minutes ago, where you want to be setting a weekly goal for yourself, or a weekly hour to go in and dedicate towards LinkedIn prospecting. That half hour at the beginning, you want to find your prospects, and then connect with them, and that comes through different connection messages approaches, which you can find some examples of those on the John Hancock website, of different things that we provided for advisory resources. And the second half hour of that time is, you want to be sending messages to your existing connections who have already accepted your invitation to build a rapport with those prospects and try to land meetings. So, I would say those are the first things you can do to implement is, save your existing clients, and prospects, and companies, and then start to set a weekly routine for your outreach on Sales Navigator.
John Bryson:
Brendan, it's always great to talk with you, I always learned something new. When we launched this podcast, we're always looking for ways to help advisors build better outcomes for their clients and their business. This clearly is a tool to help advisors grow their business. I want to thank you for sharing what you've shared today, and what you've shared in prior podcasts. I'll remind folks, like you said, we have more information on how advisors can build their business on our website; there are videos, there are downloadable resources, and the website is jhinvestments.com. And I'd hope you'd consider subscribing to our Portfolio Intelligence podcast, either on our website or on iTunes, you can hear more about what we're doing, and how we're helping advisors build their business, and how we're helping investors achieve better outcomes. I want to thank Brendan, and I want to thank everybody for listening to our show.
Disclosure:
This podcast is being brought to you by John Hancock Investment Management Distributors LLC, member FINRA, SIPC. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speaker, are subject to change as market and other conditions warrant and do not constitute investment advice or a recommendation regarding any specific product or security. There is no guarantee that any investment strategy discussed will be successful or achieve any particular level of results. Any economic or market performance information is historical and is not indicative of future results, and no forecasts are guaranteed. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal.
John Hancock Investment Management and Brendan Barca Solutions are not affiliated.