Welcome to the sales Navigator live show with Stan and Brynne join LinkedIn expert
and sales professional Brynne Tillman and me Stan Robinson Jr Chief coaching
officer here at Social Sales Link as we bring you the best tips and strategies
for leveraging sales navigator for your sales success enjoy the
happy Monday now for those of you who are normally with us I know the podcast says
uh Stan and Brynne and clearly this is not Brynne
so so I'm delighted to have Larry Holt with us today I'm G to have him
introduce himself tell us a little bit about his work in economic and Workforce
Development but this is a kind of a different spin on how people are
leveraging sales Navigator so I'm so happy Larry that you decided to join us
I know thank you for having me Stan yes my pleasure so let's go ahead
and and jump in because one of the things I found is that the time that we have we try to keep these at 30 minutes
or under generally speaking and the time goes by like that especially once we
start to get into some of the nuts and bolts I don't really listen to anything over 30 minutes so that makes perfect
sense to me yep yep that's that's part of the logic yep so if you would go
ahead and tell us a little bit about you know your current role and your history in in Economic Development yeah so uh
again great to be here and uh you know currently I'm working as an adviser with
a Lobby group out of Austin Texas uh and I'm in Los Angeles California and my uh
Economic Development and Workforce Development Career has goes back uh 15
odd years uh and so you know economic development is really about attracting
investment so um as my career has progressed that's taken on a fundraising
component as well which is where I think our discussion today is going to be helpful to your audience and I I suppose
uh you know there's really two key things I I'd like to share and uh here
is you know one you really need to embrace that we're all in sales mentality right um so you know if you're
uh you know a member relations uh uh manager with a
nonprofit uh you are constantly representing and selling to your organization selling for your
organization so you know I I I think for me dealing with investors um you know uh
it's really important to kind of embrace that and I think everything we're going to talk about today is uh looking for
opportunities to create new engagement and so uh when we think about really
activating our investor base or membership base uh what are those new touch points we can develop and then uh
finally it goes without saying that um you know none of this really works if
you're not active on the platform as well uh you know whether that's liking
or commenting or creating your own posts uh it's important to build your network
and really have a presence on it to get the most use out of it great thank you
yes yes so and thanks for that kind of overview of the stakeholders in your
world as many of of us are are talking to our sales talking to everything from
CFOs to cios and it's a different it's a different audience but I really
appreciate what you said about we're all in in sales that's right in terms of in
terms of Outreach and and promoting our organization and our Solutions yeah so
in terms of sales nav specifically I I I don't know do you have a sense of how
many your peers use sales Navigator or are you kind of
unusual I um you know I certainly think at the executive level people are using
it um in terms of my peers um you know it's an incredible platform and and more
to the point I think as you know um you know it's one of the most cost effective
uh B2B Solutions out there and you can pay thousands of dollars for other
platforms but you know for a relatively modest price um you know I think sales
Navigator gives you a lot of bang for your butt yes yes exactly um I think it
Forester research just came out with a report that I'm sure sales nav is
delighted with because a couple of the stats were a
312 per Roi from sales Navigator among the
companies that had surveyed and that on average sales Navigator paid
itself back within six months it's uh it's highly cost
effective so yeah yeah I'm I'm a I'm a very you know I've been using it really
pretty heavily since like 2016 okay and so um I was always you
know tempted to use it and and then as my my roles grew uh I
found you know I couldn't live without it okay so it sounds like you were using
LinkedIn to do some of the same things and then of course you get the messages saying hey check out all these
additional filters and sales nav is that more or less what got you to give it a try yeah when did I I don't even know
when I joined LinkedIn I guess it would have been like around 2007 or 2008 and
then yeah my my roles grew and I I started getting the you know even more
search filters um I gave it a shot and I'm just on the core plan and I'm sure
that's something you uh go over with uh your customers quite a bit but I I find
pretty plenty of uh utility uh just using that core plan to to prospect for
new accounts um I think account search is a little uh underutilized um leads and then all the
really kind of granular filters the that the platform offers are great and so if
I might just for a second as we kind of get into the meat of this sure you know we we first posited that you know okay
I'm in sales for my nonprofit organization whether that's uh you know
uh customer success and managing my board or identifying new potential board
members and investors for our nonprofit so you know at that point we've got to
kind of think a little bit so the next question is what is the ideal customer
profile for my organization and so that ICP is so critical uh to your success
and for most nonprofits you know it's going to be um really the same group you
know it's going to be your foundations it's going to be philanthropies and it's going to be kind of um you know the
business service providers uh in a lot of cities that are kind of the corporate
citizens of the nonprofit Community okay okay perfect
and one of the things I was curious about is if you could just talk about some of your your favorite features and
of sales naav and and how you use them I you know here's something that um I've
got a ton first off and and you know one thing I'm going to be talking about here a little bit um in a c in in our
conversation today is I like letting sales Navigator do the work for
me and I think that's one of the um that for new users um you know there's a lot
to take in you suddenly have access to you know hundreds of millions of profiles but you can start boiling the
ocean pretty quick and there's tools um in saved searches for um leads
yeah for for accounts um and even your account lists um that that are I think are
useful to everyone um so some of my filters I like um these are my own hacks
or LinkedIn groups you know seeing who else is in your shared LinkedIn group
for I don't know say h a tech initiative in your community and a lot of times
nonprofits are very focused on the community they're in so you know how do how do we find people that are
interested and have shared interests in the success of the community
alumni um I think alumni is super underrated for uh you know kind of
finding who those people are and then as you know it's really easy to find uh uh
you know who your new followers are and of course if you're managing a page you already get access to that what if you
could really kind of apply those sales Navigator Advanced filters to your followers are that helps you refine you
know who that ideal customer profile is for your company and so like I said um I
let it work for me I'm gonna you know here's a hack stand this is one of the
easiest things in the world it is a a saved lead search um you know just go in
do um first first first degree connections and change jobs in the past
90 days and then save that search why would you do that well
unfortunately uh I found out a few years back like a really close colleague uh
had changed jobs without doing the hey I'm happy to announce thing on L right
you know a lot you know again it gets back to those opportunities to reach out so there's really like a two- filter
search that will have you being really on top of your network I love the fact that you you say
let sales Navigator do the work for you because that's that's part of the power
of the tool and the fact that some of the things that its algorithm is doing
for us and surfacing for us we would have no way of seeing when you start
talking about things like buyer intent and they they're bringing in data on
people that are visiting your company page you you have no visibility in to
that and I know when you set it up when you first create an account it says who
are your you know you know it offers some sort of wizards to help you yes
your person I mean I'm sure I don't use any of those that I did you know eight or nine years ago so yeah you um you
know like everything in life a little bit of work on the front end really pays off and you know I can kind of go and
spend like 30 minutes I guess on on on my saved searches in the morning and
scann for um you know new leads and new opportunities for engagement and you know um that's a
pretty good use of um that's a pretty modest investment uh that that pays off really
quickly when you've done that work on the front end but uh it's you know and I don't even use personas just because I'm
you know so used to doing things my way but they they're adding new tools that
uh continue to do the work for you yes there's some AI powered tools that are
coming that they've they've hinted at uh Bren actually got a chance to see them
at LinkedIn when she went there to visit um but they I don't believe they'll be
rolled out until first quarter unless they they pleasantly surprise us and do it sooner but what you said one thing I
did want to highlight about what you said about a little bit of work UPF front pays off big time because when
working with clients I tell them a lot of the work that goes into a great
LinkedIn and sales Navigator strategy has nothing to do with LinkedIn and
sales nav it is identifying who as you said your ideal
customer profile or Persona whatever you want to call it how you describe them
and of course what the value is that you can bring to them what pain points you saw for them all of that you're doing
ideally before you dive into sales Navigator and as you said try to boil the ocean there because there's so much
you can do with the tool and it's e to get overwhelmed yeah absolutely I mean
you know you're um a strategic relations person or you know a VP or president of
a nonprofit and you know what you what you want want is that you're regularly
engaging with your customers and and really from a nonprofit perspective you
know they shouldn't be hearing from you once a year when you send an invoice right so uh you know I'm sure there's a
a private sector analog for that as well so uh LinkedIn has a lot of tools that
that make it really easy for you and uh you know happy to dive into some really
basic examples too yep very true very very true great so I know you talked a
little bit about save searches and and how that does some of the work for you
because you get notified of new safe search results and as you said you just take some time in the morning now it
sounds like that's a fairly regular part of your schedule it's not something that you do randomly from the the way that
you put it is that I uh I I I have found the saved searches to just be an
incredibly valuable piece of it for me and so I mean and you know I mean when
you go and you're let's say your ICP is like U you know um new business
development um uh Executives within your local construction industry perhaps
maybe your maybe your um your nonprofit is helping um develop Workforce
Solutions for the construction industry very common problem all over the US well you know building that search is
going to take some time but if you save it you know um then you just have access
to any changes uh that are there and it updates automatically for you every day
I you know yeah let it let it do the work for you again like we said a couple
of times so good deal good deal I'm G to ask one question that that is somewhat
selfish because I'm involved with the Workforce Development board and our local County here in New Jersey so we're
we're you know trying to connect job Seekers with employers and interestingly
enough employers say they can't find enough people to fill the positions that they have and there are other people
looking for a job and also bringing in of course the public sector local government state government
federal government and then the universities the educational piece so we're trying to connect all of those
right um and you've done work with with Workforce Development also I yeah yes um
how how is working with Workforce Development the way I just described it versus
nonprofits different if at all for you I you know um let's assume um you know
someone's in a nonprofit um supporting that that Workforce um initiative um you
know I I just I don't think it would be that different I mean again here's here's an example where you're wanting
to build engagement probably with the two-year system right and um you know
that's where a lot of great training takes place so you know there's just another opportunity to engage with with
the stakeholders and um you know using account search um let's say you had some
new initiative at the Workforce investment board the web yeping language exactly exactly yep
and they you can go you can go into your account search and um you can search for
companies by growth rates okay EXA and so uh there's a a fairly way to have
those kind of um job developers uh that work for the um Work Source centers uh
identify new companies for placement so everything on sales Navigator
translates to uh you know higher ad two-year and Workforce Development as
well and across the nonprofit space stand fantastic yep that is very helpful
that's very helpful it's funny I was going to ask you about your your
favorite sales Navigator feature because you've talked about about several but I keep hearing save
search um uh other than safe search are there any other kind of favorite features or things that you find
yourself using repeatedly well uh you know let me let's drill down for the
audience and just really show them uh what a save search could look like
because I don't know if you know there's there's not a lot of training out there on the platform if you were to kind of
criticize it it's just kind of give them your credit card and go so so let's
demystify this for them a little bit stand um here's something really easy
that I think everybody that's in a nonprofit um that has a sales Navigator license should do um go um
we're going to create um a lead list and and so take the members of your board of
directors and go and and kind of look them up one by one we're going to do a little work on the front end and there's
when you see like a lead there like Stan Robinson you'll see a little button that says save and what you want to do is
save that board member to a new list call it my board 2023 or whatever um and
so you know if you take your boards and and committees and and put them in that
that lead list um you know what you've created a dashboard um at that point you
have an entire visibility into all the supporters of your organization and you
can see who is in the news when you click on that lead list you can see who's posted content recently who's
changed jobs and so uh you know a lot of people pay a lot of money for those type
of dashboards and uh you know that's just a a tool built within the system
and so um you know that's kind of the most basic thing in the world and you know if
you want to step it up um let's let's take this to the uh uh graduate level
and uh let's try and find some new funders so uh let's first off we're
going to do account search you can see lead F filters and account filters at the top under account filters go in put
your state that you're in um and then put for industry philanthropic
fundraising Services um that is the industry category for foundations and
philanthropies and we're we're starting at the state level because you know there's not hundreds of these even in a
city like Los Angeles so um you know we're going to go ahead and put that in
and we're going to filter by employee size to only to get the largest ones
really all we're trying to do is get this to the largest foundations in our state and around 25 is what we want once
we've got that dialed in there's a box that says check all we're going to save those 20 foundations and then we're
going to view their current employees which is the button right next to check on um and then you know then we're in
the lead Advanced filters and then we can kind of go and look at our first and second degree
connections um and then we're going to save that as a lead search um so we've
created a lead list for our board that's a dashboard and now we have a lead
search uh of foundation in our areas um and it'll you know once
we're notified of new results we can see all the movement and opportunity taking place within those foundations so you
know that's um that's an advanced level stuff that I think uh any nonprofit out there
could really use for their own continued success for their community and their
stakeholders awesome great thank you that's that is a
perfect example of of what you can do with sales Navigator and surface people and
activities that you can engage with one thing um you mentioned being able to
save leads and accounts and Once Upon a Time and for some people you may see the
familiar big save button which is perfectly logical well sales naav is
changing that to add to list which is not as intuitive so if you don't see a save
button well it's it's get notified of new results at you you'll see it hasn't hit
you yet if you still still see the save button I wish they'd kept that but I do
not have a save button anymore I don't have a save button they've moved it up top where it says I can get notified of
results ah yes that is to save the the search itself
yes and so they've replaced that save button with as you just said not get
notified of new results but when you're on a lead profile once upon a time you'd
hit save right because you want to save it now you will not see save you will
see the option to add to list now since these things roll out what really gets
fun for those of us who are doing doing training is that we may be seeing one View and the person we're talking to is
seeing a different view sometimes they're ahead of us they've got the new view and sometimes they're behind us
well yeah you know if they if they changed it I will say um and we're daily
users of the platform who sometimes get frustrated I mean those saved searches
um has created extra steps but you know add to list that's what I'm going for
anyway so maybe they cut down on stuff and maybe in the end um it's the same number
of steps but just done confusingly so I don't yeah I'm not I'm not smart enough
to work uh in product management and I will leave it at that
that's well put though yeah it's the same number of steps but just less
clearly um but yes so thank you for that breakdown and and you know as I said the
time goes by super fast the time permitting the one thing I did want to
touch on is when you you see activity um it could be a post it could
be changing jobs um how do you
engage and then how do you take that from you know a comment congratulations
on your new job into a conversation where you can start to talk about
right top I mean I mean that's that's our job right is to to engage and so
what we're looking for with all of I mean we're not setting up all these searches to um you know just to nerd out
it's to look for opportunities for engagement so you know depending on like
if I see a first deegree connection somebody on close with uh that's changed
jobs I'll probably send them a note uh I'll you know maybe to their personal
email maybe it's a you know a member of my nonprofits executive committee and
I'll flag it for my nonprofits president to say Hey you know our vice vice chair
has changed jobs uh you know you may want to reach out and then you know um
depending on where they are in in your network you know um you know maybe you see someone's joined an organization
that um uh is not a current member but you have a close connection to that person you
know then I probably reached out on the um on the sales Navigator platform itself oh wait wait I would actually
reach out on regular Linking as opposed to you know they
like the messaging on on sales Navigators like not good I I don't
understand it so and and also not everybody has sales Navigator so if you see that opportunity to engage I'm sure
you recommend to the people you train to make sure you reach out to them on regular LinkedIn uh because they have
more of a chance of seeing that seeing it exactly but you know you know now that we've got our dashboard we've got
all these opportunities to uh engage and and um you know reach out to the people
that are going to make our organization successful fantastic thank you thank you
it's funny literally a couple of podcasts ago we talked about the
messaging and the fact that even though you can send messages through sales nav
the the the communication between LinkedIn and sales Navigator is not ideal so we do exactly what you
mentioned that we say hey use LinkedIn for direct messages a lot of
times it's just simpler let's not and let's you know we're not linked to employees I mean you know the the the
best communication is going to be I mean you know just through their normal email
you know um or even phone you know or um maybe you know maybe you've got an event
coming up and you just want to talk to that person in person you know those are
those are great you know so although I'm using this Advanced Digital platform I'm
looking for the most me I'm I'm looking for the most analog way POS uh to
reach out and engage yeah yep exactly because our goal is to use the tool to
get to a conversation our goal stay on that's a real life conversation yes
thank you exactly not not DMS all day that's right um super last two things if
I might yep these these will be fast you mentioned groups yeah do you find in the
n nonprofit world that some of the LinkedIn groups are more active that
people are actually engaged there or do you mainly go look at them just to see who's joined them because you know that
they'll have an interest in that particular topic
um I think I think they've changed groups around a good bit but there's
still like really good ways to network and so you know let go to um you talked
about Workforce investment boards and um there's there's a a net so really I
think the best groups are kind of your National group so that would be like
your your National Association of Workforce Development boards that's a good way to find peers Urban Land
Institute so those are really rich um uh
groups when you join on the national level and then you can kind of reverse engineer it and go well who else from my
community uh is interested enough in this enough to to maybe be engaged in
these Urban issues like Urban Land Institute or or Workforce issues that I'm not already talking to talking to
okay perfect perfect great and Larry any lastly any other thing that you would
like to mention that we hadn't already touched on I'm sure that um you know you
advise your clients to if they subscribe to sales Navigator uh that they have
access to the sales Navigator Community um and I'm as I'm sure you're aware uh
Microsoft has has decreased some of its support on the platform so um you know
that Community has become a really kind of critical way for your power users to
really identify what's changing on the platform and what features may be added
or uh hopefully not taken away well said yes yes well listen I
want to thank you for making this time to come join us and share your insights as far as the use of sales Navigator in
the nonprofit World um the principles are still the same you different
audience but same principles we're all in CS and uh let let the platform work
for you you know y love it perfect summary Larry thank you so much thank
you Steve all right and have a great rest of the day we'll be in touch thanks again for listening to this
episode in reviewing this recording I wanted to make sure I clarified one
point that we were talking about toward the end when we were discussing sales
Navigator and LinkedIn messages I want to make it clear that any message you
send through sales Navigator will go directly to your recipients LinkedIn
inbox they will never know whether you send it from LinkedIn or through sales
Navigator and it doesn't make any difference to them so the other thing is as a sales
Navigator user you simply want to be aware that if you send a message to someone through sales Navigator when
they reply from LinkedIn their reply will appear in your
sales Navigator inbox not in your LinkedIn inbox so the point is just
whenever you send a message through sales Navigator make sure to regularly check your sales nav inbox for any
replies to your messages hope this helps thanks again for listening and have a great day
thanks for listening and join us again for more insights on sales Navigator and social selling strategies that will
differentiate you from your competitors and accelerate your sales success in the
meantime you can go to social sales
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