In this episode Dennis Brown tells us how he built and sold a 3PL (Third Party Logistics) company that was turning over $80 million in sales by 2016 using LinkedIn selling. We then move on to discuss the struggle of all successful coaches and consultants of what you do when the business starts to grow beyond you. Do you clone yourself? Do you cut back on clients? Are there other solutions? Actually there are! Listen in to find out.
My Guest: Dennis Brown
Dennis Brown is the author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful LinkedIn Users” who has built three multi-million dollar businesses during his 20+ plus year career as an entrepreneur. His companies have been ranked 6 times by Inc Magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in America.
Dennis is well known as a LinkedIn marketing and social expert after he was able to generate over $20 million in new business through LinkedIn in a previous venture. Dennis now consults with entrepreneurs, consultants, speakers and sales leaders to generate more leads, more customers and more profits through LinkedIn marketing and social selling.
Pivotal Moments:
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Dennis was in college, pre-law, when he landed a job in sales and was terrible at it! Putting his mind to it, he became the best.
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Realized that he was bringing leads for his employer when he could do the same thing for himself, Dennis started his own business and realized he knew nothing about how to run a business.
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Spent first 10 years in business trying to figure out how to run a business, and the next 15 years trying to keep up with it.
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Invited to connect on LinkedIn back in the early 2000’s and learnt how go from outbound sales to inbound sales.
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Had a 15-minute phone call with “Bill” which was the first time he ever spent more time listening than talking, landing his first six-figure client.
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From there, he grew his 3PL company to twenty-million annual recurring revenue, mostly coming through LinkedIn
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Sold his company and began getting calls to help other people do what he did through sales on LinkedIn.
Came out of semi-retirement to do coaching & consulting for LinkedIn sales
The Advice:
3 C’s for selling on LinkedIn: Create, Connect and Convert
>Create: A compelling customer centric profile
>Connect: Using advance search or boolean search
>Convert: Using hyper targeted content
- LinkedIn is a goldmine for hearing what people are discussing. Find your audience, read their posts, listen in to their challneges and create few pieces of content based on those challenges to show that you get it.
- 1-3% of cold calls ended up in an appointment, 10-20% of cold sales ended up in an appointment with his LinkedIn outreach.
- LinkedIn Strategy: post an update three to five times a week. 80% of posts should be educational or informational, and only 20% trying to sell something
- Check out backlink.io and Brian Dean’s take on Buzzsumo.
The Struggle:
Dennis has a high quality problem. He has built this successful consulting business, and it is both a blessing and curse. Dennis had originally envisioned a smaller amount of high level consulting and speaking engagements, but instead he just has lots of clients. He feels the need to clone himself or cut back on his clients, and he’s now sure how to grow this business that took him by surprise (and out of semi-retirement).
The Breakthrough:
Similar to what we have in JBiz video (see the video of Estie’s talk “Ready, Set, Grow” in Links section below)
There are Five simple low-cost ways to grow any kind of business that lives and dies on you:
1. Up your rates and up your brand image
2. Get help by either cloning yourself and teaching your strategies to others so they can give them over, or get help with everything else so you can focus on what you are good at.
3. Hire or source other providers who service your audience with complementary services and bring them in or partner.
3. Pursue commission based affiliate marketing
4. Package your expertise by creating courses, group consulting and group coaching.
Quote:
“When you say it about yourself it’s bragging; if someone else says it about you, it’s proof.”
Resources and Links:
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