Ready to nail your LinkedIn game?

In today’s quick coaching sesh, Melissa shares her proven methods for crafting personalized messages that stand out and make a lasting impression. She’ll share easy-to-implement strategies for managing your connections without getting bogged down by spreadsheets and sticky notes.

Tune in to get actionable tips that will help you grow your network, simplify your workflow, and make every connection count!

Topics discussed in this episode:

• networking
• network growth
• connecting with your audience
• ideal audience
• personalized messaging
• tracking leads
• lead generation
• making connections
• top of funnel marketing
• revenue goals
• LinkedIn™

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Melissa:

Alright, Natalia.

Natalia:

Hello. Hello. I'm sorry. I have a little cold, so I'm a little raspy, but, I am here. I have a question for you. I'm trying to maximize my networking and my network period. And that's you know, I've been as you know, I've been here, like, I'm at the end of August, so I'm kinda a little bit past my halfway point. And I need to do better with connecting.

Natalia:

I really I I'm not getting I'm not even getting a b minus. I think I'm just really struggling to figure that out. So I ran a search on LinkedIn using the following Boolean terms, the women and HR and senior leaders. And then I get, like and then I get a whole bunch of people, and I choose 1st and second connections. That's 900 people that I'm thinking, just by title, they're my ideal people.

Melissa:

Mhmm.

Natalia:

Do I now like, in one call, Jackie said you could sort of spam send them stuff, but it just seems like okay. So what do I do with these 900 people?

Melissa:

Yeah. Okay. 900 is actually not that bad. Okay. If you focus on, depends on how high your SSI score is as to how many people you can connect with per week or per month. So you're just gonna have to play with that, and Jackie's got some training on that. But you can add, you know, at least a 100

Natalia:

SSI is 48.

Melissa:

Okay.

Natalia:

And I do have premium too. That's the other I think I'm not equalizing all the pieces correctly.

Melissa:

Yeah. You I would be I would make it your all time goal to get connected with all 900 of them. And the way you can do that is what I would do is and is and I've played with this, and you kinda get a feel for where your verbiage is really tracking and people are, like, really engaging. And so you might have to play with this a little bit, but it's when you're sending the request to connect and you can only do, like, a handful on the free account, but you've got the premium, so you probably can send more personal messages, is think through you know, in general, you've got a pretty tight audience that you're sending requests to connect to. Right? Yeah. Yeah. You wanna think about how can you, like, personalize that message in a way that kind of encompasses, you know, that category field. You know? Hey.

Melissa:

I you know? And and and that's the thing is and if you're only doing, you know, a couple a day, maybe 10 or 15 a day, but you're committed to doing it daily every single day, it's the compound effect. Right? Yeah. And so, you know, 10 to 15 a day with a little bit more of a of a custom either message or once they accept, like, a custom response, will go so far for you so far for you. So you it doesn't have to be super custom for each message. What I used to do when I grew my network on my own was I would strategically grow my network with different, job titles on different days because I would use different verbiage for different roles.

Natalia:

Okay. Okay.

Melissa:

Right? So that you're not going back and forth and, like, trying to think of something new every time. So, like, once a week, I would grow my network specifically with pharmacist. Right? So then my conversation is gonna be very similar to every pharmacist I send a message to. Right? Like, hey, I see that you're you're a pharmacist. You know, like, I you know, some kind of some kind of common ground and then like an open ended question. Right? And then it was literally copy paste, copy paste, copy paste, copy paste. You feel like it's spam, but it's actually very customized to the specific job description. Right? Then on the next day, I might grow my network with 15 people who worked in the pharmaceutical industry, who were, you know, high level, like, senior leaders or whatever.

Melissa:

You know, I see you're a senior leader in big pharma and then, like, some common ground comments and then an open ended question. Copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste. Right? And then it's like a rinse and repeat. I would use those scripts for the different swim lanes each day of the week, rinse and repeat each week, rinse and repeat each week, rinse and repeat

Natalia:

each week. Does that make sense? And that makes complete sense. And I was I'm thinking, actually, one day will be the HR senior leaders and another day would be my b corp because that's the other really like, when the most ideal world like, I'm just gonna vision cast my most ideal client is actually a senior leader in a b corp. That's where I wanna work or who I wanna work with. Right? So maybe that's one. So then here's the other piece that I'm getting lost in. It's tracking all of these connections and communications. So then do I as I do let's say, today's, whatever, Tuesday, I have 5 people that I wrote written to.

Natalia:

Do I then put them on a spreadsheet and say, I wrote to these 5 people? I'm not kidding you. I have some Post it notes. I have paper, and

Melissa:

I have

Natalia:

a spreadsheet. I'm like, yes,

Melissa:

a minute.

Natalia:

This is ridiculous.

Melissa:

Okay. So I did some training on Asana. It's it should be in the coursework

Natalia:

in the

Melissa:

back the back end Yeah. To guide you in how I do this.

Natalia:

Okay.

Melissa:

And so you will lose your mind if you try to track every single conversation. So I I have a specific policy that we only track people who've who've showed an interest. Okay. So for me, just because they responded to my first engagement doesn't mean they're a warm lead. It just means they're a heartbeat that's active on the platform. Right? So once I get into the back and forth and there's like, for instance, let's say you have a freebie, and you say you've discovered that they're I'm just making this up. They're HR leader. You've identified they've got some challenges in x y z, and you're like, hey.

Melissa:

You know, I actually happen to be an expert in this, and I've got this totally free downloadable resource you may find the value. If I send it to you, would you be interested in it? Got it. Very important that you ask that question. Yeah. The moment they say yes, they go on the tracker. Why? Because they're showing some level of interest. Got it. Or it could be, you know, you get into some pleasantries, and there's, an acknowledgment of being interested in hopping on a call or checking out something.

Melissa:

There has to be some positive movement forward that acknowledges that there's a gap and a need. Right? Prior to that, I am not tracking. I'm not tracking. Right? Right. And what's what's beautiful about this is in Asana, you know, I would have it very much, like, you know, showed interest in resource, and then I would move them along the board if they, you know, reviewed the resource and and followed back up. That's even a warmer lead. Right? And then if they moved all the way to a consult call, I moved them across the board of the consult call. Right? Because that just as you're moving hotter, hotter, hotter, hotter.

Melissa:

Right? So, and then when I moved to the consult call, you know, I've got Asana flagged for me to circle back in 2 days if I haven't heard back from them or whatever you wanna call it. I do the 2 by 2 by 2, so 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months. Right? So then that way, you're tracking you can very quickly on your board, if you've got minimal time, go specifically to the hottest leads or the people that you've had a call with that you need to follow back up with or that have acknowledged that they're interested. Right? Do you see what I'm saying?

Natalia:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Melissa:

And and I've got a training on that. When you're first getting started and you're just got a couple nibbles, like, you're just looking for some meals, you can set up follow ups on Asana, and you may find yourself following up on different days of the week with different people. But as you get momentum and you've got more of a pipeline of leads, what I have found is it's much easier to just actually have a day that you're following up with everyone.

Natalia:

Yeah.

Melissa:

Right? From an efficiency standpoint. Right? So I always call Fridays, like, Friday cleanup. Like, we're following up with everybody, and we're also going back to all the posts for the week and looking at second and third degree connections that have engaged in our content

Natalia:

Yeah.

Melissa:

And reaching out to them and having an open ended conversation and requesting to connect with them. So, like, that works better in in the workflow when you start really getting moving than being, like, jerked around by Asana every day saying, today's the day to follow-up with so and so. Today's the day to follow-up with so and so. And the next day, it's time to follow-up with so and so. It just, like, is kinda messy. So but you can still assign. And so where I'm going with this is I still we still have the 2 by 2 by 2, but Asana might be saying all week long, this person was supposed to be followed up with on Monday, this one on Tuesday, this one on Thursday, and it's like, great. But I'm following up with everybody on Friday.

Natalia:

Friday. I

Melissa:

yeah. Does that make sense? It makes sense. Yeah. And what's beautiful about that process is when you go to, scale and maybe make your first hire, if you don't have one now, is like a VA or someone kind of managing some of your your follow-up in the DMs. It's a very repeatable process that you can hand to them for follow-up. Like, you it's all trackable. Right? And, like, just makes for easy delegation.

Natalia:

Got it. No. This is, oh my gosh, so helpful. And then and then I actually have client work. So I'm this is where I'm struggling, actually. I'm doing all this what I call not it's not it's not profit I mean, it's eventually profit generating, but it's business development. And I'm squeezing in between client calls and actual deliverables that I'm trying to create for clients, and so it's like it's it's a mess. I mean, it's okay.

Natalia:

I'm giving myself permission to say this is, like, the growing pains, but I'm trying to formulate systems for for for scalability. And I'm thinking long term.

Melissa:

You know, top of funnel is really important, and it is the tipping point for expansion. I find even for myself and entrepreneurs are really starting to get going is you get this set of book of business, and you're so busy delivering that you can't find the time to do the top of funnel marketing to keep the pipeline going. And what happens is when we finally look up because our funnel is getting a little bit dry and our projects are slowing down, now all of a sudden, like, we have no leads. And so one of the things that I highly encourage all of you to do is really assess what your hourly rate I'll walk you through this in a second, but, like, what your hourly rate is truly worth and what some activities you're doing probably should be delegated to someone else right now in your operating budget. And I know because I've been there, and you can feel like I don't have another penny to spend. But the reality is it could be the bottleneck to blocking you off from your next big client because you don't have the time to manage and grow the platform the way that you you want to and need to. And so, what I encourage you guys to do is look at you guys can do this all right now. Like, what is your revenue goal for the year? Like, what is your revenue goal for the year? And write that down.

Melissa:

And then ask yourself, like, and I can do it with you. We can do some simple math. Let's say your revenue goal for the year is $200,000. Right? And then you have to ask yourself, how many weeks do I want off? Right? So let's say you got into business so that you could have some time freedom and, like, for easy math, let's say that you wanna work you want 10 weeks off. So that means you're gonna work 42 weeks. Right? So with 42 weeks, the next question is, how many hours a week are you gonna work? Are you gonna work 30 hours a week, 40 hours a week? Right? So let's say I wanna work 30 hours a week, because, again, that's why I got into business for myself, and I wanna work 30 hours a week times 42 weeks. Right? So you take the number of hours per week you wanna work times the number of weeks you wanna work. I just did that 30 hours 42 weeks is 1,260 hours for the year.

Melissa:

Now take that and divide it by the total revenue goal that you have. Right? So divide that. So I would say 200,000, if that's your goal, divided by 1,260 hours, that means your hourly rate is a $158 an hour. Right? So if you're looking to take 10 weeks off, work 30 hours a week, and make $200,000 this year, anything you're doing that's less than a $158 an hour that someone else can be doing for less

Natalia:

You'd be doing some somebody else should be doing it. Yeah. It's

Melissa:

So that was great

Natalia:

talking with. Thank you.

Melissa:

That that was one of my very first hires. Like, very first hires was social media in the DMs. And listen. I'm like the LinkedIn expert. What did I do? And you guys can do this. I gave them my LinkedIn checklist and trained them very simple stuff. Here's who I want you going engaging with. Here's the type of audience I want you growing my network with.

Melissa:

Here's the scripts I want you using. And they can be doing your Friday cleanup, meaning the second and third degree connections that have engaged with your content. I have to this day, I have a social she's called a community manager, and she does this. Every single every single Friday, she's pulling those second and third degree connections in. She's growing my network. We have a live event in Austin, Texas in October, so she's growing my network of entrepreneurs. Guess where? In Austin, Texas right now. Right? And then they can triage, you know, the warmer leads to you for, like, $20 an hour.

Melissa:

So ask yourself when you're sitting down to do some of this work, how does it feel to be doing a $20 an hour job right now when I could be doing a $158 an hour job? Right? And every time I've layered on every time I've layered on someone new into the business to fill a gap for the work I was doing, I've seen exponential growth in the company. You just have to be willing to to do it, you know?