Episode 32 5 Triggers That Your Bankers NEED LinkedIn for Prospecting

Jack Hubbard 00:01
I've had the privilege of being in and around banking for more than 50 years. Lots of changes during that time. We've gone from Ledger's to laptops, typewriters to technology. One thing, however, remains the same. Banking is a people business. And I'll be talking with those people that make banking great here on Jack Rants With Modern Bankers.
Hello, everybody, it’s Thursday and it’s Jack Rants with Brynne!

Brynne Tillman 00:33
Hi, Jack, I'm so excited. I feel like it's been forever since we've talked but we’re here.

Jack Hubbard 00:40
It has and you know, you've been traveling a lot and doing a lot of wonderful things and I've been doing some Banking Schools and, and moving from our house. And so we're here in our spring training headquarters and our rental for about a year. And we're back live again. And we've got a really important topic to talk about today. And it’s very timely and has to do with prostate affecting but before we do that, I wanted to mention a couple of really important announcements and kind of fun things.
We always want to look forward. And one of the things that we look at for 2024 Is there could be some headwinds. And so we're going to talk about how to head off some headwinds and 2024. At least from a LinkedIn perspective, we're going to do that on November 15th at noon, Eastern Time, Brynne and I were going to are going to do this webinar, you will be invited and there'll be a link and all that, but I wanted to least get you on your dance card.
The other thing that I'm really excited about is that we are just about ready to complete all of our interviews for the 2023 Jack Rants with Modern Bankers, these programs are on Wednesday at noon Eastern time. And we've had some amazing, amazing guests, and next week is no exception. She's Elizabeth Cotterell, who has written heart spoken, which is a phenomenal book. She's also the chairwoman of First Bank in Virginia. So that's exciting. And she'll be my guest next Wednesday. It's a recorded program, but it's on 12. Eastern time.
So lots of great things are happening Brynne. And I love this topic today because there are probably five things and more that trigger in a banker's mind. You know what, I could use LinkedIn a little bit better from a prospecting perspective. So glad to have your Brynne, this will be a fun topic.

Brynne Tillman 02:31
I love this topic and just talking about it with you brings a big smile to my face.

Jack Hubbard 02:37
Me too, it's great to be back live again.

Brynne Tillman 02:42
I know! Wait before you start, I do want to say because you mentioned the webinar, and for people to look out, but if you join the modernbanker.com/publiclibrary, you can join that today. And then as soon as you register, you will get it.

Jack Hubbard 02:59
That's great. And it's growing. And I'm really excited about it. You know, we've got over 100 podcasts and videos and ebooks and articles in there now and it's growing every single day. So I'm really glad you brought that up. From a prospecting perspective, there are some triggers, and we've kind of identified five of them. And one of them I think the first one is a really good one, seasoned bankers not getting as many referrals either from their clients or from their CEOs. But that's a real red flag, isn't it?

Brynne Tillman 03:31
It is and you know, if you ask a banker, and as you have, and I have many, many, many times, are you asking for referrals? They go “Yeah, kinda.” And what happens when you ask for that referral? And they say, Well, they say, Hey, I'm so glad we've been able to help you get the capital that you need to scale your business and hire more people and get the inventory to serve your clients. Who else do you know that could use our banking services the same way you have? And they go? Hmm, I can't think of anyone right now but should someone ask about a new banker I would of course recommend you. But it's not enough because we're asking, mostly, but they're not getting. So that's what we're going to talk about on this number one, do you want to start with it? Or shall I continue? Up to you.
Jack Hubbard 04:29
Go ahead, cuz cuz you've got a really neat formula for this.

Brynne Tillman 04:33
Yeah, I love this. So make sure you're connecting with all of your customers. And by the way, there are multiple people inside or a customer that is potential for the CEO. If you're working with anyone else inside of the organization directly, you know, it's not just one person inside of that account. So what we do? We make sure we're connected to them online. din, and we searched their connections. What other CEOs or CFOs? Do they know? And instead of saying, Hey, Jack, really enjoyed working with you, who else do you know that could use our banking services the way you have? Instead of saying that, I'm gonna say, Hey, Jack, thanks, I'm really glad we've been able to help you do X, Y, and Z. We hope you don't mind and no, connected to quite a few people that I'm going to be reaching out to in the next couple of weeks. But before I do, would you be open to a quick call to review these names with me?
Now, the key here is not Hey, Jack, can you introduce me to the 17 people that you're connected to on LinkedIn? And what you'll get back is, I really don't know them. So it's really like the way we're doing this. The tactics are as important as the strategy. So the strategy is searching their connections and getting introductions or permission to name drop. The tactics are would you be willing to review these names with me and offer insights? So your clients assuming you're doing a great job, we'll say sure, you get on a zoom call with them. There are quite a few. I'm going to quickly review these folks. Let me know who you actually know, that I might be a good fit for.
So 17 might become eight of these eight, Jack, is there anyone on this list? You'd be comfortable making an introduction to? Maybe there's one or two? Thank you. In fact, to make it easier for you, I can send a quick little introduction paragraph that you're welcome to use when you copy us both in an email. Great of the other six, when I reach out to them. Can I mention that you're my happy client and that you thought I might be a good resource for them? Yes. Sullins, now you reach out and I'll say, Elizabeth Cotterell, Jack Hubbard and I were chatting the other day, your name came up in conversation. He has wonderful things to say about you. And plus he says, Hello. He thought you know, I've been working with him for the last couple of years doing X Y& Z and he thought that having a conversation might be really worthwhile to you. Even if we don't work together, I've got some insights and ideas I might be able to share, that might be able to help your business scale or meet your business goals, or whatever that might be 50% of them will turn into a conversation.
So if there were six, three would become a conversation. So I'll just say this, and then I'll throw the ball back to you jack off in the pushback that we'll hear from bankers if I just don't have the time to do that. And I say, how do you have the time not to we're, this is the fastest way to Hello at the highest level of credibility. And guys, you are not doing this as bankers, you are missing huge opportunities. Okay, well, back to you.

Jack Hubbard 08:09
Let's go deeper into this percentage. So if 50%, if six goes down to three, we know that if you have a referral, you have an 82% chance to get in the door. So now if three might become 100%, to get in the door, and then who knows where this might go from there. I like to talk about social geographical connectivity. Now let's think about this. So I'm going on a call with Brynne to Brynne’s manufacturing company. Now before I go, I'm going to do some social listening around where Brynne’s company is. And if I know, some other companies within that particular geography and LinkedIn will allow us to do this, especially Sales Navigator, I can look at some companies that are nearby. And I can take a couple of names to a call.
And now we do a good neighbor call. And I say Brynne. You know, I really appreciate your business. And Brynne says, you know, Jack, I'm really happy with you. The bank has done a great job for me. I kind of hold back on that. And at the end of the call, I say Brynne, you mentioned that we've done a good job for you, might I share some names with you that I prepared for in advance of coming to the call to see if you might know them? Because I believe you're connected to them on LinkedIn. Might I share that with you? Oh, sure. Here's, names. You know, this one, this one? Oh, yeah, I do. And now how can you connect us? Well, how about if I pick up the phone, Jack and say, Hey, Fred, you want to talk to Jack? I'm sending them over right now.
So those are things where you connect LinkedIn and the sales process. Very powerful. So Brynne we've talked about the season bankers who really need to get more referrals but I'm a young banker, I'm brand new to the bank, maybe I'm new to the territory, and I'm struggling. I'm struggling to get conversations. And I'm probably even struggling trying to find out who I talk to? Who do I target? What do you say to those folks?

Brynne Tillman 10:16
Yeah, so the first thing is, make sure you're connected with everyone, you know, from high school on right here, it may be you're new in banking, because you just graduated, which is often a lot of folks, you know, we have some one particular bank client that has rotational for people, for they recruit people right out of college, the one thing they don't have is the network. Right? They're hungry, they're excited, they're smart, they're, they're in a great place to absorb all of the wonderful features and benefits that the bank offers. But they don't have a network. So where do we start?
If you were in sports, in high school, all of those are competitive folks, that will probably do well, in a career. It's just a fact, if you did sports, you're probably successful. It's very, there's a correlation between them. So if you did sports, go back to all the people you did track with, you play basketball with you were on the soccer field, and find them and connect with them on LinkedIn, if you had relationships with their parents, connect with them on LinkedIn, folks that you went to school with, just connect that this is your natural network. You know, one of the things, you know that one of the banks that we work with, one of the things they say to these young folks right away is go through your phone contacts, okay? Go through your phone contacts, and connect with them on LinkedIn, let's take it to that next step. You get to see where they work, who they're connected to.
So now we're building that natural network, be careful not to connect with a ton of people you don't know, you have an opportunity to have a pretty good clean network of people that at least recognize your name. And this is really a banker. I mean, this is your profession now, talking to young people Rolodex, right like this is these are your contacts. These are, you know, and what's great about this versus contacts in your phone, is when they change companies, you're alerted, when you know they're promoted, you're alerted, and there are opportunities to engage with them.
So now that we've done this, how do we start conversations, there are two paths that I typically recommend. The first path is my more traditional recommendation. And then the new path is something Jack that you and I are playing with. Well, it's more than playing now. And I'll tell you about two. So the first one, traditionally, I go to those folks, and I say, hey, you know, I see that you're working here, I just recently started working at this bank. I'd love to learn more about what you're doing, share about what I'm doing and see if over the years, we'll be able to help us each other professionally. Almost every young professional will do this, right? All of your soccer friends have now graduated college with you. And they have jobs. And there are places that we want to have these conversations.
Now the ones that are in companies that you'd like to prospect, you can move that right. Hey, you know, working at ABC Company, I'd love to learn a little bit more. This is a company that as a bank, you know, we've been trying to get in front of for a while. What do you recommend? I know the CFO because I learned it on LinkedIn is Jane Smith. Do you know her personally? Can I mention when I reached out to her that we've been friends since high school? Right? These are all those relationship building. It's a slower process than a direct referral from someone you've been doing business with. But it's still at a high level of credibility. And I recommend you do this at volume, volume and authentic volume, right? All these folks?
The average people that you know, it's like the wedding list, right? If you build out that wedding list, it's about 300. I mean, that's a big number, that if we really looked down, so if you're like, I don't know where to begin. Start with the wedding list. I know you're young. You don't have a wedding list yet. It's okay. But that's the concept. The second pathway and I'm sorry, it’s Jack rants but Brynne’s ranting, okay, so the sin kid this Second way, which I'm absolutely loving for younger, lots of bankers, but for Young Bankers, is the interview.
So now I'm a new banker in Boston, Massachusetts, I have a little bit of network but not a huge network. But I want to start to show up now, off of LinkedIn, join the chambers of commerce, if there's a BNI, locally, lots of ways to build a network that way. But what we're doing with LinkedIn is we're saying interview, the influencers, the people that you'd eventually like to do business with, but instead of telling them all about you in the bank, talk about them and their successes, whether you do it in a LinkedIn Live, which is what we're doing right now. I mean, we turned this into a podcast, but it's live. And we've got people here, including Elizabeth touch. You know, we've got lots of folks here that are listening live, and then we'll use this in replay.
This is a great way to do an interview series once a week with a Boston entrepreneur, and talk about you know, what's going on trends in Boston, it things that are happening, and, and you are going to start to build relationships, rapport, and then relationships with all the people that eventually you'd like to do business with. But do not bait and switch. This is just an opportunity to get to know them to get to know they're there. You know, what trends, they're seeing what 2024 looks like for them. And then you always leave it with, if you had one tip for another Boston entrepreneur, what might it be, you know, for growing their business in 2024? Yeah, I love playing with it, right? It's amazing. And what we're doing, we're helping them create ebooks, and then they go out and get quotes for the ebooks. There's so many ways. So Jack, I didn't even run this by you. But I think I have the name for the product for this campaign. It's prospect by interview

Jack Hubbard 17:07
I love it.

Brynne Tillman 17:08
Do you like it?

Jack Hubbard 17:10
I love it. It's great. I love it. And, and I want to jump in and mention one more thing. And Brynne Elizabeth brings up a really good question here that you can put up on the screen. But one of the things that a young banker can do that’s just out of college is to indeed look for other people from that college. And you can even do better, you can go back and you can look at CPA. So let's say you graduated in 2023. Let's say it's five or seven years back, they're still kind of in your circle, you can look at those CPAs from that college that graduated maybe seven years ago, they are now a junior partner in an organization, you're a junior banker grow up together.
I always tell people, when you're a young banker, don't go for the executive, go for the juniors, because you've got time now you've got a little bit of bandwidth to be able to do it as well. So that's another thing. What about this question from Elizabeth, Brynne about to suggest some guidelines connecting with strangers who reach out to you and connect, there's so much of this going on. And a lot of it is spam. I got one this morning from somebody who has a digital marketing company. And I connected with him and it was a nice message. And all of a sudden I'm getting pummeled with products. That's not good but what would you suggest to Elizabeth? Because it's a great question.

Brynne Tillman 18:41
It’s a great question. On the desktop. If you go to see more in your invitations, you actually have an opportunity to reply, even if they didn't have a message. So I would reply, and I would say, George, thank you so much for your connection request. Typically I only connect with people I've engaged with. May I ask how you found me and then ignore and you can actually have a message exchange without connecting. So I highly recommend that George may never reach back out. George may pitch me George may say, hey, Jane, your clients and lots of great things about you, and we're looking for a line of credit.
So you want to make sure that you're responding to all of them. And I'm gonna say we had a banker in Philadelphia, who had a request from France, but they don't have clients in France. And not only did he ignore them, like he didn't even ignore it in the thing. It was just hanging out for a long time. And I was working coaching one on one. And I said, Well, why didn't you, you know, reply to this because it's in France. I don't do business in France. I said let's try it and we replied with that message. May I ask how you found me?
Now, this was probably nine months to a year late. That's how long there was and we got a response to his response. And they said, and he apologized in the message for taking so long he hadn't been using LinkedIn. And PS mas que found me and she responded with, I do appreciate you getting back to me. We just opened our US headquarters at the Navy Yard, which is in Philadelphia, by the way, and we were looking for a local Philadelphia bank, but we got it covered. Thanks. Ah, so Elizabeth's question is great. Well, how do you respond, you respond with thanks for connecting? Typically, I only, you know, connect with people I've already engaged with me, I ask how you found me. And if there is an opportunity there.

Jack Hubbard 20:55
Yep. And I would add that connect and pitch is a problem. So if they do connect with you, and they start pitching you, you can deeply connect with them. I also, it's interesting that Elizabeth talks about strangers, because one of the things that happens many times is if a female gets married, and you went to high school with her, and she gets married and changes her name, she to you could be a stranger. So without doing some due diligence, looking at her profile, where did she go to school, oh my gosh, she's from as well look, she went to this high school, I remember this woman.
So instead of just declining, or ignoring the invitation, a little bit of due diligence can really make a big difference. And what we're talking about here, you're gonna get 80% of your new business next year is going to come from your current clients, you're going to get about 15%, from your referrals, what we're talking about here is the five to 7% that are going to put you over the top, a little bit of due diligence might help. Which brings us to our next point. You talked earlier in the show about changes in Job, this happens so often. So a trigger might be let's say a CFO moves from this position, this company to this company or a younger person in the organization is elevated to an executive position. Too often bankers, either ignore it or don't even know how to get at it, how to get to it, what would you advise them?

Brynne Tillman 22:29
Yeah, so they're actually there's a couple of places we can see the Sales Navigator makes us incredibly simple. But if you ring someone's Bell, you'll get alerted. But you can also look daily, in job changes, there's actually a place on LinkedIn. And if you're curious about that, join the modern banker.com/public library, stick your question in the community, and we will answer it, we could get into detail there. But what do we do? Well, there's a few things. And often, you can have a template ready to go that you can tailor in the moment. Right. So it might be Jack, congratulations on your role at Etsy. I'm sure you're incredibly busy right now, one of the things I could predict is that, you know, you're gonna have some questions around X, Y, and Z. Just always see me as a resource. I'm happy to help. In some cases, we have the checklist for the new CFO, so they have this, you know, congratulations on your new job. You know, I'm sure that you know, the next six weeks are going to be a little bit overwhelming to make it a little bit easier for you. We have a, you know, an onboarding checklist for CFOs.
If you're interested, let me know. Hopefully, you know, hopefully, that can help you in your position. So be a resource, be a resource, be a resource, right? It's Brandon, it's got your email at the bottom. It's all good, right? But it's valuable. And by the way, I don't want to be a banker. You can offer other tabs, right? Like, before you order your business cards, make sure you're 100% sure you know what extension you silly things are. But there are tips outside of banking that you're welcome to add. Now I'm going to bridge back I'm such a squirrel shiny object person, but you could have an ebook or that says tips from CFOs what to do in the first 90 days, and then that you can use for prospecting interview for prospecting and then that can be the piece that you offer new CFO, so it's not even just your advice. It's advice from other CFOs and what they should do and what they did in the first 90 days or what they'd recommend. So there's so I mean I'm bringing it all together, you're the answer is shocking. Show. The other thing is there is a second opportunity here. If that CFO now moved to this company, there's a nice new CFO coming to the old company. So don't just say, Hey, I'm gonna go out, you have two new CFOs that might leverage that checklist or ebook.

Jack Hubbard 25:25
And I would add, as we get to the next question, Dustin Martin, who follows us all the time has a great question, too. But I would also add that joining the CFO network, there are more than 500,000 CFOs in that group. And I found an article because I'm in the network. This was a year ago, the changing role of the CFO. And I sent that to some bankers who sent it out to some new CFOs. And a couple of people got appointments, and two of them got some major business. So it goes back to that commentary about adding value. But Dustin's got an interesting question in the context of prospecting, do y'all have the belief that the same concepts apply when folks are looking for jobs?

Brynne Tillman 26:15
So the warm market definitely, right? But there's so many other things like, I'm not sure that interviewing your potential bosses has the same impact? It could. But I would say that the warm market side, who knows who you are, you want to be doing that second degree search for people in a company that you'd like to work for, and we are not. And I will never say because there's a lot of nuances with LinkedIn, and the way that recruiters and bots look at profiles. So I will never say I'm an expert at doing this. But one of the things that I love is you can search companies first degree connections and location, even in the free LinkedIn, to see who you know, at a specific company.
And then if that's a company no matter what level they are, you reach out to them and say, Hey, and maybe you saw a job posting and you've identified, you know, there is an opportunity. You could say, Jack, I know she works at the monitor banker, I'm looking to apply for a position there. But before I do, I'm wondering, how do you like working there? You know, what's the culture? Would you recommend it? It's a place that I might thrive in. And then I pull a Colombo, it's my favorite. Oh, by the way, if you submit my resume to HR, do you get like a kickback a legal you know, do you get a finder's fee or an almost every company and bank has something that that employee gets a reward for bringing, if they stick around 90 days or 120 days, right, they get 500 bucks.
So now what happens is Jack walks the resume to Jack, that doesn't make any sense. But right, they brought the resume into HR, they handed it to HR and said a buddy of mine is really interested. And now you have the digital stack of the 187 profiles that came in through digital, and your buddy goes to the top of the pile, right? You've helped. So they've helped you, you're the buddy, right? They've helped you, you're at the top of the pile, there's a higher chance of them bringing you in for an interview with an employer employee that is recommending somebody and they get 500 bucks when you stick around. So that would be my big, Dustin. That's my big find a job tip.

Jack Hubbard 28:56
Yeah, and I would say as we wrap this up, and I'll ask you one more question. I would say that Dustin, what I always tell bankers and anybody on LinkedIn is, when you go for a job interview, it's I think we need to stop saying that it's a sales call. And I think you need to do the same due diligence on a job interview as you would on any sales call. And so if you're in the conversation, and you say, you know, I noticed that you're connected to XY and Z, my parents and they go on vacation every year. I'm curious how you know them. So getting a dialogue going is exactly what you need to be doing just like you do on a regular sales call.
Well, so one final thing we've talked about value, I think, which was really number four, and we discussed that quite a lot. So it's 3: 17 in the morning, a business owner sits up straight in bed and they're worried they're worried about their their company, their employees, their colleagues, their customers, everything And they go, you know, I really need a banker who's really proactive with me could be a resource manager. So they start looking at LinkedIn. And they look at your profile and take them about three seconds, and boom, they're gone. Because your profile isn't made for somebody looking at it at 3:17 in the morning, where there's dwell time, Brynne surreal problem.

Brynne Tillman 30:23
It is. really invert that profile if you're in a business development role from a resume to a resource. Now, if you're in job search, don't listen to this advice, because the recruiter bots do not want resources, they want bullet points of success, you know, successes and all the other stuff. But as a banker looking for business, in a business development role, looking for new relationships, they need to get to your profile they need immediately to resonate with them and create enough curiosity, right from the headline, to get them to keep reading. And it talks about how, you know you deeply partner with your clients to help them not just with banking, but really positioning their company to meet the financial goals, the scale or whatever that is.
And really, they're not coming to you for money, even though you think they are, they're coming to you for a solution that the money buys them. Right. And so if you're talking about the money all the time, that's not going to resonate, or create curiosity as much as talking about the solution that the money will get them. So just kind of throwing that in, and all of that in your profile, and your content can have all the difference in the world at 370 in the morning. If they go, you know, my bankers are not talking like that.

Jack Hubbard 31:54
That's exactly right. And, and you've got this is all about trust based opportunities, trust based selling trust based conversations. And so if somebody says if a banker puts on their head on their headline, helping the medical community stand out in a sea of sameness, helping your distribution company stand out in a sea of sameness. So you're in a vertical, for example, you've got to be able to deliver on that. And so just putting a headline out there and saying you can do it doesn't mean you can, you've got to follow up. And that's where the conversations happen. And that's where you really prove that you are indeed a resource manager. Well bring this was this was great. After several weeks of recordings and you traveling and me traveling, it's great to be back and doing this live and we're going to do it next Thursday. Thanks for the topic today. Brynne, it was outstanding.

Brynne Tillman 32:46
You know what, just talking with you is outstanding for me. Anyway, this was so much fun. Well, we will see everyone next week. In the meantime, enjoy. themodernbanker.com/publiclibrary And we'll see you next week.

Jack Hubbard 33:08
Thanks for joining us for Jack Rants with Brynne brought to you by our good friends at Vertical IQ and RelPro. We're live on LinkedIn every Thursday at noon Eastern time helping bankers turn connections into conversations.
Don't miss an episode, visit themodernbanker.com/tmbpodcast. Leave us a review if you would. You can also listen to this program and the new Jack Rants with Modern Bankers on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Play and I Heart Radio. We're on YouTube as well. Subscribe at https://www.youtube.com/@TheModernBanker. Finally, don't forget, make today and every day a great client day!