Episode 86 Advanced Search Techniques to Find Decision Makers

Intro

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 ledgers to laptops, typewriters to technology. One thing, however, remains the same banking. So people business and I'll be talking with those people who make banking grade here and Jack Rants with Modern Bankers.

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0:00:29 - (Jack Hubbard): Hello, everybody. It's Thursday. Hi, Brynne.

0:00:31 - (Brynne Tillman): Hey, Jack. Excited about today's topic?

0:00:36 - (Jack Hubbard): Well, we're pretty excited about today's topic.

0:00:40 - (Jack Hubbard): But I got to talk about a couple of guests that are coming up on Jack rants with modern bankers for the rest of May. On May 22, which is next Wednesday, I'm interviewing Neil Ford. I have to follow Neil. I met Neil through LinkedIn, and he is a storyteller and he is a phenomenal storyteller. And it is a rocking interview about stories and how to tell them and some of Neil's experiences, and they're great.

0:01:14 - (Jack Hubbard): On May 29, one of my industry best friends, one of my longest best friends in the industry, Mary Beth Sullivan, is going to be with us. Mary Beth is the managing partner of Capital Performance Group. And we're going to talk about all things banking. And I'm really excited about these, these two guests. We're going to take off in the summer, starting in July, and we're going to do some replays of some of the best of if you will, and then we pick it up in the fall. And I've got some great guests coming up in the fall.

0:01:48 - (Jack Hubbard): Mark Hunter has agreed to do an interview. You know, our buddy Mark, about prospecting. Alice Frazier is going to do an interview. Alice is the president of Bank of Charlestown, BCT bank. And what an amazing, amazing leader Alice is. And so we're going to talk to Alice. So we keep that going. Of course, this we do every Thursday. And speaking of this, today we're going to talk about advanced search techniques.

0:02:18 - (Jack Hubbard): And this is something that I'm going to learn from you because you're so good at it. And we're going to separate these two things, Brynne, because a lot of people, I believe, think you can't do as much in the free as you can in others. Now, that's probably a little bit true, but there are still a lot of search optimization things that you can do on LinkedIn and the free. And then we're going to go over to the sales navigator. So why don't we start with the free talk? Just you riff, Brynne. This is your specialty. So you riff on advanced search techniques.

0:02:52 - (Brynne Tillman): So most people don't recognize the most powerful place on LinkedIn, especially when bankers are looking to meet people. When we're going beyond the content, going beyond, and we really want to develop a search for our ideal prospects and referral partners. So in the free LinkedIn, you can absolutely leverage LinkedIn search for many different reasons. So let's start with the people search. When you click on the search bar at the top of your profile or anywhere you are on LinkedIn, it's almost always there and you simply hit return or enter on your keyboard.

0:03:41 - (Brynne Tillman): You're going to go into a whole world of amazing that LinkedIn is hiding from you. Really, like they hide the lead every time. And this is, you know, this is really absolutely powerful. So when you are on that screen, there's all kinds of filters at the top that say people and companies and posts and services. If you go all the way to the right, you're going to see all the filters. And when you click on that, you'll also see another drop-down. So if you're choosing from people, and that's where we're gonna start today and talking about advanced features of people, we can create an ideal search. And there are many filters. I recommend that you play with them.

0:04:27 - (Brynne Tillman): There are relationship filters, first degrees, second degrees, and beyond. There are industry filters. So if you are selling into manufacturing or automotive or whatever your niche or niches are, you can search for those people using those industry filters. You can search by people that your people know. Right. You can actually search your first-degree connections. Connections. Absolutely. Incredibly powerful.

0:05:07 - (Brynne Tillman): And so many other areas. I'm going to scroll, have you scroll all the way down? I'm doing this in my brain. I don't have anything open right now, but I think second or third from the bottom is title. And this is where you can put in CEO or CFO or COO. So, and going above that geography, and you can pick towns, a small, any town that has a zip code you can type in. So if you serve five or six towns, you put in those locations and choose them, and you've got five or six check-marked geographic areas.

0:05:50 - (Brynne Tillman): Now you have your industry and the titles that you're going after, and you can build a list based on your ideal search. Now, if we go back to that relationship button and click on the first-degree connections, we're going to see how many people we are already connected to that meet that criteria. Magic, right? So great. But here's what I think is the power of LinkedIn, really what I'm about to say is why I chose to teach LinkedIn instead of all the other sales things is because of this filter, second degree.

0:06:35 - (Brynne Tillman): So instead of first degree, who am I connected to? When I click on second degree and I've got all my titles and my geographic area and my industry, I now get to see who in my network knows who I want to know. And you could go from 19 1st-degree connections to 750 2nd-degree connections. The list is absolutely unbelievable. When you go to your friends, of your friends, LinkedIn will tell you this, the next area you can go to is connections.

0:07:11 - (Brynne Tillman): And this is where you can now put in a person's name. So I go in and I say, bankers in Chicago. And then I go to, you know, in industry, banking and finance. And then I go, Jack Hubbard. And I get to see exactly who Jack knows that I'm looking to meet. You have to be first-degree connected to the person. And so I highly recommend that you pull out all of those business cards at the corner of your desk that have rubber bands around them and start connecting with these folks you've met in person.

0:07:49 - (Brynne Tillman): Look at your CRM and connect with all your past clients, your current clients. Create a network of people who know, like, and trust you. Really, if you're missing anyone, you're missing out, because once you connect with them, you can identify who they know that you want to meet and have a conversation with them. Maybe Jack knows 27 folks. And when I talk with Jack, we whittle it down to two or three people he either makes an introduction or allows me to drop his name when I reach out.

0:08:24 - (Jack Hubbard): Yeah, I think you've made a couple of really good points. We live, this is, this is the life in a world of abundance phrase coming to life. Because we do. The challenge is, as a banker, I have finite time and I need to do some targeting. So getting down to two or three or five is better than 100. You'll never be able to do it. It's overwhelming and you'll quit. And that's not the right thing to do now. By the way, I learned from you every second.

0:08:59 - (Jack Hubbard): And so when we do these programs, I follow along and do what you are suggesting. So here's what I did. I went to the all filters. I had second-degree connections in the United States in financial services, English, and CEO and chief executive officer. I have now 2800 bank presidents. CEO's that are my second-degree connection that I can now go in, save this list. And it's a dynamic list because LinkedIn will keep adding to it and I can go in and I can start to connect with some of these folks that I am not connected with. And if you're, let's take a bank example.

0:09:46 - (Jack Hubbard): Every time I talk to bankers, I say, well, who do you want to talk to at a company CFO, you can do the same thing for CFO, and you could get hundreds and thousands of those. But this goes back, Brynne, to being connected at the first degree. People often ask me, well, why do I need all these first-degree connections? Because the first-degree connections open so many doors. So what you're talking about here is incredibly powerful.

0:10:14 - (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I love it. And then when you hop into a sales navigator filter system, which I'm not going to go too far into, but you can identify those people that we've identified, how many of them have posted on LinkedIn in the last 30 days? How many of them have changed a job in the last 90 days? How many of them are following our company, our bank page? There are so many other filters that can help you start relevant conversations based on those insights. So as fantastic as the free searches are, you get into sales navigator and it makes it so easy to start those conversations.

0:10:56 - (Jack Hubbard): So, Brent, take a look at what Josh Myers is saying. Now, here's a guy who is a veteran banker. He is at St. Charles bank and trust. He is an amazing sales professional and he's always willing to learn. I see that on my screen, Brynne, I'm not sure if you do. So Josh says, that's what I do to follow along as she's speaking. And so Josh is a lifetime learner. And I know for a fact this is the kind of stuff that he does. I've taught the folks at St. Charles how to do this, but Josh is a lifetime learner and this is the kind of stuff that makes him even better than he has been in his career in the past, which is outstanding.

0:11:42 - (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I love that. Well, nice to meet you, Josh. Virtually thrilled. You know, the other thing, and I don't want to spend like deep dive into this too much, but there are many other things that you can search beyond. People. You can search posts based on industry and the most recent and your connections, or specific people. You can search companies in a specific area that you already have a first-degree connection with.

0:12:14 - (Brynne Tillman): So the search filters inside of LinkedIn are incredibly powerful. Now, one of the areas that we recommend, so Jack just said something that's really important is he saves the search in the free LinkedIn. That is not an option. So at the modern banker, we teach to use bookmarks. So whether you're on Chrome or you're an edge, you can create a bookmark called, you can create a folder in your bookmarks called LinkedIn searches.

0:12:48 - (Brynne Tillman): I actually have mine pinned so I can get to it all the time. And then I can save a search so I can save first-degree prospects, first-degree cpas, first-degree bankers, or, well, we would do bankers, maybe business owners in the five towns you serve. And so you can now create that, and you can then save it. And you save it in that folder, in your bookmarks. It's the little star. If you haven't used bookmarks, I recommend actually going to themodernbanker.com 

0:13:32 - (Brynne Tillman): public library. I need to put this link up, join, it's free, and then ask questions in our community, because I can answer those. So if you're like, I don't know how to bookmark, say it. So here, I'll put that in. Yep. If you, you can do that, because we want to answer all these questions. So whether you're here live right now or you're listening on the podcast and replay, go to themodernbanker.compublic library. It's free to talk with us because we love it.

0:14:08 - (Jack Hubbard): Yeah. And it's amazing how many questions we get and the good questions we get. And by the way, what you should know, is that I got to get this date right. So I'm going to click on my calendar here. On May 28, we are having guest coaching. So if you are interested in that, this is no charge. Come on. It's Tuesday morning, 11:00 central, noon Eastern time, and we have about 20 people coming to guest coaching, which is great.

0:14:43 - (Jack Hubbard): And those people are not on our mastering LinkedIn for bankers program, but it's free to you. And if you had a question about this particular thing, what's neat about the guest coaching is that we can actually, Brynne can actually go out to LinkedIn, and she can show you on the screen using Zoom and how to do that. And it's recorded so you can go back and listen to it again. So that's May 28, guest coaching.

0:15:12 - (Jack Hubbard): If you have any interest, reach out to either Brynne or myself, and we'll get you a link. And you're in.

0:15:17 - (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. And actually, you could go to themodernbanker.com events and you'll see it there.

0:15:23 - (Jack Hubbard): That's great. So this is, so we've talked about the free, and there probably are more things that you want to talk about, but you've hit on two of them that I'd like to make sure that we don't leave before we go on to the next topic, which is the posts. You know, you can go in and you can see posts of very specific people, specific connections, specific industries, specific companies, by using that particular filter. And what we talked about last week, which we had such fun last week in our groups discussion, go back and it's in the modern banker library. You can go back and see the replay.

0:16:05 - (Jack Hubbard): We talked about groups and there is a tab where you can go into groups and you say, okay, I'd like to get a little engaged with groups. You can go in and you can type in banking or you can type in CFO and you can see the groups and how many members are actually in those particular groups that's available to you right through this filter. And I think it's interesting. You and I are very much on the same page on this.

0:16:30 - (Jack Hubbard): LinkedIn buries this headline. You have to know to go to that search bar, make it blank, and click return. Otherwise, people are saying, where do I get this? How do I find this? And in some ways it's unfortunate. The only good news about this is when you hit return, all of the things do pop up. All of the tabs pop up so you can see them at least all at once.

0:16:54 - (Brynne Tillman): Awesome. Yeah, I mean, people are blown away and there are folks that have been on LinkedIn for years that say, yeah, I'm pretty good at this, and they don't even know this is there because who would go into a search bar and not type something, right? So, yeah, it's not intuitive. LinkedIn user experience is important, but regardless, now you know, you know, and you can go show other people how to do this and then you're going to look really smart.

0:17:25 - (Jack Hubbard): Well, you talked about the free service and there may be other things you might want to talk about. But I also want to talk about quickly next week's program because it ties into my next question. Next week we're talking about Sales Navigator. Is it right for you and your team? So on sales navigator, Brynne, there is much more that you can do with these advanced filters?

0:17:48 - (Brynne Tillman): Oh, my gosh, so much. Yeah. And we'll dive much more into that next week.

0:17:53 - (Jack Hubbard): Yep. For sure. For sure. Well, what else, Brynne, on the searches that you want to talk about?

0:18:00 - (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, you know, it's funny. As important as this is, it's really about playing with it. Like, I could go in and continue to, you know, say, hey, play with this, play with that. You know what? I will throw in one more. You can search for who is following an influencer. So let's say your ideal prospect is someone who's following Tony Robbins. You can search your first-degree connections that are CEOs or CFO's in manufacturing and that follow Tony Robbins. And now you have the ability to start a conversation around an influencer that they follow. So I go out to listennotes.com and I find a Tony Robbins podcast.

0:18:53 - (Brynne Tillman): I'll listen to it, and then I'll go to all of my connections and say, hey, I noticed we're both fans of Tony Robbins, right? So at the end of this, and actually, you could do with Guy Kawasaki and take the Modern Banker podcast and share that with people that follow the guy. But a little self-serving, but it's a great podcast. But, yeah, I mean, there's just so much that you can do through searches that will help you find the right people and the right pathways to those people.

0:19:30 - (Jack Hubbard): Well, let's continue this because it's not just about getting to the list. The list is fine, and it's really great. But now, what do I do with this list if they are a second-degree connection to you and you really want to have a connection, you really want to talk to these folks, do what Brynne said, go out to listen to notes, go out to vertical iq and find an article or find somebody that these bankers or these CFO's rather might follow, and then reach out to that CFO and say, I know you follow XYZ.

0:20:09 - (Jack Hubbard): I found an interesting podcast and an interesting article. Love to connect with you, and I'll share it with you in a message, something like that. That's not salesy, that's not pushing a product, but it does provide a lot of value. So that's a great point.

0:20:24 - (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, that is a great point. I'm glad you made it. That was awesome.

0:20:28 - (Jack Hubbard): Well, it's based on the great point that you made so well.

0:20:33 - (Brynne Tillman): The mutual admiration society right here, I think. Anyway, so, yeah, the bottom line is LinkedIn is not just a place to share content and hope and pray that someone comes, you know, engages on your content and then calls you and says, hey, we need a line of credit. We need new treasury services. They don't do that. Right. This is about being proactive and starting conversations with your ideal prospects. This advanced search or these search criteria really help you to hone in on the exact people that you want to have a conversation with.

0:21:13 - (Brynne Tillman): I had one more thought with vertical IQ, where you can go out and get trends in an industry. If you find, let's say, go out and find out what are all the new tax trends, and then you look up all the CPAs and say, hey, I've got this great article. Here's a summary. And by the way, vertical iq will give you that summary. If you're interested in the full article, let me know. We can connect, and I can get that to you.

0:21:39 - (Brynne Tillman): Lots of ways to leverage that search and content to start conversations.

0:21:46 - (Jack Hubbard): And I'll add to that, because I was at Michigan bankers at the Perry school last week, and we what? The advantage of being live at a school is you can actually pull something up. So I pulled up RelPro, and I said, okay, now you want to connect with this person in Grand Rapids. Look, they won. Their company just won an award. And the banker said I had no idea. So now you can actually go in and congratulate the business owner or the CFO for winning a particular award.

0:22:15 - (Jack Hubbard): And so what we're talking about here is taking all of these tools that you have available to you and integrating them into your conversation mix. I want to give you a shout-out. And you are not big on self-promotion, and you're shy about this, but I got to ask you a question. You're going to Las Vegas coming up, and you're a keynote speaker. Can you talk about that program? It's a big deal. For you.

0:22:46 - (Brynne Tillman): It is. Thank you, Jack. Yeah, I'm speaking at the CRO summit, which is the chief revenue officer summit. They give out awards to the top CROs. This is my second year, and it's an incredible event. And if it's June 5 and 6th, if you hit me up via email at brinhe modernbanker.com, I have deep discounts for people who want.

0:23:16 - (Jack Hubbard): And if you can't see Brynne live, what's really cool about this is you can still, for a reduced price, get the replays of all the programs. So that's a cool thing as well.

0:23:29 - (Brynne Tillman): You can actually attend live virtually.

0:23:32 - (Jack Hubbard): Ah, there you go. So you don't have to ever leave you. Leave your house and go to the craziness of Las Vegas, which is. It's always fun. Well, this is always great. Next week, I had a question from a banker, and I got to talk about this for just a brief second. The banker said to me, how do you get your topics? And I said, well, Britt and I just kind of sit down and we look at things that we think are important, and we put them together.

0:23:57 - (Jack Hubbard): Then the banker said, would you ever consider me asking about a topic? My gosh, yes. If there is. If you're out there. And you want us to cover something on LinkedIn, something you have a challenge with or you want to get better at. Just reach out to us at Bryn at the Modern Banker. Jack at the modern banker. Connect with us on LinkedIn. You want new all the ways, and we're happy to do that. But next week, Bryn, one of my favorite topics, because you've taught me how to use Sales Navigator so well, is Sales Navigator right for you and your team?

0:24:30 - (Jack Hubbard): And we're going to talk about that next Thursday at noon Eastern time right here on Jack Rance with Bryn. Thank you, Brynne.

0:24:38 - (Brynne Tillman): Thanks, Jack. As always, I have so much fun. So we will see you next week.

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Outro

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 https://www.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 iHeartRadio. We're on YouTube as well. Subscribe at https://www.youtube.com/@TheModernBanker. Finally, don't forget to make today and every day a great client day.