Episode 96 Crafting Effective LinkedIn Messages to Engage Your 1st Degree Connections

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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0:00:30 - (Jack Hubbard): It's Thursday. Hi, everybody. Hi, Brynne.

0:00:33 - (Brynne Tillman): Hey, Jack. Hi, everybody. So excited to be here. We already have tons of people popping on. I'm looking at my phone. It's awesome.

0:00:41 - (Jack Hubbard): Well, good. And they should know that this is the last live show until September. We've got a lot of replays. We went back into the archives, oldies but goodies, and found a whole bunch of Jack rants with Brynnene that are going to really knock your socks off in the summer. And then we'll be back in September. Also, Jack Rance with modern bankers. We did our last show yesterday with Joe Friedman, and we started our summer series with our good friend Susan Bell from Vertical IQ on July 3. So lots to talk about. And one of the things we do want to talk about is effective LinkedIn messaging strategies with first-degree connections. That's why we're on.

0:01:26 - (Jack Hubbard): It's fascinating to me, we work so hard to get connections to say yes. And by the way, it is so important to get as many first-degree connections as possible. People say, ah, you know, first-degree connections. We were talking to a banker at our coaching last week, and she was talking about, well, there's probably not a lot of people or businesses in the small communities that I'm in. And you were able to uncover 1300.

0:01:54 - (Jack Hubbard): And I looked at him and she's not connected to anybody. So these first-degree connections are critical because they lead to so many other opportunities to help. But the problem with this is, and I'll go back to my baseball card strategy that I've talked about for a long time. It is your business card strategy where you put a rubber band around the business cards and put them in a drawer. You get these baseball cards, you put them in a drawer and that's it.

0:02:22 - (Jack Hubbard): We amass a good number of first-degree connections and then what do we do with them? So today we're going to talk about messaging. Let's start at the very top. Why is this so important, Brynne? Why is it so critical to stay in touch with our first-degree connections?

0:02:39 - (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I mean, that's, that's such a great question. And, you know, you brought up something I talk about a lot, which is LinkedIn is a 24/7 networking meeting. If we went to a physical networking meeting, right, and we spend an hour getting ready and 20 minutes driving there and then 2 hours there and then 20 minutes driving back, and then we take all the cards of all the people we met and we stick a rubber band around them and stick them in the corner of our desk, what was the point?

0:03:11 - (Brynne Tillman): Right, but we need to go through them. And by the way, we're not going to reach out to every card that we collected. We're, you know, connecting with people. Who knows, maybe down the line we want conversations with them. But from what we have found with our clients, about 10% of our first-degree connections are people we want a conversation with. So if you have 100 connections, it's 10 people, 1000 connections, it's 100 people.

0:03:42 - (Brynne Tillman): Now, I absolutely agree. Building a quantity and quality network matters. So to your point, yes, you should be connecting, but if you get a connection request from someone from Australia and your connection number three, and you have no family or friends there, you don't need to connect with everybody. But if they live in your towns, if they work in the towns around you, if they're an influencer, maybe you're a credit union and this is someone that sells copiers to small businesses, you might go, well, I don't need a copier.

0:04:25 - (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, but they're working with the people that you want to work with. So take a look. And this is my thought if this is someone you'd want to have a conversation with if you were at a networking meeting, absolutely. Connect with them, but don't connect and forget. That's where it becomes an issue. That's where it becomes a business card with a rubber band around it. We need to start the conversation or continue the conversation.

0:04:56 - (Jack Hubbard): Yeah. And I'm curious with the number of people on, what are some folks doing to discipline themselves to try to try to stay in touch and message their first-degree connections? Love to, love to see how you're doing that. But there's a mechanism. I love this and I do it once a month. I'm sure based on the number of connections you have and continue to get, you do this quite often too, and that is to take inventory of your connections. I think that's a great first step. Brittany.

0:05:28 - (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. Who are we connected to that we're ignoring? There are. Having a message campaign is only good if you have people to message. Right. So who are we ignoring? Who is our 10%? And there are a couple of ways we could do this. We can export our connections into an Excel spreadsheet or even in the free LinkedIn, you can search your first-degree connections by location, by industry, or by title. So taking inventory and identifying who is it that I want to talk to is really important. And I typically look for three categories. You may look for more, but my first category is that I want to find all my clients. Am I connected and what clients am I connected to that I haven't talked to in a while?

0:06:18 - (Brynne Tillman): Maybe it's someone that I wrote a loan for seven years ago and I haven't really been visiting or back to have this conversation. So clients that we've worked for or that we've done business with, number two, our prospects, who's on this list that if they were in a networking meeting, I would absolutely want to engage. But recognize, that just because they fit your ICP, your ideal client profile, doesn't mean they're a lead, right? So this is, just because it's a prospect that you want to sell to doesn't mean, oh, I have the green light to go sell them. And we'll talk about that in a little bit.

0:07:01 - (Brynne Tillman): And the other one is referral partners. Who are the CPAs in my network? Who were the payroll people in my network, the tax attorneys, the realtors, all of the folks that can refer business to me as a banker, you know, who am I already connected to that I'm not nurturing?

0:07:21 - (Jack Hubbard): And I'll add a couple of things to that. I think one thing with your clients is it's interesting to me when I look at bankers' LinkedIn connections and I look at a list, they are connected to their clients. But are they really? In other words, if you have a client and you're connected to one person there, which is the person you do business with, I think that's great. But get deep and wide. If you're connected to the CFO, connect to the CEO, connect to the head of marketing, the head of HRtaine, because there are all kinds of things that could happen as a result of those deep and wide strategies.

0:08:01 - (Jack Hubbard): When you talk about referral partners, Cois, centers of influence, if I'm a veteran banker, I'm going to have a goodly number of COis at a pretty high level and I want to connect with them. One of the things young bankers are frustrated by is, well, I don't have a CoI network, but go to your senior bankers who are connected with CPAs, attorneys, and realtors at a high level in those companies who are referring your business and find out who the junior folks are. That way you can continue to grow up together, and you'll amass a great COI network with people of your ilk, of your age, of your experience level, and they want those referrals as well. So it's a nice reciprocity approach.

0:08:47 - (Brynne Tillman): You're so brilliant.

0:08:49 - (Jack Hubbard): Brilliant is practicality, and I think that's. And one of the things you've taught me is to take a look at all of these strategies and say, okay, how do I put these into action? And that's a couple of things that I've talked about. So let's talk about the next thing that I think is really important. And it's not just messaging your first-degree connections, but it's messaging them with value. Brynne, talk about how to go about doing that.

0:09:21 - (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, well, the first thing is value is in the eye of the consumer because you think its value doesn't mean that its value. You telling them about your interest rates is not valuable in the eyes of someone who is not actively seeking a new banking relationship. So we have to really identify what are the things that are valuable to your prospects. And they may have nothing to do with your bank, they may have to do with.

0:09:53 - (Brynne Tillman): And often, Jack, something we talk a lot about is lead to your solution, not with it. Don't lead with products. Don't lead with, but what can you offer them that's valuable? And so you really want to take a look at your existing clients. Ask them. Look at the content they're engaging on. Ask them what content, and podcasts are listening to. What newsletters do you subscribe to? Start to learn about what matters.

0:10:23 - (Brynne Tillman): One of my favorite things to do, if you're like, I have no idea what matters, maybe I'm a new banker. For local events, check out your chamber of commerce. Check out the Lions Club. What's going on? Where there are free or very low-cost events that you can say, “Hey, I'm going to this event. Curious if you're going to be there. Love to meet you in person.” Right? Like, that's a first-degree. That's perfect, right? Take a look at everyone in the three towns around that chamber of commerce and just ask them if they're going.

0:10:58 - (Brynne Tillman): If your bank is sponsoring an event, chances are you get 10, 15, 20 free people. Find that out. Ask your marketing or whoever owns that. How many seats can I have? And start inviting people as your guest. Right. This has nothing to do with banking products, but it leads to conversations. There are so many other things, Jack, we've got, like campaigns around prospect by interview, prospect by polls, prospect by influencer.

0:11:34 - (Brynne Tillman): And so you can start trust-based conversations with a lot of these prospects without being salesy.

0:11:44 - (Jack Hubbard): Yeah, no doubt. And I'd like you to come back to the podcast. There is a website that you've talked to me about called listennotes.com, and I want you to talk about that, and how that works. But one of the interesting things to me is all the things that you've talked about, bankers might say, well, you know, I don't like articles about. Maybe my business owner knows everything about this. Well, how do you know that?

0:12:10 - (Jack Hubbard): Well, my business owner doesn't have time to listen to podcasts. What you're doing is projecting. You're projecting your beliefs onto them, and that is just a killer. So these podcasts, so if I can help a prospect and they're in the manufacturing space and they're doing robotics, and I can find a podcast that helps with. Helps them understand the seven basic things they should be doing with robotics, how powerful is that?

0:12:40 - (Jack Hubbard): What are listen notes, Brynne? Because that's really the conduit for this.

0:12:44 - (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, Listen to Notes is the world's largest curator of podcasts, and they rank them, which I'm really excited about because Jack Rants will be a year old in August and we'll get ranked. I'm very excited about that, and I know we're going to do very well. But what happens is, that if you're looking for a particular topic or a particular influencer, you can easily search and get lists of podcasts that meet that criteria.

0:13:17 - (Brynne Tillman): Here's the thing, Jack. One thing that I love, and I love that you said, if you find content around their industry, not the banking industry, around their industry, if you're projecting and you're like, I'm still going to project, Jack. I am going to project. So that's it. I don't like it. Think about finding a podcast about your clients. Clients, who are they selling to? So if you're like, my small business owner knows everything and I don't want to, great.

0:13:50 - (Brynne Tillman): Do they know everything about their client? So who are they selling to? And by the way, you can quickly jump on their website and see all the logos they list. You can find out what industry they're selling to, even going into chat, GPT, taking the link of their profile, and saying, who's buying from this company? And you can get a good idea. And all of a sudden, now you're reaching out to them and say, you know, as a leading manufacturer that sells to automotive, I thought you might get some value from this podcast around how automotive is buying in 2025.

0:14:29 - (Brynne Tillman): Whatever that might be. So I agree with you, Jack. Find content on their industry and then a bonus, especially if they're quiet to reengage, is send them content around who they sell.

0:14:45 - (Jack Hubbard): And I'll add to that. So when I was teaching at Michigan Banker School this year, I talked about a CPA firm in Benton Harbor. I went to their website in preparation for the class, and I went to see the kinds of industries, the kind of verticals that they did, that they interact with. And then I went to vertical IQ, and I found some articles about those particular industries, and I put those on the slide, and it was just like, a light bulb moment went off.

0:15:19 - (Jack Hubbard): That's really powerful. What you said was clients of their clients. And so now it's not. Well, of course, you know everything about what's going on with CPAs. I don't need to pummel you with that information. But how much do you really know about the nuances of a timber industry based on climate change and based on et cetera? That's powerful.

0:15:40 - (Brynne Tillman): Love that. Yes. And vertical IQ is magic with this. One of the things that I love about what they do is they have a summary of every report or article. So that summary, and it's beautifully written. That's a great summary to send over to someone and say, hey, I came across this article. Here's what it's about. Let me know if you're interested. I'm happy to send you the whole thing, and you can tease them with a wonderful summary and ultimately start a conversation, a trust-based conversation without being salesy.

0:16:15 - (Jack Hubbard): And I think your point's well taken there, because I think a lot of people look at us and they say, well, gee, you must be the two most Pollyanna people in the world. All you're doing is you're talking about sending value and sending, listen, you go to listen to those, sure. I mean, but that's the conduit to starting a conversation. We all realize that we want to have more sales, but it's how we get there. It's not pushing banking products.

0:16:45 - (Jack Hubbard): It's an indirect, a side doorway to get into this. But there's a trick to this, I believe, and it's not just doing it in a more generic approach, but personalizing it, I think, really adds some punch.

0:17:01 - (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, 100%. Take the time. We often say, slow down your outreach to speed up your outcome. Take the time. Learn about the person. Identify something that they have expressed in their profile or something from their website. You know, it's interesting. I used it in a meeting as a welcome message to a new banker. And I used a line from a blog post on their bank, and they said, oh, my. And I used it. And I thought I was pretty transparent that that's what it was. But they go, oh, my gosh. You talk just like we do.

0:17:43 - (Brynne Tillman): You have pretty much because I took it from your blog post. And so it was just fun. And I did put quotes around it, so it wasn't clearly mine, but it still resonated in a way where they're like, oh, my gosh, you're exactly like us. I'm like, yeah, those are your words. But the point of this is I can't send it to everyone. I slowed it down to have that conversation with them, and it resonated deeply. Right? So, really important to do that.

0:18:12 - (Brynne Tillman): And so this is not a volume play. This is a relationship play. And it's really important that they don't feel like this came from an automation program that everybody's using today, that it's real, really clear. And if you can't find anything at all, sometimes I'll say, hey, p's, I see you're connected to Jack Hubbard. How well do you know him? He's my partner. Or, I see you're connected to this person.

0:18:38 - (Brynne Tillman): And so, even if I struggle to personalize it, there's always someone in common that I can mention and just say, hey, how well do you know them? And then it just warms it up.

0:18:50 - (Jack Hubbard): It's perfect. Let's go back to something that you talked about. Clients, prospects, and referral sources. I'll add a fourth, and that's colleagues. Yesterday, Joe Friedman on Jack's Rants with Modern Bankers, talked about influence and how important it is to have indirect influence. But you can plan your influence. So let's say you're a $2 billion bank, and you're a relatively young banker, and you want to get your voice out there. You want to get your brand known inside the bank.

0:19:22 - (Jack Hubbard): Why not connect with as many people as you possibly can inside the bank, including the executive officers, heads of business banking, head of retail, etcetera, and then find content that might be a benefit to them. I don't know if you saw this article about blah, blah, blah, I'm over here in Portsmouth, but I found this article and thought it might be of benefit to the bank. So now what you're doing is you're adding value to them, and you're amplifying your own personal brand within the bank.

0:19:55 - (Jack Hubbard): And I think that's a fourth constituency that you can do. Now, there are a couple of mechanisms here whereby you can send your message, you can do it in a group situation, but that eliminates the personalization. I love the send button. I love doing this one-on-one and using the send button on the profile. Brynne, talk about that a little bit.

0:20:21 - (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I'm going to come back to this because I just want to. Yes. And something you said that's really important socially surrounding an organization is absolutely essential. No longer is there one decision maker, the CFO is not the only one or the CEO the only one making decisions on the bank they're going to use. They're collaborative decision-makers now. Right? They're in meetings. And so if everyone says, oh, I know him from that, like, there becomes, oh, we all know Joe from ABC Credit Union, like, you have a much higher chance of winning that business than if only one person in that room knows you. So social surroundings are important. And I just wanted to emphasize your point there because it is so important.  

0:21:12 - (Brynne Tillman): Okay, now I forget your question. Oh, oh, my goodness.

0:21:17 - (Jack Hubbard): This is what I get the question, too. Oh, oh, I know, I know. The messaging. The send button.

0:21:24 - (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. So when you share content on your homepage, it's really simple to get this into the inbox of folks. There's like a little paper airplane send button. And when you click on that, you get a list of your first-degree connections or even messaging threads. So, for example, Jack and I and a few people are in a messaging thread. If I type the name of that thread, I can actually check a box and it will go as a group message because it's already in a group.

0:21:56 - (Brynne Tillman): But if I go in and I pick Jack and Stan and Bob, and I just pick all of these folks, and I can do ten at a time, I can write a little message. Now, that does take away from some of the personalization. But if they're all in one bank, I still don't want to send it as a group. I can still send it separately, but simply naming the bank in the message, it personalizes it. So I don't put their name. But looks like ABC Credit Union is doing some great things. When I came across this article, I thought you might be.

0:22:35 - (Brynne Tillman): I thought it might be of value to you. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And then it's still personalized enough if they're all in that same bank. But at the end of the day, this is a very quick way to reengage and nurture those connections simply by adding additional value.

0:22:51 - (Jack Hubbard): Yeah. And the other thing you talked about is this whole idea of personalization and you said, you suggested maybe, you know, if you have a thousand connections, maybe you want to do business with 100. The fact is, you don't have to do a thousand personalized messages. I like the idea of consistency. If you said, okay, during the week, I'm going to send three messages a day, one message a day. If you get into that discipline of doing it, it's really going to benefit you down the road. Let's say you did three messages a day.

0:23:25 - (Jack Hubbard): You work 240 days a year. Do the math. You've sent out a lot of personalized messages. And some of those people are going to have a need for banking services and you're going to have mind share with them. It's so powerful to be consistent. And speaking of consistency, the phone helps you be consistent. There are some personalized messages that you can send using the phone, Brynne. Talk about that.

0:23:51 - (Brynne Tillman): Well, let's call it the mobile because of the mobile app. Yeah. So the consistency is really important. And when bankers say to me, I just don't have time to do it, how many voicemails are you leaving every day? You can make a little shift in what you do and it doesn't take any more time. In fact, it can take significantly less time because you don't have to wait for it to, you don't have to pick it up, you don't have to dial, you don't have to wait for the rings and then listen to the voicemail and then leave your message and then. Right.

0:24:29 - (Brynne Tillman): And you can do this so much faster with the app on mobile. So if you pick up your mobile phone and you go into the app and you go to someone's profile, if you click on the message and then the little paperclip, you can choose video, message, or audio. You have two choices. I like video, but just as quickly or faster than actually cold calling or even following up I can quickly have a message. Now you and I are using for content now a company called Big View that gives you.

0:25:09 - (Brynne Tillman): And I said to you, when you said, oh, let's talk about big view today, I'm like, no, I don't think that goes here. And I was wrong. You are 100% right. And what I'm thinking about this is Bigview, and you're going to be interviewing the founder of this company. You can have a script and then it's a teleprompter and it records, it'll save to your phone and then you can share that. So the reason originally I was thinking is because I do it natively, pull it up, and do the message.

0:25:42 - (Brynne Tillman): But if you're not comfortable or you're someone who wants to take 27 takes, this is a great way to do it. And then you can semi-customize each message, you know, based on the script. So the video, I think, is great. And there's also audio voice message, which I don't like as much. But I have a connection that only sends voice messages. And I kind of, you know, I, and I've been voice messaging back because that's her preferred way of communication. And I do try to do that.

0:26:14 - (Brynne Tillman): However someone communicates with me, I try to mimic that back because that's their preferred way. And I don't hate it as much. So I'm playing around with the voice messages as well.

0:26:24 - (Jack Hubbard): Well, I think that one of the powerful things about this platform is that we've talked about a number of ways to actually get your message out. And that flexibility allows people to say, I'm most comfortable with audio. I don't want to do you use the phone? I like using the laptop, so I'll use their airplane and I'll do the individual send. There are so many ways to be able to do this. Brynne. Well, this is a great, great program to talk about because too often what happens is it is that connect and forget situation because we get into a, our day gets busy, we may thank them, we hope we do, but we forget them in the long run.

0:27:13 - (Jack Hubbard): So maybe summarize some of the things that you talked about and the power of messaging, your first-degree connections.

0:27:19 - (Brynne Tillman): So the first thing is to take inventory and identify who you want to talk with. The next thing is, what do they care about? And what can I add to their day that's valuable? Keenan, the author of Gap Selling, has a wonderful line, which is you've got to master the ask-offer ratio. I'm asking you to consume my content. And by the way, a simple note, even without more content, is content. So I'm asking you to consume my content in exchange for your time.

0:27:50 - (Brynne Tillman): At the end of that interaction, one of three things is going to happen. You're going to feel like it was a bait and switch, which is really scary, right? That means, you know, I thought you were going to network with me, but you try to sell me, number two, neutral so it doesn't get them to respond or start a conversation, but it doesn't hurt your reputation. Or, number three, compelling. And this is where we want to land. We want our content to be compelling enough that they say, yes, I want more, or you start that conversation.

0:28:24 - (Brynne Tillman): So really, really important. So now we've taken inventory, we've identified what kind of content they want or is of interest to them, and now we have to decide, are we sending it in text? Are we going to do a video? What does that look like? And then what I think that we didn't talk about is the most important thing. Although you touched for sure on consistency, is setting aside a goal. I'm going to do five a day.

0:28:50 - (Brynne Tillman): Right? I'm going to reach out to five people a day with no other ulterior motive. Say that again. The English language can be so hard. I'm going to reach out to five a day with no ulterior motive, just to bring them value through content or inviting them to an event, something like that. And so when you have that consistency and you're top of mind more than a banker, but as you know, a community member who's just part of their trusted advisor networking group in the community, and I think that that can have all the different, make all the difference in the world.

0:29:35 - (Jack Hubbard): Yeah, I agree 100%. And this whole thing is not a zero-sum game. It's not, do I do this or this? Some people, including myself, try to send a note a day to somebody, and I learned that from a great book called Heartspoken by Elizabeth Cottrell. And I really recommend this book. So it doesn't just have to be, I'm going to send five audio messages, or I'm going to send five individual messages to people.

0:30:05 - (Jack Hubbard): You can send notes, you can do it in a group. There's a lot of different ways to do it. But here's the problem. A lot of people don't. And that's one of the reasons we put this program together, is to make sure that we at least shine a light on some of the important things around. I gave you the connection. Now be my connection and provide value to me.

0:30:28 - (Brynne Tillman): Ah. Oh. We could really play with that. We became connections, but now it's time to make a connection.

0:30:35 - (Jack Hubbard): Yeah. Or otherwise, it's a Seinfeld episode, and we all know how that ends.

0:30:41 - (Brynne Tillman): It's entertaining, but it certainly won't bring any business in the door.

0:30:45 - (Jack Hubbard): Yep.

0:30:45 - (Brynne Tillman): Yeah.

0:30:46 - (Jack Hubbard): As always, great to see you. We'll see you during the summer on the replays, and then in the fall, we've got a ton of great topics to talk about. Thanks a lot, Brynnene.

0:30:56 - (Brynne Tillman): Thanks, Jack.

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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.