Episode 22: How Bankers Leverage LinkedIn Polls

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. Thursday, it's Jack Rants with Modern Banker.

Brynne Tillman  00:33

Hi, Jack. How are you?

Jack Hubbard  00:36

I'm fabulous. Hope you're doing better. You've had a little bit of cold and under the weather, but you're a trooper.

Brynne Tillman  00:42

My sexy voice.

Jack Hubbard  00:45

We talked about it. Before we got on Kim Carnes is a singer from a while ago. My wife sounds like Kim Carnes when she's sick, too. We're going to talk today about polls. So from a hat perspective, I'm putting on the Ohio State University. Now anybody could say, well, wait a second, my team LSU, whatever is better in the football polls than Ohio State University and I get that. But we're going to talk about polls today on LinkedIn.

You know, it's interesting. It started in 2014 in groups, and then LinkedIn took it away. And then they put it back for the general audience in May of 2020. So today, we're going to discuss how to make this all happen, Brynne. I'm curious, just give us an overview of polls and some of the things you've seen people do.

Brynne Tillman  01:42

Yeah, you know, a lot of people are like, “Oh, I'm over polls.” I see them everywhere. But they work. They really, really work.  Which is why you're seeing them everywhere. Now, the one thing I want to say is just because you publish it doesn't mean you're gonna get votes. So we have to work at it. And we'll talk about that throughout today a little bit. But why do I love polls? I love polls so much because we can put out a question and get insights, it becomes almost a discovery-ish opportunity, right? 

We can learn about priorities or frustrations or you no wish list things from our prospects without being salesy. And LinkedIn does a great job. This reincarnation of polls is top notch. The only thing I do differently is I allow a little bit more leeway on characters and answers because you get 140 characters in your question and 30 characters, including spaces in your answers. So it does limit you a little but it's interesting when you're limited and you work hard to really hone in the message, how clear it is. So we're good.

Jack Hubbard  03:02

LinkedIn does help you with that, too because if you get over your skis and put too many characters in, it'll go read on you. And it will tell you, you have to back off two or three or four characters, whatever the case might be. And for me, I'm wordy. So that really does help me. The other thing I really like about polls is its value first, Brynne and “you” second. Talk about that a little bit. How important is that?

Brynne Tillman  03:29

Well, generally, when we're starting conversations with anyone in our network. We wanted to start with trust based conversations, not sales based conversations. And you know, asking someone to take an action, a call to action, whether it's like a post, comment on a post or vote on a poll is us asking them for their perspective, that we care about what they think about something. It's not about us trying to push our message on them. We're asking them their perspective. 

In fact, often when our bankers put out polls, we'll have them say, you know, as a small business owner in the Denver area, I'd love your one click vote on this poll that talks about what the influx of new homes is doing to the banking industry. I just made that up on the fly, right. But then you have one, you have three answers. So it could be great for banking, challenging for banking. Wait, I don't know yet. And other sharing comments, and we talked about a lot when we put those answers down. 

Number four should always be other sharing comments. Because people have opinions that we haven't thought about. And you don't want to upset the person that you're asking to vote when they go “Oh, my option isn't here.” Right? So by doing that, you also Get More comments, which helps the algorithm. So lots of reasons to do that. But, you know, this is Value first in a way, especially if the question is positioned in a way that that potential voter wants to see how other people voted. 

So it's a value that we asked for their perspective, but the insights they glean when they vote, because they can't see how others voted until they vote, also brilliant on LinkedIn’s part. That’s value for them too. What are my peers saying? What is their biggest priority? What is their biggest challenge? I want to know what they're saying. Now it's interesting as a voter, you can see the percentages. You can't see who or how they voted but as the person that published the poll, you do get all those insights. And that's something that you love best.

Jack Hubbard  05:58

I do. And so just a couple of quick comments. So for example, I saw an article recently from Barlow research that a great great people, of course, and they publish a lot of survey information. And if I remember the data somewhat correctly, it indicated that about 13% of small businesses plan to borrow for the rest of the year, and about 24% of middle market companies plan to borrow for the rest of the year. So that's what you're talking about in terms of that question. So they may put in a recent survey that I've seen X number of small businesses planned to borrow 24% of the middle market. Talk about, I love to know what you're thinking in this regard. 

And then the 4 questions: I plan to borrow, I'm considering borrowing, I don't plan to borrow, and then Other. That allows you to have so much information. And when you talk about what you can do with this information, I want to discuss it later, because we're going to talk about follow up, but I have an idea. And so I always get ideas from you, as I hear you. And as I listen to you, and I talk about the subject. 

So we have on this program, today, we have several amazing sales managers who have registered. In my mind, Ken Martin is one of the best sales managers I've ever met. He's out at CIT, a division of First Citizens, Chris Nichols has registered for the program, and my good friend Kelly Nielsen out in the state of Washington. So if I'm a sales manager, what would be the harm Brynne, of getting a general poll out, and everybody publishes the same poll on their own network, we give it a couple of weeks and then we bring it back and we look at the data. And now there's an opportunity to potentially follow up with value but we've maximized our opportunities by doing it as a team versus individually. And my good friend Bill Fink is on and he is a great sales manager. And he would probably articulate the doing things as a team would help maximize the opportunity, there Brynne. So I'm curious about your thoughts on that.

Brynne Tillman  08:16

Yeah, there are definitely two ways to go. Often, if you want to really optimize from a team, a nice way to go is maybe you as the manager, publish the one poll, and then have everyone invite their network to vote on one poll. And then you could have combined data, what you don't have is the individuals data, which is what you're talking about when each of them do their own poll. I would start with one poll and get everyone engaging and inviting their network to vote on it. It's otherwise what may happen and you know, you always look at like the pros and cons of every option is, if you have a lot of different clients connected to quite a few people inside of the organization, they're going to see that same poll popping up without their vote. And it's going to be a little curious.

I'm all about AV testing. So I'd love to try both and see which one has the greater success but I do love the idea of doing this as a team. I think it makes a huge impact. You know, and the other thing is, when you come together as a team to create that question that's going to be on the poll, you probably will come up with a much more efficient, better honed question when you've got that collaboration than when you're doing it on your own. I know I do before I put out a poll. I typically actually put it through in our group coaching sessions like would you vote on this would this be of interest to you? So I try to take advantage of that for sure. 

The other thing I want to go back to because you said something that's so brilliant that they don't want to let slip, which is you go out and you find an article that really is inspiring this poll. And I think that's genius. I think what happens is you're now piggybacking on a third party piece of content and there's zero sales filling in anything. I read this article, and I'm curious if my network matches up to this report. The key here is I would in the text, put a link to the article. 

Now, there are some arguments that could hurt the algorithm a little bit. So again, I might do a B test on this. But I believe we're doing great value to our reader, if they can go read the article that you're referring to. And I think that's like a double resource. So when you say Jack, add value, like, that's extreme value.

Jack Hubbard  11:09

Let's go back to your coaching because this subject came up in our coaching on Tuesday for our mastering LinkedIn for Bankers program. And one of the things that they wanted to know is, how often should I poll? And number two, how long should my poll be up? So I'm sure you have some experience with this?

Brynne Tillman  11:38

Yeah, I love this question. So I'm gonna say it depends on your goal, right? Like, it really depends on your goal. So number one, how long you get one day, three days, one week, two weeks, those are your choices. So if I'm using this for prospecting, and it's a great poll question, I'm going two weeks, I want to get the most out of it. Now, you need to stop asking people to vote about three days before the poll expires. Otherwise, they'll be frustrated, if you do two hours before the poll expires, and you send it to them, and they click through and they're like the poll closed, I didn't get to vote. You've frustrated people. 

So two weeks to in my mind is the optimal if you're truly using this for prospecting. And what you want to do is identify who in your network, your first degree connections? Do you want to re engage? This is a perfect way to nurture those folks to remind them that you're here and, you know, see that there's some value that you're bringing outside of just wanting to sell your back, right. 

So taking inventory, which we've talked about many times, whether you're exporting your connections, or searching your first degree connections, and identifying who you want to vote on polls, will also inspire you on what poll you want to put out. Are we going after people that care about treasury management services? Are we going after people that care about real estate? Commercial Real Estate? Like, who is this poll meant for? Right? So I think I kind of went all over the place on that but ideally, when we're writing this poll, we're focusing on who do we want voting on this? And then we're going to invite them to vote. Sorry, went on some tangents there.

Jack Hubbard  13:32

No, that's okay but let's go back to this. We proactively put a poll out there. And here's what we can't expect, just because we put a poll out there, it doesn't mean they're going to vote. One of the things I like is what you said, “How can I make sure that I get people to vote on my poll?” and there are a number of ways to do that Brynne, to push your poll out to your network.

Brynne Tillman  14:04

So there is and then it's not like one click and it goes out to your 3000 folks, but we just talked about taking inventory, who do we want to send it to? So there is a little paper airplane at the bottom of every piece of content, including polls. And if you click on that, you can type note and select up to 50 people to blind copy at a time. So if you did a search, let's say in one screen all your treasury or the people that handled Treasury inside of small businesses, or maybe we look for all the CFOs or all the CPAs we want to engage whomever we're building this poll for. We do a list and we see “Oh, I have 27 people in my network that I love to vote on this.” 

So now I create the poll. I published the poll. I clicked the little pay Paper Airplane. And I can quickly copy and paste their name or type their name, and check the box up to 50 at a time, and then send it out with a note that says, you know, “As a trusted CPA in my network, I'd love to get your one click vote on the poll that we just published,” which by the way, it will automatically be at the bottom of the note. So they'll see it. You know, “Your perspective means a lot. If you're interested, I'm happy to follow up with you and share insights that we gleaned from you and your peers.”

So now we've left it open that after the poll closes, look for our insights, I'm gonna follow up with you, get on a call and share. Where do you benchmark with your peers? Where are you appearing? Right? What CPA, especially if they're a small CPA, be curious on what his peers or her peers are saying? 

So, you know, you can definitely wet the whistle around, not just Will you vote, but you get to see how other people are voting like you. I know, for me, that's a big win for me, I want to see what's happening in the competitive marketplace. You know, so someone sent me, you know, as a social selling trainer, what's your number one priority? I want to see what the priorities are of the other social selling trainers. It's just human nature. So that way, you're getting more people voting, and you have more people to follow up with.

Jack Hubbard  16:34

So one of the other things that we always have to talk about here is that we certainly realize that as a banker, you are inundated with lots of things every single day, or, you know, people like Susan Bell, who's who's on and we love her sponsorship with Vertical IQ. They're busy too, everybody's busy. One of the things we don't want to intimate to you is that just if you want to prospect, put out 17 polls. We need to do this very judiciously. If you're looking to help people with managing their cash through Treasury Management, maybe treasury management does a poll, if you're looking to see what kinds of businesses are looking to move banks in 2024. Maybe that's something you do and you do it creatively with a unique question. This doesn't have to be every week. This is part of your process, not your entire sales process, Brynne.

Brynne Tillman  17:39

Oh, absolutely. But this is a great way to re-engage people that have been quiet. This is a great way to get back on someone's radar. For sure. I absolutely agree with you and as far as the numbers, if you're running two week polls, it's only two a month, right? Like that's basically what you're running. I do like, although I don't have one right now, I do like to always have a poll open, that I can if there's someone that I want to reengage I can get that in front of them. So we've got lots of things popping in.

Jack Hubbard  18:16

I love Bill's comment here, “The networking aspect is critical but it's golden in driving true differentiation.” And that's one of the things that we need to continue to push it to the bankers on LinkedIn is that this is a tool to show your high level of differentiation.

Brynne Tillman  18:38

That's true. I love that. And it really gives us another opportunity for touchpoints. We know that not everyone is ready to shift banks right now. But we need to stay in front of people, we need to nurture them, we need to show that we are a resource and sometimes it's just enough visibility, when they have a challenge with their current bank, you're the first one they're gonna call. And so this does this and it's also fun. I'm gonna go back to your point Jack, where you said, we're bringing them value in this right value in that we asked for their perspective, it's good for their ego value in they get to see what their peers are saying, that's big value, and value in the follow up insights that we glean that we can show them where they're benchmarking, that's value. 

All of this gives us three, four touch points with them and there are times where I'll put something out and if I get someone to vote, I'll say “Would it be okay if I give you a link and you could share it with your other bankers?” So you can click on the three dots at the top and copy a URL link. And they can actually email that out to their team and say, “Hey, team, would you mind voting on this?” and then you get 810 12 People from one company? 

So you're working with a CFO, you get that CFO to vote, you may say, you know, what is your CEO think? Would you be willing to share this? So you can take that poll and assume that it's relevant for people beyond just the CFO around priorities for next year, you can get a lot of people from your prospecting company, or the company or prospecting, to vote. Now, they're not a connection of yours? Connect. And now you can socially surround those folks or you know, there's so many things that we can do, and they're gonna accept your connection, because they just voted on your poll and they made the first move. Right? 

So many things around this. So, Ken’s 100% “Showing the presence, visibility and consistency, to be receptive to learning about the customer prospect and keep you front of mind?” Absolutely. Dustin, Hi, Dustin, Bill's comment is golden itself. This concept applies to how we develop the headline of our LinkedIn profiles also. We are always so much more than the job titles assigned to us by employing organizations. Couldn't agree more, Dustin. 

Jack Hubbard  21:26

No doubt about it. And it's great to see Ken Bostwick on as well. I know, he's a pretty busy guy and a great sales leader in his own right. Well, Bryynne, as we start to wind this thing down, you and I have kind of kept back a little bit is follow up. So I'll give you one example. And you see how this works for you. So you just said a great comment in that you suggested that I surround the company with the poll, I have a CFO, a CEO, could be the head of distribution, or the head of HR, whatever. Now I can go into that particular company. And I can follow up now, I'm not going to say, well, the CEO said this and you said this, what's going on at your company, but I might be able to genericize this a little bit in some kind of follow up Brynne. What are you seeing people do as far as follow up after the poll is over?

Brynne Tillman  22:26

Yeah, there's a lot that you can do. One thing that we have some of our clients do is just make a blog post about it. What did you find? Why did I do this poll? Maybe you're going back to the article that you read and talk a little bit about that? What inspired me to do this poll? Why I was curious that if my network aligned with the article that I read, here was the poll question. Here are some of the insights. These were the types of people and just by, you know, let's say, you can look at who voted right? You know, 80% of the voters were C suite, or whatever it is, you just give them information. And then you talk about your analysis of this, your thoughts around it. 

Now, what I recommend is you just jump on Zoom, and just talk about your thoughts. Record your thoughts around just with you, you don't need anyone else, just record. What are your thoughts around this article, grab that transcript, and you can either edit that transcript, or if you couldn't use ChatGPT, to clean it up, if you're allowed to use a prompt that says, clean up this transcript, do not research use these words only. And you know, make it two paragraphs. And then you can use that in a blog post. If you have marketing support, you can turn it into an ebook, or a digital video ebook with music behind it. There's so much that you can do and you can get a lot of value. 

Now, one thing that I recommend in the blog post or the ebook, is you have a link back to the original poll. So they can go back and see what this blog was based off of. And you know, and don't you don't have to publish the ebook or the blog post to the world yet. You could reach out and you can ask the people that voted for quotes from them. So here's the ebook that I'm following up on. I'd love one quote from you around your answer, you know, and so you can now continue to build the relationship around the content that you build. So some people will get quotes and some people you'll get on a call and say I'd love to just review this with you and share the insights weekly. And so one poll can turn into an enormous amount of pre-qualified conversation.

Jack Hubbard  25:03

Absolutely. And when you look at the, if I surround myself with this company, I can send the CEO and I don't have to say, well, these CFOs, your CFO said this, I can say, Well, it's interesting CEO. 25% of the people on the poll were CFOs. Here were some of their answers. So you can actually do that. And what I really love is what you said about the blog post or the ebook. And you could even put that into the commentary on the poll. And you could say something like, if you're open to answering my poll, you will be the first to hear about or you can even say, you'll be the only ones to hear about…

Brynne Tillman  25:49

You’ll probably publicly posted it at one point. I like first.

Jack Hubbard  25:53

I like first, and then you could say, you know, you'll be the first to hear about this in my ebook, or my and so that would give people more of an impetus to answer your poll as well. And it's so interesting. It takes so little time to do but I'm curious about this, because you may not, you may not see it in your networking feed. So again, I want to go back to this point of make sure that if you're trying to target certain companies, or certain titles that you actually go out and proactively send messages or something along those lines.

Brynne Tillman  26:29

Absolutely, yeah. Well, Jack, this was fun.

Jack Hubbard  26:34

This was a great program. I really enjoyed it. And I appreciated the banker who asked us to do this. To do this. Next week, we're going to talk about something that's going on, not so positively around social media in general, in our world in general. And that is security. And we're going to talk about some of those issues that you can do to make sure that your LinkedIn approach is very, very secure. Thanks, Brynne, I joined today.

Brynne Tillman  27:04

Thanks I did too, Jack. 

Jack Hubbard  27:07

So we'll see y'all next week. Jack Rants with Brynne every Thursday. And don't forget, we've got that public library and we're also on YouTube now which I'm really excited about. Sign up and you'll be able to see us quite a lot. Thanks again, Brynne. Have a great one.

Bob Woods  27:26

We are thrilled that you have joined us for Jack Rants with Brynne. We are here live on LinkedIn every Thursday at noon Eastern time. We'd like to thank our amazing sponsors, RelPro and Vertical IQ. Two vital platforms that all modern bankers should be leveraging to start more trust based conversations without being salesy. If you found value in today's program, please subscribe, review, like, comment and share with your peers. And lastly, be sure to sign up for a free public library at themodernbanker.com/publiclibrary. Again, that's the modern thanks for

Jack Hubbard  28:11

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. 

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