How to Get a 300% Increase in Your LinkedIn Leads – In Just 7 Minutes with Jake Dunlap

Resources/Links:

• Rethink Your Content. Stop Selling and Start Adding Value: Check out Skaled’s Team Free Audit and Assessment: https://skaled.com/digitalpresence

Summary

Where do you think digital presence going in 2020 and beyond? And what is that going to mean for sales as a profession?

People that are going to win are the people that understand how to leverage technology. And if you’re not staying well-versed on those then, you’re losing quite a bit of efficiency and effectiveness.

Rethink your content. Stop selling and start adding value. Pay attention to your digital brand.

Jake Dunlap designs repeatable, sustainable sales models and processes that outperform industry standards. As the Founder + CEO of Skaled Consulting, he helps executives around the world accelerate business growth with data-backed sales solutions.

Before building Skaled, he held the roles of VP of Sales at Nowait (acquired by Yelp), Head of Sales + Customer Success at Chartbeat, and VP of Sales at Glassdoor.

In this episode, Jake shares how he helps organizations and companies to be buyer-centric focused, fix their bandwidth problems, craft and implement a consistent audience development strategy for sales success.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:32 – Jake’s ideal client: “Yeah. We really have two ideal clients. One is a company that’s going through various stages of scaling. You know, you really only need a firm like ours as you’re trying to ramp up or do something different. And so, as companies are growing, usually things start to break. And that’s when they call in people like us to get hands-on and help them.”
• 02:06 – Problem Jake helps solve: “The first problem that we solve is basically bandwidth. Every organization has smart, capable people internally to do things, but there are only so many hours in a day.”
• 03:17 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Jake: “They focus on digital presence.”
• 04:30 – What are some of the common mistakes that folks make before finding Jake and his solution?: “Well, step one is that they try to take a command and control, right? So marketing is going to pre-approved content that they’re going to send out and disseminate to people. Either on their own internal internet, via social media platform, or Elevate LinkedIn own platform. And they’re not really, in marketing instead is not, hasn’t figured out how to empower people.”
• 05:35 – Jake’s Valuable Free Action(VFA): “Have a consistent audience development strategy.”
• 06:21 – Jake’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Rethink Your Content. Stop Selling and Start Adding Value: Check out Skaled’s Team Free Audit and Assessment: https://skaled.com/digitalpresence
• 07:02 – Q: Where is digital presence going in 2020 and beyond? And what is that going to mean for sales as a profession? A: People that are going to win are the people that understand how to leverage technology. And if you’re not staying well versed on those then you’re losing quite a bit of efficiency and effectiveness.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“People that are going to win are the people that understand how to leverage technology. And if you're not staying well-versed on those then you're losing quite a bit of efficiency and effectiveness.'”-@JakeTDunlap Click To Tweet

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland: 0:09

Hello everyone, a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. My name is Tom Poland, joined today by Jake Dunlap. Jake, good day, very warm welcome, sir. Where are you hanging out?

Jake Dunlap 0:19
I’m in Austin, Texas, right now.

Tom Poland: 0:20
Austin, Texas. I went to a conference there and the T-shirt in the lobby, well, said keep Austin weird. I love that.

Jake Dunlap 0:28
That’s right. I moved down here about what, I don’t know, year and a half ago now. And I think Austin people think it’s getting less and less weird by the New Yorker and Californian that are migrating here.

Tom Poland: 0:39
Evil imports like you. All right, let’s get to it. We’ll get on with the show. For those of you who don’t know, Jake, he designs repeatable, this are very important words, folks. Repeatable, sustainable sales models and processes that outperform industry standards. That’s pretty cool. He’s the founder and CEO of Skaled, that says Skaled with a K, Consulting, helps executives around the world accelerate business growth with data-backed sales solutions.

Tom Poland: 1:04
So before building Skaled, he held roles such as the VP of Sales at Nowait, which is acquired by Yelp, for those of you who don’t know. A Head of Sales and Customer Success at Chartbeat, VP of sales at Glassdoor. He’s a true professional and a true expert on the subject. And today’s title is, “How to Get a 300% Increase in Your LinkedIn Leads.” And Jake’s going to show us how to do that in just seven minutes. Jake, our time starts now. Question number one is, who is your ideal client?

Jake Dunlap 1:32

Yeah. We really have two ideal clients. One is a company that’s going through various stages of scaling.

You know, you really only need a firm like ours as you’re trying to ramp up or do something different. And so, as companies are growing, usually things start to break. And that’s when they call in people like us to get hands-on and help them.

Jake Dunlap 1:48
And we work with much, you will call larger, more established companies that are trying to modernize. So really, people bring us in to help build, as you said, you know, repeatable and scalable systems as they go through, you know, various transformations. Whether its revenue or trying to transform their sales org.

Tom Poland: 2:01
Thank you, sir. Question number two, six and a half minutes left, what’s the problem you solve?

Jake Dunlap 2:06
There’s really a couple of problems that we solve.

The first problem that we solve is basically bandwidth.

That, you know, every organization has smart, capable people internally to do things, but there are only so many hours in a day. And so, organizations can wait 12 to 24 months to, you know, overhaul their sales methodology, upgrade their demand gen process, or they can work with a partner like us to solve the same problems in a matter of, you know, three to six months.

Jake Dunlap 2:31

The other piece that we solve for is around making organizations more modern.

And so, like, we’re going to talk about today, we really feel that LinkedIn and really B2B companies have to start to pay attention to their digital brand, that more and more people have more information about you than they’ve ever had before. And if you’re not aware, and you’re not controlling that narrative, then you really, truly are missing out. You know, just look at what’s happened to B2C in all those industries that were disrupted by transparency. And if you don’t understand what your buyers have access to and you’re not telling the story that you need to tell on LinkedIn and other digital platforms, then you’re behind the times.

Tom Poland: 3:05
Thank you. So, what are some of the typical symptoms that people who’ve got this problem that they are behind the times, they don’t have a digital presence? What are they going to be experiencing in the businesses that gives them a clue that they need someone like you?

Jake Dunlap 3:17

Yeah. I think the digital focus on digital presence,

I think there are a couple of things.

One, if the sales organization is consistently using LinkedIn, you know, 10 to 20% of their day, that means your sales organization is spending over, you know, an equivalent of almost a month and a half every single year on LinkedIn.

And companies have no idea how to make them more effective. They don’t understand the LinkedIn algorithm. The company pages, all of the followers on company pages are previous and ex-employees. And all your likes and comments aren’t your buyers, their employees and people that are friendly to the company.

Jake Dunlap 3:48

So, organizations have to realize, look, that means your sales and your marketing team needs to be focused on being buyer-centric.

Their sales profiles need to be written for the buyer to make the salespeople sound as experts. Your marketing materials need to stop sharing your blog posts. You’re killing your data. You’re killing your own reach because LinkedIn penalizes you for sending people off the platform. And most companies, they don’t even pay attention to this. So, there’s a lot of different things that companies can do. But step one is you have to realize, look, LinkedIn is for driving revenue and creating a name for yourself in your business, and not for, you know, getting kudos from your fellow employees or coworkers.

Tom Poland: 4:21
Perfect. Thank you. So, four minutes left. Question number four is, what are some of the common mistakes that people make trying to solve this problem before they find your solution?

Jake Dunlap 4:30
Well, step one is that they try to take command and control, right? So marketing is going to pre-approved content that they’re going to send out and disseminate to people. Either on their own internal internet, via social media platform, or Elevate LinkedIn own platform. And they’re not really, in marketing instead is not, hasn’t figured out how to empower people.

Jake Dunlap 4:45
I put out a post the other day, where SAP employees have posted 11,700 times in the last 30 days, SAP has posted 70. So, you’re telling me as an organization, 11,700 opportunities that you’ve had to better engage with your buyers, but instead, you’re focused on your 50 to 70 posts that you’re putting out. And the companies that are going to win in the future are the companies that pay attention to this. And they want to enable their team to not just talk about SAP, to talk about the industries that they serve. And marketing departments aren’t arming sales organizations with industry-specific non-company content. That is a big opportunity.

Tom Poland: 5:23
Right. Interesting. So, question number five, just under three minutes left, what’s one quite valuable free action that someone could take? It’s not going to solve the whole problem, but it might move them in the right direction.

Jake Dunlap 5:35
Love it. I think there are a few things. One is, have a consistent audience development strategy. What I mean by that is make sure that every day or week you’re adding new buyers to your page or to your own personal connections. Why? Add a bigger audience in the network. Two, post. You cannot be effective on LinkedIn if you’re not putting out at least a few pieces of content a week. You need to nurture those people, right?

Jake Dunlap 5:56
Marketing and automation are nurturing 101. Now, social media post on LinkedIn, the people you connected with, that’s the 201. And so, I think for a lot of people, if you just do those two things consistently, add new people and put out content with no ask but instead just trying to provide value, you’ll be successful.

Tom Poland: 6:13
Perfect. Thank you. Question number six, two minutes left, what’s one valuable free resource that we could direct people to that’s going to help them even more?

Jake Dunlap 6:21
Yeah. I would say go check out Skaled.com/digitalpresence, just how it sounds, digital presence, and you can basically, our team does a free audit and a free assessment. So, if you go, you fill that out, our team will go kind of give you a quick high level on, like what we’re seeing in the market, like again, like how your brand ranks or how you as an individual or an executive. Because of our firm, we work with frontline teams, executives, and corporate brands. So, go fill out that assessment, it’s a free resource. I think you’ll get a ton of value.

Tom Poland: 6:50
So that’s Scaled, S-K-A-L-E-D, dot com forward slash digital presence. Thank you, sir. 75 seconds left. What’s the one question I should have asked you, but didn’t? And the answer, please.

Jake Dunlap 7:02
All right, this is a great one. I really liked this question because it really forces you to think.

Where is digital presence going in 2020 and beyond? And what is that going to mean for sales as a profession?

I think that’s probably a question you didn’t ask, but I think you should have.

Jake Dunlap 7:16
And the answer is, you know, this…

People that are going to win are the people that understand how to leverage technology, that sales is, there are over I think 1200 sales technologies that exist today. And if you’re not staying well versed on those and how this could impact your sales organization, then you’re losing, you know, quite a bit of efficiency and effectiveness.

Jake Dunlap 7:33
And then again, as we talked about before, that more and more and more, one, you know, your reps or people you want to hire, they’re going to look at your digital presence, too. They’re going to say, “Man, I don’t know about this guy. And there are these guys over here that are doing this cool stuff, I want to go work for them,” right? Or your buyers are going to say, “Wait, hey, why am I getting this on this guy? He’s a sales guy. Whereas these other five salespeople are sharing relevant things.”

Jake Dunlap 7:53
So, my friends, you have to get like very, very well versed in sales tech, you have to start paying attention to digital presence. I think these are two big trends that I think are going to impact sales in 2020 and beyond.

Tom Poland: 8:03
Perfect. Jake, thanks so much for your time.

Jake Dunlap 8:05
Awesome. Thanks, Tom. I enjoyed it.

Tom Poland: 8:22
Cheers.

Tom Poland: 8:23
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.