Episode 44 5 KPIs Bank Leaders Should Use for Selling on LinkedIn

Jack Hubbard  00:00

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. 

Happy Thursday everybody. Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Hi Brynne!

Brynne Tillman  00:36

Hi, Jack! I’m excited to be here.

Jack Hubbard  00:38 - 01:48

Yeah, me too. You know Brynne its year end and we’re starting to look

at things like strategic planning and marketing planning and sales planning and I think today's program, five kpis that bank sales leaders should use for selling on LinkedIn is is a real good one because it gives everybody an opportunity to kind of start the year off right by looking at five things that they ought to be measuring and how they do it.

Now before we start we have a very very exciting announcement about LinkedIn Sales Training 2024 and we're going to do that and we're going to talk about that at the end of the show so stick around for that well Bren let's just jump right into this there's five things and and we always have a real good discussion it's I've always been I've always heard that some of the best discussions are before the show starts and we had some really good ones before the show started so let's let's mirror those as we go forward so the the first one that you kind of talk about is a completed profile but you've added the word branded so let's talk about a completed and branded profile.

Brynne Tillman  01:49 - 04:23

Yeah, I mean I love this question and when we think about a completed profile a personal profile it's a resume right it's it's our resume but when it's a branded profile especially for Bankers that are selling or Bankers that are client facing making sure if not all the bankers but more importantly like these client facing Bankers need to have a consistent brand when it comes to the user experience, the visitor experience. Your bank has invested an enormous amount of marketing into colors and fonts and like a whole bunch of things that have this consistent brand

across the board and it's for brand recognition.

So your banner should include the logo sometimes words Escape me but should include your your bank logo it should include um you know that brand voice you also want to make sure

because this is also on brand that you are aware of your Bank’s social media policies what they expect how you should connect to them uh as you know in your experience section so that their logo is showing up so there's a lot that you should consider to make sure that you have that consistent message across the board now I'm going to for a moment be an obstinate Banker who says to me “Well Brynne this is my profile it's not the bank's profile.” 

So this is your career profile this isn't your Facebook or your Instagram this is your career profile and it's Dynamic should you win the lottery and start your own business and leave the bank you can switch it but right now this is where you are in your career and your responsibility most likely if you are engaging with us is business development it's about attracting clients that is the job that you have accepted and so we truly believe that while you're in that position you should be branded as such.

Jack Hubbard  04:24 - 06:10

Yeah and I want to give a shout out to a couple of banks to give you a couple of practical examples. Great marketing director at Avidia Bank Janelle Masonet whose Bank does a terrific job with social media and they've really helped their Bankers with some ideas on how to stay on brand their colors the it's big they're big on Orange um and they do a really good job.

The other one is Cape Cod 5 and I like a lot of what Cape Cod 5 has done because they've provided some templates for their bankers and I think that's where marketing can become real partner here if you want your Bankers to be on brand you got to help them because otherwise in the absence of that they'll they'll do their own thing and that may not be a good thing for you.

The second thing I want to talk about is connection growth Brynne and before I throw it over to you, you and I both had an opportunity yesterday myself in person and you uh on video to talk to a bank about this exact thing we did some pre-work particular bank and they for the last 30 days have been sending us stuff and this allowed them to Benchmark where they are currently with connection growth and I think that's a mistake for Bankers not to be able to do that and we had about 10% just over that time just by kind of focusing a little bit on it.

So talk about connection growth because you know your first degree connections are the gateway to everything those second degrees are important too Brynne, but we got to get a good foundational base of connections.

Brynne Tillman  06:11 - 08:39

Oh absolutely and we may have categories of connections. So maybe we have we look at what is the number of all of our first-degree connections that's a really easy number to grab you whether it's in an Excel spreadsheet or you're recording it somewhere in your CRM you're writing down here is the date and then you create the search and in LinkedIn if there's a search bar and

a first degree and you can look at all your first degree connections and so you could put

and you have the date now grab that link in the URL and stick it in the spreadsheet. Why? Because when you click on that link it will bring you to that exact search but it's dynamic.

So you don't have to continue to ref filter every single time so now we may want to do one that's just CPAs so I want to have CPA nine at this date and there's a link and now I go out and the next month I connect with five more and I click through and it'll say 14. So the work is upfront with the leader and the banker to to build that list of what that looks like so maybe you have one

that's manufacturing owners I don't know whatever it is that you're going after, right?

So you can break lists down so you your kpi can certainly be growth of all your connections but maybe growth of your CPAs maybe you set a goal I want two new CPAs a month did we hit it I want five new business owners a month maybe I want five new business owners in the greater Chicago area so once I create that search and I grab that link and I paste it in my Excel spreadsheet it takes literally five minutes in your one on-one you could do it together you could they could do it in advance of your one-on-one session but you can fill those in so quickly and it's a really good idea of not just how many connections they're growing but how many of the right ones.

Jack Hubbard  08:39 - 09:17 

And for those of you out there that are thinking well just because I have a number of connections and it grows doesn't mean anything around appointments well it may not if your Banker doesn't pick up the telephone and isn't very good at prospecting but this is a starting point these are very warm leads versus going out and buying a list and spending thousands of dollars for any for people you don't know burning through the list and where are you so this is a live group of people that you can look at and then you can do the next thing that we want to talk about Brynne which is engage them with your content.

Brynne Tillman  09:17 - 12:27

So I love this so these are now our first degree connections and there are so many different ways we want to engage so you know your your question is well they didn't turn into appointments well the next kpi will lead to that right like that's our next step down so I love so what does that mean now some of this is going to be honor System with your Bankers because it's not an very easily tracked metrics um from an outsider perspective but from the banker perspective let's say we've identified that there are 17 new connections that this month how many of those connections got a welcome video from you how many of those connections got the CPA checklist for 2024 whatever that content is which by the way as a banker creating a checklist right now so triggers for CPA clients for CPAs to know when it's time for clients clients need a line of credit to prepare for 2024 whatever that is that's the content that I'd love at this point like real resources that will help people refer you that will help bring you in create you know content for those business owners whatever that is right like what maybe it's an inventory control checklist and some of it is make sure you have a easy access line of credit credit so you can fulfill the big orders you know  without cash flow issues I'm making things up right but that's the content kinds of content that we want to engage and then we want to send it 

Now again what you really want to make sure is that we're doing this so first it's our new connections we are purpose purposefully going out and connecting with the right people now the CPA the business owners we need to start a conversation with them and often that is through content now the other thing is taking inventory of our connections that we've been ignoring who else can use that content and again you this you can do this um you can create this as a task in your CRM right so you know we have we sent them an email we had you know we called them we're logging tasks you can actually add in your CRM I sent them a video message on LinkedIn it could be a logged task right so then actually you know that's then we can measure that pretty simply. So there's a lot that we can do but we can't start a cold conversation uh they don't without value right without bringing them value and so that's what the content does.

Jack Hubbard 12:27

You know it's interesting I want to talk about uh the training that we did too but I recently got 

a notification content from Richard Vander Blom and I've seen this from others including you that engagement levels are down pretty significantly and so therefore the comment you made about messaging people is so vital because if you have a first-degree connection you can message them and send them whatever you want whether whether it's a video or a PDF and we

know it's going to get through so I love that part but here's what's really interesting you also mentioned and this is something you've taught me ever since I got to know you when some when you connect with someone they're not a baseball card that should go in the drawer they are a human being that connected you with you for a reason and in order to build that trust versus hey we connected let's have coffee I mean that's just ridiculous 

In order to build that trust you have to you have to start somewhere and the best place to start is that messaging right after they connect with you and I yesterday I I asked the question of the 20 Bankers in the room and I said how what what do you do after someone connects with you and it was blank stairs and I said well let me ask it a different way how many of you send something as a followup fairly quickly and nobody raised their hand so I think Brynne this you what you said and you can amplify what I'm talking about certainly is is so vital for Bankers to be thinking about because a a COI or a prospect could create could connect with any number of Bankers but it's the it's what that Banker does after the connection that really makes a difference.

Brynne Tillman  14:19 - 14:56

100% I absolutely, I couldn't agree more on the you know this is not about I love you call them

baseball cards right this is not collecting business cards or baseball cards this is starting conversations, trust based conversations without being salesy and you know and that is the core of everything that we teach right how do we engage with these folks not just collect business cards stick rubber bands around them and put them in the corner of our desk.

Jack Hubbard  14:56 - 15:16

If I'm a CEO this all sounds really fine to me but but it doesn't show up on the ballot sheet but what you can do with the next two will really make a difference and the first one is client 

Referrals.

Brynne Tillman  15:16 - 17:28

This is why I teach LinkedIn this very thing when I started in sales when I was out in the field for the first time I remember sitting across from a client staring at his overflowing Rolodex. Do you still have a Rolodex? (I don't anymore but unfortunately I know what they) If you're under 40

your parents had one. So you know staring at this Rolodex thinking if I could get my hands on that for 20 minutes I could identify who my client knew that I wanted to meet and instead of just saying hey who do you know that could use our banking services I could say “Hey I notice you know a few people that I'd love to get in front of…”

So when I saw LinkedIn decades later I was like this solves my problem. LinkedIn when you connect with folks when you connect with your clients you have the the ability to filter and search their connections identify people that they know that you want to know and have a

conversation with them and you are going to be blown away at how many referrals slash even permission to name drop people that you're going to get from a list that your client knows on LinkedIn and it will get them thinking about other people as well.

So it could go well beyond the list that you bring to them but what you're doing is you are saving

them the “hmmm, let me think about it” moments right you're like hey can I run these names by you get your thoughts do you think that you know they could use our banking products the way you have yes great you know I don't know but they're great people great uh you know so I can reach out and just say you know “Hey Fred, Jack Hubbard and I were chatting your name came up I've been working with him for the last three years we've really helped him do X Y and Z he thought we should connect,” Fred thanks for connecting per Jack Hubbard’s recommendation I'd love to get on a call please let me know your preferred way of scheduling if it happens to be via calendar link here's mine at least that's the way that I approach it.

Jack Hubbard 17:28 - 19:16

Absolutely let's go back to the connections for a second. So I'm a business banker and one of the things I do is work with privately held companies and a lot of those are family-owned businesses and there are a lot of people with the same name in the business and I think we miss and I we I pointed this out to a banker yesterday who is a really really good on LinkedIn

but he said “Oh yeah I get this” and what I said to him was okay you're connected to the president named Fred and Smith is the last name and you're connected to the CFO also named Smith and you know that those two people are related.

How have you gone through the entire list in that company and look for all the other Smiths to see if there's somebody up and coming in the organization that you aren't connected to because that person may be the one that provides the referral if you would just connect with them and it was one of those aha moments and and I think you're right too often I walked out of this class yesterday and one of the very senior Bankers said you know I came here just to kind of see how this was working and my impression of LinkedIn was well just a bunch of connections and that's all you do he said you've really connected this to sales and and I think that's a big mistake for Bankers is not to think about well this is a tool like a CRM or Vertical IQ or RelPro. LinkedIn connects to sales and one thing that it can do really well is to help you with networking introductions which is the fifth kpi that we should be thinking about.

Brynne Tillman  19:16

 Yeah and there's lots of different ways to do this right and and quite honestly our biggest business well client referrals our second business B biggest business comes from like other sales training that don't do LinkedIn right so or they come from referral Partners so for Bankers typically a really good referral partner is a CPA maybe a tax attorney maybe an estate planner right there are lots of folks that are trusted advisors around the money right around the money that have influence over the decisions that the clients are making right so let's let's think about the importance of these folks.

In fact it’s networking and we used to say all the time when you're out prospecting it's fishing with a poll when you're networking it's fishing with a net right we could get many introductions from those folks so there's a couple of ways to do this you can go and engage with CPAs and and business owners on LinkedIn or my favorite way is when you're talking to your client about referrals have the conversation so you know do you like your CPA has how long have you been with her what you know what do you like what don't you like what and some people are

go oh my gosh I absolutely love her she's amazing.

So I might say as one of their trusted advisers if you're open I'd love a quick introduction or permission to drop your name to your CPA introduce myself I mean we're both you know pretty intrical in your financial position it would be great for us to to know each other so now I start to build relationships with CPAs and tax attorneys and estate attorneys of my clients of the people that I'm working with now I go to the next person and I say so how about your CPA do you like your CPA oh he has dropped the ball they got bought out by a bigger firm I've lost that you know personal connection oh well you know my client ABC uses this person they love her I just had had a conversation with or are you open to an introduction or I have three CPAs that be that have been vetted by my other clients would you like an introduction to all three and decide which ones make the most sense for you right so we are building a network of people that can refer us and we are being really good referral Partners at the same time it's a win-win win for everybody.

So here's the thing though so now I have the CPA conversation we're talking about our mutual client now this is probably the best time you have a very small window to talk to the CPA or you have to wait till April 16th but in the next couple of weeks this is a great time to reach out to those CPAs and be prepared with a conversation around so you know 2024 you there's a lot of predictions of a roller coaster of an economy this is the time where a lot of companies typically have cash flow issues and when they do get a big order they're not always prepared with inventory because they were trying to keep expenses low and you know we've got this great line of credit that's immediate so if they do make a sale like that they can have inventory as soon as Logistics will provide.

Here are a few triggers to listen for you're you know if in fact the businesses you're working with may need to have that line of credit in place Now's the Time to do this they are talking to every single client in January February March April of next year. This is the time to have a checklist for them a trigger for them all they have to do is make a quick introduction and you can take it from

There. So we're connecting on LinkedIn that's what we do with the CPA now the CPA in 20 in April 17 18 19 we're going to search through their connections and we're going to identify other people they're connected to that we might might want introductions to as well as making for them that was a very long rant on Jack rants.

Jack Hubbard  23:46 - 26:10

I love it. I love the rant and and it kind of like if you go out on a boat and the lake is very calm and you drop a big boulder in the in the lake the ripple effect is massive and that's the ripple effect when when you would you do exactly what you suggested but here's the danger I was working with a big Bank gosh 20 years ago and I said to them I said let's do an exercise I said you want to be a trusted adviser yeah yeah yeah um I said okay I want you to write down the name of the CPA and the attorney and other trusted advisers of your top client and they did and I said all right let's do number two some did it by number three nobody could finish it, finish the you know who else who were their trusted advisers.

And I said have you ever heard of share of heart they said what was a share of heart and I kind of showed them and they said oh you know we're our relationships are at risk if we don't know these trusted advisers LinkedIn provides you the greatest opportunity all you gotta do is go to your client that you're likely connected with and Linkedin and say look I'd love to connect with your trusted advisor so that I could be part of your team so that I can be proactive on your behalf.

This is what we're talking about here this is why LinkedIn is not just a collection of a bunch of baseball cards or recruiting tool this is a sales tool and it's it's pretty exciting and I want Brynne to talk about LinkedIn Sales Training 2024 in a second but one of the other things that really makes this so powerful is if a sales leader make sure that we establish the kpis and then we continue to measure them and Brynne you talked about one-on ones that's true it can be linked into a a team meeting or a coaching session or whatever the case might be it's not micromanagement it's a way for a leader to help their bankers get better.

You know Brynne for many years I did a public Workshop Bob St Meer and public workshops twice a year  in Chicago and it was great until the pandemic and then we had to kind of stop it but I love public workshops. Talk about LinkedIn Sales Training 2024 I'm so excited about this.

Brynne Tillman  26:10 - 30:58

 I am too and ultimately we are going to have the best of the best LinkedIn training specifically around using LinkedIn to start trust based conversations without being salesy but it is focused on growing new business opportunities and even expanding existing ones in some cases but we're going to have four weeks the first week we are going to build a resource driven profile. A profile that is designed to convert a visitor to a conversation and particularly the right visitor so that is really absolutely foundational.

Week number two we're going to talk about the three-legged stool that we call content it's

engagement curation and creation of content but Bankers don't worry we're not looking for you to do any major writing things like polls that can start really Discovery is kinds of conversations really powerful stuff .

Week number three is nurturing our existing connections we're going to take inventory of who we're already connected to. Identify the people that have moved right who's in a new company and you know we know there's huge turnover LinkedIn will tell you on average it's 20% of a year. So if you've been on LinkedIn for five years except for your business owners they're all at a different company now especially your CFOs the CFOs have a a very high stress level and a very high turnover So 20% one out of five of your CFOs are leaving this year. So taking those inventory and identifying who we should be talking to that we're ignoring.

Week number four is warm Market prospecting - This is where we go to those client referrals, those networking referrals, the opportunities to leverage our social proximity who we know that can help us get into the companies we want to be in and the conversations that we want to have.

So I mean this is really designed for commercial bankers and you know a B2B Banker someone that's out there but you know this has been greatly successful for branch managers who are responsible for business development even in connecting with their consumer clients right just that that they're that have personal accounts with you just connecting online we're going to

talk about that content and nurturing can help you get more and more cross solving products, right it'll help us expand that relationship.

So those are the four weeks we have the dates that we're we're solidifying now so we don't have anything for you to purchase but what we have is get added to the list so if you uh we already have uh someone that scanned the QR code which is great you can scan the QR code all we're asking I think is your name your email and your bank name and then we'll let you know when this launches.

It is crazy affordable that's all we're going to say like this is not some high ticket we Jack and I are completely committed to helping Bankers succeed in what may be a turmoil in 2024 and we are really committed to making sure that as many Bankers that need access to this kind of content in order to actually Rise Above the Rest and thrive in 2024 has that access and so do we

unveil the price now? $197 for the program and it also gives you three months of our coaching membership. Crazy I know but really we are in this to touch as many Bankers to help as many people as we can be positioned well to just come out of 2024 saying ah that was a piece of cake 

Jack Hubbard  30:58

We're going to make it happen and we're really excited about it and you'll certainly hear more from both of us as time goes along as well as I didn't do what I said that what I trained I'm going to be sending messages out and and uh working with Bankers to help them so I'm very excited about this. This was a great idea Brynne and by the way for those of you that are going to be in the program just know this LinkedIn just crossed a billion people around the world Brynne is one of 16 people that was named a 2023 LinkedIn in sales influencer so you're going to learn from the best and we're going to have some fun together so great to be with you as always on Thursdays Brynne and we look forward to seeing you going forward.

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 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!