Episode 70 Building Trust and Credibility on LinkedIn

Intro:

0:00:00 - Jack Hubbard: I've had the privilege of being in 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 is a people business. And I'll be talking with those people that make banking great here on Jack Rants with Modern Bankers.

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0:00:28 - Jack Hubbard: Happy Thursday, everybody. Hi, Brynne.

0:00:31 - Brynne Tillman: Hi, Jack.

0:00:33 - Jack Hubbard: Well, we have a great show today. And, you know, I had the great privilege over the last couple of weeks to do some very interesting interviews with Larry Levine and my good friend Chris Nichols. And one of the things that kept coming back is whether you're in person or you're online, trust is the foundation of everything. And today we're going to talk about how to build trust and credibility on LinkedIn.

This is a great subject, Brynne, and it's right in your wheelhouse. So I don't want to waste any time. Let's get started. The first thing that you always talk about in building trust and credibility is your mindset. Talk about a couple of things there that are important to you.

0:01:23 - Brynne Tillman: Yeah. And it's interesting because what we teach is social selling. But what we don't want to do is sell on LinkedIn. We want to start a rapport, bring value, and really create some strategic relationships that can lead to sales. So the first thing we have to do, well, I'll say the biggest mistake that salespeople make is connect and pitch. Right? So we've got to turn that around and detach from what our prospects are worth to us and attach to what we are worth to the prospect.

So, you know, in putting this together, Jack, I had a revelation on bant, which is the traditional sales process of budget, authority, need, and time. Right. And I recognize when we focus on bant, we are focusing on what matters to us as the seller, and we're not focusing on what matters to the buyer. So I'm actually putting a poll together, like, in between work today because I think that mindset needs to. We have to get away on LinkedIn from Bant, right? We have to get away from qualifying them based on our needs as a seller. And we want to treat the person, really, as a human being who might be in the right seat of someone that we would sell to, but not necessarily a lead. Yet they're not lead until they say, you know, I'd love to hear a little bit about how you can help me. And until then, it's a human being that we're networking with.

Another way to think about this is to treat the person on the other side of the message the same way you would on the other side of the table. If I met you at a networking meeting, I would not immediately pitch you. We would have a lovely conversation. Right. And so all of this comes down to slowing down our outreach to speed up our outcome and detaching from the sale and attaching to how we can be of value to the person that we are identifying as a prospect. They are not identifying themselves as a prospect yet.

0:03:48 - Jack Hubbard: Yeah, you know, it's really true. I've always kind of felt there's nothing worse than a desperate banker. And too often what happens is that's caused by the culture and a sales manager who pushes numbers and not solutions and not relationships. And so one of the things that I always look at is if I'm going on a joint call, I'm going to Kentucky next week on Wednesday, and I'm going to deliver a one-day program on making effective business development calls for Kentucky bankers.

And one of the things I've always noticed when I make joint calls with a banker is if I say, well, show me the questions that you're going to ask. And if the questions are focused on products, even though they don't push a product, but they're focused on the product, the buyer tends to push away. If they're focused on the buyer, there's more opportunity to have a great conversation. And statistically, last year, Greenwich did a study and found that only 17% of bankers got into call number two after call number one with a prospect. And one of the reasons was they asked terrible questions.

And part of the reason for that is their mindset. When they're preparing for a call, when they're preboarding these questions, think about, what if I was on the other side of the table and I was asking these questions, how would I feel about myself? And so if you change your mindset to say, we live in a world of abundance, there's lots of opportunity, and my goal is to help this buyer. The whole thing changes. And that's so true on LinkedIn as well.

But let's take a little bit deeper, and dive into this. Let's go from mindset to tactical and start talking about profile. Because when someone comes to your profile, 317 in the morning or 1022 in the morning, what they're looking for is, what can you do for me? Not what can I do for you? So talk about the profile as kind of a foundational element of this approach.

0:05:57 - Brynne Tillman: Yeah, I love this. And so the profile actually is this very carefully balanced landing page, right, where people get here. And of course, they need to know what you do and how you help, but you also need to be seen as a resource. If our goal is to be seen as a trusted advisor, we have to act as one. And our profile is the place to start. And there are lots of different elements on here, including your about section.

Most bankers write their About section more like a bio or what I think could go into your experience section. So since we have two sections, let's rethink the About section and let's make the About section very clearly a resource. So if we start with what are the challenges that our small businesses and our business leaders are facing in our little towns, right? Talk about insights. And these are, I would say, almost banker-agnostic insights, right?

These are value nuggets that they don't have to use you as a banker to have gotten value from learning these insights. That's how we lead to our solution versus leading with our solution. Right. We're getting them to think differently about what banking can look like, but it's not. Here's how we do it. It's here's how you should start thinking about your banking relationship and how some of these things can actually have an impact on your growth goals, on whatever your business goals are.

That then what we're now seeing as an advisor, and that's our goal. You know, Jack, you always say we should never ever call ourselves a trusted advisor, but our job is to position ourselves so that other people see us as that trusted advisor. And so the About section is a great place to do that once we've earned the right. Now we can talk just briefly about how we can help and that we're willing to have a conversation even if we don't work together.

0:08:09 - Brynne Tillman: You'd love to have a conversation to help them do x, to help them learn more about what they can do to grow their business in a challenging marketplace, whatever that might be. So I do think that about section is really important. Before we move to the next section, do you want to add anything to that?

0:08:29 - Jack Hubbard: Well, you know, you've always talked about the importance, of earning the right. And I really like what you said about my concept of don't say you're a trusted advisor, be a trusted advisor. And so part of that is profile. Part of it also is the next thing I want to ask you about. And that's the featured section of your profile. This is, I think, a really underutilized section of the profile. It can really amplify that trust.

One of the neat things about this. You can probably talk more directly to this is now your ability, if you have the premium membership, to be able to take part of a recommendation or a full recommendation and move it up into your featured section. So now people aren't, you're not telling people that you're a trusted advisor, they're telling the marketplace that you're a trusted advisor.

0:09:38 - Brynne Tillman: Yeah, it's very exciting. Typically if you have the free LinkedIn, you still have the featured section and you can add resources here, ebooks, connect posts, and lots of things. But if you have a sales navigator or any paid premium feature in LinkedIn, you can now link different parts of your profile. And our favorite bar none, is now adding a recommendation. And it's just pinning it there, but it does draw attention. So I got this beautiful recommendation from Lori Richardson, who is arguably one of the very top women in sales professionals.

And so I've had that pinned there for a couple of weeks and I've had now and I have to go count. So I don't want to exaggerate. Four or five people reached out to me because they saw that recommendation and I had one person say to me, if Lori Richardson is saying you're the LinkedIn person, I'm not looking any further. So that was pretty awesome.

0:10:44 - Jack Hubbard: Yeah, that is great. And so we need to take advantage of this. And one of the things that, you know, kind of get off this subject just a little bit is we've got to invest. If we want to build trust in the marketplace, we have to invest a little bit of time in ourselves. I'm really big on the weekend looking at some things on my LinkedIn profile and constantly tweaking it. And it might be a word here or there adding something to the featured section.

Too often what I see is bankers that have very old profiles that haven't been updated in a long period of time, and that takes away from your trust and credibility. But one more thing on the profile that I'd love to talk about is that recommendation and how important that is from a two-way street.

0:11:37 - Brynne Tillman: Yeah. So I love this question, Jack. Most of us will think in terms of how many recommendations can get from our clients. And I think that's great. Absolutely. And help them do it right. Have a conversation with your client. You know, we're so glad we've been able to help you get the funding that you needed for, you know, that growth project, your inventory, whatever it is. Right. I would be honored, based on all these kinds of things that you said, if you'd be open to saying that on LinkedIn. I can even recap some of those wonderful phrases and send them over to you. You can use that or anything else. Great.

I love that. Right? That's credibility. Now why don't we recommend our clients? So maybe I just did a big loan, maybe a commercial loan for a customer who's expanding their warehouse. And we were able to help them get funded and everything on kept it all on track and on time and all those fun things. And we go, okay, we want that recommendation, but we want to recommend them. So I might say, Jack, it's been an absolute pleasure working with you in this twelve-month project to get this warehouse up and going. And I'm glad that you've been so happy with what we've done.

And you know, I would like to recommend, I'm going to recommend you too. So I send a recommendation that says, Jack was so fabulous to work with all his, you know, he was so organized and everything was on time that helped us really help them launch this amazing project. So now that lives on Jack's profile Jane's profile friends' profile and Ann's profile. So we are recommending all of our clients for being, assuming it's true, authentic. If they were a very difficult client, you might skip them.

Right. But, generally, we're making these recommendations. We now have real estate on their profile. So we make them feel good. So, and that's not the only reason I'm doing it, but we make them feel good. It feels great to get that. It feels really good to be appreciated, number one. Number two, they rarely get these like people aren't doing this. So it completely stands out. Number three, it deepens some loyalty.

Right? How hard is it for them to go look at another bank when you've worked closely with them and you now have a recommendation, it just deepens that relationship. And we are now taking up a little bit of real estate on their profile. So when someone is checking them out, they can see who they've banked with.

0:14:29 - Jack Hubbard: Well, let's take this to another level. And you always spur on such great thoughts in my mind. So let's say that I'm a banker and I work in a vertical, so let's say I work in medical or not-for-profits or what have you, and I do a lot of business with this company and I want to recommend them. And I might say something like since 1946, Hoffer Plastics has, and then go on and on. I recently came across, recently had a chance to work with XYZ on a particular project and this is going to really benefit the community.

So now it says, I have expertise in this vertical industry and I've complimented this company for what they're doing in the, and I think that's, that's an essence of community banking and it's easy to do. And I know you're huge on, using chat GPT and I am too. As long as you can kind of blend your humanness within that whole project and with just a few facts, you can get chat GPT. I like to use perplexity AI. They're both very, very good and they're both free and it's short.

0:15:43 - Jack Hubbard: Then you can write, then you could edit that recommendation, make it bu, and post it up there, and boy, that's so powerful.

0:15:51 - Brynne Tillman: Yeah, I haven't used it for recommendations yet, but that's, that's fabulous. I love that. Awesome.

0:15:59 - Jack Hubbard: Another kind of high-level bullet point to show trust and expertise and your profile certainly does this. But content, what you put out into the Internet, into the marketplace, really shows who you are as an individual, your comments, what you post, etcetera. Talk a little bit about content in the context of building trust and credibility.

0:16:28 - Brynne Tillman: Well, so the first thing is don't pitch in your content. Don't make it all about your products and your services. That's where you'll lose the credibility. And by the way, you can link some of that into your profile. One of the things we didn't talk about was providing services where you are encouraged to talk about your products and services, but your content and your posts are not where you want to do this.

So if you have a particular niche in manufacturing, sharing industry trends and community content from associations or wherever those manufacturers are getting their content, is a great idea. We tend to recommend Vertical IQ as a place to find industry content, and they do a great job of summing up a whole article. And you know, I will tell you an interesting approach when you're doing this is you don't have to share the whole article, you can just share a summary of the article.

If you're interested in the whole article, send me a little DM. I'm happy to share it with you. And so now you start a conversation beyond that post. So lots of things that you can do in that content. The other thing, I think when it comes to content, excuse me, is amplifying other people's messages, right? Engaging with other people, not just your post, don't just post and hope that people are going to show up, but find the influencers in the manufacturing world or whatever vertical that is, and amplify their content. You do it all the time with Chris Nichols. Right. He has some great content.

You're amplifying someone else's voice, not just sharing your own stuff, which is also fabulous, but the combination of engaging and amplifying other people along with sharing your own content is. Is a big win in building trust and credibility.

0:18:42 - Jack Hubbard: Yeah, no doubt. And I want to go back to something you said about LinkedIn. I got an email from our friend David Buffalo, and he told us yesterday that LinkedIn has just launched a brand new tool. This is amazing. Localized industry data, 2 million, 200 million data points. And so now, one of the things that clients have been asking for since LinkedIn started or since vertical IQ started is, how do I take what's going on with pediatricians and put it down at the local level?

It's available now. It just came out. It's amazingly powerful. And congratulations to Bobby Martin and Susan Bell and their team for being so client-focused and so on top of this. And when you talk about Vertical IQ and our friends at RelPro, this is one of the reasons that we like to amplify what they're doing.

0:19:43 - Brynne Tillman: Sorry. Oh, did you hear me?

0:19:46 - Jack Hubbard: No.

0:19:47 - Brynne Tillman: Okay, good. I have a very loud dog. I apologize.

0:19:53 - Jack Hubbard: No problem. I love dogs. We both love dogs. So what they're, what, what they're doing, vertical IQ and rel pro just continue to add to their. They are great resources for bankers and others. So you mentioned Vertical IQ, and I wanted to kind of bring that up. So, another way. This is a really good way. So I want to start a conversation with Brynne, Chris, or Susan. I want to make sure that in that connection request, they see a level of trust that, allows them to accept my connection and b, to say, hmm, maybe I'd like to start a conversation with them. So talk about connection requests, Rin.

0:20:38 - Brynne Tillman: Yeah. So, first of all, when we send out a connection request, we always want to note and context, and selling to them is not a context that matters to them. Right. So we don't want to just send blank notes. We want, it might be, to come across an article on your bank, maybe it's, I really loved the content you shared, and it may simply be I was having a conversation with a shared connection and your name came up. Whatever it is, we want to make sure that they don't feel like we're cold-calling them.

Right. It's that we've really taken the time to make it about them. Now, be careful with this because I am now getting what seems to be very personalized connection requests. And it turns out they're really scraping because I'll get a message that says, I really love the work that you're doing at the modern banker. You're helping so many people succeed. And I feel like that's personal. But then they'll say, I'd love to share with you how we can help your LinkedIn presence. And I'm like, that isn't me.

Me. Do you want to know how you can help me? Like, right? So if they are scraping information now, these automated bots from profiles, to make it feel personalized, to me, this is as inauthentic as you can get. Don't fake personalization, please. I mean, I can't stress this enough. I would rather. No message that is a fake one, even though I don't want no message but a fake one. Imagine we're trying. Our goal is to be seen as this trusted advisor, yet we're starting off a relationship with a lie.

I visited your profile and I noticed this. They didn't visit my profile. I have premium. I know who's visiting my profile. So the connection request just needs to be authentic. And I'm going to go back to that mindset of treating the person on the other side of the message the same way you would for someone on the other side of the table. Would you start a conversation with someone at a trade show with a lie?

No, let's not do that here. Don't tell them you read your profile if you haven't. Don't tell them you read the article if you haven't. I just. I'm on a little bit of a soapbox, Jack. I'm sorry.

0:23:20 - Jack Hubbard: I think it's great. I think it's great. And there's one more thing on the connection request I wanted to ask you about. But one of the things that I think too often we do is bury the headline. If I'm going to try to connect with Stan Robinson, and I know you and we're connected to Stan, we're both connected. I'm going to say Bryn Tillman and you and I. Brynn Tillman and I are connected. Stan, I mentioned. I talked to her last Thursday, and she mentioned you and your expertise in sales navigation.

I'm going to put that right at the top of my LinkedIn connection request. I'm not going to bury that headline. Now. LinkedIn, in some ways, has helped us because, like Axe or Twitter, whatever you want to call it, it continues to condense the number of characters that you can use. And while I don't like that we can use 300 when we have the premium service, it does force us not to bury that headline and to personalize something so that when somebody opens that connection request, the first word they see or early on is Brynne Tillman or Stan Robinson.

That's important.

0:24:33 - Brynne Tillman: I think that's.

0:24:35 - Jack Hubbard: Yeah, I do, too. And now let's not stop there. When they do connect with you, send them back something of value. Talk about that, because you do that.

0:24:46 - Brynne Tillman: Really well, you know? So there are two kinds of welcome messages. There's the welcome message to someone who has accepted your connection request and the welcome message to someone who you've accepted. Right. So let's go backward for a second. Someone asks you to connect, and you say, yes. My welcome message is going to be, you know, I'm going to do my due diligence. This is someone I'd love to connect with. I accept.

Thank you for connecting. I noticed you're a banker. I'm not sure if you're exploring new ways to grow your business, but we have a public library that has tons of resources for free. If you're interested, let me know. I'm happy to send over a link. I'm asking permission. And I'll have P's. May I ask who found me if they didn't say it in their note? Right. And so because they approached me, I can now notice it's completely free and I'm not spamming them with the link. It's an offer that they can ignore or say no to. But you'd be shocked how many people actually want it. It's fabulous, right?

Now, if I've connected with them, it has to be a very different approach. Right. If I pursued them, I might reach out. So. And again, this is where personalization really comes into play. Let's say they shared a Chris Nichols quote and that, you know, and I connected with them, or they engaged on your content with Chris Nichols. I engage with them. I asked them to connect. I see. We both love Jack Hubbard's content. Would love to connect with you.

Now, I'm either going to share another piece of Chris Nichols content or a Jack Hubbard content, because we already have that in common. So I might say, you know, I noticed we both really liked, that article that Jack shared from Chris Nichols on AI in banking. I recently came across another piece from Chris Nichols on this. Or I don't know if you heard the podcast that Jack did with Chris Nichols, but I'd love to share that link with you whatever this is you want to find out what they care about and share more of that.

So my welcome message is very personalized. Now I will go out and this is something that I will do frequently. I will go out and find a podcast. I like using listennotes.com to find a podcast on a topic. So if it's AI in banking now, I'm going to go find another AI in banking now. I don't have time to listen to it right now. I will queue it up because I love podcasts. And now my message is, that I noticed that we both engaged in AI and banking with Chris Nichols.

I recently came across another podcast that I have queued up. Totally authentic. I haven't listened to it yet, but it looks excellent. If you're interested, let's connect. Or have we already connected? It's a welcome message. If you're interested, let me know. I'm happy to send you a link. I am not selling. I am having a normal conversation around a topic that we've already identified. And that's why it has to be hyper, hyper-personalized based on why we connected in the first place.

0:28:03 - Jack Hubbard: Boy, that is so good. And related to podcasts. One of the things I'll do is I know that James Robert Lay, for example, digital banking, banking on disruption, Eric Cook is involved in that one, Larry Levine's podcast and the Community Banker, the community bank podcast by South State bank correspondent Division. So I have a few that I go to, and I know that if I recommend that or share a link it's going to be a good program and there's not going to be a lot of blue stuff or wrong messages or anything along those lines. So I like that a lot.

So you talk about as we, as we go to this last section, you talk about connect and pitch. I love that. I like to think of this part of it as connect and collect. In other words, your goal here is not to collect as many connections as possible. Your goal is to nurture the connections you have. And you have several components of this. Talk about nurturing your connections and some things you can do here to continue to build trust and add to your credibility.

0:29:18 - Brynne Tillman: Yeah, and a lot of this comes down to sharing content, whether it's industry trends or content about their company or what's, or geographic trends that are happening. Maybe there are, you know, chamber events. I mean, there's just a lot of opportunities that are not about banking to just keep in front of them and keep bringing value. So, you know, one of the things, and I'm not even a local company anymore. Right. We're national, but I still. And you too, locally with St. Charles Bank, like you really want to be deeply seeped in your community.

So I'm on the board of the local chamber. I go to all the networking events. That's not where my business is coming from today necessarily. However, I still nurture. I will. Look, if there's a big event coming, I'll reach out to all the bankers in my area and say, hey, I don't know if you know about this mayor's breakfast. That's next week. It's completely free. And I think there are going to be hundreds of people there who would love for you to attend. Right. And it's. And now I have an opportunity to see them in person.

So bankers need to be leveraging these opportunities. There are an enormous amount of free events, or if you're sponsoring an event as a bank, oh, my gosh, what a great opportunity to invite people to that. So keeping in touch with our folks. It does not have to be all the things that are happening at the bank. It's whatever can bring them value. You can search for free LinkedIn people in your town and invite them. It's so simple to do your first-degree connections.

So we want to make sure we're staying in front of them and bringing them value. And the value is not for us as the bankers, it's the value for them as the business owner. Right?

0:31:15 - Jack Hubbard: Yeah, that's so true. You know, recently, this month is. And where did this time go? It's our one-year anniversary on LinkedIn. We didn't start our training program for a couple of months, but we got together and we did this, and I'm so excited about it. And so we're getting a lot of messages. Congratulations on your anniversary with the Modern Banker and what I've done. And this might be crazy, but when someone does this for me, I'll read, if it's a first-degree connection, I'll reach out, send them a video message, and then I'll tell him, them on the video message that I'm going to send them.

Watch. In your message on LinkedIn, I found a great article, or I have a great podcast, or here's something Brynne and I did that might be perfect for you. So this whole idea of video messaging and audio messaging brings. So powerful.

0:32:14 - Brynne Tillman: Yeah. So I love that. Yeah. And you know what people really connect with, with you person to person when they see your face. So I don't use the audio message all that much. I really tend to use the video message. And yeah, I agree with you. I don't think there's a better way to stay in touch than for someone to see your face.

0:32:37 - Jack Hubbard: Yep, absolutely. And then engage on their content. We talked about this a little bit, but, boy, when you've got a first-degree connection, you have such a great opportunity. If they do, what I do is when I connect with somebody, I look at how often they post. And if they post often, I'll ring their bell. Because what I want to do is I want to find out the content that they send and I'll look through my notifications and then I can engage with them, especially early on in our relationship, to let them know that I value what they bring to the table.

0:33:13 - Brynne Tillman: I love that. Really good stuff, Jack.

0:33:16 - Jack Hubbard: Yeah, it was great. It was a great session. These always go really, really fast. Again, thanks to our great sponsors, vertical IQ and RelPro. Congratulations to Vertical IQ for the brand new benefit to their members. And always good to see you, Brynne. We'll see you next week.

0:33:34 - Brynne Tillman: Great to see you too, Jack.

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Gaining the trust of a business owner is no easy feat. It requires hours of research and preparation, learning the ins and outs of their business, the industry, and even their local economy. But it doesn’t have to. Made by bakers for bankers Vertical IQ is your trusted source for reliable, convenient, focused, and localized industry intelligence all in one convenient place. Helping your teams save time, boost sales, and gain a competitive edge. Learn more at verticaliq.com. 

Outro

0:33:36 - Jack Hubbard: 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 TMB podcast. 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. [email protected] at the modern banker finally, don't forget, make today and every day a great client day.