How to Build Valued Relationships With Your Buyers on LinkedIn, with Trevor Turnbull [Episode 369]

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Joining me on this episode is Trevor Turnbull, Owner of Linked Into Leads, online reputation strategist, LinkedIn trainer, keynote speaker, and owner of the 30 Day Sales Machine program.

Key Takeaways

• Trevor’s agency, Linked Into Leads, is in Vancouver. 98% of their clients are outside of Vancouver. They generate leads, using LinkedIn to turn cold leads into warm prospects.
• Trevor uses LinkedIn as a tool — a massive database of opportunities — to get his clients in front of their audience at the right time in the buying process. Trevor teaches methods for effectiveness.
• Trevor has a degree in marketing, but went straight into sales in 2003, cold calling from the Yellow Pages. In 2009, he started using LinkedIn for social selling, human to human.
• Tip: make sure your profile photo is professional. Don’t treat LinkedIn as an online résumé. Those who view your profile want to know how you can help them, but you have just six seconds to capture their attention.
• In a LinkedIn campaign, use laser focus. Specifically aim for your target persona, and speak to them directly about pain points, with headline, summary, and supporting media.
• The 30 Day Sales Machine is a marketing cycle program for a LinkedIn campaign of 1000 connection requests (50 per day), and replying to responses. Use a dedicated email account for a campaign.
• Don’t just join LinkedIn groups of your peers. Join groups of your target buyers. You have to request to join. Let the group admin know what value you offer to them.
• In a LinkedIn campaign, define your searches, and save the searches for further filtering.
• TIP: Use the permission method for connecting: Thank you for visiting my profile. I’m looking to expand my network in the (blank) space, here in (blank). Would you be open to connecting on LinkedIn? This gets much better response than the generic request.
• If the person accepts, follow up with a message that doesn’t ask for anything: Great to have you in my network, I look forward to sharing ideas. If there’s anybody I can help connect you with, don’t hesitate to ask.
• Differentiate yourself and start a conversation with a second follow-up such as: I’m looking to get some feedback from decision makers such as yourself on the challenges they’re facing with (blank). Some of your peers have said this …

More About Trevor Turnbull

What’s your most powerful sales attribute?

Authenticity. I’m an open book, in this to help people.

Who is your sales role model?

I follow a number of people online, including Grant Cardone,

Eric Lofholm, and Gary Vaynerchuk.

What’s one book that every salesperson should read?

Sales Scripting Mastery: The 7-Step System for Consistently Delivering Successful Sales Presentations, by Eric Lofholm.

What music is on your playlist right now?

Chill music. Anything Bob Marley.

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul (0:35)

It’s time to Accelerate. I’m your host, Andy Paul. Join me as I host conversations with the leading experts in sales, marketing sales, automation, sales process, leadership, management, training, coaching, any resource that I believe will help you accelerate the growth of your sales, your business and most importantly, you. 

Hello and welcome to Accelerate. I’m excited to talk with my guest today. Joining me is Trevor Turnbull. He’s the owner of LinkedIn Into Leads. He’s an online reputation strategist, LinkedIn trainer and keynote speaker. Also, owner of the 30-day Sales Machine program. Trevor, welcome to accelerate.

 

Trevor Turnbull (1:15)

Andy, thanks very much for asking me to be on. It’s a pleasure.

 

Andy Paul (1:18)

My pleasure. So, take a minute, introduce yourself beyond that little sketchy intro I gave.

 

Trevor Turnbull (1:24)

Sure. So, as you mentioned, I am the owner of a company called LinkedIn Into Leads. It’s my agency. I’m actually based in Vancouver. Surprisingly enough, I’d say 98% of our clients are actually outside of Vancouver. It’s a truly digital, virtual company that we have. We do lead generation for clients around using LinkedIn to find those cold leads, turn them into warm prospects and ultimately more clients for their business. And we do that by ultimately training our clients to understand our process through our training program called 30-day Sales Machine. Knowing full well that some of our members don’t ever want to do the work, so they actually end up hiring us in the end. But I’ve just been in the LinkedIn space for a number of years. I’ve been doing this for about nine years now. And my LinkedIn-Fluence program as well, as another one that we created about five, six years ago, we’ve had about 20,000 people go through that one. It’s really geared towards the job seeker, from a personal branding standpoint, that type of thing. So, yeah, I live eat and breathe LinkedIn every single day. This is all we do.

 

Andy Paul (2:31)

All right, so what did you think when Microsoft acquired LinkedIn? Or made the offer. I guess is not closed yet.

 

Trevor Turnbull (2:36)

Yeah, well, it’s the same thing that I always think, “alright, this sounds good there’s going to be change”, but there’s always change, that’s the name of the game with this. In fact, it’s kind of why my business is thriving, because it’s never static. It’s also one of the frustrating parts of doing what I do is that it’s always changing, but at the same time with change comes opportunity. There’s nothing ever that closes completely, that is squashes opportunity, if they take away a feature, they bring something else new and that creates opportunity for a short time period.

 

Andy Paul (3:08)

Well, that seems to be one of the frustrations with LinkedIn though, is that there’s this unpredictability inconsistency. What is this? Is a sales tool, not a sales tool? So, from your perspective as somebody that’s waist deep, or up to your armpits on it, day after day after day, what do you sort of see coming? Do you see some temps to sort of rationalize the way the product is structured, maybe how it works with or doesn’t work with CRM packages? I mean, what do you see going for salespeople?

 

Trevor Turnbull (3:41)

Well, forever LinkedIn has wanted to be a true sales CRM, and especially with their Sales Navigator tool, they’ve attempted to kind of be the one stop shop for that, and I know they’ve made a really strong push to actually have sales teams out there pitching and selling their Sales Navigator program. And it’s been slow to adoption just because people are used to using their own CRM and they want to integrate it with Sales Navigator. And of course, nothing does. And if it does, though, like Salesforce, there’s still some ties in there, or there used to be.

 

Andy Paul (4:16)

Yeah, it’s just such a closed environment, it is? Or relatively open?

 

Trevor Turnbull (4:19)

It’s super expensive if you want to go down that path. So, like, I actually really make a good living because I’m able to be completely independent, I don’t work for LinkedIn, I don’t sell their programs or anything like that. I just look at it as a tool, a massive database of opportunities where then you need to implement practical solutions to be able to get in front of your target audience on a consistent basis, build relationships and close more business over time. Because with my strategies that I teach, I don’t ever claim to shorten a person’s sales cycle. If it takes you six weeks, or six months, or a year to close a deal. I’m not going to shorten that but what we can do is put you in front of the right person at the right time, using a tool like LinkedIn where you might never other in any other way be able to get in touch with that person.

 

Andy Paul (5:09)

I think that’s sort of interesting, and I sort of noticed that when I was reading your blogs and looking at your materials in preparation for this interview is that, for a LinkedIn expert, you sound a lot like a traditional sales guy.

 

Trevor Turnbull (5:22)

Well, that’s my background, right? I actually have a university degree in marketing, and I never used that degree, I went straight into sales in 2003. And I learned the old school way, I was taught by a very traditional sales manager who said, “here’s the Yellow Pages book, start making phone calls.” And I did that for years and was successful at it too. But the times have changed. And quite frankly, I hit a wall about three or four years into doing that. And I said, “there just has to be a better way.” I discovered LinkedIn in 2009. And, ever since then, I’ve been trying to figure out how to use it most effectively to warm up those calls so that you’re not having to make cold calls again.

 

Andy Paul (5:59)

Yeah, I mean, you’d written an article saying that you don’t need more leads to close more sales. And again, I thought that was interesting come from a LinkedIn expert, because frankly, some of your peers, the service called the LinkedIn Ecosystems, trainers and so on, believe that, it’s not like it’s really selling, right? But you know, social selling has the word selling for a reason. I mean, you have to sell.

 

Trevor Turnbull (6:25)

Yeah, absolutely. And again, I think that’s why it is more than, because I’ve actually had opportunities to work very closely with LinkedIn, and with different platforms, and that type of thing, but I always have chosen to stay independent in this way because there’s no one magic formula that works. But it definitely in teaching people how to use LinkedIn, I teach it in a way that’s very respectful in the way that you’re reaching out and connecting with people. It should be a very human to human experience, and you do have to sell those sell, and that’s why I wrote that article, is because I find a lot of times people get caught up in generating the next lead, they always got to keep the pipeline filled, and they don’t focus on the people they’ve already spent time warming up. And they lose those old school skills that are still important. Like, phone calls, and face to face meetings is how business is still done. So, you can avoid that. You got to combine it.

 

Andy Paul (7:16)

Alright, let’s spend a few minutes talking about some of the most common mistakes you see that sellers are still making with LinkedIn today, starting with the profile, it seems hard to have to still talk about this, nine years in or 10 years in, as you talked about. But, it just amaze me how many times I get connection requests from people that don’t have pictures on the profiles and so on. And these are people that aren’t just some random person from some far-off land that that’s a student or something. But yeah, someone that’s got a legitimate title and legitimate background, yet they have their own profile picture.

 

Trevor Turnbull (7:50)

Yeah. And that’s about the basics, as you say, make sure you get that good photo on there, and it’s professionally done and all that but even beyond that, too. I find that people still look at LinkedIn, like an online resume. They pad it up with their past experience and their jobs and their employments, or sorry, their education. But at the end of the day, the person that’s looking at their profile does not care about that person. They want to know how you can help me do my job better, or how you can help me save money or be more efficient at what I do. So just by changing the tone of the way that you communicate on your LinkedIn profile, could make a huge impact on capturing that person’s attention. Where in today’s day and age, what do you have? Six seconds, if that, to actually capture somebody’s attention? So, we actually teach to be laser focused when you do campaigns with LinkedIn. So even if you sell whatever, insurance, or cars, or it doesn’t matter, if you are being specific to one type of person, one industry, one rule type in your headline in your summary, that’s what speaks to that person. Not, “I’m the jack of all trades, and I work with every industry out there”, because that doesn’t resonate. You’re just another person in a big pond right here, another fish in a big, big pond.

 

Andy Paul (9:05)

So, you’re talking about the title, the headline, the summary I imagined because I just like people, I don’t get much beyond that. I mean, you can have your resume in there. But to your point, I don’t think people really care.

 

Trevor Turnbull (9:17)

No, the rest of it is complimentary. Any kind of media you can add in that supports what you’re talking about, or recommendations and that type of thing. That’s all good to have. But yeah, you’re right, like the summary is about as far down as people go. And again, my advice is always to address the person that you’re trying to get in touch with directly, and the way that you write it, and also talk about pain points, because you want that person to read it and go, “oh, that’s me. I need to talk to this person because they just identified me and every pain-point I have, it sounds like they can solve it.”

 

Andy Paul (9:48)

Okay. Now the other thing that seems to be a trend, a basic common mistake, and we’ll touch on this again as we get further into the talk today. But yeah, I can tell when people are connecting with me just for the purpose of emailing me, oftentimes in a way that is kind of spammy. So, two questions, one, is this starting to ruin LinkedIn a little bit? This increased sales or proliferation of all these spam, even though it’s not spam necessarily, but what can you do to outreach to someone in an authentic way?

 

Trevor Turnbull (10:29)

Yeah. There’s no doubt, because of access to online trainings, and a lot of people that are doing what I do, some that are new to it, some that have been around for a long time, there’s more and more people that are starting to use LinkedIn very proactively. But I still find that a lot of times people do it the wrong way, which again, you already mentioned that before, but I don’t advocate that you actually sell anything on LinkedIn. It’s not what it’s for. It’s not a sales tool per se. It is just a piece of the puzzle that allows you to access the database that includes all the people that you want to connect with. Everything that we teach around, connecting with people and even follow up messages has nothing to do with sales. Unless of course, you’re in a specific type of job role. I’ll give you a good example. I used to work in the sign business, I used to sell large illuminated signage, and my clientele was three types of people. It was architects, project managers, with construction companies and engineers.

 

Andy Paul (11:29)

So like signs with the company’s name on the side of a building?

 

Trevor Turnbull (11:30)

Yeah, exactly. Illuminated signage. So, I knew that those people likely wanted me to be able to bid on their project. So, it was it was a simple task of, “hey, I sell signs, do you need signs? I’m happy to go onto a vendor list if I can.” And that’s about as straightforward as you can get, right? Because most times, those architects and everybody, they’re happy that just add another person to the list. But that’s not everybody that uses LinkedIn. Most people, if they approach that way and say “hey, I do marketing consulting” or, “hey, I sell insurance, do you need insurance?” Of course, you’re going to get ignored because you’re one of thousands of people doing the same thing. Instead, you need to look at it with a longer-term perspective. And that’s where a lot of people get lost. And I don’t know, if you or your listeners follow Gary Vaynerchuk. And Gary always talks about, being patience and playing the long-term game. And if you have to do this with LinkedIn too. LinkedIn is just another source. That’s another tool to find the people that you want to connect with. But if you try and sell people on LinkedIn within one or two messages, it just doesn’t work. But if you can use it in a consistent way over time and build relationships and actually position yourself as an expert– there’s an interesting stat that says that I think, a buyer is 50 to 57% the way through their buying decision before they ever reach out to a salesperson to have a discussion.

 

Andy Paul (12:57)

Right, that comes from CB, the challenger salespeople, who come up with that data, right?

 

Trevor Turnbull (13:02)

Yeah, for sure. So, your LinkedIn profile, and then the media that links to a landing page, that then puts a person on an email list, that then introduces them to your podcast, that then gets them to sign up for a webinar, and then buy your product or service. That’s the cycle now that people buy it, they do their research ahead of time, they don’t even want to hear from you before that. So, you have to take a look at LinkedIn as just another lead channel, another source, medium to be able to get in front of the right people. And that’s the really the most powerful part about it is that, all of those people define exactly who they are, they fill out their profiles to tell you their role and their industry and their experience and everything else. And that’s why it’s so powerful.

 

Andy Paul (13:44)

Okay, sort of interesting to bring up, so it’s an investment. You have a program called 30-day Sales Machine, which sounds like very short-term as opposed to being long-term. So, tell us about that. A little, how are you squaring those two things?

 

Trevor Turnbull (14:03)

Yeah, so the 30-day Sales Machine, we named it that instead of the 30-day LinkedIn Machine, because again, we know that this is more about a full marketing mix. LinkedIn being the main source to be able to find the right people that you want to connect with. And the 30-day aspect to it is that, I know myself and our members and people that watch our webinars and whatnot, too. They like to do things in short spurts. So, people will execute a campaign for 30 days, and then allow the opportunity for those replies to come back in. So, we always do everything in 30-day cycles. Because typically, if we run a LinkedIn campaign, we’re identifying, say, up to 1000 people that might be potential clients or referral partners or whatever it might be. When sending connection requests to that many people, you can only really do up to 50 per day before you kind of hit limits on LinkedIn. That’s kind of the max you can do. So, to do 50 a day, it takes 20 business days to do that. And then the last 10 days of the month, you’re replying to the responses that are coming in. So, everything kind of ties into that 30-day concept. Now, some of our members that go through the training actually do see quick results, because they happen to get in front of the right person at the right time. And that person says, “I am looking for what do you have to offer, what great timing”, but it doesn’t always work like that. So, we don’t ever claim that you’re guaranteed to get results. What we do claim is that if you don’t start now, you started three months from now you’ve missed out on opportunities to at least create that awareness that your products and services do exist. And of course, stay ahead of your competition.

 

Andy Paul (15:39)

Well, let’s walk through the program a little bit. So, you start with setting the foundation, which I thought was really interesting, then you really get down to the detail about email and other settings in LinkedIn, but I think most people probably really ignore.

 

Trevor Turnbull (15:52)

Yeah, the foundational part that we get into at the beginning is really necessary so that you don’t get overwhelmed as to why you’re trying to accomplish and how you can manage it effectively. Because yeah, we recommend that people set up a dedicated email for LinkedIn, so, you can filter all the messages that come back to it. It ends up in one inbox, otherwise, it’s just info overload. The interface of LinkedIn is not very great for searching, and tagging, and creating folders, you just can’t do that. So, you need another way to organize all that stuff. So, we make sure that people when they get started, they have the foundation set up, to be able to manage an effective campaign once it starts to scale, because everybody’s busy. So, to add hours worth of work on their day is just not realistic. You need that you need a way to manage it effectively.

 

Andy Paul (16:41)

Yeah. I was just interviewing Jill Konrath. And by the time this episode airs, her interview will air about her new book, which is, how do you gain hours in your day as opposed to spend more hours in your day? Now, one of the things that you talked about in terms of developing your target audience and goals is behind the premises, your prospects are on LinkedIn, you need to have conversations where they’re having conversations. So, you’re not joining the groups they belong to. And I think, again, you hear this with every speaker about LinkedIn, this is so important, but so few people actually do it.

 

Trevor Turnbull (17:17)

For sure, yeah. Many times, people will look on LinkedIn for groups of their peers, because that’s what naturally seems normal to do. If you’re in tech sales, for example, you’re going to go and join all the groups that are for tech salespeople. Which makes sense, like, from a personal development standpoint, professional development standpoint, it’s good to surround yourself with your peers and everybody that’s training around best practices in what you do. But your clients aren’t there, your competition is, so why spend any time on joining those groups exclusively and not joining the ones where your clients might be. Now there’s a way to go about doing that. We actually teach people how to request, get into these groups and then follow up with the administrators of those groups because they’re no longer open, you can’t just join a group on LinkedIn, you have to request to join every single group that’s available in the public domain. So, it’s really simple strategy, we just teach people to just reach out to the admin and tell them genuinely why you want to join. And hopefully, it’s obviously not to spam their members and try and solicit them constantly, but instead offer value. And that’s where the challenges is, you got to figure out what can you offer value to your potential clients that makes them look at you as somebody that they can trust and that knows their stuff.

 

Andy Paul (18:36)

And, with the closed groups now, have they been able to sort of reduce the volume of spam that’s in the conversations?

 

Trevor Turnbull (18:47)

Yeah. And then to be perfectly honest, the groups, since they did that, have become a lot more vetted and not super valuable to really be engaging in on a daily basis. There is some value there still, of course, if you can post content consistently, there’s emails that go out as, like daily digest or weekly digest to the members, which creates opportunity for your profile photo and the article that you’re writing or sharing to get in front of that person. And again, it’s just another touch point. The more you can put your face, and something related to what your expertise is in front of somebody, the more familiar you become to them. But yeah, there’s no doubt it cut down on it. In fact, I manage a LinkedIn group called, The Sports Industry Network, I’m not actively managing it anymore, because I don’t really work on that side of my business as much anymore. But we have over 200,000 members in that group, and there is thousands of posts every single day. And I guarantee you 90% of them get overlooked. But those people are now connected to each other within a common area where, especially for the job seekers like you, want to get a job in sports, join the sports industry network group on LinkedIn because everybody that you want to get hired by, or position yourself in front of as somebody that is passionate about sports marketing or whatever it might be. They’re in that group. So, what a great lead source to be able to find the right people to connect with.

 

Andy Paul (20:11)

And they have to contact you to get in.

 

Trevor Turnbull (20:15)

Yeah, they do. And from a group owner’s perspective, it’s really overwhelming, especially when you get to that kind of volume. It almost becomes like a part time job for somebody on my team to manage the requests of people joining that group. But there could be worse things that a person could have aside from building a 200,000-person group. So, it’s not a bad thing by any means. Not a bad audience at all.

 

Andy Paul (20:43)

So further in the 30-day Sales Machine is, using saved searches and other techniques to build your target prospect list. Again, a lot of people aren’t aware of that you can use your saved searches on LinkedIn. Why don’t you talk about that for a second?

 

Trevor Turnbull (21:03)

Sure. So, when we tell people to set up their LinkedIn campaigns, and they get really defined and specific about their niche, like recruiters, for example, I speak with recruiters a lot, they’ll do placements in the tech industry, in healthcare, and whatever, manufacturing, IT, all these different things. And when they do a LinkedIn campaign, they try and be everything to everybody, instead of focusing on one specific area, so, if we narrow down to say healthcare, there’s a lot of healthcare groups out there where potential employees and potential employers are both in those groups. And of course, you can save searches within LinkedIn. If you really define your searches to say, 500 to 1000 people, you can actually pull those up and then run different tools to automate the process of viewing profiles along the way too. And that gets you laser focused again, where, if you do tweak your profile to say, “I specialize in placements for the medical industry” or, “I specialize in working with medical startups that are looking for top talent to grow their business.” Now, every touchpoint of what you do, I’m looking at your profile and seeing your connection requests and your follow up message and all your supporting materials is all about one thing, which is relevant to them. And that is what separates you from the competition.

 

Andy Paul (22:24)

So, are there other tools to automate profile viewing?

 

Trevor Turnbull (22:28)

There is, yeah, there’s a number of tools that are out there that you can use in that capacity.

 

Andy Paul (22:34)

And the reason I ask is because the tactics you’re talking about, is build awareness as to go view people’s profiles, thinking that they’re going to view you back, right?

 

Trevor Turnbull (22:43)

Absolutely. Yeah. Because it’s one of the things that separates LinkedIn from all other social accounts, is that you can actually see who’s looking at you. The problem is that a lot of times people don’t take advantage of that. They don’t see that as an opportunity to really get very targeted and have the right people looking at you. And therefore, when you’re reaching out, you’re reaching out to relevant people, not just people that randomly happened to have come across your profile.

 

Andy Paul (23:09)

Interesting. Yeah, I think that one’s overlooked quite a bit. To get people to view you, go view them.

 

Trevor Turnbull (23:15)

Yeah, exactly right. It’s definitely the most powerful feature of LinkedIn. And by far the most popular, people love looking at that section just to see who’s checking them out. But to 99% of people don’t ever respond to them, though, they just go, “oh, this person looked at me, I wonder what they want”, and then they don’t do anything about it. So being proactive about that, and knowing what to say, and that’s half the battle.

 

Andy Paul (23:39)

So, let’s talk about that. This is why I brought it up earlier in the conversation. The sixth sense, when somebody requests a connection, I know within a day I’m going to get an email from this person via LinkedIn. Sometimes it’s two days, but invariably I’m right on. So, two types of messages. Let’s say one for connection request that doesn’t set the spine tingling and follow up messages. So, what’s the key to a good connection requests?

 

Trevor Turnbull (24:10)

Sure. Well, what I like to call it is actually “the permission method”. So, there’s a basic template when you choose to connect with somebody on LinkedIn that says– let me actually just pull it up. I always forget exactly what it says, but I’ve got it right here, “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn,” and then your name, right? So, it doesn’t address them by name. It’s very impersonal. It’s like everything else. That’s the standard one. And in fact, if you send that one now the way it shows up in a person’s inbox as an incoming request in their LinkedIn account, it doesn’t even show any kind of message, it just sends it to them and doesn’t show that message even, so it’s even more useless. So, what I recommend to do is to customize that message, but very simply, though, like it doesn’t need to be much. In fact, you only have 300 characters to work with. By I’ll read one out to you for an example, “thank you for visiting my profile.” If you’re doing this in trying to connect with people that look at you, you acknowledge first of all that you notice that they looked at your profile, you might even say, “hey, I noticed you looked at my profile after I looked at yours”, it depends on your comfort level of how you want to address that. But secondly, “I’m looking to expand my network in the (blank space) here in (blank) wherever that might be.” So nonprofit space in Vancouver, or, tech space in San Francisco or whatever it might be. So again, it’s very general, it’s just about networking. There’s some value there, obviously, and growing your network, hopefully the person on the other end sees that value too. And then thirdly, this is the permission method, which is, “would you be open to connecting on LinkedIn?” and it’s so subtle, but it’s asking for permission to connect instead of assuming that the person will connect with you. And we’ve sent thousands of connection requests ourselves for our clients, and easily this gets us 60% higher response rates consistently. And it’s such a subtle little tiny thing. And, when I tell people this on webinars, they go and do it, and they’re just shocked as to how much better the response rates are by just tweaking that one little line.

 

Andy Paul (26:11)

Okay, so now then the follow up message.

 

Trevor Turnbull (26:14)

Yeah, the follow up message. So, what we actually teach is another kind of two-step process. One would be, when you notice that the person actually accepts the connection request, follow up with a quick one that doesn’t ask for anything, doesn’t sell anything, just literally says, “hey, great to have you in my network. I look forward to sharing ideas. If there’s any way I can help connect you with, don’t hesitate to ask”. That’s it. Just be true to the word of what you actually requested in your connection requests. Don’t try and sell anything, don’t be pushy, offer to help offer value. And then as you said, there is a there is a formula to this, within two to four days type thing you do want to follow up again, especially if you’re trying to get the conversation started with that person. The two main methods that we recommend, one I already discussed, which is the sell method. So, it’s, I sell signs, you’re an architect, I know you need what I sell, I’m just going to tell you straight up, I sell signs do you need this? Nothing wrong with doing that, especially if you’re in a very, “widgetized” type of business, right? But most people are service based. And if you approach somebody like that, like, “hey, I do web design, if you ever need any web design, give me a call”, you’re not going to get a response from that, unless the timing is absolutely perfect, and they need something like that, but that’s very rare, right? People don’t want to be sold to that way. So, we actually use what’s called an ask method. And there’s programs out there actually, that speak to this. We’ve been using this strategy for years now. But just put a name to it actually, and what it refers to is just started to open up the conversation of addressing pain points of that person, because that’s what’s going to allow you to start to get a conversation going. So, address, “hey, I’m, thanks for connecting with me. I looked at your profile looks like you’re doing some great work. And I’m looking to get some feedback from decision makers like yourself on challenges that they’re facing with.” And I’ll use the bookkeeping example again. “Here’s some of the issues I’m hearing commonly from your peers on bookkeeping. So bookkeeping is a manual process, very time consuming. There’s a high turnover rate of bookkeepers that keep good ones on staff. Does any of this resonate with you? Or, is there something else that keeps you up at night?” It’s an open-ended question. It allows the person the opportunity to go, “yes, I do actually have that issue. And I’m glad you asked, and here’s my feedback.” Another aspect of this too, is will if you’re willing to go a step further, you can even say, “I’m writing an article on this topic, and I’d love to get your professional opinion so that I can include it in my article.” I used to do this when I was writing for Entrepreneur, I would actually ask people their feedback on certain things. And then I could use some of the statistics of the feedback that I got in my articles. And it becomes such a great draw for people to answer to because they’re like, “oh, I’d love to be, quoted in an article on Entrepreneur. So sure, of course, I’ll answer your questions”, right? And again, it all ties back to expertise. You try to position yourself as the person that they can trust, because, how else do you separate yourself when you sell insurance as an insurance salesperson? You can’t everybody sells essentially the same thing. So, you have to have some other way to position yourself as the one person that they want to deal with.

 

Andy Paul (29:37)

Great advice. Trevor, again, some standard questions I ask all my guests here in the last segment of the show. And if you’re ready, I’ll throw them at you here.

 

Trevor Turnbull (29:49)

Well, let’s do it, fire away.

 

Andy Paul (29:50)

All right. So, the first one is a hypothetical scenario. And in this hypothetical scenario, you Trevor just been hired as the VP of sales by a company whose sales have stalled out. And the board, the CEO are anxious to hit the reset button, get everything back on track. So, your first week on the job. What two things could you do that could have the biggest impact?

 

Trevor Turnbull (30:12)

Well, I am obviously a big advocate for social selling and LinkedIn. So, the first thing that I would do, obviously, is implement a strategy for outreach using LinkedIn. That seems like a pretty straightforward, obvious answer coming from me. But I know for sure that if I’m coming into a company, I’ll bet you, a good percentage of companies are still not fully leveraging this tool. And a lot of this, a lot of the foundational stuff is very important when starting with LinkedIn. So, getting a good company page up that speaks to what the company is all about. Making sure all the employees and the staff are consistent with what their profile say to connected, that you’re supporting the sales team to actually give them the tools that they need to go position themselves as those thought leaders in their industry. So, I would implement those types of things because not only do they help in the long term, but you can see some very quick turnarounds as well, where if you do it now, it’s not too late, like you haven’t missed the boat by starting to implement these strategies right now. In fact, you’ll probably be ahead of your competition. So that would definitely be the first thing that I would do moving in with a new company.

 

Andy Paul (31:25)

Okay, perfect. Alright, so some rapid-fire questions, you can give one-word answers or elaborate. And the first one is when you, Trevor, are out selling your own services, what’s your most powerful sales attribute?

 

Trevor Turnbull (31:40)

Oh, wow. I would say authenticity. I’m an open book. If you Google my name, or you look at my profiles, you’ll see that I’m a genuinely good person that’s in this to help other people. And overly polite of course, because I’m Canadian. But yeah, that’s definitely it. I’m authentic. I pride myself on being very transparent and authentic with who I am because I end up attracting the kind of people that I want to work with, not the ones that I know I can’t help.

 

Andy Paul (32:15)

Okay, perfect. Next question, who’s your sales role model?

 

Trevor Turnbull (32:20)

It’s not one person in particular, to be honest. I follow a number of people online. I can even throw a few names at you. Grant Cardone would be one, from a certain aspect. Like I say, I don’t adhere to one particular philosophy. But I really like Grant because he’s the kind of guy that keeps you motivated and keeps reminding you that, you know what? Nobody else is going to do it. You got to step up and wake up every day and go and do this, and for the right reasons too, for your family, for your own livelihood, and living the kind of life you want to live, and the impact you want to leave. So, Grant is one, Eric Lofholm is another individual that I actually work very closely with. Eric’s philosophies on sales scripting and approaching things from a very, I’ll use the same words, in a very authentic, truthful way. I really like the way that he approaches things. And we use a lot of his training in our programs. And, there’s really a lot of different people I mentioned, Gary Vaynerchuk already, too, like Gary is great for motivation, but he’s also really great at being truthful. I don’t try to sell everybody out there. I know that there’s a lot of people out there that might not resonate with the way that I teach. But there is a lot that do too. And it’s a really big world out there. And I’m more interested in helping the people that really want to buy into what I’m selling, and how I can help their business and the rest of it– It’s life’s too short. I get to leave that behind.

 

Andy Paul (33:52)

I agree. Okay. What’s one book every salesperson should read?

 

Trevor Turnbull (33:58)

You know what I’m going to mention Eric here again, because I’m such a fan of this book he wrote here recently, it’s called Sales Scripting Mastery. The subtitle on this is, The seven-step system for consistently delivering successful sales presentations. It’s a lot of “Ss” in there. But it is really great, especially for what we teach too, because everything that we teach is all about scripting in the way that your messaging gets delivered and the timing of it.

 

Andy Paul (34:31)

How does Eric spell his last name?

 

Trevor Turnbull (34:33)

Lofholm. L-O-F-H-O-L-M. Easy to find him when he just do a Google search. He’s written dozens of books, number of them bestsellers, and the Sales Scripting Mastery is a newer one. It’s one that I recommend all of our members of our 30-day Sales Machine, in fact, we it giveaway as prizes constantly to our members. So, we’ll ship them out copies of this book because I say it’s such a compliment to what we already do.

 

Andy Paul (34:59)

Okay. Excellent, good. Definitely go check that out, it’s on the list. And last question for you is what music is on your playlist these days?

 

Trevor Turnbull (35:08)

Holy man, you know what, I don’t even listen to that much music, to be honest with you. But you know what I do have? I’m a big fan of favoriting my favorite songs as they come up. So, let me pull it up right now. I’ll tell you exactly what is on here right now. Usually, it’s chill music. I’m about to head to Thailand here in a couple of weeks, checkout for a little bit. So, it’s any kind of music that reminds me of the beach. I’m going to go with Bob Marley. Anything Bob Marley at this point right now is what gets me into a chill mindset. I allows me to work too.

 

Andy Paul (35:43)

Alright, perfect. Well, great. Trevor, thanks for joining me today, and tell the audience how they can find out more about you.

 

Trevor Turnbull (35:52)

Sure, well, you can just Google my name, of course, Trevor Turnbull, T-U-R-N-B-U-L-L, and you’ll find everything you need to know about me. You can find me on my website at the same name. And then of course, if you want to check out all the trainings we have on LinkedIn, just go to linkedinleads.com, there’s a variety of free stuff, free trainings, tips, we do webinars on a frequent basis. And then of course, you can go to 30daysalesmachine.com if you want to learn more about our program, and how it works, and how you might get involved with us on in helping turn those cold leads into warm prospects and more clients for your business. That is our goal and helping every single client that we work with. So, thanks again for your time. I appreciate you having me on.

 

Andy Paul (36:31)

No, my pleasure. And thank you. And remember friends, thank you for taking time out of your day to join us today. And remember, make it part of your daily routine to deliberately learn something new to help you accelerate your success. An easy way to do this, take a minute subscribe to this podcast Accelerate. That way you won’t miss any of my conversations with top business experts like my guest today, Trevor Turnbull, who shared his expertise on how to accelerate the growth of your business. So, thanks for joining me and until next time, this is Andy Paul. Good selling everyone.

Thanks for listening to the show. If you like what you heard and want to make sure you don’t miss any upcoming episodes, please subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or stitcher.com. For more information about today’s guests, visit my website at andypaul.com.