How To Rock Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn w/ Viveka von Rosen [Episode 405]

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In this episode, we discuss how a personal brand can drive sales success like never seen before.

Viveka von Rosen is a social selling expert, and author of a brand new book, LinkedIn: 101 Ways to Rock Your Personal Brand, Grow Your Network, and Build Your Business.

Key Takeways

• A LinkedIn specialist, Viveka writes about, talks about, and consults about, ways to help make LinkedIn work better for people. She is an expert in lead generation, social selling and social marketing on LinkedIn.
• Viveka stresses the importance of your personal brand and to separate it from the brand of your employer. Your brand always stays with you, regardless of your job.
• Building a personal brand is creating an online presence so that when people research you, your unique profile comes up. Add thought leadership in your area of expertise, with content. This strategy applies to sales, and career positioning.
• If your LinkedIn profile dates back to the day you found LinkedIn, and you haven’t updated it since, when potential buyers or employers see it, they will assume it is your personal brand. Differentiate yourself, with expertise you have now.
• Andy’s book Zero-Time Selling establishes that how you sell, starts with how you differentiate yourself to the customer. Who are you right now, to your target audience? What is the value to them in your brand? Re-engage them by asking.
• Viveka gives keys to being memorable. Add a background image, in your colors, with your tagline, message and expertise. Strengthen your professional headline. Say in 120 characters who you are, what you do, and whom you serve.
• Publish, in LinkedIn’s publishing platform, whether it be your own content, or, if you are not a content creator, curated content in your area of expertise. Content should all reflect the purchaser’s persona; their interests, and points of pain.
• Only use your last name in the last name field. LinkedIn can hide your profile if you put a descriptor there. Anything besides your last name violates the user agreement.
• Do your summary first in word processing, to catch errors, typos, etc., and add bullets and minor formatting. You can use 2,000 characters. Paste it into LinkedIn. Focus on solving the client persona’s key point of pain. Engage them.
• Viveka says to put contact info in the header background image, summary section, and the contact me section. If you use a unique phone number or email, then you can track what business is coming from LinkedIn.
• Your brand is what you stand for, in business. Leave politics and religion out. Share stories of the type of leadership you represent, that would engage your key customers. Your languaging and content are part of your brand.
• By not publishing, you show to prospective clients a lack of curiosity and passion about your expertise. This is bad for your brand. Use a post from LinkedIn, or use linkedIn.com/bookmarklet. Or use Google alerts for content.

The Sales Enablement Podcast with Andy Paul was formerly Accelerate! with Andy Paul.

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul  0:35  

Hi, 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 to help you accelerate the growth of your sales, your business and most importantly, you  Hello and welcome to the Sales Enablement Podcast. Joining me on the show today is my friend Viveka von Rosen. She’s a social selling expert, and author of a brand new book titled LinkedIn 101 ways to rock your personal brand, grow your network and build your business. So Vivica Welcome back to accelerate.

 

Viveka von Rosen  2:39  

Thank you so much. It is a pleasure to be back. 

 

Andy Paul  2:44  

It’s pleasure to have you so if there’s a chance that there’s someone out there that’s listening that didn’t hear your first episode with us, may you just spend a minute to introduce yourself briefly and what you do.

 

Viveka von Rosen  2:53  

Sure. So my name obviously is Viveka von Rosen. I’m a LinkedIn specialist expert. I write books about LinkedIn. I talk about LinkedIn on stages, and I work with customers and clients to help make LinkedIn work a little bit better for them, sales, you know, lead generation and social selling and social marketing. It’s really just all about LinkedIn with me.

 

Andy Paul  3:18  

Yeah. And you have what I would characterize a sort of love hate relationship with them.

 

Viveka von Rosen  3:22  

I do indeed. I’m trying to be more positive.

 

Andy Paul  3:30  

So, what have you seen in the month since the acquisition was announced? Yeah. anything positive? You know, we can spend a few minutes on that. Anything that, you know, seems like an opening to be more user friendly?

 

Viveka von Rosen  3:44  

Well here, let me try and be positive. Okay. So one thing is they seem to be using user groups now, which I’m very excited about. I’m not on one, but a couple of my friends are in the Sales Navigator user group. So that is good. They’re actually Microsoft is actually listening to the LinkedIn users or at least some of them. So that that is a very good thing. Because traditionally, LinkedIn has not been much for user groups, the paid tool Sales Navigator, their search function just got a whole lot better. Because of course, they’re taking away all the functionality of the free account and are trying to put us all into Sales Navigator, right. But you know, the party line is they are wanting to make the LinkedIn user interface more seamless, and more aligned with the mobile app. And so if you’re a heavy mobile user, heavy free mobile user, and you use LinkedIn, it will feel the same whether you’re on mobile or on LinkedIn. What that means is they’re getting rid of some of what I consider LinkedIn best features like the Advanced Search the Save search, tagging, those will all be available and are now available on Sales Navigator. Apparently they will not be available with the newest user interface. So that’s a little unfortunate. But they’re listening to us, which is a very positive thing. They’re adding good features to Sales Navigator, which is a positive thing. And yes, I think for people who use LinkedIn, not very much, they’re going to find it an easier user interface than the one that we have right now. 

 

Andy Paul  5:32  

So it’s always a trade off. Yeah, we’re user friendly, or but we’re more user friendly, but there’s less you can do with us without paying.

 

Viveka von Rosen  5:39  

Exactly, exactly.

 

Andy Paul  5:44  

That’s excellent. So let’s jump into your new book. So you’ve written this new book is at LinkedIn 101 ways to rock your personal brand, which the title says several nominally about LinkedIn, but really about building your personal brand and I guess the thought that sort of struck me as I was reading it is you start really right at the beginning and say, you just have to sort of think about this topic, first and foremost. And I think that’s sort of the barrier for most people is yes. They don’t really think about having a personal brand, as an employee of a company that has a break. Right? So why is that so important for them?

 

Viveka von Rosen  6:24  

It’s important because of the way our market is, our economy is, the way our businesses are. You know, always be looking right. Always be selling, always be looking. 

 

Andy Paul  6:39  

Always be closing, always

 

Viveka von Rosen  6:45  

Well, the fact is, we don’t have 30 year careers anymore. So even if you are working for a company and you love it, you just really have to be thinking about the fact that you might get acquired, new management might come in. You might get sold, someone might be elected president who’s not supportive of your industry. And if that is the case, then it’s possible that you’re going to have to look for a new career. And you want to make sure that you look the best you can. So this is not a book just for jobseekers, like don’t get me wrong, it’s really for the entrepreneur, the solopreneur, the small business owner, it’s building your personal brand is more than just creating a profile on LinkedIn. Building a personal brand is creating an online presence that really is defined so that when people say your name, or when people research you on Google, this presence, this profile comes up and it is different from everybody else out there. And if you can align that with some kind of thought leadership, so whether you are a business owner, or an employee or a job seeker, there is some area of expertise properties that hopefully you excel in. And so using your personal brand to elevate that area of expertise, they kind of go hand in hand. 

 

Andy Paul  8:13  

Yeah. Okay. is it’s it’s for people really to understand this is a sales issue as well as a career issue. So, and it just and I think that’s sort of when people hear about personal brands, they tend to sort of think about it more as maybe the career issue rather than really the sales issue. And it’s both, I mean, they’re inextricably linked at this point.

 

Viveka von Rosen  8:38  

They really are. They really are. And, you know, it’s interesting, because, at the time, the person who wrote the foreword is coca Sexton, who used to be the head of a social marketing for LinkedIn, and has been a friend since before LinkedIn, so he agreed, you know to write the foreword, and like two weeks after, he wrote the foreword, he called and said, You know, I’m leaving LinkedIn. And what a perfect example other than the fact I was like, ah, one day I’ll have someone from LinkedIn actually endorse something I write. But, it was such a perfect example because he has done an exemplary job of positioning himself as a social selling expert on LinkedIn while he was working for LinkedIn, in the social media sphere. And so when he stepped away from LinkedIn, he had job opportunities. He finally ended up going with Sandler, thinking about building his own business for a while, it’s probably doing both. But yeah, he was able to walk into a successful career, you know, from LinkedIn. And so he was actually the perfect person to write our forward in retrospect, but yet, but it was he had created such a strong personal brand and such a name for himself, that it didn’t really matter. He wasn’t working for LinkedIn anymore. 

 

Andy Paul  10:02  

I think that that sort of leveraging the LinkedIn topic is, I believe, Reed Hoffman and his book. Talked about this concept of tours of duty in jobs. So that if you look at your career, not as, you know, this one endless progression from one point to another, that sort of seamless within a company, which we know hardly exists anymore, as he talks about it, sort of using the analogy of something maybe lists for all the military branches is you’ve got this defined period of time, which you’re doing this particular job, right. And when you get to the end of it, that’s really time to sort of say, Okay, yeah, this is my continuing doing the same job, perhaps somewhere else. I mean, it could be that the company doesn’t need me to do that job anymore. So yeah, this whole issue of building a brand and having people be able to understand who you are and what you do both customers and employers, yes, it’s really pretty essential.

 

Viveka von Rosen  10:57  

It really is. And the fact is a lot of people created their LinkedIn profile, you know, 2003 2005 2007 2009. And they haven’t revisited it since. And they certainly haven’t thought about it since they created it as a personal branding platform. And that’s really what I wanted to address. And the fact is still, when you look for someone on LinkedIn or on Google, their LinkedIn profile is going to show up for a second, third, and maybe with with Facebook and an Instagram, now, it’ll be fourth, fifth or sixth, but it’s still going to show up, people are still going to look at it. And if your LinkedIn profile sucks, it’s gonna cost you business. Well, whatever that means to you, right? Well,

 

Andy Paul  11:39  

it does. I mean, I had people on the show that I’ve interviewed and also companies I talked to with research, I’m doing that. Yeah, I asked the question, when you’re contacted by a salesperson when you think you would engage with a sales professional. Do you look them up online? And the question is, that response is almost 100% Absolutely,

 

Viveka von Rosen  11:57  

Yeah, absolutely. Without Fail. Yeah. And you know, for the job seeker, if people aren’t even looking at resumes anymore, especially for the older job seeker who’s you know, it’s always been one way, guess what? It’s not anymore. They’re looking at your LinkedIn profile. So you again, you’ve got to differentiate yourself from everybody else out there, whether it is whether you’re looking for a job, whether you are looking for a new partnership, whether you are looking for a client, you have to differentiate yourself so that all wraps into the whole personal branding.

 

Andy Paul  12:30  

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s a great sales author called Andy Paul, who wrote a book 

 

Viveka von Rosen  12:37  

oh, yeah, guy.

 

Andy Paul  12:38  

And the premise of that book is that these days, it’s less about what you sell and more about how you sell and how you sell starts with you. I mean, that’s all your personal differentiation differentiates you when you focus on how you’re selling and how you’re helping the customer make that decision. So, yeah, this is important. Okay. So let’s jump into some of the specifics about that you lay out in the book about about how to Go about this process of, and we obviously you have 101 way, so we’re not going to we want to cover them all because I mean,

we might have to come back episodes. But we touched on the first one at the beginning, which was you have to think about who you want to be. Yeah, what you want to be. And I think that that is so critical. And part of that, I think you also mentioned is, is that if not, then, you know, we’ll bring that up if you need to be very pragmatic about assessing who you are right now. 

 

Viveka von Rosen  13:33  

Yeah, exactly. You know, not who you wanted to be, not who you were in the past. Like, who are you? Who are you right now? And who are you to your audience or to your target market right now. And really, in who you are, how do you bring value to the table like Where Are you, what’s the value in it? Your brand as it were, what is your value in your brand to them?

 

Andy Paul  14:04  

Right? And sometimes that means you’re gonna have to ask somebody else, right? So I think this is the part where people want to, and that’s why I talked about being very pragmatic about it. Yeah, is that you’re gonna have to go solicit input from people that you know, it could be customers, it could be coworkers, it could be acquaintances you know, people are gonna take a look at that and help you really come to a truthful understanding of as you said, who you are to your audience, what the value is you provide.

 

Viveka von Rosen  14:34  

Yeah, exactly. I mean, the task is so important. And, you know, we were so embroiled in our own businesses, that we forget that not everyone knows everything that we do. And so, being able to ask your network, your existing clients or past clients, where you are valuable, not only is invaluable information for you and moving forward in your personal brand but oops, but can you still hear me? Yeah, but more importantly than that, it’s an opportunity to re engage I mean, this is actually a strategy that I talked about when I work with clients is you know, it’s kind of the the referral strategy but but it’s a great opportunity to ask and say, Hey, past client who’s really really happy with our results. Can I have 15 minutes of your time? You know, I’m working on my rebrand. You can do it through LinkedIn through the LinkedIn messenger app, I’m working on my rebrand. have a few questions for you. And you know, it’s a great opportunity to get on the phone with them and maybe as they learn more about what you’re doing now, especially if you’ve changed your product service or offer you have like a great opportunity to upsell them right as well as get referrals as well as I mean, it’s just a great social sales strategy, quite frankly. But yeah, you absolutely have to ask your peeps you know what it is that makes you different from everybody else and wrap that into your brand.

 

Andy Paul  16:04  

And you bring that up you talk about you have to really have the necessity to be memorable. And yes, and this is again, if you are going to be the point of differentiation in a sales process or buying experience for the customer. Yeah, you have to be memorable. So how do you be? What’s the key to becoming memorable?

 

Viveka von Rosen  16:22  

Well, knowing who you are and what you do, but a couple simple things right? So things as simple as adding a background image like you’ve got a great background image, it’s your branding it’s your colors. It speaks to who you are. It’s got your tagline in there strategies to power growth right sales acceleration speaker coaches strategist are talking about me. I’m talking about you. Yes. Like literally talking about you right now. You know, that immediately pulls in your brand and I always laugh and laugh last cry because we wouldn’t dream of having a Twitter account or a Facebook account. Or an Instagram account or any online social media account that has a background image and not use that background image, especially for business. But so many people have not if they even have anything here, it’s like a background of mountains from a photo they found on their desktop, which is better than nothing. Don’t get me wrong. But having something branded to your business and to who you are, what you do, like you have done is so much more important. So something as simple as that. And by the way, that still applies to employees who may one day be looking for a job, there’s still something about you that you can create a visual of that brands you that really kind of supports your vision of who you are. 

 

Andy Paul  17:51  

Interesting question, though. Is it that companies ask or do they provide background graphics for their employees LinkedIn profiles?

 

Viveka von Rosen  18:01  

The companies I work with do. Yeah, I mean that’s absolutely one of the things. Now they can’t make them do it. Sure. But it’s important. And it’s not just the sales and the marketing team, by the way that need these background images, it’s anyone because at any point when someone searches on your profile, it’s not just the customer facing people, employees that show up, it’s any employee, right? So it’s really important to get all of your employees whether you have five or 50 or 500 or 500,000. It’s important to get all your employees with a background image that reflects the company. So that’s absolutely key. You know, most of the readers of my book will probably be entrepreneurs, solopreneurs job seekers. But whether you are a job seeker or an enterprise size company, you know, you can make use of this background image which Oh, by the way is free so why wouldn’t you write so that’s, that’s something very, very simple and obvious. Another thing is that professional headline that will section right underneath your name, which you usually say title a company. But it doesn’t really tell me who you are, what you do or who you serve. And if you’re looking for a job, it might tell me what you’re doing right now, which might not be applicable to what you actually want to be doing. It might say, dot, dot dot, because you’re not currently working. I mean, huge wasted opportunity. Because when people engage with you on LinkedIn, they see your picture, your name and the professional headline. Plus, when you view other people’s profiles, if you want to get proactive and engage with your network, again, they’re going to see your picture, your name, and whatever you’ve put there. So you want to think about it not being 120 characters. It’s a short sentence, but you want to describe in 120 characters or less who you are, what you do and who you serve. Right. So your top rated podcast or your best selling author, your speaker, your coach, and you Who do you serve, you advise CEOs and entrepreneurs. Bam, right. And so that’s another really easy way to affect your branding. And I’m just gonna pick on you because you’ve got a great profile. All right. Another thing is if you are a content creator, and I get that not everybody is, but if you are a content creator

 

Andy Paul  20:07  

We’re going to talk about that.

 

Viveka von Rosen  20:08  

Yeah, yeah. If you’re a blogger Oh, we’re going to talk about later. Yeah.

 

Andy Paul  20:12  

Okay. Because I think that’s one of the topics we’re gonna bring up just briefly as we have time is  the requirement as part of your personal brands, you have to publish, you really do.

 

Viveka von Rosen  20:22  

And it doesn’t have to be your own stuff necessarily. You know, it’s great if it can be if you’ve already got a podcast or a blog, or you know, a vlog or something where you’re already creating content, you can repurpose it on LinkedIn. But even if you don’t, you can be a curator of information so you can do my top 10 business books, top 10 quotes from leaders in this industry, you know, you can correlate or curate content within publisher that’s within the publisher program itself and then of course, updating but again, you want to do it in such a way that supports your brand. If you are really focused on the b2b world, then don’t upload singing cat videos. 

 

Andy Paul  21:10  

Well, first you don’t ask serious questions. You don’t see that very often they’ll do.

 

Viveka von Rosen  21:16  

Unfortunately. Yes, sir. I mean, it’s no lie as I was pulling up your profile before I popped over to you to tear it off. You took the cat video off. Thank you very much for doing that. No, it was, it was a bikini shot. That’s a better word. It was a bikini shot and the person who had posted it, who unfortunately in re sharing it gave it even more amplification. But basically was saying this is not Facebook folks. Like literally that was the update. 

 

Andy Paul  21:45  

That’s showing up on my LinkedIn profile was not a picture of themselves.

 

Viveka von Rosen  21:49  

Okay, the problem is pictures like that. And we all can picture it in our heads right now. pictures like that. Get a lot of visibility likes and shares, even if it should be a dislike instead of a like, and even though the share might be, oh my god, I can’t believe people are doing this on LinkedIn, it still gets the activity. And so people keep doing it. And that’s unfortunate, because it’s probably you got a lot of views, likes and shares. But did you build your business and your brand in any way in doing that? You know, if you’re my friend get Candace Gallagher, then awesome. You own bikini Luxe, and that worked for you. But for most of the rest of us, not so much.

 

Andy Paul  22:33  

That’s interesting. You know, it’s people doing things to sort of drive as you said, to generate traffic. Yeah, LinkedIn clickbait basically.

 

Viveka von Rosen  22:40  

Exactly. It’s exactly what it is. Yeah.

 

Andy Paul  22:44  

So part of what you talk about as well as is and we’ve sort of touched on, you know, building the sort of basic inventory of things that you need. We talk about graphics talked about, you know, good professional headlines. Then you also talk about the client persona.

 

Viveka von Rosen  22:59  

Yes, yeah. The client persona purchaser persona, you have to know who you serve. I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make and they go well is how is that part of your brand? You know, your brand’s about you, it’s not about the people you serve. But it’s almost entirely about the people you serve. So people who go, Oh, I can help anyone with a face, I can help anyone with a computer. You can’t really help anyone then you have got to have as refined a purchaser persona as you can get. Even if you have more than one, the more refined the better. Because the copy that you write the visuals that you share, the content that you share is all or should all be reflective of your purchaser persona, interests, needs points of pain, and if you don’t know who that person is, then you’re a generalist. And unfortunately, generalists don’t tend to convert on LinkedIn. You really need to be speaking to your ideal client, your purchaser persona. And yes, it means you won’t get everyone. But quite frankly, you know, that’s why there’re a lot of LinkedIn experts out there so you can work with the one who gives best with you. And if I’m trying to be a generalist and do everything to everyone, then you’re going to pick the one that you jive with, and it’s not going to be. It’s going to be the very business b2b person, or it’s going to be the very fit flamboyant b2c person or it’s going to be the hunky x, you know, x x athlete, or it’s going to be the nerdy engineer guy, you’re gonna pick the person that you’re most comfortable with whose LinkedIn profile is speaking to you. So it is imperative that you know who your purchaser persona who your buyer persona who your target market is.

 

Andy Paul  24:52  

Right. And then once you have that done as you increase your keywords and your one paragraph that’s gonna be the header on your summary tailored to that.

 

Viveka von Rosen  25:00  

Exactly right. Exactly. Right.

 

Andy Paul  25:03  

Yeah, that consistency is really, really important, I think. And it’s oftentimes, we see a disconnect between at least I do when I look at LinkedIn profiles between  professional headlines, the summary what they’re publishing, it’s just it’s not doesn’t have sort of lacking congruence and what are your key points throughout? This is just consciously having to be thinking about what the goal is.

 

Viveka von Rosen  25:26  

Yeah. What’s it like switching between first and third person? It’s the you know, it’s the focusing on my accountant and I also sell Mary Kay, you know, it’s just like you said, it’s the in congruence between the different features and aspects of LinkedIn.

 

Andy Paul  25:47  

It surprises me still that you brought this up in the book. Are people using descriptors other than just their name when they’re trying to optimize their profile?

 

Viveka von Rosen  25:58  

Oh, yeah, the last name field. Which is a really and I just saw someone else who’s a client of mine and I told her to take it off and apparently she listened to someone who told her to put it back on when you put something other than your last name in the last name field it used to get you found on Google it doesn’t really anymore your your URL your your LinkedIn profile URL actually does that. What it does do is violate LinkedIn sent User Agreement. And so if someone turns you in for having say viveka von Rosen, colon space LinkedIn expert in my last name field, LinkedIn can enhance because I did that. LinkedIn can’t find me just to be straight up here. LinkedIn can make you hide your profile essentially can blacklist you so that you’re not even finable when people are doing a search for say, you know, a LinkedIn expert or top rated podcaster or, you know, whatever it is that you do, and so please don’t do that.

 

Andy Paul  26:59  

Yeah, Yeah, it’s a bad idea.

 

Viveka von Rosen  27:01  

That’s a bad idea.

 

Andy Paul  27:02  

Okay, so the sort of last thing I want to dig into a little bit before we talk about content is the summary. So what is sort of the perfect summary? Because if there is such a thing, I mean, what’s our guidelines which give people we talked about creating this, this one great summary paragraph with the key word laden focused on your client persona, but what should be in there?

 

Viveka von Rosen  27:25  

Yeah. So first of all, do it first in a Word document and then copy and paste it over that way, you can keep spelling errors, grammatical errors, and you can add some things like bullets and things like that. some minor formatting, there’s not much formatting you can do, really, it’s to catch the spelling errors. You’ve got 2000 characters. So the other nice thing about doing it in a Word document is you’ve got a character count. But what you want to focus on always is your purchaser persona or your ideal client or your ideal prospect and what’s in it for them. Why In the world, should they give two cents about who you are? And why in the world would someone hire you? So you can talk about a little bit you know, other people that you’ve, you’ve worked with other results that you’ve, that you’ve achieved with your clients. But mostly, you really want to focus on your key clients, which is why you should know who your key client is, your client’s key point of pain and how you solve that for them. And you can throw in a little like I said, you can throw in a little experience, you can throw in a testimonial, a very short testimonial. If you tend to work with a more male audience, you probably want to add more numbers and figures and percentages, if you work with a female audience is probably going to be a little bit more around the emotional pole. But you’ve got 2000 characters in that summary section to engage them to wrap them in to make them want to reach out and connect with you. So yes, you should also put your contact info in there as well. Well, two places, I recommend the contact in three places, actually, I recommend putting your contact information in that header or background image. Because then it’s just right there, they can see it. If they’re on mobile, they can see it. If they’re on the browser, they don’t have to scroll anywhere, if they like, see you like you and want to call you, bam, let them but in the summary section is another place. Just be aware, if you make your summary section public, that there are some scummy people out there who might, you know, put you on a list somewhere. And then there’s a contact me section at the very, very bottom of your profiles. So you might want to put it there too, but that you definitely want to add some version of contact information on your your summary section, whether it’s a calendar link, which they’ll have to copy and paste it in hyperlinks are shrinking anymore, but whether it’s a calendar link to book some time with you a phone number and email address, and if you can make your contact information unique, meaning, you know, it’s maybe a Google Voice number which is What I did, or unique email address, then you can track how much business is actually coming from LinkedIn. Because they will be the only people with that email address or phone number. So you can actually track that engagement. But really your summary section needs to be focused on 2000 characters, focus, not words, characters focused on your ideal client, their points of pain and how you can solve those points of pain.

 

Andy Paul  30:23  

Okay. Alright, so just a couple minutes here that we have forgotten the last segment of the show. We talked about the content of the need to publish and curate. And I think that the thing that people need to understand if they’re not publishing, and they look at it as a burden is that they’re telling people what they stand for. And I think they own this whole thing about personal branding. This is what we’re doing. What do you stand for?

 

Viveka von Rosen  30:48  

Right, exactly, exactly. You know, and we just went through a tough political time, so maybe leaving politics and religion out of it for a while. But what do you stand for in business? What do you believe? You know, what kind of leadership Do you believe in and share those types of stories? Whether it’s just an update from an article or a blog you like, or whether it’s a full on blog post length post that you wrote on LinkedIn, you know, what is it that you believe in that you stand for that you jive with? Hopefully, that also your, your, your key customers are aligned with as well. Otherwise, you know, it, you’re kind of missing the point there, but it needs to be your languaging and your content needs to be a part of what your brand is

 

Andy Paul  31:37  

I think one of the things the dangers that summarize this for people that aren’t publishing, aren’t sharing is what you’re telling people, you know, they’re coming to a prospective customer, they’re coming to your website or prospective employer. What you’re showing by not doing anything, is that you’re not very curious.

 

Viveka von Rosen  31:55  

Yeah

 

Andy Paul  31:56  

We say you may say you’re passionate about something but you know, if you’re not curious, and it’s not demonstrated by the fact you’ve taken the initiative to go out and find stuff, the information that you want to share with people about the things that you’re passionate about, then yeah, that whole claim that you’re passionate about this topic or that you’re curious sort that would be a great sales call, really dig in with the customer and do some great discovery. If you’re sorry, if you’re sort of giving that the lie. 

 

Viveka von Rosen  32:25  

Yeah. And I’m a passionate learner who’s never shared a thing ever. 

 

Andy Paul  32:29  

Exactly. So that I think is the key lesson for people listening to that is there’s just no getting around it. And unless you’re in a business where you’re having to turn away leads, based on what you’re currently doing, which I’m sure there are some right but yeah, sure the vast majority of salespeople and companies out there are entrepreneurial venture solopreneurs. Yeah, it’s a fight to get leads. And so here’s something that you can do that’s relatively simple and pays dividends because people understand who you are.

 

Viveka von Rosen  33:03  

Absolutely. You know, and it’s so funny to me. I mean, not only are there like a gazillion and I’m probably not even exaggerating here posts on LinkedIn that your posts on Google that you could do a quick Google search and find something to share. LinkedIn has LinkedIn pulse. And it’s easy enough to find an article on LinkedIn pulse within LinkedIn itself that you can share. So even if you’re not going to create your own content, and I do understand not everyone has time to create content, there is no excuse in not sharing content. Any article you find on LinkedIn, has a LinkedIn sharing button. And if you find content elsewhere, you can google a tool. It’s called the like literally Google LinkedIn sharing bookmarklet. It’s a sharing tool that you can pull into any browser that you use, and it will share whatever content you find on line to your LinkedIn audience. So there is no excuse. It could literally take you as little as 10 seconds a day.

 

Andy Paul  34:09  

So, we’ll make it right and we’ll make it even easier. 

 

Viveka von Rosen  34:13  

It’s called the LinkedIn sharing bookmarklet. And I believe it’s linkedin.com/bookmarklet.

 

Andy Paul  34:21  

Okay, so the other thing that people can do quickly and will then move on is to set up Google Alerts.

 

Viveka von Rosen  34:33  

Oh my gosh, right.

 

Andy Paul  34:34  

You’ve got keywords that you can search on that we’ve already come up. If you’ve gone through Viveka’s book and you’re optimizing your profile, you’ve developed the keywords that are relevant for you. Yeah, know what they are for your customers. set up some Google alerts for goodness sakes, and they’ll send you multiple emails a day. And then download the sharing tool and literally you’ll be inundated with things that you might find that are interesting. That your audience would find followers and find that’s interesting that you can quickly share and doesn’t take any time whatsoever.

 

Viveka von Rosen  35:07  

No time at all. And for that matter for people who are using sharing tools like Okta, post or a Gora pulse, or Hootsuite or buffer, or a lot of those sharing tools will actually also feed you articles that you can share based on your previous sharing. So they’ve got an algorithm set up, it makes it even easier, like literally all you have to do is turn it on. There’s just no excuse, right?

 

Andy Paul  35:35  

Okay. All right, we’re gonna Well, that’s good. I mean, it’s a great book, people definitely want to make sure they pick it up. Because even people that have well developed LinkedIn profiles, there’s gems in there that help them, improve what they’re doing and to build a personal brand. And as we talked about, this is what it’s all about. So Viveka going to the last segment of the show, I’ve got some questions, rapid fire questions. You can give me one word answers or you can elaborate, if you wish. So the first one is, the mind teaser one that I leave with us. Is it easier to teach a technical non salesperson how to sell or teach a salesperson how to sell a technical product?

 

Viveka von Rosen  36:16  

Salesperson how to sell a technical product

 

Andy Paul  36:18  

Because

 

Viveka von Rosen  36:20  

Because most sales people can learn and think I’m about to piss off all my tech people here. It takes a certain type of personality to be a salesperson. And salespeople can learn just about anything, they really do tend to be learners, whereas tech folks, you’re so immersed in what you know, sometimes you go a little bit too far, like I do, like, I should have what this was supposed to be a one word answer, right? I’m kidding. I’m still talking. So it’s a trick question.

 

Andy Paul  36:49  

There’s no one answer.

 

Viveka von Rosen  36:52  

Okay. Yeah, so for those of us who are more immersed in the technical world, we are to immerse in it and we we don’t have the facilities or the skills necessarily, although I suppose they can be learned to step out and and really empathize with our key with with our with our, with the people who want to buy up stuff.

 

Andy Paul  37:20  

This is half the fun of doing the show so alright so here’s that sort of not tricky one but requires a little bit thought. So what’s one great literary book not a sales book not a bit like a novel or something that you think every salesperson should benefit by reading?

 

Viveka von Rosen  37:36  

That’s a good question.

 

Viveka von Rosen  37:38  

A Wrinkle in Time because it’s the only one that’s coming into my mind right now. No, but it was the first book, I think it was Madeline Longo who wrote that book right? And,it’s about seeing what’s possible, beyond the ordinary and really as a salesperson is what we’re doing. 

 

Andy Paul  38:03  

Okay. Next question, if you could change one thing about your business self, what would it be?

 

Viveka von Rosen  38:15  

I would be a better delegator than I am. I’ve learned to delegate. But I would love for delegation to be like, just second nature to me, like, doing a task and then go, I don’t need to be doing this. My assistant can do this. I don’t need to be doing this. My contractor can do this. And I wish that was second nature to me, because that would give me so much of my time back if I could delegate more.

 

Andy Paul  38:39  

Okay, well, something to think about in the new year here. So the last question for you is do you have a favorite quotation or words of wisdom that you live by?

 

Viveka von Rosen  38:49  

You know, and I think I use this last time and every time and pretty much anything I say, it always comes back to Bob Berg right. People do business with and refer to people they know, like, and trust. Because that is what social selling is about. It is getting and increasing that trust factor. And there’s still grant cardone’s out there. And that just there’s still those folks who are. Let’s stop building fear and let’s start building trust.

 

Andy Paul  39:24  

Okay. That was a very interesting editorial comment you give. So all right. So Viveka, as always a pleasure to speak with you and tell people how they can find out more about you and your book.

 

Viveka von Rosen  39:35  

Sure. I’m a LinkedIn expert on Twitter on Instagram, LinkedIn expert on YouTube, LinkedIn expert on LinkedIn. Please just google LinkedIn expert. I should still be the first person who pops up. we’d be more than happy to connect. I’ve had a lot of people actually Andy just So you know, I think more from your podcasts than any other one that I’ve done, reach out to me and connect. So yeah, just reach out to me, let me know that you were listening to the podcast. And I would be more than happy to connect with you on LinkedIn or other places as well.

 

Andy Paul  40:16  

All right, perfect. Well, again, thank you very much. And thank you, friends for spending your time with us today. Remember, to make it a habit to deliberately learn something new every day to help you accelerate your success. An easy way to do that is to join my conversations with top business experts like my guest today Viveka von Rosen, who shared her expertise about how to accelerate the growth of your business. And if you enjoy accelerating and the value we’re delivering, then please take a quick minute right now and leave your feedback about this podcast on iTunes or Stitcher wherever you listen, be very much appreciated. So thanks again 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