s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com...Your business is NOT what people want. However, through your business and your marketing efforts, some people will either believe you have the solution

THE INFLUENCER PROJECT

A BUSINESS OWNER’S GUIDE TO EXPONENTIAL GROWTH

by

Andrew McWhirter and Rana Saini

First published in Australia in 2016.

This edition is published in 2017.

Copyright © Andrew McWhirter and Rana Saini 2016

Andrew McWhirter and Rana Saini have asserted their rights to be identified as the co-authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968, the Patents Act 1990, the Trade Marks Act 1995, the Designs Act 2003 and the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any other means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent and permission of the copyright owners.

Addresses for the company can be found at www.theinfluencerproject.com.

Paperback ISBN: 2370000400840Hardback ISBN: 2370000500366

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

PREFACE

To our Evolve family, who taught us that persistence, passion and purpose, can happen wherever you are. We thank you for taking the action inside our business that helps others to achieve what’s possible in theirs.

A special thank you to Ram, and our entire family ‘over there’. You make us smile and make every day special for us ‘over here’.

To our families here, from when we considered this book as a goal, to here, where it is before us, thank you for continually being our ‘rock’. You have helped us to achieve all of this, all that has gone before, and everything else underway. Thank you with all our love.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: The fundamentals of influence .................. 1PART ONE: Establishing a system of influence .........................7

Ch 1: Determining your core influence factors ...........8Ch 2: Building your system of influence ........................45Ch 3: The ‘Six Gears of Influence’........................................63

PART TWO: Applying your system of influence on LinkedIn ...................................................87

Ch 1: Building influence: key business concepts .. 88Ch 2: The five steps to becoming a

LinkedIn ‘influencer’ ..................................................... 108STEP 1: Optimise your LinkedIn profile

to rank................................................................ 108STEP 2: Establish an Effective

Community Growth Strategy ............129STEP 3: Grow your community

with activity ....................................................135STEP 4: Introduce your offer ..................................144STEP 5: Maintain contact and activity ............157

Ch 3: Taking the ‘activity test’ ............................................... 171

SUMMARY: To be an Influencer .....................................................174

ABOUT THE AUTHORS .......................................................................177

Are You An Action Taker?

As you read through the pages of this book you’ll quickly discover that an underlying philosophy here inside The Influencer Project is:

‘Those that take the most action win.’

Information might get you interested, but actions will show commitment and that is where the results you are looking for can be found.

That being said, if you’re an action taker and want to fast track the growth of your business insideThe Influencer Project private network,

Head Over To:

www.TheInfluencerProject.com

YOUR EXCLUSIVEINVITATION

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INTRODUCTION:

The Fundamentals of Influence

“Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It’s about impact, influence and inspiration. Impact involves getting results, influence

is about spreading the passion you have for your work.”

Robin S. Sharma — Canadian self-help writer

and leadership speaker

Influence is a strange thing.

It is defined as:

The capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behaviour of someone or something, or the effect itself.

In the business context, an ‘influencer’ can be defined as:

An individual who has the power to affect purchase decisions of others, because of their real or perceived authority, knowledge, position or relationship.

The biggest dilemma for small and medium business owners is that, whilst we know that influence exists and we can see the results of it everywhere in our lives, it is an invisible and intangible force that is difficult to pin down and to get working for us.

THE INFLUENCER PROJECT: A BUSINESS OWNER’S GUIDE TO EXPONENTIAL GROWTH

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Right now, whether you like it or not, the outcomes in your business (and life in general) could be said to be a direct result of your influence, or someone else’s influence upon you (possibly your lack of influence).

It therefore goes without saying that the more you are able to actively influence the people in your marketplace (and your life), the more people will see you as a leader; you then have a responsibility to create the world you want to see through a life of meaning and purpose, whilst not being ashamed to make a profit.

However here’s the truth that no marketer will ever tell you…

Nobody cares about your business!That’s right! Nobody cares about your business.

The moment you realise this, and surrender to it, is the moment that your business will start to grow. Why?

People only care about themselves – their problems, their challenges, and their ‘survival’. Your business is merely the conduit for them to get what they want or need.

Your business is NOT what people want. However, through your business and your marketing efforts, some people will either believe you have the solution they want, or go elsewhere. They will either buy from you, or someone else.

Influence doesn’t discriminate. You either influence your target market or someone else will. Full stop!

Your challenge is to position your business as the ONLY solution in the eyes of your community. Through The Influencer Project you will begin to realize the true power of a social media strategy and its growing importance in positioning you as that solution.

ANDREW MCWHIRTER and RANA SAINI

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Stop reading this book right now and burn it if...1. You think that applying everything from this book will

turn your business into an overnight success.

2. You believe that leads will start falling out of the sky with their credit card details attached and a note saying, “bill me”.

3. You think that by the end of this book you can stop all other forms of marketing for your business and just follow this.

That’s right – stop reading this book and burn it! You won’t be able to do any of the above, so reading it is pointless.

Is the book still in one piece? Great - so let’s talk about what you WILL get out of it?

What is The Influencer Project about?The Influencer Project is not about growing business, as such. It’s about growing influence, which is an enabler of business growth.

Business growth is a by-product of your ability to influence your market through solving the problems and challenges of your community. And social media has not merely changed this – it has disrupted how you do it.

Social media and digital marketing have made it possible to accelerate the growth of your brand in ways that, just 10 years ago, people couldn’t even imagine.

In the click of a button, a tweet, a post, or status update you can reach more people with your message than ever before.

According to Dun & Bradstreet’s State of Marketing Data Report 2015, 67 percent of the ‘buyer journey’ now takes place online.

And social media doesn’t just generate leads; it helps you close them. According to a State of Inbound Marketing survey,


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social media has a 100 percent higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing.

The flip side to this is the amount of ‘noise’ around. It’s easy to get lost in the crowd and hard to stand out. Creating influence helps you cut through this ‘noise’.

Some businesses expect results before trust has been built, with quick wins, overnight success and the silver bullet that minimizes risk, failure … and work. Influence doesn’t work like that.

Let’s be honest, you’re reading this because you want some level of success in your business and you want the ‘blueprint’ or the ‘short cut’ too.

But nothing will work unless you first bear in mind the following three ‘core truths’ that The Influencer Project is built around:

1) People won’t engage unless you’re active

2) People won’t show interest unless you ask

3) People won’t buy unless you sell

This sounds pretty logical and straightforward but, without a clear strategy in place that addresses all three, it’s very easy to lose sight of them amongst the everyday highs and lows of doing business.

Many businesses end up skipping over the strategy to find quick wins in a desperate bid to keep up and make money. And they complain that “social media isn’t working” for them.

That’s where The Influencer Project comes in.

By the end of the book you will have all the tools necessary to set in place the simple, yet consistent steps to stand out from your competition. This applies to any industry professional in any market.

You will not only understand the value of having influence, but you will have started to develop your own unique ‘flavour’ of


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influence. You will also have started taking the steps through targeted activity on LinkedIn, to use this newfound influence to actively generate leads and sales for your business.

In short, you will have found the key to an exponential growth strategy for your business, by improving your ability to influence other people both online and offline.

Develop and apply your unique ‘flavour’ of influence

People will always try to copy WHAT you do, but they cannot copy your unique ‘flavour’ of influence. They cannot copy WHY or HOW you do it.

This is important to understand as we set out on the journey through this book.

Your ‘flavour’ of influence is yours and yours only, so understanding it, and living it, gives you a hidden advantage in all things. Your power lies in the fact that none of your competitors are YOU!

So, once you understand why influence is so important, the next step in the book is the Influence Framework: where you start developing your own unique influence.

But then we take it a step further in the second half of the book – and reveal the different strategies of influence to help you create more power in your business using the LinkedIn platform.

The Influencer Project is certainly no ‘get rich quick’ guide or a way to make money overnight. But following the concepts and strategies in this book WILL get you seen, stand, and in front of opportunities you can probably not imagine right now.

And that’s a promise!

PART ONE:

ESTABLISHING A SYSTEM OF INFLUENCE

“You don’t have to be a person of influence to be influential”

Scott Adams (Cartoonist - creator of Dilbert)

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CHAPTER ONE:

Determining your core influence factors

How NOT to create influenceLet’s cut straight to the heart of the matter: if your business needs more leads and sales then your community is not seeing the true value of your product or service. Or, at the very least, you aren’t getting the results you’d like.

So, what’s the solution?

Many business professionals have an entrepreneurial epiphany and dash headlong into spending marketing money on digital ‘stuff’: new logos, websites, landing pages etc. But they are then left with no resources or strategies to get these digital assets in front of people.

In short, they haven’t invested in building a community.

So instead of ‘doing the work’ and building a community of people who know, like, and trust them, they start to spam people with bribes and offers in an attempt to get quick wins.

In essence, they spend money to ‘buy’ relationships. This is where a business can become very ‘transactional’, devoid of any rapport or relationship building.

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What vs. whyThe surprising thing is that every time we begin to work with a new client they have no problem telling us WHAT they do: consulting, financial advice, home loans, accounting services – all very boring!

In most cases the interesting part of their business story is WHY they do it.

That’s the ‘secret sauce’ that separates one business from another. Otherwise you just have a ‘Me-Too’ brand that will have to rely heavily on paid advertising, online ‘tricks’, and marketing manipulation.

Products vs. servicesUnderstanding the differences between a product-based business and a service-based business is key. The main difference is in the importance of the ‘relationship’, especially at the beginning of the sales cycle.

If I want to buy a TV (product), I don’t care who I buy from in the first instance, so long as the TV works and has the features I want. BUT, If I am going to invest time and money in a consultant to fix my TV (service) I want to make sure I like and trust him first, and believe he has the skills needed to fix my TV.

So, with a product-based business, the TV is the initial focus however, with a service based business, the TV repair guy becomes the focus because through him I can have my TV fixed (my needs can be met).

Look at it like this:

Products work towards a transaction Services work towards a relationship or experience.

It’s therefore important to realise that people remember how you made them feel long after the purchase of the product,


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and these emotions create the engagement that will influence your brand equity long into the future.

A winning strategy of influenceIf you aren’t 100 percent clear on the value and purpose of your business, how can anyone else be?

Unless you are absolutely clear on the WHO, WHY, WHAT, HOW, and WHEN of your business, you can expect big struggles around some future corner.

Businesses without this clarity of purpose have difficulty in exerting influence, and begin to fail, because they become too relationship-focused rather than relationship-driven.

Gaining clarity with this ensures that the right messages reach the right people, triggering the right responses and beginning the process of exponential growth.

The following sections of Chapter One will take you through the process we use with clients to unlock the WHO, WHY, WHAT, HOW, and WHEN of their businesses. This helps determine their core influencing factors.

First we need to consider some of the most common obstacles to growth that business owners face and then we will look at how identifying your core influence factors can help to overcome these obstacles and lead to more purpose, profit and power in your business.

The three most common business dilemmasMost business owners have an inherent internal dilemma: what they want, and what they are committed to doing, are two very different things.

It all comes down to the pain of dealing with GROWTH. You have to be willing to do something that will inevitably stretch your thinking and push you to do things differently. This means dealing with high levels of uncertainty, and therefore taking risks.


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In working with hundreds of business owners over the years, and speaking with thousands, the following three dilemmas come up time and time again:

1. SYSTEMS DILEMMA: “I DON’T HAVE TIME!”

Systems give our business meaning, purpose, and direction. They allow us to grow, expand, leverage our time, and gain vital insights and metrics in order to react or respond as needed.

A lack of systems in our business leads to ‘syndromes’ occurring e.g. breakdowns in client communication, money being lost etc. Business owners often become very reactive, often overwhelmed, and this can lead to burnout.

Our ability to have powerful systems will determine the foundational strength of our business, as well as our ability to work ON our business (advanced systems) rather than IN it (basic systems).

Business owners are often the biggest bottleneck in their business because they don’t want to lose control. Their business therefore relies on their unconscious competence to operate.

Clients with systems ‘issues’ often get stuck IN their businesses. They are effectively well-paid technicians, struggling to grow their business because it relies so heavily on their own time and ability to respond.

2. MARKETING DILEMMA: “I NEED LEADS!”

Marketing is often confused with ‘sales’. However, the two serve very separate functions, which are explained below and in Point 3.

The function of marketing is to build a brand through familiarity, and to consistently get a message out into the marketplace, in order to trigger a desired response. As we say, it’s getting


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people curious and being able to turn that curiosity into interest!

Marketing is basically buying attention.

The confusion with ‘sales’ often stems from ineffective marketing practices, due to the absence of a marketing budget, lack of available funds, no set strategy, or lack of consistent activity.

This means that leads are not generated consistently, leading to a ‘shrinking’ or weakening of the business.

This perceived ‘marketing dilemma’ causes business owners to turn to desperate measures in order to keep their heads above water.

Because of the need to make money, marketing now becomes a short-term play to manipulate attention and ‘sell’ quickly. They opt for band-aid solutions and ‘quick wins’ to solve long-term problems.

This, of course, usually just deepens the ‘hole’ that the business finds itself in, and brand integrity is eroded.

3. SALES DILEMMA: “I DON’T HAVE THE MONEY!”

The function of sales is to assist a prospect with making a buying decision, converting their interest into a YES or NO commitment.

A sales system must clearly and effectively lead the prospect towards this YES or NO decision.

Often we see businesses focus heavily on marketing, with little to no ability to take an enquiry, overcome objections, and nurture that opportunity towards a buying decision.

The abilities to market (open up interest) and the ability to sell (close that interest) involve very separate strategies requiring equal amounts of attention.


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One of the biggest mistakes a business owner can make is to invest in marketing, praying that it will automatically result in sales. This suggests a fear of selling, or in some cases, lack of confidence in the product or service being offered.

Without an effective sales conversion strategy in place, any form of marketing will be undermined and lead to wasted marketing dollars.

It is critical for business owners to understand that the ability to close deals is the only way to receive a return on investment (ROI) on any marketing spend.

By focusing solely on attracting interest (marketing), without a structure for converting that interest into commitment (sales), businesses will see a considerable imbalance in the ROI curve.

More about this later, but for now, let’s understand that both elements must be in balance to achieve steady and reliable growth.

Perhaps you are experiencing the above problems in your own business? Most business owners are affected by one or more of these dilemmas at some point, because they can’t or won’t expand.

They become trapped working IN their business rather than working ON it - or because ‘this is the way we’ve always done it’ they simply refuse to innovate and evolve.

The Influencer Project provides a framework to ensure that you are aware of, and can overcome these dilemmas and you are therefore able to remove the main obstacles to exponential growth in your business.

The Influence Framework: Five key steps to overcome the key business dilemmasThe ‘Influence Framework’ is a strategic approach to overcoming the main obstacles to growing business in the


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digital age, by providing a clear roadmap for developing your influence.

Clarity of purpose is the basis for your influence.

Without taking a step back, focusing, and becoming clear on each of the following five points, all the leadership, motivation, communication, and planning in the world will never inspire great performance. You’ll just become another generic and unmemorable ‘Me Too’ brand with no point of difference in the marketplace.

You see, businesses don’t fail. It’s what people fail to do in their own business that leads to the breakdown.

Below are the five steps, with a brief summary of each. Start considering them in relation to your own business. The section after that goes into more detail about each step, to help you uncover your ‘influence factors’.

1. Create your ‘Influence Avatar’ and promote with WHO (Passive)


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Know who you want to target and what their needs are, based on common problems or challenges they have. Know who you want to serve!

2. Discover your ‘Influence Code’ and connect with WHY

Have a clear strategy and scalable system. Know WHY you are doing what you’re doing. Money is never a motivational long-term reason but rather the by-product of passion, purpose, and feeling empowered by what you do.

3. Build your ‘Influence Activator’ and engage with WHAT

Be seen as an industry expert and influencer. Start to interact with your audience and find out more about their challenges, pain points, and concerns. Provide them ongoing value without expecting anything in return - no quick wins!

4. Channel your strategic influence and persuade with HOW

Start getting active to capture interest. Create a product or service that shows your community how you will solve their problems or challenges and build your ‘interest influence’ with a relevant value-based offer.

5. Expand your influence and close with WHEN (Active)

Turn interest into commitment with an effective sales system. Sell your product or service to your community and close opportunities.

Every time we consult with a company experiencing problems with marketing, sales, or building their business in general, it comes back to one of the five influence steps not being met, or considered carefully enough.

In the next section we ‘deep dive’ into the five steps. These have been the catalyst for some phenomenal business transformations with clients.


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Go through the steps and consider the questions posed for your own business: how they relate to you, your service, and your customers.

This will help you understand the core influence factors that make you and your business unique. Nobody knows you and your business like you do, and through asking better questions you receive better answers.

Simply put: Now it’s time for you to DO THE WORK!

Uncovering your ‘Influence Factors’

1. CREATING YOUR ‘INFLUENCE AVATAR’WHO DO YOU SERVE?

Considering WHO unlocks the ‘feeling’ or ‘flavour’ of your business’s brand.

It never ceases to amaze us how many business owners are unable to clearly define WHO they are running their business for.

A recent report by Gleanster Research, in collaboration with Kapost, surveyed 3,408 marketers and found the following:

“Companies that utilize inbound content platforms and offer buyer persona driven content see a 45% increase in the volume of Sales Accepted Leads (SALs).”

Yet, the simple question “Who’s your target market?” is often met with a puzzled look and a series of “ums” and “ers” by clients.

An inability to generate interest in what you do may be linked to the fact that you are trying to serve EVERYONE. You have become generic, saying “yes” to anyone and trying to help everyone.

This may sound reasonable in theory – you can’t turn away business can you? And the more people interested, the more


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people will buy and the more money you’ll make - right? WRONG!

In The Influencer Project we ask clients to “think deep before you think wide”. What we mean by this is to ‘niche’ yourself and get clear on who you serve. Knowing this is critical to uncovering key demographic information that will inform how you market and sell your services.

You cannot know everything about everything, but you can know everything about something. As the great Zig Ziglar said:

“The great majority of people are wandering generalities rather than meaningful specifics. The fact is that you can’t hit a target that you can’t see.”

As an example, a business professional targeting ‘business owners’ will have a potential audience of millions, BUT a general audience leads to a generic message and, guess what?

Generic = Unqualified Interest

Get specialized and get specific.

Instead of targeting business owners, how about targeting female business owners or, even better, female start up business owners?

You can even go micro-niche and target start up female business owners, aged 25 - 35, who live in Sydney. The point is get clear!

Appeal to a specific audience, because specific audiences have specific issues. You CAN’T solve every customer’s issues, but you CAN be the best in the world at solving specific challenges.

As Jim Collins points out in the book Good To Great:


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“What is it that you can be the best in the world at? There’s more than enough to go around even when you get specific.”

Does that mean you can’t offer other services and expand later? Of course not! But know who your core audience is and specialize before you diversify.

Remember: specialists get paid more! Think about it: who gets paid more, a General Practitioner or a brain surgeon?

In knowing who you serve, your brand begins to take shape. Your marketing messages become more real, raw, and relevant. You begin to speak to people powerfully and, by being more specific, you begin to build a growing community of empathic people with similar problems and challenges. They can all relate to each other and your brand becomes the glue that connects them.

‘Niching’ in this way helps you become an industry ‘expert’, a ‘thought leader’ or (as we like to call it) an ‘Influencer’.

So how do you create your own ‘Influence Avatar’?

Consider the following questions carefully. Whatever you think about here in relation to your business will be the forerunner of the action you then take.

In other words, the time spent considering, recording, and planning will save you time and money down the track.

a) Who is your ideal customer or client?

Your ideal customer is the sort of person you’d absolutely love to have buy, sign up or hire you – someone who should definitely take advantage of your offer.

Can you describe your ideal customer?

Describe exactly the sort of interest you want to attract to your business. Not just “50-year old male, 2 kids.” Go into detail about


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what this person is like, how he or she lives, and what sort of specific problems or desires he or she might have that would bring such a person to your business.

Remember, in getting clear on who you serve, you also see clearly who you DON’T serve, which is so critical if you want to wake up every day and love what you do. Working with the wrong people can really drain your energy and bring you down.

Bring value to the ‘right’ people, and the right people will bring value to you.

b) What matters to your ideal customer when buying your service/product?

This is why niching is so important. People have more similarities than differences and so start to get ‘into the heads’ of your customer. Put yourself in their shoes.

If you were the customer, what would you feel was most important?

What feedback have you received already from customers or clients that could give you more accurate answers here?

c) What problem or frustration does this person have before discovering your product or service?

How is this person feeling right before he or she finds your product or service? What’s keeping him or her up at night? What roadblock is holding him or her back?

Emotion is the fuel for engagement. By getting clear on this, you can start to get smarter with how you promote your product or service, the images and language you use, and the call to actions you put out to attract interest.

d) Which people are the hungriest for my business?

Now let’s go deeper into the psyche of your ideal customers and clients.


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We are looking for more details, more meaning that will help to create a real and honest connection with our marketplace.

Consider: what do they dream of, fear, need, Google, follow, despise, pay good money for, follow on social media, interact with…? Really get to KNOW your audience!

e) What would best serve my target audience?

Now create the connection and relevance for your product or service.

What are the main results that customers are looking for? What are the main challenges and obstacles to achieving these results?

2. DISCOVERING YOUR ‘INFLUENCE CODE’WHY ARE YOU IN BUSINESS?

Your WHY unlocks the purpose of your business/brand.

Social technology means that business is evolving quickly. The challenge is that the minds of most business owners are not.

They still find comfort in the safety of what is familiar and certain but, as the tides shift and currents change, it becomes evident that what got them here won’t get them there.

Successful businesses see themselves not as finance, coaching, or real estate businesses perse - but as PEOPLE businesses.

Why? Good question!

People engage with the WHY rather than the WHAT. Social platforms are all built through engagement between people, and so increasing the levels of engagement will help you touch, move, and inspire more people with your message.


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In the professional services model, WHAT you do will get you found, but WHY you do it will get you remembered.

In his book Start With Why, Simon Sinek puts it perfectly:

“If your WHY and your customer’s WHY correspond, then they will see your products and services as tangible ways to prove what they believe.

The goal of business should not be to do business with anyone who simply wants what you have. It should be to focus on the people who believe in what you believe.“

The reason that WHY is so hard for many to relate to is because it’s unseen. It’s usually felt. People talk about it as energy, or ‘the vibe’ of the place. You hear customers say “it’s really happening here” or “It just didn’t feel right”.

What the heck is a vibe, or the ‘it’ that is happening or didn’t feel right?

The answer is found in our biology, as people. We first feel things, then rationalise to make sense of them, and this creates our stories and experiences. WHY is the CONTEXT for CONTENT…

WHY is the feeling behind the facts, the marketing behind the sale, the brand behind the business, the purpose behind the profit, and the meaning behind the money.

There is no right answer to WHY, there is only a feeling-based rationalisation that we must consider when creating our products and services, because it’s these ‘stories’ that people buy into, feel connected to, and will gravitate towards or away from.

So, whenever we ask people why they are in business, the first answer is always basic bullshit. It’s surface-level rhetoric that is masking the deeper meaning that forms the DNA of that unique brand – and this is where the competitive advantage lives.


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For example, we might ask: “Why are you in the mortgage business and why are you unique?”

A: “Because I love helping people get the best home loan deal” (the same answer that every mortgage broker gives).

Q: “Why is that important to you?”

A: “Because people spend years of their life in their home, they create memories in them. If I can alleviate some of the financial burden so they can have a more comfortable life, I will. It’s satisfying.”

You see the difference between the first and second answers? More importantly, can you FEEL the difference?

Which one has more connection and meaning to you, and which mortgage broker reply would you go with?

Remember: People can try and copy WHAT you do but they can’t copy WHY or HOW you do it.

Your WHY is your fuel. It’s the purpose that keeps you going when times are hard. It’s the meaning behind your brand and the feeling that people get when they work with you. It’s what separates you from everyone else in your field.

The following questions will cut to the heart of your WHY, so that you separate yourself from the herd and your message cuts through the ‘noise’.

Take the time to consider the following and you’ll create a level of clarity that the greater majority of business professionals can never hope to achieve. We use this approach all the time with client campaigns.


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a) What is the story of your business?

Think about WHY you started offering your product or service and what led you to decide to make this particular offering. Where, how, and WHY did it all begin?

Go back and recall what inspired and motivated you. What urged you to take the step into business?

By asking WHY, WHY, WHY you will go deeper and deeper and cut to the core of WHY you do what you do. The deeper you go the more purpose you will expose.

b) What are the main 5-10 features of your business, and 5-10 benefits of each feature?

This is where most business owners get confused and miss the biggest opportunity to differentiate their products and services. They confuse FEATURES with BENEFITS.

A feature is what your product or service IS. A benefit is how it changes or affects your ideal customer’s life.

For example:

“My rubber boots come in 24 trendy colours (rubber and 24 trendy colours are features, what the product IS) so buyers can match them to their outfit and be the fashion envy of all their friends (being the fashion envy of their friends is a benefit that changes customers’ lives)”


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Here are some fun illustrations and examples to highlight the point:

c) What are 3-5 reasons why your ideal customer should choose YOUR offer over that of your competition. Why is your offer better for this person’s needs?

The answer here is critical! Most clients, when asked this question, will say things like:

“We offer better quality materials”

“We give better customer service”

“We do things differently”


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We often listen to responses to this question and then say, “So you’re saying that these answers are your points of difference? Do you realise that these generic statements are exactly what your competition is saying? Not good enough. Stop trying to compete on product, tap into your WHY and compete on values, perspectives, and your vision. Go deeper!!”

d) Why do you get out of bed every morning?

Consider your response here carefully!

The sad truth here is that some business professionals lose their passion. They lose their WHY. They get out of bed because of pressure, not passion. Be honest here, are you in it for the money? Or do you love what you do?

Ultimately, we believe that, if you don’t do what you love and love what you do, how can you expect anyone else to?

e) What are your five top products or services and WHY does each one exist?

If you don’t have a product or service yet, think about five of your competition’s top products or services instead. This will help you start to discover your own way to innovate, model, and create your own offerings.

If you DO already have a range of products and services think about this question seriously. Because everything you offer is an extension of your purpose, your WHY. If you can’t link it, then chances are you’ll find it hard to sell or market it.

Put value, meaning, and purpose into your products and services and you’ll never again find selling a challenge.

f) Why don’t you quit your business or stop offering your product/service today?


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Another hard question to consider carefully. Again, dig deep and discover where your WHY sits. Let that purpose drive you every day to make the best decisions ‘on purpose’.

g) How does/will your product or service add value to the world?

Now that you have gone deep, it’s time to go wide, and look at your product or service on a larger scale.

With the Internet, there are no more ‘local’ businesses. Your knowledge and expertise has international appeal. Someone over the other side of the world might find what you do, and WHY you do it worth engaging with. So consider the bigger picture of your product or service.

3. BUILDING YOUR ‘INFLUENCE ACTIVATOR’WHAT DO YOU OFFER TO YOUR MARKETPLACE?

Your WHAT gives practical perspective to your brand and clarity to buying outcomes (profit potential).

Some people refer to this as developing an ‘elevator pitch’: a quick 30-second spiel that has someone say “Wow – I want to do business with you”.

BUT remember: people identify with WHAT you do, but engage with WHY you do it.

So, in the world of social business, you need to define your WHAT within the context of your WHY, to achieve maximum potential for engagement.

For instance:

Q: “What do you do?”

A: “I’m an accountant.”


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While this is true, he or she is now competing with 10,000+ other people who also say they are accountants.

By taking this line, you become a ‘Me-Too Professional’.

People often confuse WHAT they do with WHO they are in the marketplace – resulting in lazy, generic responses.

WHAT you do is an extension of the service you provide (WHY you do it). It should not just be a label or title given to you because of a qualification. You need to speak to your community in such a way that makes them go “Wow – I need that” and “I need HIM, HER, or THEM”.

If you have carefully considered the previous sections on WHO and WHY, then this should be relatively easy.

Now consider the difference between the above response and this one:


A: “I offer tax minimization strategies to small businesses with a focus on saving them maximum tax dollars.” (Accountant)

And consider the difference between the two answers below:


A: “I offer superannuation solutions.”

A: “I turn people’s passive superannuation dollars into active investment strategies that triple their return over their working years.”

Another perfect example of this was provided by a mortgage broker we worked with. Think about how many mortgage brokers there are in your city and how competitive the industry is.

Our client wanted to attract more business and, like everyone else does when asked what they do, he replied:


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“I’m a mortgage broker.”

We replied “That’s WHO you are - but WHAT do you do?”

Again he replied “I help people get the best home loan.”

We were getting warmer, but he was still a ‘Me-Too Professional’, sounding just like every other mortgage broker out there.

So, after going another layer deeper, and taking him through the WHO and WHY questions, we came to a perfect WHAT. He wasn’t just any old mortgage broker; he helped people ‘unlock their mortgage.’

Using this description, he went on to generate 34 lead enquiries in the first 30 days after our meeting.


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Your WHAT needs to speak to a common challenge or problem your community has. It must trigger curiosity and conversation. You’ll know you’ve done this right because, from experience, people who fit your target market will say “Wow, that’s exactly what I need - we need to talk” … and then you have them!

In traditional business, people identify with what you do. But in the new social business economy, in a service-based industry, your greatest advantage over the majority of your competition will be in knowing WHO you serve (where to point the megaphone, your message) and WHY you do it (the quality of voice that your market hears, and feels). This is what people engage with.

The HOW, which we will get into in the next step, connects these together and enables you to deliver on your promise to your marketplace (it is an ‘amplifier’ that empowers both your WHAT and your WHY).


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Consider the following questions to arrive at your WHAT.

Again, please don’t just be a ‘Me-Too Professional’. Do the work! It’s an investment that will pay off for you over and over again.

a) What type of business do you have?

What does your business offer and what do you sell?

For example, you might say something like, “I own a general contracting business and offer both custom-home design, as well as turn key home options.”

b) Consider your top 10 products or services in order of profitability? Then rate them 1 through to 10 in order of popularity. Are they still in the same order?

c) What is the ONE product or service you really want to promote?

This is very important because confusion leads to no sales. WHAT is it that you want to be the BEST in the world at?

By focusing on one service or product, it doesn’t mean that you forget the rest. It just means that this item becomes the attractor and the others become solutions to further assist, or to recommend as needed.

For example, our business offers a full-service marketing solution but, by explaining everything we do to a potential client, it can become very overwhelming for them. So, knowing who we serve and why we do it, we can focus heavily on professional marketing services using LinkedIn as part of our Influencer system. That’s what we lead the market in and what we promote.

As we engage with clients and identify other needs (perhaps Facebook, or a wider digital strategy) we can then steer them down that path and meet these needs too.


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The key is knowing the ONE product or service you want to lead with and lead with that. Based on further conversations and the needs of the customer, you might close with something very different.

d) What does this product or service cost?

Consider this from two perspectives: what it costs you to provide it and the cost for the customer to buy it.

You’d be surprised how many business owners never consider the profit margins in their products or services, and therefore never truly know what they can spend to get new customers. They don’t know their new customer acquisition cost.

e) Now consider your offer using your WHO, WHY and WHAT and put it all together...

“I work with…” (WHO, specifically)“To help them…” (List 1 or 2 powerful WHY benefits)“Using…” (put your WHAT service here)

Examples:

“I work with 30 - 50 year old business men to help them generate leads and increase sales using automated social lead funnels.”(vs. “I’m a digital marketer”)

“I work with single mums to help them create a secondary income to better support their families through a custom financial advice model.”(vs. “I’m a financial adviser”)


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4. CHANNELING YOUR INFLUENCE

HOW WILL YOU SELL AND DELIVER YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE?

Your HOW creates the values and principles that align you to your clients, and guides them towards their desired outcome.

HOW we do things is manifested in the systems and processes within our organisation and its culture - especially when it comes to selling our products and services.

The essence of HOW relates to sales and your ability to help your prospect make a buying decision.

This is not about HOW something works (its function), but more about HOW something will benefit someone (its features and benefits).

Remember that people don’t really care about the product or service you have - it is simply an enabler towards solving one or more of their problems or challenges.

Who you are and what you do are merely a conduit to your customer getting something they want.

The key here is to see your product as an ‘enabler’ for your target audience:

“Want a more profitable business? Here’s HOW my product/service will enable that…”

“Want to lose weight and get into shape? Here’s HOW my product/service will enable that…”

“Want to save money on your home loan? Here’s HOW my product/service will enable that…”

“Want a happier, more connected relationship? Here’s HOW my product/service will enable that…”


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People will emotionally engage with WHY, but will identify and buy a WHAT if they can see HOW it will get them what they want.

Uncovering WHY someone wants something is the ultimate skill of the sales professional, because your HOW is simply the explanation of the journey that links your product or service to the solution for their problem, and moves them closer to them getting what they want.

See the figure below...

This process can be seen as convincing, persuading, or influencing your customer. But ultimately it comes down to educating them in a series of well thought out steps or phases that expands the value of your product or service even further, by making it more relatable.

The main goal of HOW you present your product or service comes down to what we refer to in The Influencer Project as ‘believability’.

‘Believability’ is defined as:


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The level of confidence in the truth, existence, or reliability of something, without absolute proof that one is correct.

Believability then, is the level of ‘buy-in’ your prospect has about your product or service at any given time. You need to guide your customers to the point where they have ‘bought into’ your HOW, and can see it link to them getting what they want.

People will buy 100 percent of the time if they can see that, in making a buying decision, they will dramatically improve one or more of the following:

● Time – does your product or service save or give them back time?

● Money – does it help to earn more, save more, generate more or produce more money? Cold hard dollars!! Money always matters in business.

● Lifestyle – does it assist them in having a better, more comfortable lifestyle, both in the short-and long-term?

Remember: Every buying decision is an attempt to be better off as a result of having made that decision. All buying decisions


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are emotional. People do not buy products, instead they buy benefits.

So, HOW you present WHAT you do must be clear in your mind before you can ever expect someone else to understand what you do and HOW it will benefit them.

The following example shows HOW our ‘Fast Influence Framework’ breaks down our service into stages. This enables our clients to visualise the results and benefits as a journey:

Here is an early example of the framework in action for The Influencer Project model:


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Knowing your HOW gives you the confidence to back up your WHAT. It’s in this explanation that people’s ‘believability’ is either won or lost.

There is nothing more frustrating than seeing a powerful marketing campaign that inspires ‘believability’, followed by a sales specialist who poorly explains HOW the product or service rolls out or HOW the service will benefit the client

Consider the following questions concerning your HOW. Don’t just skip these because you think you already know the answers. Your marketing and sales efforts will thank you for it later.

Anyway, you knowing HOW your service works does not mean your prospects will!

a) How does your product or service solve a customer’s problems and make their pain, fears or frustrations go away?

Here, consider the phases, steps, and stages in the delivery cycle of your product or service and how each brings value to the customer.

Describe the process from buying through to experiencing your product or service, and all the steps in between. Think about the results and benefits of each step, so that the customer can visualise the journey they will go on after making their buying decision.

Results just don’t happen overnight, and people aren’t that stupid. By breaking things down, you positively shape a customer’s ‘believability’, demonstrating your expertise by providing a framework to explain the results in esultr detail.


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b) How will this person feel and what will he or she achieve after the problem goes away?

Put yourself in the shoes of your customer and be honest. Once this person has used your product or service, how will life be different? What will change?

c) How would you like people to describe you and your brand?

Think carefully about your USPs (unique selling points).

It’s always interesting to consider these and then honestly assess whether what you consider as your unique selling points are what your customer feels and experiences once they do business with you. Is there a disconnect?

Some business professionals just want to tick USP boxes without ever really living them. What does your team think of your USPs and how would they describe what the business offers?

It’s better to be honest and specific about these than to be fake and generic, because that is probably what everyone else is doing.

Raise your standards! Know your value, stand by it, and demonstrate it every single day! Accept nothing less!

IMPORTANT TO CONSIDER:

For values or principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs. For example, it’s not ‘integrity’, it’s ‘always do the right thing’; not ‘innovation’, but ‘look at the problem from a different angle’.

Articulating our values as verbs gives us a clear idea that they involve action, and it also brings your BRAND CONTEXT into easily relatable words.

Doing this exercise properly will put you miles ahead of your competition and give you better angles and insights from which to promote and sell your products or services.


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5. EXPANDING YOUR INFLUENCE WHEN WILL YOU CLOSE THE DEAL?

Your WHEN is the urgency in your sales system, placing an active focus on turning interest into commitment and getting a decision.

WHEN creates urgency, helps you manage expectations, and helps a client come to a buying decision.

On the marketing side of the equation, getting leads is important and explaining clearly how your products and services work is critical, however, being able to close a lead into a sale is VITAL for every business owner. This is the journey between ‘interested’ and ‘committed’.

In The Influencer Project we see sales as educational rather than transactional, helping prospects arrive at buying decisions by building relationships and consistently giving value.

You can’t force a sale, nor magically manipulate someone into handing over their credit card details. Nor should you want to.

A sale is won or lost at the ‘tipping point’ of a decision. Decisions in your favour are made when the prospect’s BELIEVABILITY in your product or service intersects with their NEEDS.

It’s up to the sales person, however, to ask the YES or NO questions in order to create urgency around that decision, or at least develop a clear timeline for a decision to be made.

There is a constant desire in the mind of your prospect for change, growth, and improvement. They want to BELIEVE in something or someone that will help them be better, feel better, live better.

But at any given time, customers have different levels of NEED for your products or services.

So, believability and need are in a constant state of flux. They are never constant, even after the sale, which is why understanding your WHEN is so important.


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For example:

A client rang our office, desperate for some marketing assistance to generate leads. He said “This is something I need straight away!”

Of course, we thought, ‘HOT lead! Guaranteed sale! We sent the proposal as promised, and then waited.

Several days passed and we called to follow up, “How are you going with the proposal?” He answered “Um, well, I have a few questions...”

After answering his questions for just under an hour (they were of course ‘objections’) he ended with ‘I’ll think about it’.

Shocked, we couldn’t understand what had happened. In 72 hours a hot lead had turned cold. WHY?

The answer was a lack of ‘believability’.

Some call it ‘cold feet’ or post-sale it’s called ‘buyer’s remorse’. Whatever it is termed, it shows that levels of believability and levels of need are always changing.

Marketing needs to be consistent - to maintain audience ‘believability’.

And sales must be persistent - to affect and manage levels of ‘need’.

To help us quickly assess prospect’s level of ‘believability’ and ‘need’, we created the following quadrant. It provides a quick and simple insight into what might be going on, based on how a prospect responds when closing the sale:


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WHEN the time comes to close, based on the prospect’s response, the quadrant quickly reveals potential ‘believability’ or ‘need’ indicators. This helps you to pivot and respond accordingly, to either build more trust or create more urgency in the sales process.

So, just like in the example above, you come to the part of the conversation where a buying decision is sought and the customer seems ‘skeptical’. They have objections. You can see that a lack of belief in your product or service is stopping them from moving forward, for whatever reason – and you will need to do more work on this.

Alternatively, if the person seems to like your product or service but ‘ums and ahs’ or seems a bit ‘complacent’ (you’ll know because they can’t make a decision) you can see it’s their lack of need that is slowing them down. So you can focus your efforts more on raising their perceived level of need.

Let’s go through the quadrants:


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1. Indifference = Rejection (Low believability/low need)(No particular interest or sympathy; unconcerned)

Inside the quadrant of indifference lives rejection. There isn’t enough believability in what you are offering and the customer doesn’t feel they have a need (at this time!). It could mean a number of things but the bottom line is, “thanks but no thanks - not right now”.

People are indifferent for many reasons but we’ve seen how often it’s because business owners are desperate, and go straight to ‘converting’ without establishing a relationship or providing any real clear value or context.

Remember: rejection might not mean NO, it might mean NOT YET. Do the work and continue to build value, relationship, and rapport. Over time, a NO can become curiosity, as the prospect continues to see and hear from you on social media.

2. Complacency = Stagnation (high believability/low need)

(Satisfaction with how things are and not wanting to try to improve them)

Inside the quadrant of complacency lives stagnation. It’s a little like smoking: people know and BELIEVE that it is bad for them, but despite all the warnings and public health announcements, they continue to do it.

It’s not until they get a major shock or something happens that triggers an intervention that they feel an urgency that compels them to take action.

In this quadrant people are curious but there is nothing compelling or urgent enough to make them interested or to create a need. They simply continue to observe and watch until a time when their want becomes a need.


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3. Skeptical = Objections (high need/low believability)(Not easily convinced; having doubts or reservations.)

Inside the quadrant of skepticism lives objection.

Objections are often seen as negative by salespeople, but it should not be confused with a lack of interest at that point in time.

If a prospect is objecting it’s because they are trying to ‘sell’ themselves on what you are offering. They are asking for more information to help give them the believability they need to say YES and move forward.

If you are dealing with a prospect in this quadrant, they are interested because they have a need, but they are not yet committed, because they haven’t totally bought into what you are presenting to them.

This could be for a number of reasons beyond your control. However, in most cases, trust is the limiting factor. Perhaps they have been burned before, or they don’t believe enough in the benefits outweighing the risks.

4. Enthusiasm = Conversion (high believability/high need)(Showing intense and eager enjoyment, interest, or approval.)

Inside the quadrant of enthusiasm lives conversion.

Have you ever experienced that euphoric feeling when, within minutes of talking to a prospect about your product or service, they have arrived at a positive buying decision?

You probably walked away thinking, “Why can’t all sales be like that?!”

It’s simple: they had a need and they believed fully in what you were offering, so it was easy to commit. In some cases they have already decided YES before you even open your mouth. They just ‘get it’.

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You’ll find yourself increasingly in Quadrant Four when you start implementing the systems and processes of The Influencer Project. People start to know, like and trust you, and buy into who you are and what you do, because you are the most active in your marketplace.

People want to be around and associate with active and respected people, who are certain about who they are and confident in what they do. Period!

Just before we finish this WHEN section, let’s revisit the example of the prospect who had appeared so keen, only to end up saying “I’ll think about it.”

Well, he came back six months later and signed up with us. He even referred two more customers!

Through our process of sharing high-value content and ongoing phone touch points, delivered consistently over time, he grew his ‘belief’ in our service until his level of need forced a buying decision voluntarily on his part.

Making decisions is hard for most people and many are not proactive. It pays to be persistent and consistent with your contact when you consider the question of WHEN. Don’t take a NO personally. Understand which quadrant the prospect is in and what you need to do to move them into Quadrant Four.

As you go through this book, you’ll learn the steps to do that.

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CHAPTER TWO: Building your system of influence

“Having influence is not about elevating self, but about lifting others”

Sheri Dew – Author/Publisher

The social business modelYour ‘system of influence’ will be built around the social business model. This is based on four simple steps:

1. OPTIMISE: Get clear on who you serve and the value you provide people.

2. CONNECT: Build a community of like-minded people who have common passions, problems, and challenges.

3. ENGAGE: Engage the community with valuable content and resources and build interest around who you are and how you can help.

4. CONVERT: Monetize the community through value-based offers that present solutions to common problems and challenges.


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We’ve already covered Step One in the previous chapter - that always has to be the starting point.

In this chapter we look at the other three steps.

Unlocking ‘exponential’ growth in your businessWe first cover some of the key principles associated with unlocking ‘exponential’ growth in your business, before going into more detail about CONNECT, ENGAGE and CONVERT in the next section.

‘Exponential’ growth is an outcome that enables business owners to have more time, earn more money, and live an amazing lifestyle. The problem is that most business owners are looking to achieve that using a silver bullet approach.

They are looking for the secret (and mythical) formula:

Minimal Effort and Investment In = Maximum Return and Profit Out

This is also the reason why so many ‘marketers’ release crap products that prey on the desire of business owners to make quick and easy money.


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The truth is that YOU are the silver bullet and YOU are the foundation upon which real, achievable exponential growth is built upon.

It comes down to two fundamental things:

1) Activity2) Consistency

Here’s an illustration that cleverly breaks down the marketing and sales cycle inside the average business.

You’d be surprised how many people avoid doing the simple things consistently because they expect to find an easier or quicker way without having to ‘do the work’.

One of the sayings we like to relate to clients is:

The simple things become complicated when you expect too much.


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THE IMPORTANCE OF BUILDING PEOPLE-BASED COMMUNITIES

The path to exponential business growth starts with people and building influential relationships. Not a quick thing at all. But, activity taken consistently over time creates a ‘tipping point’ of opportunity. People see you as a key person of influence in the market and are happy to pay a little more because of the perceived expertise you bring them.

That’s the reason why we call this The Influencer Project, because people want to do business with experts, with leaders, with people they respect and look up to. An ‘influencer’ is exactly that.

Think about the people YOU would do business with.

Before you even considered spending $1, you would have to first see value in a PERSON before you considered their service, right? You’d need to have built a certain level of ‘believability’ in who they are and what they offer before you made a buying decision. This is no different to the people who buy from you.

Unless you are active and put value into the marketplace consistently you will always be at the mercy of ‘paid’ marketing strategies. You’ll have to BUY relationships to make up for the fact you haven’t BUILT any.

PROFIT comes from PEOPLE, not PRODUCTS.

This is not some HR ‘hug it out’ people jargon. PEOPLE support your business with their buying decisions based on the believability they have in you as a PERSON and in your professional service to help solve their problem.

You could have the best product in the world, with a mind-bending service offering and the funkiest job title, with the most ‘WOW’ business cards on earth, but if nobody has heard of you, then what’s the value of your product or service?

What is YOUR value to the marketplace?


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We’re in a ‘social economy’ now, where people want to do business with people and are fast losing trust with large corporations and faceless organisations. We are already seeing massive changes here, with many of the largest companies in the world taking note.

According to Crezeo, 86 percent of Fortune 500 companies report that interactive online communities provide deeper insight into customer needs.

“This led to not only increased customer satisfaction, but also a rise in brand loyalty.”

You don’t need to be a Fortune 500 company but the same rules apply. Building a powerful community starts with the right mindset in wanting to understand customer needs more deeply, and allowing customers to freely and comfortably interact with you.

Then it’s a case of aiming to provide the best product or service in the marketplace, on the basis of the level of engagement and service you provide people.

A thriving community provides many other valuable benefits apart from insight into customer needs:

66 percent of companies say they turn to brand communities for product development, according to Cause Marketing.

64 percent of companies state that their brand community has improved their decision-making, according to the Innsbruck University School of Management.

80 percent of marketers indicate that building brand communities has increased traffic, according to Hubspot.

53 percent of Americans who are part of a social brand community are more loyal to the brand, according to a study published by Convince and Convert.


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Despite this compelling evidence, it’s amazing how many start-up businesses spend countless tens of thousands on their products, websites, business cards, car stickers, new equipment etc, and just expect to GO LIVE and TA DA! People will flood through the doors in droves, credit cards in hand, ready to buy.

Epic fail! And we see it over and over again.

When you have great ideas for products or services instead of great ideas for people you will fail.

VALUE-BASED MARKETING VS. TRANSACTIONAL-BASED SELLING

The reason why some companies have to discount products, giveaway items, have flash sales, and use cheesy marketing manipulation is because their business has become ‘transactional’: fast to sell, slow to be remembered.

On the flip side we have people-based businesses or BRAND-based businesses. Think of some of the brands that are doing this well by using similar principles to those you are reading about in this book: Uber, GoPro, Tesla, Airbnb, Oculus, HTC Vive, etc.

All of these businesses have a focus on value-based marketing as opposed to transactional-based selling. They know that they have a great product/service and continue to sell the BENEFITS through marketing that their target market will relate to and see value in. It’s like a kind of content seduction.

You don’t have to see an ad to buy a GoPro, you just want one, because you want to be part of what the ‘brand’ means and represents. You already trust it and know what it enables you to do.

Great brands create powerful social narratives and are clear about who they serve and what they stand for. This brings confidence and confidence is magnetic. Fast to be remembered, slow to sell.


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The paradox of this, of course, is that the more you are remembered and related to, the more you will sell anyway.

WHY ‘EXPONENTIAL’?

We call the growth associated with this model ‘exponential’. What does that mean?

Well, once you have people connected to you, who know, follow, and believe in you, limitless opportunities will be uncovered, based on consistent activity on a moment-to-moment, day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month basis.

Exponential growth builds and grows by more people simply ‘getting you’. Your activity and consistency means that they buy into what you’re doing and they see how you can help them. This is social engagement and influence-building.

Either you can do it or someone else will.

THE ‘FLYWHEEL EFFECT’ (PROFIT ‘MICRO CYCLES’)

A flywheel is a heavy wheel that requires a large amount of energy to push it. By continuing to push, the flywheel starts to build its own momentum. Keep going and it eventually has enough power to turn itself and generate its own ‘built up’ momentum.

That’s what a business experiences with ‘exponential’ growth.

Some business owners get disheartened after a short period of trying something new. Momentum takes time to build - because it always takes the maximum time, energy, and investment to get started, to begin.

We often say to clients, “It will never be as hard as it is right now, here, at the beginning” because, in starting anything new, you often have zero to build from and must overcome resistance in order to learn, grow, and evolve.

Our ability to take consistent action over time, despite the ups and downs, will see our flywheel begin to gather momentum


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and afford us more opportunities and outcomes with less and less effort required.

You’ll notice in the top image that, whilst each phase is separate and distinct, each has its own flywheel inside (what we call ‘micro-cycles’) that stack and integrate, rather than swap and change.

In each campaign phase there will be a heavier focus on either CONNECT, ENGAGE or CONVERT.


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For example:

1. During the CONNECT phase, building the community is the main focus; but we must still consider how to ENGAGE people with valuable content and build believability to CONVERT them towards the end purpose.

2. During the ENGAGE phase we don’t stop connecting with new people, but we now focus on adding value and engaging with our connections, in order to create deeper relationships and interest.

3. During the CONVERT phase we continue to connect with new people, engage and build interest, but also focus on value-based offers to take to those who are interested, in order to convert them.

Again, each phase stacks and integrates, one doesn’t replace the other.

The ‘Flywheel of Influence’, as we call it, is the same philosophy that explains why social media posts go viral and ‘take on a life of their own’.

By being consistently active (CONNECTING, ENGAGING, and CONVERTING) you create more and more momentum:

● More curiosity about the purpose of your campaign;● More engagement in your community, your content,

and your offers;● More conversions as people get to know, like, and trust

you.

It doesn’t matter where you ‘feed’ this flywheel, it always creates more momentum and this leads to more opportunity over time and, as a result, helps to create ‘exponential’ growth.

The ‘Phases of Influence’ Let’s now get into more detail about the campaign cycles that we use with clients in The Influencer Project:


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● CONNECT - connection leads to CURIOSITY● ENGAGE - engagement leads to INTEREST● CONVERT - conversion leads to COMMITMENT

A strategy founded on these three phases builds up momentum in one phase before shifting emphasis to the next, in order to build, grow, and monetize communities. This is what we call the ‘Flywheel of Influence’ mentioned just now. This helps a business make money, through value, meaning, and purpose – just as business should be!

This strategy can be applied to any business model online or offline, because it starts with people and is based on the ability to take consistent action over time, continually adding value to build the community.

But this strategy is NOT new. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. It’s a case of adapting ‘ACTIVE’ old-school business-building strategies, proven to work over the decades, and bringing them into the digital, social world.

OLD-SCHOOL VERSUS NEW-SCHOOL BUSINESS

Think about what used to happen in business. First, we would need to connect with people through networking groups, cold calls, door knocking, sending letters etc. This would spark community curiosity in a certain product or service.


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We’d then have to qualify prospects, based on whether they were really interested or not.

If not: “Thank you very much, let’s stay in touch?”

If there is genuine interest: “Great, let’s make a time to catch up, what’s your name and phone number?”. No email back then - you’d book a time and place for a meeting by phone or in person.

At this meeting, we would educate the prospect and start to ‘sell’, which involved convincing an interested prospect to make a committed buying decision using various scripts or sales techniques.

So what’s changed?

The Internet changed! This has opened up access to every person and every piece of information through a few short clicks.

Then, social media changed all that again. We are now connected to the largest databases of people ever, and can instantly communicate with people across the planet.

The good news is that there is no more walking the pavements —‘wearing out shoe leather’—or making cold calls, and there is no more waiting for replies to sales letters.

We can now do it all with a tweet, mention, comment, share, connection, or email AND we can measure engagement immediately, all from the comfort of our home or office. Heck, we can even measure it from our PHONE! BOOM!

It’s critical to understand what this means for your business, so that you know which levers to pull in order to capitalize on each phase of the cycle. The question is: How do you move prospects from CONNECT to ENGAGE to CONVERT as efficiently as possible?

It’s time to start getting practical and strategic. Let’s look at how you can deploy what we’ve so far discussed and theorized on.


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Here’s a deeper overview of the phases of influence and how you can apply them.

1. THE SOCIAL CAMPAIGN – CONNECT AND SPARK CURIOSITY

This phase of influence is created inside your social platform, and relates to the ‘campaign message’ you’re running, and the strategy behind it.

What is the context behind the content you are going to create and put in front of your target audience?

The goal in this phase is simply to start building a community by actively introducing yourself through a private message, connection request, email etc. You’re not offering anything to buy, just simply reaching out and ‘shaking hands’ - introducing yourself and saying ‘Hi, it’s great to meet you!’.

It’s through this simple correspondence that you spark curiosity in the mind of your prospect. Given that your profile is visible online and you’re (hopefully) strategically reaching out to your target audience, those who are curious will be more open to connect and stay in touch.

Social campaigns are underpinned by two key elements: strategy and system:

What is your big-picture strategy? This relates to context. What are you leading the members of your community towards? Make it clear, but don’t sell. It means helping them see the bigger picture and what could be possible on the journey ahead with you. It also assists you as the business owner in clearly understanding the journey ahead, as you attract and guide people towards your product or service.

What is your system to enable it? This relates to the content. What will you deliver consistently to stay front of mind and have your community see you as


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the market leader? This is about producing valuable content every day, positioning you as an Influencer.

The by-product of a well-put-together campaign is that you garner curiosity, indicated by likes, comments, engagements and sometimes create organic opportunity.

Curiosity doesn’t make you money but gives you benchmarks, data, and insights into better understanding your community and how to capitalize on their behaviours, likes, and dislikes. It also helps with keywords and other key analytics that better inform your core strategy.

2. MARKETING – ENGAGE AND GATHER INTEREST

In this phase you direct curiosity strategically, to capture it and nurture it more closely.

Although this is where the marketing activity really starts, it relates to providing the community with consistent, value-based content, rather than selling. Instead of “Buy this, buy that” it’s “How can I serve you?” This is an important distinction.

Helping your community and giving value without expecting anything in return gets you viewed as the go-to person in your niche.

Building ‘brand equity’ is a kind of strategic seduction. It’s about becoming magnetic to your audience through different content channels consistently over time, and having people engage with you regularly.

Engagement is a social currency. It’s where we ‘qualify curiosity’ into interest, learning more about our community members individually, and making the relationship a little


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more personal. From a ‘LIKE’ to a name and number, then to a conversation and a sale.

In the first phase there might have been a few engagements already, but now we capture ‘content engagement’ in the form of personal details in exchange for something of value.

For example, we gather names, email addresses, and phone numbers in exchange for a piece of material that adds massive value to community members, something they need in order to solve a common problem.

You might have seen this in the form of:

● Webinar registrations● Video series● Podcasts● VIP mailing lists● Pre-registers or pre-orders● Resource downloads● Strategy guides● Templates● ‘Done for you’ resources● Free trials or samples

Side note: This only works if the content you put out is good quality. If it’s just ‘fluff and balls’ then you’ll only lose the trust and credibility you’ve worked so hard to gain. It’s much quicker to lose trust and credibility than it is to gain it.

Most ‘FREE’ content out there is worth exactly what people paid for it—nothing. If you want to stand out from the crowd you need to provide something you would normally charge money for, then it is of real and perceived value.

If you feel a little nervous or unsure about giving it away, then good! It means that it has value. You’ll only really know its perceived value once you’ve tested and measured feedback from your community over time.


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The by-product of this marketing is leads and opportunities. According to Demand Metric, content marketing generates three times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, but costs 62 percent less.

In short, you are moving the relationship needle over one more step to become more personal with members of the community, by now acquiring personal details.

Turning curiosity into interest in this way is the elixir of life for a business, and a potential profit indicator. But remember that profit is a by-product of commitment, and commitment is a sales benchmark.

3. SALES – CONVERT, GET COMMITMENT, AND INCREASE ROI

This phase is about helping interested members of your community (leads) come to a buying decision and closing them. It means getting a YES or NO commitment within an effective sales system.

We have a saying in The Influencer Project, which is:

“An influencer doesn’t play in the world of maybe.”

This is a reminder to us to be brave enough to ask for a YES, but humble enough to accept a NO. Both are decisions that lead to a clear outcome – so they should be welcomed.

The harsh reality is that your ability to close business ultimately determines your ability to stay in business. Marketing will OPEN up opportunities, but it’s your sales system that will CLOSE them.


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Many professionals confuse marketing with sales. We’ve seen countless examples of businesses where great quality leads, literally begging to be sold, are wasted because the business owner had no sales system in place and couldn’t close effectively.

According to Marketing Sherpa, 79 percent of marketing leads never convert into sales, due to a lack of lead nurturing.

Without the ability to turn interest into commitment your business will starve.

Sales means a signed agreement/contract and, ultimately, clients who pay you. AKA - making money!!

The funny thing is that most professionals enquire about ROI (Return on Investment) when presented with a marketing proposal, but they do not focus on their sales system to close the leads it will bring.

This is worth a closer look. These three letters (ROI) are often thrown around businesses but many don’t understand the raw truth – that marketing ROI means nothing if you can’t convert.

The only ROI a marketer can ever deliver is through the amount of ‘brand reach’ achieved and interest (leads) captured.

Say that a marketer delivers HOT leads to a business, but the owner doesn’t call them until three months later, when the response is “I’m not interested anymore”. Is marketing to blame for the lack of ROI - or is it a sales issue?

There are therefore three considerations when measuring ROI:


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System (Strategy). What is the implementation plan and how much is there to spend on the campaign?

Marketing (Attraction). Return On Activity (ROA) = capturing interest. How many people did your brand reach? How many are now being tracked? And how many leads did you capture?

Sales (Conversion). Return on Initiative (ROI) = getting commitment. How much money did you make and how many clients signed up?

There is a time and money cost to both the marketing and sales elements. Together they influence the overall ROI for your business - so it is a little more complicated than most imagine.

This is also a benchmark of your business influence. ROI can also be seen as ‘Return on Influence’ where your ability to touch, move, and inspire your community and engage them towards a buying decision over time (commitment) will ultimately decide how well you profit in your business.

None of the above should be very difficult to apply in your business.

It comes down to having a growth mindset and using social channels as an ‘enabler’ to consistently:

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Connect: Build a community. Did you connect with someone new today?

Engage: Engage your community with high value content and resources. Did you offer value to your community (or followers) in any way today?

Convert: Present quality offers that encourage members to buy. Did you present an offer or follow up on any expressed interest?

Get these three phases right and the ROI will follow. Never skip a phase just to make money! Be disciplined and strategic, with a system to roll out your campaigns according to these phases.

If you haven’t yet applied any of this, don’t worry. We get even more specific about this is in the second part of the book, where you will see each of the three steps in action inside the professional LinkedIn platform.

But before that, let’s talk more about the power of influence.

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CHAPTER THREE: The ‘Six Gears of Influence’

“People’s ability to understand the factors that affect their behavior is

surprisingly poor.”

Robert Cialdini

Understanding a little about how the brain works can be a powerful way to exert more influence – and you don’t need a white coat and work in a lab to do it!

There are certain ‘universal’ factors that contribute to how we all make decisions – based on the way we take in and process information, and how we experience the world.

Unlocking these factors can help shape our approaches, strategies, and messages to our target audiences, giving them more weight and making them more effective.

What could be more powerful than being able to affect the thoughts, feelings and opinions of others, by understanding the basic fundamentals of how the brain operates?

Although this might sound scary at first, it comes with the knowledge that marketing companies are already investing millions into behavioural insights. By applying this framework, you can shortcut the time needed to learn and apply it with immediate results.

We have seen its power first hand. This exact method has been applied in our own business, whenever we submit a proposal


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to a client, start a marketing campaign, run a consulting session, or attend a sales meeting.

It’s extremely useful to be able to ‘climb inside’ the mind of a prospect and influence their buying decision.

‘CREATE’Our unique framework is called ‘CREATE’ and the six ‘gears of influence’ are:

1. Commonality2. React and Respond3. Exalt4. Awareness (self) and Association (others)5. Trust (the facts)6. Expand

Understanding this framework a little more, will give you key insights into the triggers that will help you to improve communication with prospects, better meet their needs, and increase the likelihood of exerting a positive influence on them and your community in general.

These influence factors work because they are based on the fundamental elements of human thinking and behaviour. This is not some fad centred around the latest technology or trend. It is based on the common denominator for us all: our brains and how we use them. That’s why we call them ‘universal’ intelligences.


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Each one is a ‘gear’ that the brain moves through as it processes information. Each has a distinct focus and is associated with specific emotions, giving rise to very clear behaviours in ourselves and others.

We each possess all six ‘gears of influence’ but, through conditioning during our early lives, we develop preferences for certain factors over others. These translate to habitual behaviour which link to how we see the world and our overall perspective - what we like and what we don’t, what motivates us and what doesn’t; what we prioritise and what we leave out.

This is why we are not all the same! These variations give rise to different personalities and behaviours and, from the perspective of business, lead to different emotional biases and buying decisions.

Understanding more about these intelligences is helpful to us in explaining why some approaches are ineffective, and do not produce the desired responses in people. They highlight why emotions and behaviours vary amongst customers, and helps to illustrate how we might be able to adapt our communications to increase their impact, improve engagement levels, and quickly raise levels of influence.

The central question for an Influencer is: “How do I effectively trigger customers to take a desired action?”

Every marketer knows that this involves a little psychology. In the following run through of the six ‘gears of influence’ you will discover why people make the decisions they make, what their triggers are when engaging, and when they may be ready to take you up on an offer.

The following information has the power to change the way you approach not only marketing, but business in general.

Don’t use this information to push poor products or services, or profit unfairly through manipulation. When these factors of


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influence are used unethically, any short-term gains will, in most cases, be met with long-term losses.

The First Gear: Commonality—Can you relate?Commonality is the brain’s first gear in the influencing sequence.

Why?

Because we all want to ‘fit in’. We want to feel that we are in the right place, doing the right thing, with the right people. We want to feel safe!

Think about this carefully. You walk into a room full of people — who are you drawn to the quickest? Who gets your attention and influences you first?

It’s most likely a person who reminds you a bit of yourself. Someone who speaks in a similar way to how you speak, acts in a similar way to how you act, maybe even dresses like you. We seek the familiar.

Commonality is about ‘fitting in’ and creating a ‘tribe’ of common values, a tribe of people who you know and trust. Ultimately this brings a feeling of SAFETY and it is a very primal, survival-based instinct of our brain.

It’s in our ‘tribal’ DNA to make sure we conform with our peers, our industry guidelines, workplace culture, and so on. We define ourselves by the communities we belong to, and are highly sensitive to social rejection and exclusion.

We all know what it feels like to be surrounded by people we don’t trust or we feel threatened by, most of us would go into ‘threat response’ mode and shut down.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR AN ASPIRING INFLUENCER?


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When marketing your products or services, you must know WHO you’re calling out to and WHY. Without this, how will you get their attention?

This is why we spent time on NICHING and WHO-WHY-WHAT-HOW-WHEN (‘Influence Framework’) in Chapter One: people will engage with what they relate with most.

Our aim here should be to make people feel safe, that they fit in, and give them the sense that they are among peers, to lower their ‘threat response’ (objections) and show them that they don’t need to keep scanning for threats.

Providing information that people can’t relate to is essentially SPAMMING them:

Content without context is spam

People need to know HOW something relates to them and WHY it is relevant for them to engage with it.

Establish commonality first, common ground that builds rapport and lowers the perception of ‘threat’ that contacts may initially have.

This brings more certainty to the relationship, and allows you to establish loyalty and trust with your prospect.


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YOUR FOCUS IN MARKETING CAMPAIGNS

WHO is your audience and can they relate? Align your product or service with your target market’s core values and focus on making your message highly relevant to them.

Key questions your marketing needs to answer in the minds of prospects:

● How does this relate to me?● Why is this relevant to me?● Will they relate to what I’m saying?● Am I familiar with this subject?● Does my attention and focus belong here?● What’s the purpose of this?

The Second Gear: React and Respond – Are you saying what they’re thinking?

Our brain loves to react to events, situations, and people. We crave to express how we feel, what we think about things, and our opinion on matters. We love to be heard and want to feel free to react to things authentically.

Our opinions are born from our beliefs, and our beliefs create our perception of the world.

How do you feel when these opinions are stifled? When you cannot say what you think? It’s incredibly frustrating, right?

People who are too scared to express what they think will rally around and engage with people who they feel more comfortable with, who represent them, and who are able to say the things they feel they can’t.


Understanding that people need to voice they think, have an opportunity to contribute and be heard, and discuss through open communication channels is critical for any Influencer.


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You need to know what your audience is thinking and then react and respond to that by helping them express themselves through you and your message.

Reactions come from emotions and emotions mean engagement. Think about how social media channels entice users to react (Facebook even calls them ‘reactions’) by liking, loving, sharing, and commenting.

GETTING DISAGREEMENT AND NO ANSWERS

In some cases, your reactions will have a polarising effect. You will have people like and relate to you and others who will feel the opposite. That’s OK. As the saying goes, you have to stand for something – or you’ll fall for everything!

Whilst some people will disagree with you, this is fine. YES or NO is better than MAYBE. You need to accept that some people won’t like you! It’s perfectly healthy engagement, and profitable too!

Getting a NO means you can close that particular loop. Getting a YES means you can move forward. Both lead to a decision and a commitment. Perfect!

Once our minds are made up about something, we don’t need to expend any more mental energy on it.

So both YES and NO responses are positive. They mean that you are engaging people. Taking the ‘side’ of your target audience, forming stronger relationships with them, is a BIG positive. If you can help them express their problems and frustrations, they will rally behind you, believe in your message, and buy into what you’re saying. Through you they have permission, feel safe and can say what they are thinking and feeling.

These become the individuals who will relate most closely to the solution you offer through your products and services and who, further down the line, will buy from you, because they have already bought INTO you.


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People’s buying decisions generally represent a choice to run away from pain or run towards pleasure. More often than not it’s the first one. So it’s important to consider your product or service from three perspectives:

1. How can I help a person save time or give them back time?

2. How can I save them money or help them earn more money?

3. How can I enhance their lifestyle or help them look or feel better?

REFINING YOUR MESSAGE

Your message needs to relate to the problems and challenges of your target audience. It must emulate their reaction or response to a certain topic from a clear and confident perspective.

Problems and challenges create discussions. Think about why trash magazines and tabloids constantly sell! Gossip sells and bad news travels fast.

This doesn’t mean you have to create ‘bad’ news and make people feel horrible. Just address a challenge or problem that is causing them pain or discomfort.


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Without problems or challenges that you can help solve, what relevance do you have to your audience? There is no reason for them to engage with you otherwise.

Call out to people from a clear and confident perspective and you can start to build loyal followers who connect with you on an emotional level.

The bottom line here is to take a chance to help your audience express themselves and provoke a reaction. Spark engagement!

YOUR FOCUS IN MARKETING CAMPAIGNS: HOW do you want your target market to react or respond? Be sure to take a stand to evoke engagement and get your target market talking.


● What do I think or feel about this?● How do I feel like reacting?● How does this trigger me emotionally?● What action do I feel like taking?

The Third Gear: Exalt - The need to leadThe brain is competitive and loves status, achievement, and the ability to stand out.

At a certain point, people are looking to be better, improve, stand out, and grow. Whether we like it or not, we constantly compare ourselves to others and how we ‘rank’ amongst our peers.

We like to feel significant, special, unique, and needed, as it helps give meaning, direction, and importance to our lives.

This applies to everything from education and exam results to job title and how big our houses are.


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Our brain encourages us to stand out and be recognised for something, to feel significant in some way, and to be of value to our community.


This ‘gear’ relates to the benefits that your offering can bring. It also relates to the ‘credibility indicators’ that enhance the value your audience receives from your product or service.

Does it provide STATUS? Think of the excitement and SIGNIFICANCE people feel when they get a better home loan rate than their neighbour, implement a new marketing system that sees them hit number one on Google, or simply wear the latest suit from Dolce and Gabbana into a business meeting.

As mentioned previously, business professionals often confuse features with benefits. This is a great way of describing the difference...

The ability to show a customer the gap between where they are now, and where they want to be, then highlighting how your offering closes that gap is the key here.

People buy to achieve something that will impact their lives positively in some way. They have the perception that, with


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your product or service, they will be creating a better life for themselves. This may be a big or small improvement, but knowing what triggers this (the WHY) is the difference between getting a YES or NO.

People don’t buy a camera because they want to take pictures, they buy it to take photos that impress friends and family, or to capture precious moments to remember. People don’t want a mortgage. They want a home for their family, they and/or an investment for the future.

As you know from Chapter One, your product benefits should be built around WHY. Consider your product or service as a ‘conduit’ for your customers’ WHY.

By helping your audience understand the benefits of your product or service clearly, they get to see how it helps them achieve a certain goal. It defines the value of your offering.

As with the second gear, people generally want results in one or more of these areas:

● Saving or ‘earning’ time● Saving or earning money● Lifestyle enhancement (quality of life)

YOUR FOCUS IN MARKETING CAMPAIGNS:

WHAT benefits does your target market seek? Be sure to show clearly how, by purchasing your product or service, it helps them achieve their objectives.

Key questions your marketing needs to answer in the minds of your prospects:

● How will it give significance to me?● How does it benefit me?● What’s in it for me?● How will it help make me ‘better’?● Does it help me achieve something faster?● Which area does it benefit me: money, time, lifestyle?

How?


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The Fourth Gear: Awareness and Association - Connection to othersThe brain has a natural desire to connect and empathise with others, and to feel continually liked and understood. It wants to feel a close sense of union. We want to feel loved, cared for and valued.

When people acknowledge us for who we are, and the value we add, it feels good. It empowers us and creates connection and affinity.

So we want to bond with others, forming friendships that extend our sense of who we are in a broader sense. These ‘outer’ connections balance the inner need for significance of the self.

Neuroscientists have discovered ‘mirror neurons’ in our brains that allow us to effectively ‘think together’ and understand and connect with someone else on a deeper level.

We ‘mimic’ others around us. While some of us think we always do things in our own way, we are often fearful of doing something out of the ordinary.

Most of us give so much importance to the opinions of others that it constantly alters our behaviour.

It’s best to consider this fourth gear in two dimensions:

● Awareness relates to self (internal): How we see and experience the world through our experiences, emotions, and feelings.

● Association relates to others (external): How we see and experience the world through our circle of influence, made up of the peers familiar to us, who we know, like and trust.


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This relates to the deeper emotional connection with our audience. In marketing we are able to deliver powerful and emotional messages using techniques such as:

● Customer testimonials● Professional endorsements● Real life examples (case studies)● Before & after images

When people are uncertain about a course of action, they tend to look to those around them to guide their decisions and actions. They especially want to know what everyone else is doing – they look for SOCIAL PROOF.

Experiencing your product or service through someone else gives people a greater capacity to say YES, because it validates their decision-making process.

Other people’s experiences act as ‘shortcuts’, reducing our need for extensive research. We get to ‘feel’ exactly what a product or service could mean to us.

This provides the opportunity for the target audience to be touched, wowed, and inspired to ‘buy into’ a product or service, based on their ability to connect with it on a deeper, more meaningful level.

So, in what ways can we increase our attraction to others and make our offering more appealing?

● Physical attractiveness - using popular celebrity endorsements (Influencer Marketing).

● Similarity - cultivating an image that the audience relates to and feels comfortable with.

● Compliments - gathering sincere words of praise from those who appreciate and notice the small things.

● Contact – building rapport over time, which help breed familiarity (more attractive than the unknown).


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● Cooperation - being helpful and caring without any expectations.

● Conditioning and association - referring to positive events rather than negative ones (laughing and smiling creates a strong affinity).

This gear reminds us that people will remember how we made them feel long after they forget what we said, when it was sold to them.


HOW does your product or service create affinity with your target market? Be sure to connect with your target market by being real, honest and authentic.


● How does this message empathise with me?● How does this marketing message acknowledge my

gifts, abilities, and strengths?● How does this marketing message best connect with me

on a deeper level?● What story is there behind this product or service?● How does this marketing message touch, move and

inspire me?

The Fifth Gear: Trust [The Facts] - Let the numbers speak so loud that you don’t have to.

The brain constantly looks for facts and data to verify that information is correct. It works to receive, perceive, and recall information, with a special preference for visual information.

This gear works on the ‘seeing is believing’ level, where visual perception is reality.

Our brain wants hard evidence to back up thoughts and feelings, seeking external confirmation of internal emotions. It pushes for deeper understanding and visual verification.


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As a customer’s brain scans through details of a product or service, at the same time processing thoughts, feelings and emotions, it starts to rationalise it all by looking for data - to determine the truth through facts.

It’s therefore critical that you provide this, using SPECIFIC references rather than general examples. This can be done through:

● Survey results● Statistics● Review percentages● Star ratings● Other facts and figures

Here are a couple of examples where hard statistics back up the offer:


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Whereas the fourth gear looks for social proof to create an emotional connection with the audience, this gear is about the factual proof which builds a more logical connection.

By providing facts and key statistical data you raise levels of BELIEVABILITY and TRUST. The brain loves to confirm facts that back up feelings, to know that deeper ‘research’ has been done and that the details all add up.

TRACK the numbers and build up key data points in your business so that you can assess, measure and analyse trends and provide a greater understanding of the results that customers can expect.

We have a saying in The Influencer Project:

“The numbers will speak so loud that you don’t have to”

The devil is most definitely in the detail. Get familiar with the numbers so that you can help your prospects see that everything adds up consistently and that you ‘walk the talk’.

Consistency is a valuable quality for a business, as it helps to create trust. It creates patterns and patterns create habits.

But this can work positively or negatively - consistent poor performance can lead to mistrust too.

People will look for proof of consistency via the available data. Either you help provide it, or they will get it from elsewhere – and then it’s beyond your control.


WHAT data and facts give supporting evidence to your product or service? Be sure to provide this information to your target market to prove value.



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● Where is the proof in this message or campaign?● Can you show me facts that prove what you’re saying?● How do you present the data, facts and information in a

way that supports your case?● How can you make what you are selling more credible?

What proven sources, facts or brand ratings do you have?

The Sixth Gear: Expand and Explore - See the possibility in all things

The brain looks to move forward, based on hope for a better future.

As funny as it may sound, the brain is an ‘anticipation machine’, constantly projecting into the future the consequences of staying on its current path. Importantly, our level of hope is directly linked to our sense of whether our current path will lead to a positive future. What’s more, this is in direct relation to how well the first five gears are aligned and applied.

Our brain sees where we are and projects an image of where we would like to be. Accordingly, the gap between these two creates our sense of purpose, our path and our forward focus.

On the flip side, when we see the gap and can’t find the means or strategy to bridge it, pain, depression and anxiety may result.

So, whilst people say ‘be in the moment’, our brain is still wired to anticipate outcomes, expand and explore possibilities, constantly looking to improve our ‘now’.


It’s a classic case of pain vs. pleasure.

We feel that our reality right now is devoid of something (pain) and so look to the future to fill the gap, to improve our position (pleasure).


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For influencers, it’s about creating an experience that helps prospects expand their thinking, explore the possibilities of something greater, and create a better situation than they have right now.

This involves using language like:

● Just imagine...● What would your future look like if....?● Get ready for...● Think of the possibilities...● What if...?


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Bear in mind that using the language of scarcity may improve your offer. The less there is of something, and the more in demand it is, the more valuable it is perceived to be.

People often want something because they can’t have it, so try using language such as the following to convey this scarcity:

● Limited time only● Only ‘X’ items left● This offer ends in X hrs and minutes● Only available for people in X (location)

But the key point with this gear is that it opens the minds of our audience to consider things they might not have ever considered before. In doing so, it expands their thinking and helps them re-consider possibilities, explore new horizons, and visualise new and exciting outcomes.

In doing this, you must LINK your product or service powerfully to these dreams, thoughts, and concepts and show that it is the key component in this new reality.

In short, help your audience ‘download’ a completely new vision for their lives and re-imagine their situation by envisaging a better future.


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In the words of Albert Einstein: “Imagination will take you everywhere.”


HOW does your product or service expand your target market’s perspective and explore greater possibilities? Be sure to demonstrate hope for the future by exposing the gap between where they are now and where they could be if they engage with your offering.


● How does this open up new and exciting possibilities to explore?

● What is the big idea that you are selling me?● How does what you are saying present a better future for

me if I take action?● Can I see a better, brighter future through your offer?

SUMMARY: Applying the ‘CREATE’ method

The ‘Six Gears of Influence’ is powerful stuff, whether applied to email marketing, website sales page layouts, sales pitches, or any other aspects of sales and marketing campaigns.

But you may be wondering: How does each gear integrate with the other gears and work to increase influence in the real world? And does the order matter?


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Members of your target audience will resonate more readily with some gears than others – those they relate to most will grab the most attention.

We should always try to cover all six gears for our audience, and never market based on what WE like or what WE think looks and sounds great. We are biased, and will base decisions upon the gears of influence that our own brains resonate with the most.

The bottom line is this:

The more gears of influence that you can apply in promotions, the more you are fulfilling the social and biological needs of your customer. This will add greater impact to your marketing and make campaigns more effective .

By covering off all the gears, you are able to capture the attention of MORE PEOPLE and your messages penetrate your audience MORE POWERFULLY.

The order is important to consider, because the gears are based on how the brain takes in and processes information. By following this order, you also have a framework that ensures you don’t miss anything that will aid in the decision-making process with prospects. This will help them feel more

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motivated and inspired to engage and take action with you and your brand.

THE SOCIAL MEDIA EXAMPLE

A great example of these gears at work is found in social media. It is exploding simply because it uses ALL the gears of influence – as explained below.

● Commonality: People can connect, surround themselves with friends and family, and stay in touch by posting and sharing information.

● React and Respond: People can express their emotions whenever they feel like it - using pictures, quotes, and other content for emphasis.

● Exalt: People can compete with their peers by having more connections, and getting more engagement (‘Likes’). They can also share their wins via social channels.

● Awareness and Association: People connect with peers daily through updates and engage with posts to create deeper levels of connectedness.

● Truth [The Facts]: People have access to untold data about their connections, as well as analytics on the reach of their posts.

● Expand and Explore: People are inspired by seeing new content daily, which expands their possibilities and creates new ideas to explore for the future.

That brings us to the end of Part One of the book, but the ‘Six Gears of Influence’ are highly relevant as you continue to Part Two.

There you will start to apply what you have learnt about influence in the context of a lead generation and business growth strategy on LinkedIn. This incorporates a system of developing relationships and making offers to a large engaged community.

PART TWO:

APPLYING YOUR SYSTEM OF INFLUENCE ON LINKEDIN

“If your presence can’t add value to my life, your absence will make no

difference.”

Anonymous

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CHAPTER ONE: Building influence on LinkedIn:

Key concepts

Congratulations! You made it to Part Two of The book.

This is where we introduce you to a system that has seen the influence of many of our clients skyrocket, becoming the catalyst for ‘exponential’ growth in their business.

By working through Part One, you now understand the power of influence, can now see how it applies to your business, and defined how you can become more influential. Now it’s time to start targeted activity to use this influence to actively generate leads and sales for your business.

And we do this largely using LinkedIn.

But before we start it’s important to bear in mind that to achieve anything from this section you will need to commit to:

● applying the principles and marketing/sales systems outlined;

● carrying out, with integrity, the recommended daily tasks and activities (Note: ‘Integrity’ to us means doing what you say you’re going to do, when you said you’d do it); and

● short-term (three months) and long-term (if you keep active) community growth and lead generation, not overnight success.

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Without committing to the above, everything outlined in the following pages will see your leads go cold and your name probably marked as spam. You would be representing everything that The Influencer Project does NOT stand for.

How LinkedIn proved us wrongWhen we first started creating The Influencer Project, we actually set out to prove that the LinkedIn platform was NOT useful for our social marketing business.

We always focused on B2C campaigns, yet many prospective clients asked what we thought of B2B platforms (in particular LinkedIn), for developing leads and growing business.

Well, when you hear it once you might dismiss it. Hear it twice and you might consider it a coincidence. But when dozens of smart and savvy business owners ask the same question, “Do you have any idea how we can grow our business with LinkedIn?”, we decided that it was time to answer it once and for all.

And what we discovered was truly amazing. Starting with a single profile and a base of only 400 connections, most of which were old work colleagues or friends, our campaign started from a very low base. Within three weeks, we were generating the first enquiries, which we passed off as ‘luck’. Within the first month, luck had turned quickly to multiple leads and the tide was turning.

What had we started? Was it beginner’s luck or a goldmine?

This system that we thought would never work, one which we’d merely transferred over from our Facebook marketing campaigns, started to play out in ways we never imagined and brought massive opportunities to our business every single day.


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Why you need to master LinkedInThere are two instant realities worth bearing in mind:

1. Most people consider LinkedIn a Business-to-Business (B2B) platform.

That’s not really the best way to describe it. We see it more as a powerful P2P marketplace (Peer-to-Peer or Professional-to-Professional). It’s where Peter can meet and talk directly with Robert, developing the foundation needed for a business relationship to evolve. Your ‘business’, also considered to be a third-party to this peer relationship can take a backseat.

2. Most people also have NO IDEA how to use LinkedIn.

That’s great news for you. And the best part is that it is not a difficult platform to master – much easier than Facebook, for instance, which is something of an ever-changing behemoth.

And, with over 400 million business owners, professionals, and leaders openly profiled on the LinkedIn network, it’s as personal and individual as it can be, short of a phone call.

Therefore, for experienced and smart business opportunists, it is singularly the number one place to grow a database, engage with a personally constructed group or ready-formed community, create opportunities, grow business, and become a leader of distinction: an Influencer in your market.

In essence, LinkedIn provides access to the world’s premier business directory or database. Every person you could ever want to connect with to help your business grow is right in front of you, under your nose, with their contact details displayed – ready to connect and be engaged. Around 45 percent of members are said to be in upper management positions, this means key decision-maker roles.

Yet, many professionals believe it to be nothing more than a platform for those who meet at a conference, to connect with and never talk again; or a recruiter’s platform designed to dig


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deeper into the past of an applicant. Well, as we discovered, it’s much more than that.

A 2015 Oktopost infographic referred to here looked at the percentage of B2B business leads created through the social networks:

● LinkedIn – 80.33 percent● Twitter – 12.73 percent● Facebook – 6.73 percent● Google+ – 0.21 percent

LinkedIn clearly came out way ahead. That’s probably because it is full of EVERY piece of business intelligence that anyone could ever need to build the best list of partners, customers, distributors, information sharers, and more.

In the same Oktopost survey, 77 percent of B2B marketers said they planned to increase their use of LinkedIn, but the majority of them are held back by a lack of clarity on strategies and methodology.

Elsewhere, barriers to success are often cited as lack of resources in staffing, budgeting, or time.

That’s what we will correct here in Part Two of the book. A methodology that will place LinkedIn at the forefront of your marketing strategy and drive incredible opportunities - without staffing increases or huge budgets.

If you don’t feel it’s for you then you’d best get out of the road, because your competition will stampede over you – and it will happen before you realise it.

Never got much out of LinkedIn?

Join the gang...our customer base is FULL of clients who never got much out of LinkedIn in the past.


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This is usually down to ignorance of how to use the platform effectively. Don’t be offended if this applies to you – that’s what you’ll be correcting by reading on.

Some businesses view LinkedIn as the ‘golden goose’, expecting their spam offer messages to be met with “Great, here are my credit card details”, only to be disappointed when it doesn’t happen. They then claim that “LinkedIn doesn’t work for me.”

Other professionals sit at the other end of the spectrum. Even when there is clearly a business opportunity to be had, they get offended when ‘asked’ for business.

In truth, LinkedIn is the perfect platform to start ‘doing’ business if you do it the right way. That means harnessing the factors of influence that we’ve described in Part One rather than going straight for the ‘sell’.

The difference between being considered a ‘spammer’ and a serious business professional on LinkedIn is the engagement that lies between ‘connection’ and ‘conversion’. That’s what we introduced in Part One and what you’ll be applying as you go through this part of the book: building a community, providing value to it, and then getting active with asking for business.

Sometimes it’s a case of, “don’t blame the tool, blame the fool using it!” If you want a different outcome with anything you do, you’ve got to try doing things a little differently. The same goes with LinkedIn. The platform has many hidden gems within it, and sometimes it just needs a little digging to bring them to the surface.

The Influencer Project has been created especially for those willing to do this.

Combining new media with past masters…It’s worth noting that any strategy where you are dependent upon a single third party application is nuts. So, for as long as LinkedIn remains a viable platform for our B2B marketplace, then this is all relevant.


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However, the pieces of ‘gold’ scattered throughout these pages are not just made up of LinkedIn ideas and case studies, they include tried and trusted sales strategies from some of the greats of the past century, such as Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, James P. Douglas and more. These still ring true today and will ring true tomorrow if LinkedIn is supplanted by another platform.

None of those greats would disagree with the following principle, on which The Influencer Project is founded:

The business that will win at the end of the day is the one that speaks with its clients and prospects most regularly, and gets into the habit of daily interaction.

Key steps to successIf you’re thinking that this doesn’t relate to you, then you’re right. It doesn’t. It’s time to pick up another book.

Our approach is aimed at like-minded humble leaders, who are willing to do what the great sales leaders of the past taught, with a modern spin, to become the influencers of their marketplace today.

Remember the CONNECT-ENGAGE-CONVERT steps from Part One? As you read through Part Two, you will see that success on LinkedIn and beyond is built on actively taking these steps.

1. CREATE A PROFESSIONAL PROFILE – ‘look professional’Develop a powerful and professional corporate or business profile (OPTIMISE).

2. CREATE A COMMUNITY – ’lead your community’CONNECT and lead your community from groups of your prospects.


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3. CREATE VALUE– ‘contribute to your community’Be seen by your connections as one who contributes more than anyone else with relevant, reliable, and valuable content (ENGAGE)

4. PROVIDE GENUINE OFFERS – ‘get active with your connections’It is still a numbers game. Not every door will open with gratitude, but don’t be put off by rejection. You may need many NOs before you secure a YES (CONVERT).

Applying these four important steps on a B2B platform such as LinkedIn is relatively simple. The hardest thing for most business leaders is believing that they really CAN achieve the necessary daily activity – and ensuring that it is carried out every single business day of the month.

Don’t worry – in the following pages we’re going to give you many examples of how you can achieve all of the above to generate inquiries that turn into leads – and improve the return on your investment in time (and money).

Remember, only with the necessary activity will you achieve the momentum from the ‘flywheel effect’ that we covered in Part One.

How quickly can you expect results?Sales don’t happen in most industries overnight. There may of course be situations where an inquiry can be converted into a lead and closed within 72 hours.

But, in most cases, there will be a sales cycle of anywhere from 4-6 weeks and up to 12 months.

The Influencer Project is a system for raising confidence and trust levels, and expanding influence by making connections, delivering content, sharing case studies, following up with


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article sharing, liking comments, email communication, sending newsletters, and more.

It all takes time, and the notion that it can happen overnight is best dispelled before we begin, rather than after you’ve done four weeks’ work without double-digit growth!

What is a lead?Before we go any further we should also define what a ‘lead’ is. In The Influencer Project, a lead is NOT just a connection – though a targeted connection is a great start.

A true lead has been engaged, received value, and accepted and responded to an offer message with a variation of something like this:

So a true lead is OPEN and INVITING and looking for an ‘influencer’ in the market to help them. The prospect has a genuine need at that point in time, enabling your product or service to be the solution they are looking for.

Where can this system take you?

If you apply the system outlined in the following pages to your business, you will experience precisely what our own business has experienced - and ALL of our clients to date too, with NO exceptions.

That is:

● A powerful first impression with your target audience● Considerable and targeted community engagement

and growth● ‘Warm’ inquiries, opportunities and leads on a daily

basis from your community ● Improved cashflow and profitability


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● ‘Influencer’ status in your community● An improved lifestyle – with less time spent in your

business and fewer total work hours every week

But these results don’t come automatically. Like any system, it needs to be supported by having the right back-end systems in place.

After all, some businesses don’t have a ‘lead problem’ – they have a ‘sales’ or ‘conversion’ problem.

A ‘lead problem’ or a ‘sales conversion problem’?The following is a typical scenario that we meet regularly. Let’s talk real world, with real issues.

A very successful accountant with over 4,000 connections engaged us to re-create his profile, as he wanted to stand out as a LinkedIn ‘Influencer’.

His main goal was to generate interest in a business growth and profitability program that he was facilitating early the following year. As he already had many thousands of connections, he didn’t have an urgent need to build his community. He would connect with members of the local area business community and have his team post articles every now and again from his profile. That’s where he stopped. What did he achieve from this? Absolutely nothing.

What he really needed was to engage his community with an offer centred on his program.

We asked the question, “As you’re a busy guy, who’s going to reply to messages and action the leads that come your way?”

He replied, “Can’t you do that for me?”

In other words, he had no-one in his entire 160-strong staff base who was specifically assigned to the role of business development or sales specialist!


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It was estimated that a lead for this client was initially worth around $14,000, then a further $10,000+ per annum recurring revenue for ongoing services. So in the first year alone, the value of a lead started at $24,000+.

Within the first three weeks of working with us and applying the steps outlined in The Influencer Project, 28 leads were generated. The business owner engaged his newly appointed Digital Marketing Manager (with NO experience in finance or sales) to respond to all enquiries.

This is what a typical lead looked like:


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Rather than picking up the phone and calling the connection, introducing the business and developing an environment to engage and to create an offer, the Digital Marketing Manager responded to leads with a message to visit their website to download information about the program.

There was no engagement. No call. No offer of assistance. No value to offer. No personal connection whatsoever!

What do you think the conversion rate was? Right – VERY low!

But was the system of lead generation or the current system of sales conversion the problem?

The problem was clearly the sales conversion system - a problem 100 percent of the business’s own making, and one that cannot be blamed on lack of leads from marketing or any external forces.


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What went wrong?It’s one thing to generate interest through marketing, but quite another to get commitment through sales.

If influential business leaders are not closers themselves, they need to hire people who are not afraid of getting a YES or NO answer. The average business owner takes a more passive approach, often leaving the conversion decision up to the prospect. A little like our accountant friend.

The first thing to understand is that you ‘own’ the problem – and are responsible for the outcomes. Blaming the economic situation or third parties is passing the buck.

We spoke at length earlier in the book about Return on Investment (ROI) and it’s worth considering it briefly again here in relation to our accountant.

For a campaign to generate a positive ROI (in time or money), two things need to happen in unison.

Your attraction system (marketing) needs to be supported by a competent conversion system (sales).

Both must come together in balance to provide the business with a positive ROI. There is no success when there is imbalance with either the marketing or sales system, as either there are not enough leads, or leads are not ‘nurtured’ to close.

The system of attraction provided by The Influencer Project dynamically attracts business opportunities – we can prove that. But what we can’t control is how you convert interest into commitment, how you identify a lead, how quickly you respond, what you say, how well you close, which CRM software you use, how you follow-up, and so on is all up to you!


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How SHOULD the accountant have managed his campaign?In the case of the accountant, leads were left to go cold, with no reply for seven days in some cases. A perfect example of an incompetent sales system.

Leads are a big waste of time and money if there’s no sales system to engage them or system to nurture and support them. Indeed, according to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50 percent more sales-ready leads at 33 percent lower cost.

After three weeks, we suspended the campaign. The client indicated that the leads were great, but he was humble enough to admit that there were clearly glaring shortcomings in the sales system in the business.

He wasn’t kidding. Imagine creating 28 leads for your business over three weeks – 28 of your target clients who genuinely reached out to you and asked for information about your offering. How would you respond to these leads?

Would you let them wait for 2 days, 3 days, 7 days or more?

Or would you respond to them as quickly as if they had just called you and wanted to speak with you right now?

Customers are the lifeblood of EVERY business. It’s not their privilege to have you provide a service or product. How do you feel when you are treated as if you don’t really matter?

If the accountant had responded to the leads within 2-4 hours of receiving them, he would have really treated those customers like they matter to his business. Forget about not wanting to appear ‘desperate’, which is what clients often defend themselves with. Remember, each customer was worth an average of $24,000 in the first year to the accountant! He should have been keen for their business and desperate to show that he cared about bringing them on board.


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It’s worth noting that research shows that 35-50 percent of sales go to the vendor that responds first, according to InsideSales.com.

Think you already have a great system?Maybe you are thinking, “My business has a great system and we always respond quickly.”

Great! But for most people reading this book this won’t be the case. These are the questions you need to ask of your business:

● What exactly is your sales process for a lead inquiry?● How long does it take for an inquiry to be acted upon? ● How do you respond to a lead? ● What’s your method of information dissemination? ● How do you collect, store, and use your prospect’s

information?

Without being able to answer each of the above confidently, you will burn valuable opportunities for your business.

Get these elements right and your system will provide an increased conversion rate from inquiry to lead, or lead to sale. An increase from 40 to 60 percent would mean a 50 percent avenue for growth. If this can be achieved with no impact on your time, that’s smart business!

Putting the right person on the right seat The main positive aspect of the accountant case study above was that, once the business owner realised that he had an internal sales system issue, we stopped the lead generating activity immediately, and the client set about fixing the problem.

He hired sales specialists to engage with the leads and provide information necessary to prospects, either in person


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or via the phone. They were also skilled in closing sales as the opportunity presented itself.

As a very successful accountant and business owner it was no surprise that he took decisive steps and realised that he was not the best person to provide customer service or sales conversion.

In Jim Collins’ best seller Good to Great, he says ‘put the right person on the right seat of the bus’. That means, based on personality, we are best served by finding precisely the ‘right’ person for EVERY role within our business.

An accountant (data-driven perfectionist) is generally not the best person to perform sales and you wouldn’t want a salesperson (an engaging, dynamic, enthusiastic presenter and closer) to do your books – as they usually don’t have the eye for detail.

For the best results, you need to:

1. find the right person for each role2. have the system in place ready for their activity3. have them adhere to the standards of activity (your

system) 4. set targets (KPIs) expected for each individual, in

alignment with the overall business plan.

And you know what? It’s really quite simple...

Don’t try to be the Chief of Everything!The reverse of the above is the business owner who we refer to as the ‘CFE’: the ‘Chief of Friggin’ Everything’!

We’ve all met business owners who must perform every role in the business because they trust nobody else to be as good as them. They work 80 hours a week and the sales figures chart looks like a map of the Himalayas, with its peaks and troughs. Sometimes home life starts to suffer too.


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Business owners who perform five roles at once often only achieve 20 percent effectiveness in each. If a paid staff member did that, they’d be terminated.

Even if you ARE the best salesperson in the world, but you can only put 40 percent of your time to sales, a ridiculously high 75 percent conversion rate would only make your business achieve 30 percent of its sales potential.

A full-time salesperson with a total focus on sales may achieve a 50 percent conversion from lead to sale - they’re still beating you by around 65 percent.

Don’t worry about the numbers too much. The key is to hustle where it counts; don’t just hustle to be busy. Surround yourself with people better than you, pay them what they deserve, and get out of the road.

From our experience, the main thing that holds back the growth of a business is the owner. It may be time to let go of the reins and finally push for what you always dreamed of for your business.

If you’re humble enough to admit that you are holding your business back, that you’re not as good at sales as you think you are, and that your sales and marketing systems need improvement, then things are about to get a whole lot better for you.

The remaining sections of this book will show you how to increase leads exponentially – and to raise your conversion rate from 20-30 percent to new levels of 50-70 percent and higher.

In doing so, you will have done something truly wonderful for your business, your lifestyle and your family.

‘Active’ and ‘passive’ sales and marketingWe’re about to get into the real ‘meat’ of Part Two. But first let’s consider ‘active’ and ‘passive’ sales and marketing activity.


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This should recall the graph on page 11 of Part One, where we talk about ‘active’ and ‘passive’ activities in relation to the ‘Influence Framework.’

This is important because The Influencer Project bridges the gap between these two age-old sales and marketing techniques, incorporating both methods into one.

We will refer to these quite often throughout the following sections, so it’s worth outlining them below.

● ACTIVE – speaking directly with a prospect, asking a direct question that will derive a YES or NO response.

The following perspective may be different to how you normally play, but it has certainly helped us to better leverage our passion and belief in what we offer, to move past a YES or NO.

Say, out of 10 sales calls or in-person presentations you close one deal. You generate $2,000 commission per sale with a YES, and $0 commission with a NO. Right?

That’s how most people think. A NO therefore affects their attitude, their confidence, their ability, their ‘believability’, and their whole perspective.

Zig Ziglar presented a great seminar on sales perspective that shatters the whole ‘$2,000 vs $0’ fantasy. He said this:

“If you make a $2,000 commission from one sale, but you get nine NO answers before one YES, in reality this means you get $200 for EVERY YES and NO.

Wow, now there’s a perspective shift! But he’s 100 percent right. You get $200 every time someone DOESN’T buy – when they say NO!

When Zigler presented this he’d push his hand into his pocket as if to simulate receiving $200 for every NO. The prospect would say, “What did you just do?” and Zigler would respond with:


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“Well, for every ‘YES and every NO, I earn around $200, it’s all the same to me. I just know what I need to do to earn what I want to earn. I need nine NOs and one YES to earn $2,000. So you just helped me earn another $200. So, thanks very much.”

He mentioned that the story, in fact, often got him more business as the prospect was so amused at his approach that they gave him a second chance and he never missed on the second take!

A great active sales perspective!

PASSIVE – building your profile over time, branding your product or service, encouraging your community to identify and relate to you.

Your passive system should form at least 20 percent of your total activity. Why? Because your community isn’t always ready to engage with you right now. In eight or nine months perhaps, but not now.

As such, you need to be active, consistently providing value to your market. Then, from time to time (aligned to your consistent activity plan), you need to reach out and present an offer.

That’s what ‘passive’ marketing creates, a presence in the market before you get active inside of it to create opportunity.

Think about it. A real estate agent has a bus shelter ad with her photo and contact number. You’re not expected to ring your wife and say, “Honey, Michelle’s ad is on the bus shelter, we need to sell our house.” However, it does subconsciously tell a community member that Michelle is present and still active in the marketplace.

Being ‘actively passive’ with influenceThe Influencer Project presents a unique ‘actively passive’ approach.


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You are about to see how its system of influence creates a powerful, prospect-filled community, which it engages with high-level value (passive), then enables direct offer placements (active) that encourage prospects to ask for your help when they have a need.

It works in another sense too. You (actively) grow and give value to your community of prospects, who, as their need materialises, they reach out (passively) to you, the clear market leader or ‘Influencer’.

These very ‘warm’ leads don’t necessarily mean you’ve got sales, but they’re a great start. As mentioned previously, it then requires a competent and efficient sales system to engage with your leads and convert them to a sale over time.

And it will take time. That’s why it’s called a sales ‘cycle’.

Farewell to cold calling...Many readers will remember cold calling from just a few years back – some of you may still do it.

Think about this for a moment. Learning scripts from sales trainers and going through endless videos and cassettes of the ‘masters’ like Zig Ziglar and Allan Pease. Perhaps you practiced your pitches in front of a mirror. Maybe you even practiced how to get past the ‘gatekeeper’ on your poor husband or wife just to help to improve your conversion rate above the standard 2.5 percent.

Well, we can all kiss those days goodbye. With LinkedIn and the strategies of The Influencer Project, there are no gatekeepers and there is no need to cold call.

You can search for and target anyone you want to find, including leading business professionals from within your target industry. You can connect through groups and share content, and when ready, source their direct contact details. You bypass the gatekeeper entirely.


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Once a connection has been accepted and rapport established, your first call is more like a ‘warm’ call, especially if it follows an accepted connection request quite quickly.

If you follow a carefully structured strategy on LinkedIn, you will never need to cold call again.

You tell me - does this look like a ‘warm’ opportunity?

Follow the system and you can expect opportunities like this daily.

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CHAPTER TWO: The five steps to becoming

a LinkedIn ‘influencer’

For those of you who are skeptical and thinking ‘Yeah right! As if I’m going to get all those leads!’, that’s fine.

What follows is clear insight into the most powerful launch-pad ever available to grow your business, your point of distinction as an active ‘Influencer’ in your community.

Take a chance, read on, and you will learn a system that has created hundreds of opportunities each week for our clients and our own business. And we assure you that it can do precisely the same for your business.

STEP 1: OPTIMISE YOUR LINKEDIN PROFILE TO RANKYour LinkedIn profile is the foundation to becoming an Influencer. If you don’t get this right, your efforts will fail, and you’ll blame the effect of poor strategy rather than the cause of it. Below you’ll learn how to get it right.

Making a powerful first impression

“Everybody knows how important first impressions are. But not everybody knows that the ‘first impression’

is actually only a seven-second window.”

Business Insider

Consider this for a moment. A person ‘checking you out’ on LinkedIn will give you just seven seconds to make a good impression.

With attention spans always decreasing, people are less likely to wait. So, with your LinkedIn profile, you need to keep

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it clean, simple, and easy to digest to create a strong first impression. This section explains how to do that.

The golden rule here is this:

Let your visitors see straight away what you’re a leader in, what industry you command, and what you offer.

Really, no one cares that you’re a ‘founder’ or ‘CEO’... sorry! Think about it: how can your job title help your community?

Visitors usually want to know WHAT YOU OFFER, not WHAT’S YOUR TITLE as a first impression. Your job title may make your mother proud, but you need to throw your ego out the door on this one. Keep your prospect interested by showing them how you alone can SOLVE THEIR PROBLEM.

This happens when you describe your WHAT, not your WHO. Here’s what we mean:

Within seven seconds you know exactly what Ian Judson offers. Yes, he is the Owner and Managing Director of his company, but prospects want to know that he is a management accountant, an accounting expert, and is based in Brisbane.

Consider carefully what information and images to include here. Bear in mind that almost three-quarters of people process information best visually so, if your profile ‘looks’ uninspiring or hard to digest, you can expect many visitors to leave and never return. What a waste of a potential prospect!


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Say you operate an online shop that attracts two visitors. One stays for 15 seconds, the other for four minutes. Who do you have the better chance of converting into a sale? Right, the latter.

The same theory applies to a visitor to your profile. They’re checking you out to see if you’re a good match to provide a solution to their need or problem.

You get one chance to create a powerful first impression. Let’s go through the elements that will help to achieve that.

A PROFESSIONAL PHOTO:To start, get a professional photo, plus a graphically designed background image created using the LinkedIn shape requirements.

If you don’t have a good graphic design resource available, source what you need from Fiverr or a freelance site like Upwork to create it.

NAME:We’ve all seen it:

“Peter Smith (Business Coach)” Or

“John Citizen (Mortgage Broker 3,500+)”

The ‘Name’ field is designed for just that – YOUR NAME: first name and surname.

You may be interested to learn that EVERY field on LinkedIn is weighted, and your name is the most valuable field on your entire page. All other things being equal, it’s the words in this field that will have your profile found and ranked ahead of all other fields.

The other point to note here is that using words other than your name is in direct violation of the LinkedIn Terms and


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Conditions. To breach the user guidelines can see your profile restricted, suspended, or even terminated.

As you develop and grow your network on LinkedIn, getting terminated and losing the benefit of what lies therein will be a bitter pill to swallow.

It is our strongest recommendation NEVER to breach the LinkedIn rules. You will discover many more ‘legal’ ways to optimise your profile, with so much pulling power, that your name field will become almost inconsequential.

PROFESSIONAL HEADLINE (Note: NOT your job title):Just under your name you will find the field ‘Your Professional Headline’. I’m sorry to report that nowhere here does it say ‘Your title or job’.

We view a lot of profiles. About 95 percent+ have the following:

▪ CEO▪ Founder▪ Managing Director▪ Etc…

Your headline is a powerfully weighted field for ranking when people search the platform – so it’s important to NOT make this mistake.

LinkedIn is a HUGE searchable database, just like Google. In the search field at the top of your screen you can search for keywords. This search will return results of the most relevant profiles, based on many finer algorithmic points hidden inside the database.

Try it out.

With Google, if someone wanted to find you, and they didn’t know your name, what keywords would they enter? I bet it wouldn’t be ‘CEO’, or ‘Managing Director’ (your WHO). They


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would enter what they need or what you offer - your WHAT. For instance:

● Mortgage Broker● Home Loan Melbourne● Conference Emcee Brisbane● Retail Sales Trainer

You can even try searching for LinkedIn profiles on Google. It can take some time to perfect your profile, but the value of a well-optimised LinkedIn profile can be seen as it now ranks organically in a Google search, even above SEO-managed websites in some instances.

Try it out on LinkedIn right now. Search for what you offer, not your name, rank or your title. As mentioned before, your role is of no importance to the growth of your business, because it solves no problem. Remember, you want to be found by prospective customers.

What matters to our own business, Evolve Digital Agency, is that we grow in line with our overall goals. What matters to our prospects is that, if they ever need a specialist to optimise profiles on LinkedIn, to help them stand out and grow, then they are able to find us.

With that in mind, here is one of our Professional Headlines:

You will note that we have included keywords in it - what our prospects are searching for. This is especially important if they don’t know Andrew, the company name, his business partner, his team etc. They search for WHAT they want, not WHO they want.


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So they type in ‘Optimise LinkedIn profile’ or ‘Create Leads on LinkedIn’. You see where we’re going with this? Get your ego out of the road and stop following what everyone else is doing! You’re a wolf, not a sheep!

The purpose here is to highlight one major thing – be the specialist, not the generalist. Offer too much, try to be the solution for EVERYTHING and you will lose out. Your prospects want to find the BEST person to help them, not the person who does it all.

We run a digital agency that offers social media marketing on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, video marketing, CRM integration, media buying, graphic design and more. But we are clear that the number one attractor is LinkedIn. That’s where the conversation starts, and once the relationship is created, it can go many places.

YOUR LINKEDIN URL (your link to organic Google Rankings):LinkedIn automatically assigns a URL to each profile, which allows it to show up in a Google search. It therefore acts as your ‘doorway’ from Google to your profile. This automated URL looks like this:

You may not realise that this field can be edited. Most people replace this unmemorable mix of characters with their name. For example:

However, if a prospect is searching for your WHAT and doesn’t know your name, this is a very ‘un-optimised’ edit.


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If you understand a little about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) you will know that it’s smart to use the keywords that you want to be found for.

So using your name in the field that links directly to a Google search is a waste of an opportunity and it could reduce your ‘organic’ (or ‘free’) rankings against other profiles and websites, for your optimised keywords.

For instance, a finance specialist operating from Melbourne and wanting to be found for equipment finance might change his URL link to reflect the keywords below:

In this way, your three main keywords can be used to help your profile’s Google search ranking: a strategy that is often overlooked when building a LinkedIn profile.

To edit your URL, select the ‘wheel’ icon on the right-hand side of the URL link.

Then follow the custom link (the blue ‘pen’) on the right-hand side of the screen to edit the field:

CONTACT INFO:Keeping your key business contact information private, and not having it displayed in the Contact Info area of your profile surely defeats the purpose of being on LinkedIn.


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We’ve heard customers say, “But I get annoying calls.” OMG! Welcome to business!

Not every call can be a hot lead. You’ve got to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff, but don’t close yourself off to opportunity. Yes, some people will make annoying sales calls to you, but what about those who want to reach out to you and discuss your offer?

Add ALL the details you can, from location through to your mobile or office phone number. Providing the simplest pathway for a prospect to reach your door will give you an advantage over your competition.

The most valuable area of Contact Info sits at the bottom of the section and provides the link to your website/s. When entering website URLs, most people select ‘Company Website’ from the dropdown menu. It’s best NOT to choose this option, instead select the ‘Other’ option.

This then opens up a third field. Here you can add further optimised keywords to your profile. For example, if you’re a real estate agent in Sydney, you add the website URL to the far right field, but then name the website in the central field ‘Real Estate Agent Sydney’ or similar.

This is just another strategy that will add greater optimisation to your profile, and give you an extra edge for ranking in searches.

SUMMARY:The Summary is the first ‘volume’ text field of your profile where keyword optimisation can really flourish. Written professionally, your Summary can highlight your areas of specialisation while also using your keywords, providing BOTH a better reader experience AND an enhanced optimisation and ranking strategy.


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By NOT including a Summary, LinkedIn considers your profile incomplete and it will NOT rank you in a search. If you can’t be found, you can’t be considered.

To stand out higher than others, one key feature is to get your profile to ‘All Star’ level:

With an ‘All Star’ profile, you can rank higher in searches and your business can be found.

Most people, when writing a ‘Summary’, create either a story, like a post on Facebook, or present a CV-type setup.

LinkedIn is a professional business platform and so it’s best to engage a professional writer for your Summary if you are not sure where to start. You only get one chance at a first impression, so having a clearly written, succinct, keyword-optimised Summary will go a long way to impressing on readers that you are a true market leader.

When deciding upon your keywords, be specific. Your target audience is looking for a specialist. Don’t try to cover ALL the keywords for your business – select the most important and base the copy around those.

Trying to cover all the keywords for Evolve Digital Agency would require mentioning Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, CRM, Website Development, Design, and many more.

We want to be identified as the best in the market for something, as this accumulates a vast array of followers to convert to inquiries and leads. With this in mind, Andrew’s Summary includes this:


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The profile is solely built around the keyword and ‘offer’ of LinkedIn - starting with the Professional Headline and hammered home in the Summary.

Interested business owners like to discuss LinkedIn, but when our business relationship develops and trust levels are raised, the conversation often turns to, “I see you also do…”. That’s when further sales opportunities are created and we can talk about other services. But the key is to appear as a specialist – and attract your target audience.

A couple of the most common questions we get asked are:

“How many times should I use my primary keywords within my profile?”

Within both the Summary and Experience fields we always look to add keywords or variations of keywords around 8-10 times. Don’t just say “equipment finance” 10 times, that will be considered as ‘gaming’ the system and will get you restricted quickly, plus it just looks horrible. You could say equipment lending, equipment funding, equipment finance, equipment loans, equipment specialist, equipment banking specialist, equipment lending manager… or any number of variations.

“What’s the purpose of all this? Does optimisation really matter?”

Great question.

Before you start optimising your profile, in the search field at the top of your page, enter your keywords and location, such


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as ‘sales coach Sydney’, or ‘leadership consultant Auckland’. See what the search returns with. Where did your profile rank?

If you’re already at Number One, then great. If not, then it’s simple – your profile is not optimised. You can continue to NOT be found, like you’re standing in a dark room wondering why no one can see you. What’s depriving you of leads? Firstly, it’s your inability to optimise your profile.

Andrew’s profile usually appears between positions 1 and 3 for his main keywords. In many searches with prospects and clients, all positions 1-3 will be filled by members of Evolve Digital Agency, who are also specialist marketers. That’s a nice problem to have, eh?

If you find that you’re not 1, 2 or 3, then you need to take some immediate action. Why? Because if you’re not found, you’re not able to be considered by prospects.

It’s no wonder that LinkedIn has not been benefitting you. Simple really:

STOP DOING THE SAME THING THE SAME WAY AND EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS!

If you’ve never received any business from LinkedIn, like many of our clients when we first meet, start with optimising your profile. This will see you appear in searches, ranking as the true market professional you are.

This is a good time to remind ourselves about the ‘bigger picture’ of the four-step process we went through in Part One:

Optimise – Connect – Engage - Convert

You are now progressing well in the first step, but we’re not done yet - so back to your profile.


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EXPERIENCE:This section is another wonderful opportunity to explain WHO you are, WHAT you do, and WHY you’re the best at what you offer.

Often we see business leaders cram 20 years of experience in a single field. To get the maximum benefit and to showcase your experience in the best way, break up your experience into individual roles over time. This will not only show career development (even within the same company), but it will provide maximum potential to rank highly for your keywords. More fields = more keywords.

Why?

Within each role or area of experience you have the opportunity to utilise the full character limit available, to add further descriptors of your offering. That means more keyword activity.


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In the example above, Andrew’s keyword target is the word Influencer. Note how the text is broken up into bite-sized chunks, easy to read. Most profiles have one big body of text, not an attractive proposition to read and likely to turn a reader off. Every reader who leaves with a bad first impression is another missed opportunity.


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Company Name:Two steps are needed to set up your company details in the Experience field.

Firstly, enter your company name. In some cases, depending on your company size or relatedness to the platform, when you SAVE your company name, your logo will automatically be embedded into the business title.

The second step is to edit the company name. For example:

Step 1: Enter Evolve Digital Agency

Step 2: Edit to Evolve Digital Agency | Optimise your LinkedIn Profile | Leverage Your LinkedIn Community

As you can see, it’s a further opportunity to embed more keywords into your page, thereby enhancing the ranking and search-ability of your profile.

Role/Title: In this field you have 120 characters to create a clear picture of why you’re number one at WHAT you do. If you’re the Managing Director of a finance company, most people would complete the field like this:

1. Managing Director at ABC Finance Pty Ltd

For the best results, and to assist with better ranking, try using your main keywords at the beginning (and, if necessary, display your title at the end of the field).

Strangely enough, keywords at the end of the field are ranked below words used at the beginning. So ensure that your most important keywords appear first in the display.

Here’s a good example:


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You’re essentially telling the reader what you do and the service that you offer. Remember, a prospect’s NEEDS have nothing to do with your job title.

A small change like this can have a big impact, because it also increases your chances of being found and ranked by the database for your keywords.

Of course, this process should be repeated for every role in the Experience section.

Description:With the ‘Description’ field capacity of up to 4,000 characters, aim to use your keywords at least 8-10 times. Don’t just dump words into one big paragraph - use bullet points or icons to separate your key points or offerings. Break the text into bite-sized pieces that are simple and easy to digest:

Why is this important? Over 60 percent of people view LinkedIn pages from a mobile device. Icons used as separators not only make things easier to read, they can highlight your profile in a search result. We use ✔ symbols, so that when our profiles are displayed at number four on page one for a search, the reader’s eyes are drawn to the bold ✔ as opposed to just a comma, or | separator. Again, small changes can make a big difference.


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How do you get these icons? If using the ‘edit’ mode on a desktop or laptop, then you may not have access to icons. Symbols like are created via mobile devices. There are plenty of icons on the mobile keyboard to consider. Try a few out, but once added to your profile, do a search and see how your profile actually looks. Does it draw the attention of the reader? Is it bright enough to make you look immediately at the profile? If not, select another one and try again.

If you’re not the best writer in the world, ensure you get the Description right by hiring a professional copywriter and providing direction on which keywords to optimise for, as well as how many times you want those keywords used. It can make the world of difference.

Remember, you need to be presented in the most professional and visually appealing manner possible. You only get one chance at a first impression!

Adding media – videos/documents:Video is the simplest way to supercharge websites, social platforms and more – LinkedIn is no exception. People are now more likely to watch video than read text to understand who you are and how you can be a solution to their problems.

As consumers, we have less time to consume the thousands of words written in a profile. If you have created a marketing video for you or your business (or even other videos that relate to your products or services), then it is strongly recommended that you add them to your profile by attaching a ‘link’.

Why else is this beneficial for your profile? It gives you two more fields, ‘Title’ and ‘Description’ to add further keywords and more about your specialised offering.

In the ‘Title’ field start with a headline for the video (or file, photo, or document). In the ‘Description’ field give brief details


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of the video, photo, or document - and add further keywords describing the purpose of your offering.

For every video, file, photo or link you add, these additional fields are opportunities to embed highly optimised keywords into your profile. Simply adding two media items to your Summary and two to your Current Experience creates eight more fields for keywords. This adds valuable ‘search power’ to your profile.

If you don’t have any video content, why not add industry-related YouTube content to your profile, from key leaders you follow or industry experts? This shared collateral can all be harnessed for a remarkable effect on the power of your Profile.

Remember, in the world of SEO, to highly optimise a website takes months of activity, based around adding the right content to pages. Over a period of months and with sustained effort, your ranking improves hopefully getting you to page one for your keywords. The costs associated with this can be considerable.

The same can be achieved on LinkedIn, with the number one ranking (or at least page one in a competitive marketplace) VERY quickly by following the basic steps outlined above. This applies even with markets, industries, and keywords that are quite competitive.s

Skills & EndorsementsVisitors to your profile are often asked to ‘endorse’ you for the key skills listed on your profile. When they do this, the endorsement acts like an additional keyword or phrase that’s embedded inside your profile, giving you additional keyword ranking.

Without management by you, LinkedIn will ask visitors to your profile to endorse you for some of the words associated with your key industry in your header bar. For example, in Andrew’s profile it says:


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Andrew doesn’t want to be found for marketing or advertising. He wants users to find him for LinkedIn Marketing, or LinkedIn Training.

Leaving it like this will create associative industry links that will cause much of the endorsement work to play out in the background, and therefore not be of much use.

Creating and managing your OWN list of skills to be endorsed is therefore essential to help with ongoing ranking and relevance to your audience. You’re allowed to list 50 skills in your folder and it’s very easy to do.

At the foot of the ‘Skills & Endorsements’ field you will see ‘Add Skill’. Clicking this allows you to add or remove skills from your list. If you don’t want to be found for what you’ve been endorsed for, simply remove them from your list – it is highly recommend to do this with any non-applicable skills.

Then, to add a skill, simply enter your keywords into the field and save.

Once saved, you can ‘grab’ a skill and move it to the top of your list. LinkedIn recognises the words promoted to the top of your list as the main ones that you would like connections to endorse you for.

It will take time to build up your list of endorsed skills, but it is more than worth putting time to. When your connections endorse you for these preferred keywords, they get stored in the ‘backend’ of your profile and it helps to add greater weight


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to it. Just another step to becoming the ‘influencer’ in your marketplace and outpacing the competition.

Six months after Andrew started managing his endorsements, this is how his ‘Skills & Endorsements’ section looked. You can see how much value these keywords now add.

Remember - the more active you are, the more connections you will get, the more often people will visit your profile, and the more endorsements you will receive.

GroupsIn over 90 percent of the profiles we’ve seen, the Groups that a user joins are aligned to professional bodies or organisations, peer groups, or product or industry discussion panels.

Such groups are usually not where customers can be found, they are where peers and competitors hang out.

So, by being active, posting articles, and sharing great content here, you will NEVER be seen by people who would be interested in buying your product or service. For all that hard work, you are essentially getting nothing in return. And that, in the world of business development and growth, is just plain stupid!

If you’re an academic looking for peer review, then that is fine. If your peer is someone who you would like something from or can assist you, then a review is like a ‘sale’.


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But most of the time business leaders are on LinkedIn for a single purpose: to grow their business.

Inappropriate group alignment is one of the primary reasons why most clients we talk to say they never get any real value from LinkedIn. This also leads to receiving spam emails from multi-level marketers or another Nigerian minister wanting to help you to claim millions!

How can you build your customer base by being active in Groups where there are no prospects to convert? You wouldn’t fish for snapper in the South Island streams of New Zealand – so don’t look for prospects where they are not present!

This single realisation can add tremendous value to your time on LinkedIn, and dramatically increase the return on the investment of your time.

So where do you start? Firstly, you’re allowed to join up to 50 groups. If you want to attract decision-makers in small business, search and join groups named ‘Small Business Owners Group <location>’ or ‘Entrepreneurs <location>’, or ‘Business Owner’. Search through the returned list of groups and choose five or 10 that suit you best. Select groups with plenty of members and active daily discussions. It’s these groups where your activity will return the best results over the longer term.

There might also be sub-groups off these main groups, which will allow you to join in excess of 50 in total. But start with a power selection of primary groups where your prospects and future customers of your business are members.

You can connect with a maximum of 30,000 members (followers can go well above this number) from your profile. That will be more than enough. Once you get over 5,000 connections, LinkedIn will stop you from connecting further, but via Support you can request additional connection requests. It’s simple to do and it’s usually granted in 3,000 connection increments.


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Remember, it’s not the size of your connection base, but how you use it to target offers to the members, that will ultimately determine your success. That’s the ‘secret sauce’ of The Influencer Project strategy.

NOTE: CHARACTER LIMITSBefore we move on to Step Two, below is a guideline to the character limits for each section of your LinkedIn profile:

FIELD CHARACTER LIMIT

First Name / Last Name 20 / 40Professional Headline 120Summary 2,000Recommendation 3,000Published Post Headline 100Published Post Body 40,000Website Anchor Text 30Website URL 256Your Personal Profile URL 29Position Title 100Position Description 4,000Interests 1,000Additional Info / Advice for Contact 2,000Phone Number 25IM 25Address 1,000Skills 80 per SkillCompany Name 100Company Page Description 200 min / 1,500 maxCompany Page Specialities 256Company Update 600, or 150 plus LinkPersonal Status Update 600In-Mail Message 2,000Group Discussion Title 200Group Discussion Body 2,000Group Discussion Comments 1,000


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STEP 2: ESTABLISH AN EFFECTIVE CONNECTION SYSTEMOnce you’ve optimised your profile, it’s time to start using it to increase your connections, inquiries, leads and ultimately sales.

This section looks at the step-by-step process to increase connection numbers.

Profile acceleration: Personalised connection templates

The first stage in your sales process is expanding your connection base. But before you dive headlong into doing this, it’s important to bear in mind the LinkedIn policies on connection requests.

LinkedIn nearly always errs on the side of caution. If it receives complaints from people saying “I don’t know this person”, they may suspend or restrict your account.

In order to minimise any negative fallout from this activity, there are several things to add to your connection request message when contacting people who you don’t know personally, but would like to have inside of your community.

The single biggest mistake you can make is to send the standard ‘vanilla’ request offered by LinkedIn. Take one minute from your daily schedule and create a simple template to demonstrate to your prospective connection why it would be beneficial for them to connect with you.

Below are a few sample scripts you can edit, as required. They should provide a general idea of what’s needed.


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w

Hi Peter,

I was checking out your profile and noticed that you play in the <name of industry> game. I have a genuine interest in this area of business and it would appear that you have a wealth of experience. Although I know we’ve never met, I hope you don’t mind me reaching out with a connection request.

Kind regards

Andrew

Hi Peter

I’m looking to expand my network to include and follow leaders in specific industries and I saw that you’ve got a wealth of experience in the <name of experience> industry. If it’s not too much trouble I’d really like to connect with you, if that’s OK. If not, no worries. I wish you all the very best in your business.

Kind regards

Andrew

Hi Peter,

I see that we’re a member of the <name of group> Group. I am looking to grow my network with other market leaders from my Groups and I was checking out your profile, I hope you don’t mind. If it’s OK, I’d like to connect. If not, then I wish you all the very best with your business. Kind Regards

Andrew


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What responses can you expect?As much as we like to think that we’re all unique, we generally act in the same community-appropriate manner when it comes to responses to messages. So it’s very easy to predict what responses you will get to your connection requests.

They will generally be one of the following:

a. Automatic acceptance of connection request (40-50 percent of the time)

b. “I don’t normally accept connection requests from people who I’ve never met personally.”

c. “Before I accept, can you tell me what you considered interesting about me”

Let’s examine the b and c responses a little closer.

The ‘average’ person will take no offence at a polite, personalised connection request. Some individuals in the business community, though, only want those who they know and trust around them:

“Hello Andrew, thanks for the invitation to connect. I usually only connect with those people I know, so unless there’s some reason why you believe we should connect, I will decline this invitation. Thank you.”

We’re fine with messages like this – we know where we stand. While we know it’s very hard to grow your business with only family and friends, we need to be respectful of the perspective of others.

For most of us, growth is a process of continually providing great service to our existing customers, offering new products and improvements to the range of offerings, and building a


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bigger database of prospects from people and groups we don’t know.

LinkedIn provides a tremendous opportunity to do just that – but not everyone sees it this way. There is not much you can do in the short term about this, so if you receive plenty of b and c responses, you should accept these response with respect. Don’t avoid replying, though. Instead, send your own version of the following:

“Thanks <name>, I appreciate your position. Thank you for the opportunity to reach out and perhaps some day in the future we shall meet. Until then, best wishes in your business.

Kind Regards

Andrew”

These contacts may someday develop a need that only you can provide a solution for. So, continue to provide value, build your community, and make offers. Don’t take the rejection personally.

In our first 5,000 connections we received just one or two responses that were written with a negative tone – so that’s manageable. The numbers are most certainly on your side when you play a smart, active strategy.


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Following up with a new connection acceptance

Like with any social environment, the best time to engage a person is just after they’ve met you, or contacted you for the first time.

Think about when you meet a business associate at a networking function or seminar and you exchange details. Reaching out within a short and acceptable timeframe, with a simple message or an offer to chat more directly, is usually the most effective follow-up procedure.

From our experience of LinkedIn, the single best time to engage with a new connection is within 48 hours of your connection request having been accepted, or of you accepting a request to connect.

However BEWARE! Some ‘professionals’ think that as soon as a connection request is accepted, it’s prime time to tell their new connection all about themselves and immediately present a sales offer or link to a website to find out more about them. WRONG! Horribly wrong! In fact, that’s social marketing cardinal sin number one - also known as SPAM.

As we mentioned in Part One of the book:

CONTENT WITHOUT CONTEXT = SPAM

Think of meeting someone at a party for the first time. You wouldn’t talk about your favourite topic, bore the hell out of


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them, then try to give them an offer ‘too good to refuse’ would you? Unless you wanted to drive them away.

The same applies on LinkedIn. New connections are generally NOT ready to buy from you. We need to think like a real estate agent. At any given point in time, 97% of the market has NO INTEREST in property - buying or selling. So, of all their connections, only 3 percent may have some genuine interest (2 percent buying & 1 percent selling). It’s clearly a numbers game, and a case of being in the right place at the right time, just like with LinkedIn marketing.

Like any form of relationship building, it takes time to form a bond with new connections on LinkedIn. There is a process of ‘give and take’. You need to learn more about the other party before you share too much about yourself.

You’ve heard the saying that you have ‘two ears and one mouth and you should learn to use them in direct proportion’. This applies here.

Nobody respects ‘predators’ on LinkedIn. You need to show your connections that you care, provide regular and consistent value, and are different to everyone else. If you really want to engage with someone, you need to understand that the number one topic that your connection (or any person) wants to share is about themselves and their business.

So, show them that you care and are genuinely interested in who they are, what they do, and how they are making a difference in their market or industry.

Once you have this information available to you, gleaned from messages, reading their posts, and perhaps even a call or two, then it’s time to share more about you.

In a nutshell: before you move into a sales-offer mode, you need to establish a solid foundation, like in any relationship.


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STEP 3: GROW YOUR COMMUNITY WITH ACTIVITY

“There is no influence like the influence of habit.”

Gilbert Parker (Canadian novelist)

Every business leader is capable of building a large and responsive community on LinkedIn – but it takes habitual activity to achieve it.

If you really want to stand up and be noticed as an influencer in the eyes of your market, then this is the foundation activity required for your LinkedIn presence.

Establishing an effective way to connect, without then reaching out to those connections to provide value, is pointless.

Why would anyone follow a leader who’s not active? Surely a ‘leader’ is someone who stands tall above the ‘noise’, and creates his or her own space. They don’t follow the crowd. Quite often they polarise a community, blazing the path ahead with new ideas, opinions, and action.

You may either love or hate leaders, but mostly you will notice them - as they stand out above the rest.

We are inspired to follow leaders, as they are ‘influencers’. They have the ability to compel others to take action with their opinions or behaviours, and may even change entire industries or markets.

So how does influence work at a ‘community growth’ level on LinkedIn? It’s really no different in principle to a successful offline approach, or how it was described in Part One of the book.


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The real estate exampleLet’s consider real estate again. Every week a local real estate agent drops a flyer into your letterbox, promoting a local property that’s recently come on to the market for sale, and is open for inspection the next weekend. The agent knows that 82 percent of all buyers will live within 4.5km of the property for sale. She also knows that 97 percent of the members of her community, at any point in time, really don’t care that she’s offering a property for sale. But she still markets consistently to the whole community. Why?

When you receive this promotional flyer, it doesn’t make you run upstairs and tell your partner:

“Darling, Marie from XYZ Real Estate is selling a house up the road. I think we should contact her immediately to sell our home too.”

It just doesn’t happen like that, right? But, it’s not designed to. It does, however, make you aware that this agent is not just active, but is ‘consistently active’. So, when it IS time for you to sell your property, there is a strong likelihood that you will contact her to provide you with an appraisal. Does she win your business? No, not yet - but she’s at least got the opportunity.

It might take three months, a year, or three years, but you will most likely consider her as an option to secure you the best deal from the market.

Is she the best? Will she attain the best price for you? Is she the best negotiator?

There is no way of knowing this, BUT her ‘consistent activity’ has put her in the frame to be considered. A perception is built up over time that, due to her activity or visibility in the market, that she must be good at what she does.

This is likely to influence your decision at a basic level, then your own perception has helped the real estate agent become an ‘influencer’. But it all started with her activity.


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Consistent activity taken over time not only creates the right behaviour in your business, but it also develops the right attitude and behaviour in your community.

Becoming a ‘beacon of light’When you’re considered an ‘influencer’ in your market, your work becomes like a beacon of light to others seeking guidance or support.

We were recently contacted by a connection whose first words were:

“Hi Andrew, my name is Peter and we’ve never met. But, I’ve been following you and reading your posts. You’ve been putting some great stuff out there recently on LinkedIn and I just wanted to reach out and let you know that I need some help with my profile and thought that you were the right person to discuss this with. Would you have time to discuss this with me?”

By engaging with your community and consistently bringing value, you are considered a source of ‘truth’ and guidance. Real or not, the perception of others will dictate how they approach or respond to you.

What matters is that you are then in a position to respond as an influencer, to assist or help your connection with their need, and to provide your professional advice or service as a solution to their problem.

Give people a reason to follow you. Then, once you’ve developed and implemented the right ‘influencer’ strategy, centred on adding tremendous value to your community, your connections develop more BELIEVABILITY in you, subconsciously – they are then ready to become a lead or opportunity.


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Influence–building activitiesThere are many activities that can help you in your quest to stand out on LinkedIn.

We’ve already covered personalised connection requests in Step Two. Here we look at some other activities:

LIKESEvery time you ‘like’ a discussion on a group page, it appears in the news feed of ALL your connections. Not only does this show others the articles and posts that their connections follow, but it is also a great way to get your face and name regularly in front of your connections.

Does it make a sale? No, but it’s not intended to. It’s merely a profile growth strategy to keep front of mind with prospects on LinkedIn. It’s like the real estate agent flyer strategy outlined earlier.

COMMENT ON POSTSCommenting on posts is another means by which your connections can see what thought leaders are engaging with, and it is a great way to share relevant articles of value with your community. Again, your name and profile image appears in the news feeds of all connections.


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PROFILE POSTSThere are generally two types of LinkedIn ‘posters’: those who write ALL of their own material, and those who share material that they find interesting and of value to their community, from a variety of sources.

There is so much wonderful content posted all across the Web, relating to the key topics in your industry. As long as you reference it in accordance with the LinkedIn guidelines, it’s a great strategy to share it with your community as a Status Update.

Also, when you post or share via the ‘Publish Post’ feature on your profile, the following type of message appears in the news feeds of ALL your connections.

Your connections mightn’t read the post, but they still see your smiling face, your name, and all the keywords that you


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want to be known as an influencer for. This is a powerful ‘subconscious’ formula in action, just like the real estate agent’s banner on the bus shelter on the road on your way to work, or the flyer in your letterbox.

People won’t be rushing to call you, but they will subconsciously acknowledge that you are active in the market and, over time, a perception of professionalism, value, and expertise can be formed.

STATUS UPDATESWhat content do you share – and how do you present it? What’s the right strategy?

Remembering that content without context is SPAM, don’t just post an image by itself (content). Your explanation or ‘contextualisation’ will help the reader understand your perspective or reason for the update.

Another way of describing context is your WHY. Why do you feel that this update is worth sharing with your audience? Let the reader get to know you. This helps to paint a picture of who you are, and justifies and validates to the reader why they follow you. Your WHY helps your reader align to you.

Make sure that you include an image with your update, as this will generally be the first thing to catch a person’s eye. People are largely visual beings, so a relevant picture can help convince a reader to dig a little deeper, engaging with your update and profile.


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GROUP SETUPOne of the key goals for LinkedIn is to help like-minded professionals come together to share and discuss key elements of business. With this in mind, the platform allows you to create Groups for discussion where, as an administrator, you can invite connections to participate.

Any active strategy of influence needs substance, as well as appearance. Groups are your chance to ‘give’ to your connections, to provide value. Through the development of a Group, you can share relevant content relating to your industry and your specialist area.

We started a Group called Social Lead Systems for Business and broke through 1,000 members within eight months.


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The Group discusses elements of business growth and lead generation via social platforms. This is a general topic that generates interest from within the wider business community, rather than discussing one narrow topic that might limit the scope of discussion. The more active the group is the better, as it helps to create sharing between the group membership.

When we set up the Group, we invited all of our business connections to share and comment on a range of topics across the full spectrum of social, content sharing, CRM integration, web lead funnels, and other social systems for business.

The outcome is that we have helped many other business owners and professionals to develop a deeper understanding of the value of social and digital lead systems for their businesses. Furthermore, we’ve helped to grow our own profiles through active daily posting in the news feeds of our members.

GROUP INVITESAs with connection requests, the standard LinkedIn group invite template will not help here. It’s not personalised or attractive enough for the recipient, and would probably be deleted.

Replace it with your own personalised text. Perhaps write and save 2-3 templates and choose the right one for the right individual in your connection base. This is more likely to be welcomed; and you should get a better ‘hit’ rate, with plenty of messages saying “Thanks for the Invitation. I’d love to join.”

This activity has the potential to grow your Group (and your database) quickly – and your relationship with each member can grow to be very powerful. However, it is up to you to nurture those relationships over time and actively connect, engage, and convert them as part of your ongoing strategy.

Remember that, as the administrator (’leader’) of the Group, it is your duty to keep members engaged with active discussions around key topics and manage expectations and needs. This


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will differ from individual to individual. Sometimes it may be necessary to go beyond a daily post and offer specific guidance, support, or direction for members. In short, make sure you provide value.

GROUP POSTSWhat do you post? Discussions shouldn’t be centred directly around your products or services, but more on your industry or market. The more general you make the parameters, the wider your net will be cast.

Remember two particular aspects of posting inside the Group.

1. You are sharing industry-wide relevant information to your community that shows you are a market-savvy leader, to be considered as the benchmark of knowledge and a reference point for questions.

2. For EVERY post you make, your name, face, and your ‘what’ appears in the Newsfeed of EVERY connection of yours.

There’s power and positioning right there. And the perception of activity can, in many cases, create a belief of ability, meaning that the person who is most active is most likely to be the best. Not a reality, just a perception!

As mentioned previously, your activity here is directly proportional to your returns. If you take 10 times the action, then you should expect 10 times the returns. This also goes for engagement and lead activity too. It’s 100 percent linear.

However, it’s worth noting here that this linear relationship applies within each industry, but not necessarily between industries. A mortgage broker in Sydney will routinely extract the same result from the same activity level as a broker in Melbourne, or within the same city. However, results may well be different for a provider of online educational services, even with the same level of activity.


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A NOTE ABOUT ACTIVITY LEVELS

If you are still in any doubt about the importance of activity, it’s worth noting that this symbol will appear at the top of your news feed:

This indicates that your community is active with Likes - Comments - Shares - Published Posts - Connection Notifications.

This notification of activity shows in the newsfeed of others, but quickly gets ‘buried’ unless you are consistently active. Within 20-30 minutes, your activity may NEVER be seen by your connections - a big waste!

So your level of activity needs to counter this tendency to make you invisible to your community. Don’t just spend 15 minutes three times a week taking action. Schedule LinkedIn activity in your diary 2-3 times a day, 5-10 minutes at a time. This is the best way to stand out in your community, receive the ‘passive’ benefit for you and your ‘brand’, and to get a good ROI from your LinkedIn presence.

Remember that all this is for ‘community growth’ - NOT specifically lead generation. However, you will find that the by-product of activity and engagement in your community is often ‘organic’ lead generation. The saying ‘activity breeds activity’ rings true here.

STEP 4: INTRODUCE YOUR OFFERAfter a period of adding great value consistently, on a daily basis, and being highly visible in your connections’ news feeds, then (and only then) is it time to introduce your offer.


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The power of the offer

Sometimes we can be sitting SO CLOSE to the answer, we can’t even see it.

A business owner in the finance industry recently replied to one of our offer messages. Upon checking out his profile we were convinced that he was ‘switched on’ with his LinkedIn strategy. He had over 1,000 connections, a cleverly crafted Summary and Experience section that showcased his offerings and talents, and would rank powerfully for his keywords.

We asked him how he used LinkedIn, and he replied:

“I enjoy using LinkedIn but I don’t really get much from it. I like to post relevant blogs to my profile that I write, I connect with people who look like they could be my future customers, I also comment in Group discussions, BUT I don’t really get anything from the platform in so far as leads on a consistent basis. In saying that though, in the last three months I’ve received 6-8 leads from members of my connection list, so that was nice. But I just want to be able to get that consistently. Can you help?”

We asked one final question:

“What have you done differently over the past three months? Are you using the platform differently in any way?”

He replied:

“No, not really. I still do the same posts and comments, but I did send a few of my connections a direct message to see if they were interested to catch-up.”

Here was a guy who was doing most of the right things. Then, over an 8-12 week burst, he sends out a series of messages to his connections with an ‘offer’. We don’t know what that message comprised of, or how it was worded, but one thing is true:


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IF you send someone a short and simple offer AFTER having engaged with them and provided them with value, AND it lands in their inbox at a point in time when they have a specific NEED for it, then it can create an opportunity.

It’s worth remembering something we covered in Part One:

People won’t engage unless you’re activePeople won’t show interest unless you askPeople won’t buy unless you sell

This guy had been active, up to a point, within his LinkedIn community. He then decided to change things a little and used the platform to send offers to his community.

The result was that people messaged him back with replies like these:

● “No thanks”● “Yes please, good to hear from you. Happy to chat, please

call me” or● Silence/ no reply at all.

ALL of you should now be thinking, “Hey, I could do that.” And that’s 100 percent right. So let’s get started.

Shaping your offerRemember that this, ladies and gentlemen, is a ‘numbers game’. The more active and consistent you are, the better your chances of a successful outcome. Just because your connection doesn’t take you up on your offer does NOT mean that:

1. They don’t like you2. It’s spam, or3. The system doesn’t work

People aren’t against you; they are for themselves! If you’ve taken the steps above, it simply means that at that moment in time, the connection had NO NEED for your offer.


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The story may be different at some time in the future. They may need what you’re offering, but NOT NOW. For this very reason, you need to maintain a consistent, daily ritual of value-adding activity. The time will eventually be right.

Now, let’s move on to how you present your offer because that’s just as important as the timing.

No doubt you’ve done sales training, and read sales books and the like that give you varied behavioural reasoning as to why one strategy is better than another. Here we will share one simple method for attracting interest from a sales offer message on LinkedIn.

The power of the ‘conversational’ short-form sales messageOver the years we’ve tried both long-form and short-form sales messages.

A long-form sales message provides a large amount of information with numerous BUY NOW calls to action scattered throughout. From the moment the reader opens the message they’re already thinking, “Oh my god, this is long. What’s he trying to sell me?”

When a message appears to be a ‘nuisance’ or an ‘intrusion’, you’ve most likely lost the reader already. It will be deleted within 10 seconds.

Consider the following example:


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How far did you get with that message before your eyes glazed over?

Remember the CREATE method in Chapter Three of Part One? We considered how the brain processes information. In this digital age that we live in, people engage quicker, respond faster, and need to see relatedness sooner. Most of us consume content quickly, make a decision (if necessary), and then move on.

That’s why the best results we’ve achieved with clients have ALWAYS come from short-form messages.

This is simply two or three sentences long, no more than 50-100 words, without any scrolling needed by the reader.


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It should be highly personalised, conversational in nature, and make the recipient feel that it is directed solely at them. It doesn’t require much effort to read, and requires a short attention span to digest.

By the time the reader has finished the message, the offer has been made. The brain doesn’t even process it as a ‘sales message’.

The offer is usually something along these lines:

● Receive some more information● Take up a ‘health check’ on their business● Meet for a lunch● Take part in a survey

...or some other invitation to take an action that will be of VALUE to their business (Important! Don’t miss this point!)

Below is an example of a short-form message that has always worked well for us.

Hi Peter,

I hope this finds you well.

As a LinkedIn profile builder, I checked your profile and noticed that your profile is optimised around the keywords of <Word 1>, <Word 2> and <Word 3>. Is that what you want to be found for?

For the next month, I’m going to be offering a free 7-point Profile Tune-Up to my 1st tier connections only.

If you’d be interested to know more about this or perhaps take me up on the offer, please let me know and I’d be happy to assist.

Kind Regards

Andrew


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As you can see, it’s simple to understand, accept, or decline. Once you get to the end you decide quickly whether you want to take up the offer or move on. It’s short enough to ensure that the reader doesn’t have any time to consider that this is a sales pitch. For all intents and purposes, it’s a personally written message, aimed solely for the intended recipient’s consideration.

It’s also worth noting that there is a considerable difference between ‘social messaging’ and standard ‘sales messaging’. Most of the latter types of messages take on a formal tone. However, less formal, conversational language is designed to avoid the potential ‘disconnect’ between parties in more formal communication. It is friendlier, and designed to break down barriers, making the sender sound more approachable. For these reasons we recommend using this form of message.

It’s unrealistic to expect that your offer will be able to take anybody directly to a buying decision.

Remember that the purpose of the message is to offer something (more information, a meeting, a chat) – NOT TO SELL OR CLOSE A DEAL. That will nearly always be done face-to-face. Use your message to take the reader to the next step in the sales cycle. We call this taking a connection from ‘curious’ to ‘interested’.

When we use this strategy, the majority of written responses that we receive back from our first-level connections look something like this:

“Hi Andrew, thanks for your message. Firstly, it’s so nice to see someone actually take the time to view and read my profile before sending me a message….by all means, send me some more information.”

That’s a light-bulb moment right there. It shows that many people receive messages that are simply sales pitches; but our point of difference is that we’ve taken time to get to know our connection, then delivered something of value that made him or her feel special.


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This is how our ‘competition’ contacts their prospects after an accepted connection request:

“Hi Andrew, thanks for accepting my connection. Here’s a link to my website with more information about me. If you want to book a time to chat with me, here’s another link….”

There is not a hope in hell that you would waste your time replying to such a message, right? This person isn’t interested in you, a future customer. They’re only interested in one side of the relationship, and it’s centred on them.

We have reached out to several connections who have approached us with this type of message, and asked them what they think of LinkedIn and whether they get much back for their efforts.

Invariably, we receive these types of responses back:

“It doesn’t do much for me, I don’t really get much from it. LinkedIn is a bit of a joke, really.”

Perhaps now you can better understand why!

Timing your offerWe often get asked “But when is the best time to engage with connections?”

There’s nothing better than receiving a reply to an offer sent to a connection saying, “We’re actually looking at this right now. Good timing”.

Here are two sample responses that one client received, after sending his ‘value piece’ out to his market:


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It was certainly worth a chuckle when both leads mentioned that the ‘universe’ connected them! This is almost proof in itself that The Influencer Project strategy is receiving divine intervention!

But don’t forget that, to get to this stage, we’ve usually gone through a lengthy communication process with the connection. Sadly, connections don’t reply with “...and here are my credit card details.”

Remember, this is all the outcome of a process that includes:

1. OPTIMISING your profile to make a powerful first impression.

2. CONNECTING with prospects (rather than peers).3. ENGAGING the community by sharing content of value

and giving more than you take.4. CONVERTING: Presenting your offer to the individuals

of your community and following up to close.

Some professionals send an offer within a few minutes of a connection acceptance. To us this is a big mistake:


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YOU SHOULD RARELY PRESENT ANY OFFER WITHIN THE FIRST 30 DAYS OF CONNECTING WITH SOMEONE.

Why? Well, this is the period in which rapport, trust, and value are created. In the development of any relationship it is more about giving than receiving, right? Here it’s the same: give more than you take - then present the offer once you are trusted.

American social psychologist, author and lecturer, Amy Cuddy observes:

“Trust is the conduit for influence.“

If all you are interested in is a sale, or a ‘transaction’, then you’re not going to be trusted. In fact you’ll appear desperate, fall short of your goals, and in many cases your offer will look like a scam. Build trust first before you can hope to have an influence.

In fact, most of the rules of standard networking apply here and, if you follow them, a connection is much more likely to become a lead, either now or further down the line:

● Engage and take the time to get to know the person● Take an interest in their business● Avoid talking too much about yourself and what you do● Ask open-ended questions to prompt answers● Build rapport and trust, and find commonality

If your connection is ready, and it’s the RIGHT TIME for them (they have a need), then you’re in with a shot. If not, then you’ll get a “No thanks” or be ignored – but you have lost nothing, because you can always go back later.

We come back to the real estate agent and the DL flyer; we have mentioned it on numerous occasions because it’s the same principal here. It demonstrates that you are active.

You should never stop at the first message. Presenting an offer is not a one-shot deal. Your offers should be delivered


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consistently over time, as part of a competent lead generation strategy.

Respecting people’s timeAs you’ve seen, there is a philosophy and etiquette to getting the direct offer message right. Part of this is understanding that you’re often dealing with business people who are time-poor.

At the point in time that you send your message, your priorities are not necessarily other people’s priorities. In most cases, business leaders simply don’t have long to digest your text, attachments and video.

So a general rule to follow is to keep messages short (able to be consumed quickly - usually within a minute), simple, well-considered, and easily actionable.

The action might just be to reply with “Yes, I’m interested”. BOOM! That’s a lead.

Otherwise, your message might be ignored - or you will receive a polite NO:


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Note that there is no anger or negativity in this response. Respect people’s time and they will generally respect yours. Yes, at times you will receive a more abrupt response; however, without knowing the context of the response, it’s best to just leave it be, and move on. You can only control what you can control!

Everything we have done to this point has been respectful. To recap:

● Request connections in a personal manner – be considered as polite and respectful.

● Comment and Like discussions in your community and Groups - give value and join in to discussions. The author will appreciate it.

● Give value to your community by adding content in the form of articles and posts - your community genuinely wants value from you.

Getting your response rightRespond to positive messages about your offer within two hours, if at all possible. No, it doesn’t make you appear desperate, it shows you care.

In the first instance, CALL your connection, as a positive response means they are ready to take action. Calling is more effective than simply messaging back. Most people don’t access their account daily, so remain proactive and reach out directly via the phone wherever possible.

Our clients send over 40,000 offer messages per month. By tracking their responses and conversion results, we can share the following valuable data, which shows the response time and chance of converting.

2 hours - 95 percent chance of converting genuine enquiry to opportunity - “Wow, that was quick!”

24 hours - 75 percent chance of converting genuine enquiry to opportunity


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48 hours - 50 percent chance of converting genuine enquiry to opportunity

Greater than 48 hours - your lead opportunity is now most likely cold - “Sorry, remind me, who are you?”

So, based on this, if you respond within 24 hours instead of two hours, the chance of conversion from ‘enquiry’ to ‘lead’ drops by 20 percent. Remember, if longer than 48 hrs, it’s back to being COLD.

Not replying to a message is criminal! You wouldn’t ignore an inquiry at a networking event. Imagine this:

“Hi Peter, I see you’re a Business Coach, can you tell me more about your service?” Peter pauses for 5 minutes before responding, by which time the enquirer has long walked away!

Communication is key to any successful relationship - including those on LinkedIn.

It’s a SOCIAL NETWORK, and poor communication is not the behaviour of an ‘influencer’. Please don’t blame the system about lack of business, if you’re not going to follow good communication practices.

STEP 5: MAINTAIN CONTACT AND ACTIVITYMaking the first offer is only the first step to becoming an ‘Influencer’. Successful LinkedIn marketers ‘rinse and repeat’, time after time, as part of a comprehensive and consistent strategy.


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Purpose-built CRM vs. LinkedIn CRMPicture a successful business and we’ll show you an effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system coupled with an active communication strategy.

Yet most small business owners operate a basic database on an Excel spreadsheet at best.

From our experience, fewer than five percent of businesses have an active CRM or sales database to track activity, follow up, conversations, opportunities, leads, values, conversions, and more.

Why is this a problem? Well, for starters, Dun & Bradstreet’s State of Marketing Data Report 2015 found that companies that regularly maintain their database can see 66 percent higher conversion rates. That’s why almost two-thirds of B2B marketers surveyed in the report stated that improving the depth and accuracy of their database was a top priority.

If you fail to create recurring sales activity due to the lack of a simple, smart sales system, all the time and money spent creating marketing initiatives to attract new leads and grow our database are essentially wasted.

● You will NEVER experience the full benefit that an active and engaged database can bring your business, and

● Your database will become disengaged and leave for a better relationship or experience elsewhere. In short, your business will be crippled by ‘run-off’.

Your database should be the ‘raw material’ that you use to start to build real and profitable relationships for your business.

The availability of excellent, cost-effective CRMs in this digital age means that no small business should be without a tracking system to help manage and monitor sales activity, from Salesforce to ACT, Infusionsoft to SugarCRM, and dozens in between.


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No matter the nature of your business, you’re leaving bags of money on the table by not implementing a sales CRM.

Did you know that a basic CRM even exists within LinkedIn?

If you’ve never noticed it, it can be found under the ‘Relationship’ tab on each connection’s profile page.

There you can track recent conversations, add tags for keywords, and set reminders.

It’s better than nothing, but it is certainly limited, compared to what purpose-built platforms offer. Another issue with using the LinkedIn CRM function is that your all data and notes are contained on a social network that, should you inadvertently breach the user guidelines, can temporarily or permanently suspend or terminate your account. You may lose all your data! That’s a risk that we’re not willing to accept, nor would recommend, while driving forward in exponential growth.

How likely is it to that your account will be suspended, restricted, or terminated?

There are countless terms and conditions that most users have no clue about. They’ve checked the I AGREE box without reading them. Being ignorant of these terms can see you blocked and unable to access your business data. We’ve seen it happen. As such, an external CRM is highly recommended.


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Segmenting your database If you do decide to use the LinkedIn CRM, the ‘tag’ functionality is great for database segmentation. This helps you break up your connections into like-for-like groups.

A typical method of segmentation is as follows (the A-B-C-D method):

A – High-Net-Worth clients who buy from you every month or quarter. You need to keep front of mind with these individuals. They are a great referral source and worth every cent you spend on them. These clients should be contacted every month.

B – Valuable clients who buy from you once or twice per year, and occasionally refer a deal. Contact with these clients should still be a priority: every 3-4 months. These clients, if treated right, may step up to become A-grade clients in time.

C – Clients who buy from you occasionally (every 1-2 years) but, on face value, don’t offer much extra value to your business. They usually don’t refer and are likely to leave if a ‘better deal’ comes along. Contact with these clients should be on an annual basis, but remember that they could also step up to grade B with the right communication strategy applied.

D – ‘Dead’ clients. These offer limited or no value to your business. Message annually if time permits.

Of course, in The Influencer Project you are building a new LinkedIn community of prospects, rather than existing customers. So there is an important difference:

You will be targeting and engaging with groups where your prospects are found. As such, EVERY member of your community should be considered an A- or B-grade prospect of considerable potential value to your business.


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They are all, in effect, Bs waiting to be As, or Cs who will become Bs, as soon as they see value over time. You’ll also find As who you never would expect to be attracted to your business.

Actively engaging with an updated database The real value of any business lies with the size, composition, and activity associated with its database. Remove that and the business will fail. However, not applying an active and targeted communication strategy to an updated database is as good as not having a database in the first place.

You will hear such business owners say:

“I’m a referral business.”

Business is always easier with a referred lead, but unless you’re actively asking for those too, they can be few and far between.

Your database is your path to growth and this is essential. In nature, if it’s not growing, it’s dying. So don’t sit back and wait for the phone to ring.

Referring to the A-B-C-D model, you should aim to have a majority of As and Bs, with a few Cs and as few Ds as possible. An inactive database will gradually head towards a predominance of Cs and Ds and indicate a dying business.

Presenting new offersThe reason for continuously going to your market with an offer is that you never know when your connection’s ‘want’ becomes a ‘need’.

So, setting a strategy that re-connects with your prospect every 4-6 months is essential to the ongoing growth of your opportunity base on LinkedIn.


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Spending time and money growing an active customer list, but not providing ongoing value to your community, will simply result in high ‘run-off’ (clients taking their business elsewhere).

The old marketing adage, “it costs six times more to sell to a new lead rather than convert an old one”, tells us that we should focus 80 percent of our time on providing more value to, and getting referrals from, the connections we already have, rather than seeking new ones.

The saying goes on to say, “You’re six times more likely to sell to a person who’s bought from you once before, and you’re 12 times more likely to sell to a person who’s bought from you twice.”

So why, after doing all the hard work to build a relationship, develop rapport, raise trust levels, and provide value to get the initial business, would there be no system of ongoing sales for that customer?

This is what one customer recently wrote to us:

“Hi Andrew, you helped me with my LinkedIn Profile last year and I’ve been following you here on LinkedIn and also on Facebook. As I can see, you’re truly a professional who I want around me and want to harness your knowledge and skills to help my business. Can you please call me to discuss how we can best make this happen?”

Not a bad opportunity but, more importantly, a good example of it taking time.

Remember that, if a connection doesn’t convert right now into an enquiry or lead, the same won’t necessarily apply in three, six, or 12 months. It will take time to build trust – and, in any case, the timing may not be right to meet their need.

The power of engagementIn 2014-15, we worked with a banking client who had the joint goals of revenue growth, new client acquisition, and reducing client run-off, which was then at 20 percent.


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At the start of the sales exploration process we noticed that there was one glaring opportunity that no one had covered: a database of over 650,000 current customers across the group of 180 branches, with no active customer-focused campaign of contact and present an offer.

The bank’s marketing team believed that sales messages on social media were spam, and the concept of email marketing had been locked up with their legal division for over 12 months. Its social media team believed that Facebook was a platform to grow community, but that it was incapable of giving value and converting opportunity leads.

Over the course of the next 12 months, we actively engaged over 100 branches with a call program, to re-engage with their database. Over 250,000 calls were made to A, B and C-grade customers, who provided the greatest value to the business. Previously, the bank itself didn’t want the individual offices to call the clients en-masse to avoid ‘annoying the customer’ and because of IP risk to the corporate entity. In other words, the bank’s focus was on the risk of loss, rather than opportunity for growth through customer service and relationship.

After initial resistance, the result was overwhelmingly favourable. Customers reacted with “My bank has never rung me to see how I’m going, thanks so much”, and “Great timing, I would love to chat with you about how I can get a better deal”.

Accordingly, in the final quarter of the year, the bank achieved positive growth and profits of over $175M, the first time that this had been achieved in nearly a decade.

What changed that year? Only the process of customer re-engagement and an active call campaign that simply thanked customers for their business, asked if there was anything that the bank could do to assist with their financial needs, and the presentation of an OFFER that linked the customer’s product to another product that would drive a saving. The result? Growth, relationships, appreciation, good will, and more, plus the individual business owners who made up the


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business development team for the Bank started to enjoy their businesses again.

Now, if you have a ‘run-off’ problem in your business, how would it affect your bottom line if you could keep your customers for 50 percent longer, or they bought two more times over the next two years, at your average dollar sale?

The upswing would be a great benefit, right?

The Influencer Project can help you do that through LinkedIn.

Activity and response levels

By all means, ring every connection quarterly, that would be insanely beneficial for your business, without doubt.

But few reading this will be ready to take such a bold step just yet. Don’t worry - the simple process we’ve taken you through so far will see your level of opportunity and engagement grow consistently every day, month after month. Taking ‘actively passive’ action with an offer message direct to your connection base every 4-6 months will do wonders for your business.

As we’ve seen, growing your community and increasing opportunities requires an activity strategy that both engages and offers your connections something of value, using both ‘passive’ and ‘active’ strategies.

Putting our own numbers on this over the first 12 months of applying The Influencer Project strategy, within three months we were generating 1 to 2 leads per day, within 12 months we were generating 12-15 leads per day.

But how many offers does this translate to per day? How much work is involved?

The process is 100 percent scalable - and needs to be. There’s no point sending 150-200 messages per day if your database is 1,500 people; instead, send 10-20 per day (which will take 20 minutes) and gradually increase that as your database grows.


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Your A or B grade connections should ideally hear from you 2-3 times per year.

Your results will essentially depend on three factors:

1. The nature of your offer If the offer is too long or represents NO value to your reader, re-write it.

2. The consistency of messages sentMake sure your offers are sent daily - that’s 22 business days per month.

3. The volume of messages sentMake sure your activity puts you in contact with your connections at least every 4-6 months.

On this third point, how many connections do you have? If you want to send 10 per day, that’s 220 per month. If you’ve got 1,500 connections and you’re adding 200 per month, your prospects will hear from you every 18-24 months, which is not good enough.

To present an offer every six months to a database of 1,500, with 200 added per month, you’ll need to send 350-400 offer messages per month. That’s 15-20 per business day. You need to break it down as we have done here.

Dealing with NO answers We all hate rejection and the word NO to anyone in a sales role can feel horrible.

But, if you run a campaign that gets no response from a prospect, don’t fall into the trap of believing that the prospect or connection NEVER wants your product. It’s NOT that your product or service isn’t good enough. If you’ve got a great product (and there’s no point going through all this if you haven’t) you don’t need to change it.


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The truth is that your message will probably be dismissed out of hand, unless the need is there and the timing is right. You would do the same!

A targeted quarterly message sent to multiple connections doesn’t spark action unless the recipient has a specific need at that point in time.

Only when a ‘want’ becomes a ‘need’ will your offer be received positively. It’s exactly the same as being ‘in the right place at the right time’. Give yourself the best chance of that happening by sending offers regularly. Yes, we’re back to the real estate agent example again!

So your message will be met with “No thanks” or deleted by 97 percent of recipients. You may even get reported for spam, but that’s OK - people who have no need at that point in time will always act indifferently.

Never stop believing that this is a vital channel for lead development in your business, as your primary goal is to appeal to the three percent that you can help at any point in time - not the 97 percent you can’t.

What would Zig Ziglar think of the 97 percent? Yes, the hand would go into the pocket and there would be a smile on his face. Each of the NOs helps him get closer to a YES.

Don’t let a feeling of rejection stop you from asking for business, and allowing your database to go to waste. An emotional response to rejection is one of the single biggest limiters to business growth and personal success. When you stop even being prepared to get a NO, you miss out on all the potential YES’s.

Remember that, unless you’re attracting or repelling prospects, you’re not being active enough. Business IS Sales – period. So don’t let the thought of looking like you’re selling something hold you back:

If you have a great product and you have engaged consistently on LinkedIn, there should be no fear


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in going to your first-level connections with a well-considered, short-form and conversationally written offer.

Don’t like sales? Then hire someone who does, then get out of the road and watch your business flourish. A professional sales specialist will be comfortable targeting and attracting the three percent, knowing that they will bring success.

They know that it’s just a numbers game, and it’s nothing personal.

Remember:

“You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

Tracking your activity At first, your ‘responsive’ activity levels increase because of your ‘outgoing’ activity.

You need to track this activity, and the corresponding opportunities, so that you can then track conversion rates.

Let’s break down what you need to know:

● How many connections requests are sent to get one accepted?

● How many messages are sent to get one message back?● Of all messages received, how many are genuine leads?● Of all leads, how many become opportunities?● How many opportunities are required to produce a sale?● How long does it take on average for you to respond to

your lead enquiry with a phone call?

Once you can get a handle on the precise numbers that play out in your strategy, you can better plan your activity to attract the numbers you need. It’s a very clear linear equation.


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The ROI on consistent actionWe always guarantee one thing: if you do nothing, that’s what you will get in return.

The successful ‘influencers’ don’t procrastinate, they don’t stop because there are no immediate results, and they are not ‘too busy’ to take the necessary action.

They believe in CONSISTENT ACTION.

And, when it all comes together, we are still yet to see it NOT work - even when opportunities looked most unlikely.

In recent cases, we have seen this system of consistent action produce the following results:

● 83 franchise partner lead enquiries for an Australian telecommunications franchise network in a single month.

● An average of 53 lead enquiries per month for a mortgage broker .

● 182 respondents to a survey over a 4-week period for a PhD candidate collecting survey data to validate his PhD pilot (compared with three people completing the survey in the previous 12 months from a total of 3,000 emails).

● An average of 150+ lead enquiries per month for a business coach who specialises in ‘Change’.

● Average of 40 leads per month, with an ROI of 13:1 for a management accountant.

● In excess of 200+ leads in the first month for an online registered training organisation specialising in innovation and entrepreneurship.

In short, whatever professional service you offer, The Influencer Project strategy will work for you if you follow it through with consistent action.

Those who succeed the most take the most action. The ROI is purely linear, unlike paid advertising on Facebook for instance.


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Just because you pay double the amount for an ad, doesn’t mean that you get double the return on your investment. An ACTIVITY strategy will trump an ADVERTISING strategy every time when building a personal brand. Especially when playing the ‘relationship’ game and offering your market a professional service.

BUT - the salesperson who knocks on 10 times more doors WILL get 10 times more opportunities, all else being equal. This applies to activity in The Influencer Project.

Say that each day you:

● Perform 20 account activities (connections, likes, comments, posts, updates); and

● Send 10 offers/sales messages; and ● Receive 1 message

Doubling the front-end activity will double the back-end response rates. If you want five times more leads, do five times the work. It’s that simple.

Finding the timeIf you think “I can do that” or “There’s no way I can do that” you’re right either way!

For those of you thinking the latter, the mindset that you’re not considering here is one of ‘LEVERAGE’. To think that you can do all this work yourself AND be the master of everything within your business is ludicrous.

The most successful exponents of The Influencer Project are those that surround themselves with people who cover for their own weaknesses. For many of us, our biggest weakness is TIME. yet this can be purchased thus providing greater leverage.

“Surround yourself with people smarter than you, and then pay them well.”

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You can achieve initial results from the campaigns yourself, but, as you implement The Influencer Project strategy and attract more opportunity and activity to your business, you won’t be able to action it all yourself.

Before you start implementing this full strategy, make sure you have the back-end of your business sorted out. Otherwise, you will experience the dreaded ‘sales slump cycle’ we mentioned in Part One: activity goes up, available time goes down, then things grind to a halt while you’re actioning all your work, because you’re trying to be the ‘CFE’ ( ‘Chief of Friggin’ Everything’).

Don’t fall into this trap, where limited cash flow and burnout are the most likely outcomes. Find time by hiring specialists and ensuring the right people are on the right seats of your bus. Hire for where you want to be, rather than where you are now.

The power of referralsRemember that it costs six times more in time and money to find a new lead than to convert a current one.

A current client can not only buy from you a second time, but they can also refer you business, if they like what you do for them and your offering is seen as being something of value.

We regularly ask customers if they know anyone in business who they believe would enjoy the benefits that they’re receiving from our work. On average we get three referred leads from each client, within six months – in some cases within 24 hours!

That’s around $100K worth of opportunity just by communicating effectively, regularly, authentically, and then asking for a referral. It works in almost 100 percent of cases and it is SO simple.

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CHAPTER THREE:

Taking the ‘Activity Test’

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and

looks like work.”

Thomas Edison (Inventor and businessman)

This is a very short final chapter - but a very important one!

Inside The Influencer Project we have created our own system of influence called ICON as a key part of our own strategy for business growth. We take consistent action, deliver value-rich content using our LinkedIn profile as the hub, and couple it with a lead generation model that produces remarkable opportunities daily.

However, we have tested what happens when activity levels drop...and it’s not pretty.

We don’t use any software or third party plug-ins – everything is performed manually. We consider our profiles like ‘shop fronts’ and want foot traffic to check out what we offer.

On average, with regular activity we receive:

● 250 visitors per week viewing our profiles (we call this ‘digital foot traffic’)

● Around 40-50 messages per day, producing around 8-10 ‘leads’


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Remember these ‘leads’ are opportunities for us to discuss more with our connection, to then decide if The Influencer Project is going to be right for them.

Over a seven-day period, we decided to run a test to see what would happen to foot traffic (profile views) and overall opportunity creation, if we took NO ACTION. That meant literally no action, no community engagement - no likes, comments, posts, offers, nothing! Effectively, we decided to see what it was like to be like nearly EVERYONE else on the platform.

Here’s what happened:

● 65 profile views – around a quarter of what we had been getting

● 15 messages received rather than the 250 we usually receive

With all our usual activity stopping completely, our profile views and messages dropped DRAMATICALLY...and with it the opportunities for growing our business.

This perfectly demonstrated exactly what we expected to be true: when people can’t see you, they can’t engage, and when they can’t engage they will go elsewhere, where they can.

While the ‘opportunity cost’ of this little experiment was around $100K it was great proof of this fact:

Unless you are prepared to get active, don’t sit back and whinge about your lack of success on LinkedIn, or in your business.

It’s not the platform with the issue. It will NEVER produce anything of value for you if you sit there, waiting for your connections to ask for help.


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Get up and get your head off the block. If you don’t, you can be sure that the axe will swing and there will be nothing left to grow.

Remember:

EVERY PERSON YOU COULD EVER WANT TO HELP YOUR BUSINESS GROW IS AVAILABLE TO YOU ON LINKEDIN.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO START INFLUENCING THEM!

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SUMMARY:

To be an Influencer...

“If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done”

Thomas Jefferson

You now have all the tools you need to enact your ‘system of influence’ and to become an ‘Influencer’ in your market.

It may feel a little different to what you’ve been doing on LinkedIn in the past - but it should. Better results don’t come by doing the same things, as Thomas Jefferson pointed out in the above quote.

Keep it simple with OPTIMISE, CONNECT, ENGAGE and CONVERT:

● OPTIMISE your LinkedIn PROFILE so that you can be FOUND by your target audience for your WHAT, not your WHO

● CONNECT with new prospects and build a database● Provide VALUE to your connections consistently over

time, and become ACTIVE on the platform using all tools at your disposal

● ENGAGE them and build relationships until you are known and trusted

● Present an OFFER to your audience to generate interest and leads

● Ensure you have an effective sales system to CONVERT these leads

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● Then ‘RINSE AND REPEAT, maintaining and ‘exponentially growing’ your database

The Influencer Project presents a simple strategy designed to take you from being a bystander on LinkedIn, on the ‘outside looking in’, to becoming the active, influential, professional business leader that you can choose to be.

We’d love to claim that our system is a remarkable algorithmic breakthrough, but it’s purely a numbers and activity game. However, the numbers ARE impressive ONLY if the activity is taken.

The Influencer Project is a system that brings together a targeted marketing approach with a business sales system, and applies it to the digital space to create positive ROI and the foundation for business growth.

It is the most amazing opportunity yet to grow, nurture, offer, re-connect, and provide value to your customers and prospects on LinkedIn.

An automatic by-product of this is creating opportunities at a level you only thought possible for market leaders.

But that’s only IF you are prepared to get active with the following:

● you build a large enough community to sustain consistent action

● you take action on a DAILY basis over a period of months – not days or weeks

● you have a team capable of handling lead inquiries competently

On the third point, remember that your ROI will ultimately depend on your ability to convert a lead into a sale. If you can’t do that, then NO system in the world is good enough to help you.

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If you do install a system that converts well, then following this strategy precisely over the next 12 months can produce remarkable results. No more cold calling, all the leads you could ever want, and a way to catapult your business growth into uncharted waters.

Remember the ‘Flywheel Effect’ mentioned in Part One? The same type of unstoppable momentum really does apply here. We call it ‘exponential growth’.

In the past 12 months, we’ve added over 20,000 connections and followers to our LinkedIn community. Each one is a potential client, desirous of our value and waiting for their time to present their need, for us to solve and deliver a solution.

Remember that we were once doubters ourselves about the power of LinkedIn. When we kept hearing that “cold calling is dead” we doubted it, especially as cold calling had served us well as sales professionals, even in the recent past.

We now believe that cold calling is, indeed, almost dead. Why would you cold call someone when you can passively engage them and turn a ‘cold’ relationship ‘warm’ over time, using the power of a social platform like LinkedIn?

By consistently providing value that helps to create meaningful relationships and delivers new connections and leads DAILY, you never need to speak to a potential customer until they are ready to speak to you.

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About the authors

ANDREW McWHIRTER

In the past 15 years, Andrew has started and sold businesses, created new ventures, raised capital, and played every role within business until he burned himself out and was diagnosed with a serious medical condition caused due to stress.

Andrew never found it hard to find and grow business, but dealing with the activity levels was a constant challenge. Consequently, each venture went up and down, as did his cashflow.

Once he managed to develop and implement systems so that he wasn’t working ‘in’ his business so much, He discovered freedom and really began to enjoy business.

And when he started pulling all his ideas of business growth and sales systemisation together, he realised he could help others across any industry.

Teaming up with Rana, they have been able to combine their experience to create The Influencer Project, and this book came about after witnessing, first hand, the tremendous results that this strategy can produce.

Andrew now wakes up every morning feeling inspired to help other potential ‘Influencers’ grow their communities and enjoy the ‘by-products’ of the growth that can come from this.


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RANA SAINI

Rana has always had a passion for helping people and his love of personal development and health drove him to start his first business in the fitness industry over 10 years ago.

He soon realised the great challenges a business owner faces. Having to market, sell, hire, fire, create systems, do finance, keep cash flow… it didn’t leave much time to enjoy life.

Rana knew there must be a better way to do business. He soon learned about the power of online marketing and social lead systems, discovering ways to leverage himself to build and grow business whilst still having a lifestyle. Which was how he always imagined business to be.

Since then his has built, run and sold multiple businesses and found his passion inside creating marketing solutions that help others work smarter, not harder and build profitable businesses.

With a mutual love of marketing and business growth he teamed up with Andrew, who happened to be one of his first business mentors, where we put our joint experience, knowledge and passion for business growth together inside ‘The Influencer Project’.

Today Rana continues to innovate the digital online marketplace for both his business and that of his clients to build systems for business growth and create innovative social strategies for business influencers looking to lead their marketplace.

s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com...Your business is NOT what people want. However, through your business and your marketing efforts, some people will either believe you have the solution

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