053 | JAN KYSELÝ | HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF LINKEDIN

Fortunately, LinkedIn is no longer just an HR bulletin board, but a full-fledged social network that we can use for business. I asked one of the most knowledgeable, Honza Kyselý from Future Sales, how to turn your LinkedIn business card into a sales channel.

Honza is the co-founder of Future Sales, but mainly a B2B marketing expert, consultant and trainer with a focus on digital technology and social media. He co-founded Future Sales with Jirka Jambor, and somehow they naturally divided their roles in the company. Unconventionally, they don't have a CEO.

Both teach B2B companies how to find business opportunities through LinkedIn. But not only that. They focus on digital communication, working with data, emailing. These are all great tools to accelerate business, but as Honza says, there is always a person at the end and normal human communication, which no digital can replace yet.

Let's get the most out of LinkedIn. Listen to Ignition, where I also asked about common myths associated with social networks. Ignition for all LinkedIn users who want to turn it into a business channel ...

🔸 How to reach out correctly on LinkedIn? 🔸 How to synchronise contact acquisition and publishing correctly?

🔸 To automate or not to automate? 🔸 How often do I post on LinkedIn? 🔸 What is the Social Selling Index and how to use it?

And as a bonus, download the handy checklist below "How to get started with building your personal brand on LinkedIn".

BONUS

How to get started building your personal brand on LinkedIn (Bonus code: )

TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERVIEW

Martin Hurych

Hello. I'm Martin Hurych and this is Zahžeh. Today's Ignition will be about what sales looks like in the future, how to market on LinkedIn and how to use modern tools in B2B sales. That's why I've invited none less than Honza Kyselý. Hey, Honza.

Jan Kyselý

Hey.

What does the future of trading look like according to Future Sales?

Martin Hurych

Co-founder of Future Sales, CMO of the company and co-author of the book Social Selling in the Czech Republic. Before we start with LinkedIn and the specific tools, what do you think the future looks like in sales? If Future Sales, then what is the future of sales?

Jan Kyselý

There's definitely a part of digital communication, you just can't leave that out nowadays. It includes social networks, emailing, various tools for collecting customer data, working with data. In B2B, which is what we're doing, we definitely can't forget the human part. The human touch is terribly important, so at some point you have to pull those people out of the digital environment and start dealing with them anyway.

How does Canada fit into the history of social selling in the Czech Republic?

Martin Hurych

We'll get to all that. I learned an interesting thing in my preparation. Usually one goes to Canada for the nature and the bears, sometimes for the fish and the unfortunate ones for the heliskiing. You went there for a business idea. How did that come about?

Jan Kyselý

I also went there to see the bears and the mountains, but I was kind of trying to keep my eyes open. I worked in a marketing agency before and I found communication in B2B companies to be terribly inefficient and built on B2C principles. So I was trying to find some innovation in the way it's done abroad. Social selling was already very common in Canada at that time, so I brought that innovation here to the Czech Republic.

What about social selling?

Martin Hurych

Social selling. How is this method common in the Czech Republic and how could it be explained to people who don't know what social selling is, even though they will probably be a minority after Covid?

Jan Kyselý

Very simply, you use your personal social media profile to find, reach out, start building relationships and ideally open up business communication with a potential customer.

Presentation of Future sales and Jan Kyselý?

Martin Hurych

Although our episodes are not primarily about introducing companies, but rather about the know- how that the person carries, I always want some brief introduction of the company and your journey to the company, so that it's clear from what perspective we are then commenting. So can you give an idea of what Future Sales is, how long you've been there, what you do and how many of you there are?

Jan Kyselý

Future Sales is dedicated to digital sales in B2B companies. Basically, we help companies implement social networks, digital tools, CRM tools, emailing, business data and online data into their communication and business process. We started on LinkedIn, which is still the biggest service we offer. We built our name on that, but over time we found that just communicating, branding and generating leads on LinkedIn wasn't enough for companies and we started adding other things to our portfolio. These include CRM tools and emailing so that we can offer a comprehensive service to companies. Today there are 11 of us in the company, 3 or 4 people in the core team, and then we have a few freelancers and people who work with us, but together it's a relatively large team. I started the company with my business partner, Jirka Jambor. It's interesting that basically our know-how, experience and approach are very much combined, they're different and that's probably what makes Future Sales today.

Martin Hurych

We've already talked about it before the shoot, I'd like it to come across on camera. I like you guys because you don't have a CEO. How do you do that? I mean, every startup founder today has a CEO, a COO and a CTO, so how do you two compare?

Jan Kyselý

I don't think it's completely necessary in a small team like ours. Our roles are sort of naturally divided, and when we started talking about this topic, there was some resentment and conflicts, so we decided that it was basically pointless. We are two managing directors of the company, the roles are clearly divided and there is no point in discussing this for the time being.

Who is the target group?

Martin Hurych

If I understand correctly, you're in charge of marketing strategy at the company. Come tell us who your typical client is, where you're targeting, and then we'll talk about what your typical campaign looks like.

Jan Kyselý

We have been looking for our client for a relatively long time because the product can be for basically anyone. But as I tell my clients, it's a fundamental mistake to think that my product is for everyone and to target digital communications to everyone. Then your target audience is terribly broad, your communication is terribly diffuse, and you're basically reaching almost nobody and it's costing you a lot of effort and a lot of money. After some time, we found out that our core customer is an IT company or a betting business. The Czech company is a well-established, medium-sized company that wants to move from the classic referral-based sales channel to digital. We are most successful with companies that have a very complex product, long business cycles and need to build a certain relationship with the customer. The product is not free, it's expensive and you have to convince that person. We also work with law firms, consulting firms and marketing agencies.

How to get started with LinkedIn for long sales cycles (for the more advanced)

Martin Hurych

If I have a long sales cycle, something expensive that the other side has been considering for a long time, they think a lot about me, how do I actually get started with LinkedIn? Now, I'm thinking more advanced, because I don't suppose there's anyone in the audience who hasn't created a profile. How do I start to build up that kind of undercurrent to influence those people, to let them know about me and how often do I post because there's a bunch of confusion about that, some people say daily, some people say weekly, how do you see that for you?

Jan Kyselý

Before we look at the strategy itself, there's a marketing lesson to be learned. In B2B, those people can handle most of that sales and buying cycle on their own with some market research on the internet. They can basically pick those potential suppliers today, figure out what they need, and they come to you with basically a done deal. You have to work with that from your point of view as well, so you have to try to target that person well so that they know about you and you have to continually provide them with some added value so that they put you in the potential supplier box. The moment they need that product, they'll think of you and reach out to you. Of course, it's not so easy that customers then come to you on their own, although that also happens sometimes, but you have to push them a little bit to where you need them to go. LinkedIn is great in that you can target specific audiences based on market segment, position, etc. You can even use an account based approach where you define specific companies in a data tool. We call it a wish list, a list of dream companies that you want to get into and you target people who are part of those companies. LinkedIn is great in that you can usually identify those people there, find them and start working with them.

Martin Hurych

Before we get back to how to find these people, it sounded a little defensive to me that I actually have to wait for someone to make a decision, which goes against those predatory salespeople who say you have to create a need. So how do you have that in your country? Isn't it possible to create a need in a potential customer with LinkedIn?

Jan Kyselý

I think it is, but since we're in B2B, that situation where a person is ready to buy from you doesn't happen right away. It's going to happen about three percent of the time when you're reaching out to your target audience, which is basically not enough to work well. That's why the communication has to be long-term, for months, for years. You have to take into account that it's another business channel that you have to dedicate yourself to and it will start to bring results after a while, but after that it can bring results regularly. That's why it's terribly important to create that need. But the person has to think first if they really need it, the right situation has to arise, they have to have the budget for it, they have to convince their boss, for example. All this can take months or years. So it's one thing to create a need, but people don't buy socks from us, it's not an instant purchase, so they usually need time to sort it out in their head and actually buy the thing from us.

How to reach out correctly on LinkedIn?

Martin Hurych

My typical client comes to me, says they need help, and a lot of times LinkedIn is part of that. The typical idea is that they'll start reaching out to the client and immediately write in the first or second message how they're the best. I suppose this path leads to hell.

Jan Kyselý

It doesn't have to lead to hell, it depends on the product you are offering and the situation you are in. By pushing those leads in the beginning, it can generate some instant leads, sales discussions, if that person is just in that situation of needing you. But the percentage of those potential customers who are in that situation and would buy from you right away is awfully small. By the fact that you push them, you cook them right off at the beginning and then you can't work with them anymore. They stop seeing you, or they stop following you, and they don't even want to read the next message. I'm more of a proponent of some gradual pre-heating of customers and trying to give them some added value with additional messages and posts. That business discussion will happen sooner or later when that customer is ready to talk to you. Of course you can't let it go and you need to have a plan, a campaign, but don't push people unnecessarily.

How to properly synchronize contact acquisition and publishing activity?

Martin Hurych

What will follow now is all written in the bonus that Honza prepared for us, a checklist of how to behave on LinkedIn. I would ask you how to pair some publishing and outreach well on LinkedIn. Some people say they're just going to reach out, they don't have time to write, some people say they have to produce some content first so then people will see something. I don't think either option is correct. I think I pretty much have to run both in parallel so that the people I'm reaching out to can see that I'm producing something at the same time. What do you think is the best recommendation when starting out? How do I go about it?

Jan Kyselý

Ideally, you should start publishing a while before you start reaching out to those people, so they can see that your profile is not dead, that it's not a fake profile that you created just to reach out to those people. By the way, what happens on LinkedIn is that if you're approached by a pretty lady with a lovely name and the profile has no history at all, you can be sure that it's usually a fake account. So it's it's good to start a little while before you start reaching people and then throughout the outreach, at least throughout the campaign. The reason for this is because when you add those people to the network, the algorithm is going to be testing to see if they like the content you're publishing. The chances of them seeing your content in their feed is many times greater than, say, after some time. If they respond to it, they'll see you regularly, which is what you need. So I would definitely recommend syncing it up somehow and publishing at the moment you reach out to people. On the other hand, this is usually the biggest stumbling block, because producing interesting content is a time-consuming affair and people don't do it.

Martin Hurych

What is the cooperation with the client like then? I assume that you cannot be responsible for all content generation. I imagine you will take over the outreach part of it to some extent. How do you convince the client that they need collaboration and coordination on the publishing part?

Jan Kyselý

We usually base this argument on data. We show them how companies that have a similar product, are in a similar market segment, what kind of social engagements they can generate. That usually convinces those people that there is content on LinkedIn. If they don't have time to do it themselves, they can leave it partly to us.

To automate or not to automate?

Martin Hurych

I have another tricky question. In your opinion, should it be automated or not? And if automated, how far?

Jan Kyselý

You can certainly automate, but there are limits. We're in a B2B business that's built on relationships, and that simply can't be communicated with some pre-made sequence. For example, we partially automate reaching out to people. Sending out invitations in some quantity can't be done manually, so that gets automated. However, the moment a person replies back to you, we usually handle that communication manually. Because you can't send a sequence to a person who responds to a question in your message, or asks straight away for product details and so on. So it should be some healthy combination of those two things.

Martin Hurych

What's your, what do you guys call, tex-tech? What tools do you use to make sure you're handling all the business as efficiently as possible?

Jan Kyselý

I'm not going to say that we can handle everyone completely efficiently, but the foundation of communication, or sales and infrastructure, for you will be your LinkedIn profile. It's worth getting a premium account on LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, which is an external app from LinkedIn that links directly to your profile and extends the capabilities of the free account. There you can filter your potential contacts in detail, sort them into different lists and somehow work with them systematically. LinkedIn offers a thirty-day free trial of premium accounts and if you're a salesperson or in sales, I recommend just taking the option for that Sales Navigator. That's about the only one of those premium accounts that makes sense. So that's the basics. Then you'll need some sort of automation tool, there are tons of them on the market, I probably can't mention specific names completely, but you usually can't go wrong with the ones that are famous. They've been around for a long time, it's important that there's some history there because LinkedIn doesn't really officially support these automations and if the app overdoes it, it will eventually block it. That's why it's better to choose something that's been around for a while and has good references. Then you might need a publishing tool like Buffer or something like that, because if you want to publish regularly, it takes time. These publishing tools have some limits, you have to publish something directly on LinkedIn, but for the vast majority you can handle it. Then, of course, you can't do without your website. They are very important, because sooner or later the potential customer will simply click on the website. If they don't work the way they're supposed to, you'll lose that person right from the start and all your LinkedIn activity will go to waste. So I recommend tweaking your website, having some conversion points, up-to-date information and actively working with it. Next, it's definitely going to be some sort of email communication system, typically some sort of MailChimp, and then a good CRM where you'll collect all the data and manage your record in leads.

Martin Hurych

Just to clarify, LinkedIn doesn't block the app, but because the app pretends to be my profile, it blocks my profile, which makes it all the worse. Is that right?

Jan Kyselý

He'll probably cancel the app too, somehow trying to block it, but he'll also block your profile. Usually there will be some sort of notification first, or a daily ban of your profile, but I would definitely be careful about using automation so you don't lose all the work you're doing there.

Martin Hurych

How about those publishing tools? Can LinkedIn recognize that you're lifering something to your feed from the outside and can it use an algorithm to limit it or push it forward?

Jan Kyselý

It will definitely know that you're uploading it through some external app, because it doesn't go directly to the feed, but it goes through some app. If it limits the posts, I honestly don't know, or I don't have data to prove it. There's a rumor in the backroom that the reaches are lower, but I haven't been able to verify that yet.

What format should I try to get more reach?

Martin Hurych

So, speaking of numbers and trends, what's a currently promoted format on LinkedIn that I should try to get more reach?

Jan Kyselý

If you'd asked me a few months back, I'd have told you the poll. Since there were a bunch of them, the algorithm changed a bit and toned down the poll. When we put together all of our submissions, which were about 250 last year just for Future Sales, the poll came out on top. People usually figure out that something works because they follow LinkedIn gurus, of which there are many on the market today. However, your content plan should also have some variety in formats and alternate between the basic ones, which could easily be plain text. These are pdfs, pdf slideshows, various attachments, images where there is some informational value or human emotion, and then native videos that you upload directly to the platform. I would rotate these 4 basic formats in some healthy ratio. As for external links on the network, LinkedIn will always partially dampen those because they can get you off the platform, which no social network wants. At that point, it loses users and can't serve them advertising and other posts that it's essentially paid for. Therefore, external links will have a lower reach. Even LinkedIn has a new feature that notifies you when you leave LinkedIn. This is unpleasant for marketers when you want to get those people to some landing page, some conversion point, registration, webinar, etc. That's why LinkedIn is also coming out with, for example, some lead generation formats, events, landing pages that you can create right on that platform.

Martin Hurych

Do you think it makes sense to use these new formats in the Czech Republic? My experience is that when we do some online meetings, offline meetings, the events are of course hanging on LinkedIn. But the way the form is made, it creates confusion rather than being useful. What about those other types of posts or lead generation forms?

Jan Kyselý

Now recently LinkedIn came out with a lead generation tool right on your LinkedIn company page, I noticed it about 14 days ago. We're trying it out, but I honestly don't have much faith in it. Most of the time, the customer will reach out to me specifically anyway, as a human being, rather than filling out some lead generation form on our website or on the LinkedIn company page. So I still think that personal profiles are the main conversion point where you get that lead.

Where to gather experience and inspiration?

Martin Hurych

You're saying a bunch of things right now, some of which are completely new to me at least. Where do you get your experience, where do you get your inspiration?

Jan Kyselý

We're hanging on to that platform 24/7. We manage dozens of profiles, both ours and for our customers. It's interesting that LinkedIn is constantly rolling out new features and mostly starting with the less active profiles. It tries it there, it tests it, and if it pays off and the test goes well, then it rolls it out to those more active profiles that basically secure the content and activity on that platform. So we usually hear about the news on our customers' profiles and then after a while it's just flowing through to us. Then, of course, we follow LinkedIn blogs, marketing, sourcers, and we follow people who are doing the same work as us but abroad. We try to take their know-how and interpret it here for a domestic audience. For example, I like van der Bloom's communication lately, I would definitely try to find him. Social selling has been a big topic in Canada and there is a company called Sales for life that has done a lot of work on it. We took a lot of inspiration from them in the beginning. But there are dozens of these people and companies. You just follow them all and wait for someone to come up with some interesting information that you can then interpret here. By the way, I don't think there's anything wrong with this strategy of finding experts abroad who are doing the same thing as you, following them and taking their content. I recommend you take advantage of it, whatever you do.

How often do I post on LinkedIn?

Martin Hurych

I wanted to ask you one more thing. There was an Instagram expert here recently, and Instagram in general is very demanding in terms of frequency of posting, quality of content, etc. It struck me that in that particular bonus that will be available to viewers, you say that you just need to post something once or twice a week. That's against a lot of people who say that's not enough these days, that you need to have a more frequent presence on LinkedIn. I've heard from the outside that LinkedIn should be twice a day. What are you basing that on? Is it that the Czech market is not saturated yet, so it's enough to be seen once or twice a week?

Jan Kyselý

First of all, I don't think any person who has a certain workload, a classic job, is going to be able to generate content twice a day on LinkedIn. So it's good to set some frequency that you maintain, and that twice a week I think is a sustainable frequency for most people. It's also based on the fact that a post on the network will last a while. If it's good, it could be as long as 3 days. LinkedIn will never show two posts from the same author in your feed. If you publish twice a day, you're essentially cannibalizing the reach of the original post, which is not good. So I recommend having at least a day break between posts so that the post has a chance to go viral when it does well. After a day, you can publish another post again. I would say that if you want to be active on the platform, three times a week will be enough.

What is the Social Selling Index and how to use it?

Martin Hurych

You also mention the Social Selling Index in the bonus. In my experience, few people know what it is and how to use it. So can we lose a few words about it?

Jan Kyselý

I'm sure. The Social Selling Index is an index directly from LinkedIn that evaluates your activity on the platform in terms of sales activity. Anyone can look it up, just type Social Selling Index into Google, click on the first link, be logged into LinkedIn in the same browser and it will already pair with your profile and show you your number. It's a zero to 100 point index and basically rates some 4 basic activities on the platform. It's the quality of your profile, how often you publish content, it hides that in the sections it calls Establish your professional brand. Then there's a contact search section, then how often you engage in conversations on the platform and finally it rates the quality and size of your network. That's 4 basic parameters, each of which is 25 points and adds up to a hundred. It's good to watch for two reasons. Firstly, some feedback from LinkedIn to see if you're really using the platform effectively and then it's also in terms of some relevance and credibility for you as an author and a LinkedIn user. The more credible a user you are to that platform, the more space it's going to give you and the more often you're going to drop out in search results. I'm not saying there are any marked differences, but if you really want to use that network effectively, I would also look at the Social Selling Index from time to time.

Martin Hurych

How high is the Social Selling Index of the Future Sales masters?

Jan Kyselý

Such a benchmark is around 70 points. That's where I'd try to get to. Since we show this in our training sessions, we try to keep it somewhere around 80 so it looks good and it's not the darkest under the candlestick. It's not easy, most of the time you can't get to some 80 points unless you have a premium account from LinkedIn. Of course, if you pay for it, it gives you a little bit of a kick to make it look good. So I think 80 points is the maximum for a mortal with a free account.

Martin Hurych

The number varies, it's not constant. So what does it mean that my number is falling or rising? How do I coordinate accordingly, what do I do, what do I do wrong and what do I change?

Jan Kyselý

Unless I'm mistaken or LinkedIn has changed it somehow, the index is calculated for the last 90 days. If you're not active and suddenly you start to be, the index starts to slowly ramp up because it's some sort of average over the last 90 days. So you need to be active for at least 3 months to get to some good numbers. If you start to crash, take a look at the 4 basic parameters. Look at where you are falling, do a print screen for each month so you know where you are falling and where you are growing. Of course, LinkedIn also changes the rating itself and what it gives more weight to and less weight to, so sometimes you can't completely control those things and suddenly you drop 5 points even though you're not doing anything wrong. So you have to figure out what LinkedIn has given more weight to and move up again.

How is Future Sales selling?

Martin Hurych

Now we'll come back to you for a moment. We were talking about client sales. How are you guys doing with sales, how are you selling yourself?

Jan Kyselý

We are blazing the trail of inbound sales. Even though it takes time, it's not completely effective, in the long run I think it's the best thing you can do. It's built on the fact that you're building some kind of community around you over the long term of people who are interested in the topic that you're selling. It is important to define it well so that people understand it at first sight. That's another problem with B2B companies, that the breadth of their services is so big that it's hard to cram it into one sentence. When we set up strategic communications in companies, we often get stuck on that. When you communicate a lot of things, you don't get anything out of it. That's why it's good to have a door opener. For us it's LinkedIn, LinkedIn communication, we build a community and communication around that and basically the customer is slowly coming to us on their own. For 2 years now, we don't do cold selling, cold calling and we mostly pick people from the community who are ready to talk to us or reach out to us themselves. LinkedIn makes up about 40, 50% of our sales, the other big part is referrals like in any other B2B business. Then there's a small portion of people who come in really on their own, which happens, but not on a regular basis.

Summary

Martin Hurych

I'm going to ask you if you could conclude what we've said here today in three, five sentences so that we can set it in stone. It's gonna be a little bit of a north for us in our LinkedIn behavior.

Jan Kyselý

First thing, don't worry about it. There is a big problem in the Czech Republic that people are shy to do something on the net and publish content. It's not exactly rocket science, mostly you're trying to really help people in a targeted way and you're building that content and communication on the fact that you're passing on some of your know-how. When you try to give people advice, it usually works out well. It doesn't really matter if the content is visually pleasing. To me, even plain text on LinkedIn is enough and you can do great things with it. The second thing, define your target audience properly, don't try to communicate to everyone. I would put that in really golden letters, because it's a big problem for B2B companies to define their target audience properly. Then find the right key theme to communicate externally. There shouldn't be more than 2 or 3 so that people understand first hand how you can help them. It's often a big problem, but once you do it, then it can work for you. Another thing, LinkedIn is about some longevity and regularity. It's a channel that won't generate leads for you right away, and it's simply part branding and part acquisition. Those things have to be combined together. On the other hand, maybe if you let it go for a while, it can still work. So it's important to stay with it for the long term and not expect it to deliver results right away.

Martin Hurych

A saying comes to mind. As they say in the Anglo-American countries, the deeper your niche, the faster you get rich. Isn't that right?

Jan Kyselý

I still like to say that people like to listen to the know-it-alls, but they end up buying from a specialist. So don't be afraid to at least be a specialist in communication so that people immediately understand what you are offering them. Then you can explain the details to them at the meeting.

Martin Hurych

If we want to buy from a specialist, where can we find you?

Jan Kyselý

You can find me on LinkedIn.

Martin Hurych

Where else. Thanks, Honza.

Jan Kyselý

You're welcome. Thank you for inviting me.

Martin Hurych

This was an episode about LinkedIn and how to make the most of it. As a reminder, if you're interested in the episode and want to get moving with LinkedIn, you know where to find Honza. At my website, www.martinhurych.com/zazeh, you'll find the promised bonus in addition to this episode. If you're watching on YouTube, or listening on your podcast app, make sure to subscribe and like, because otherwise the world will have a hard time hearing about us. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed and wish you success, thanks.

(automatically transcribed by Beey.io, translated by DeepL.com, edited and shortened)