“LinkedIn is just such a great way to build rapport and build a relationship.” – Millie Gulley in today’s Tip 668
Are you personalizing your LinkedIn connection request?
Join the conversation below and check out the full interview with Millie!
Millie Gulley on LinkedIn
Millie Gulley on Sales Success Stories Interview
LinkedIn Sales Stars
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip is a clip from the newest Sales Success Stories episode that we just released today, featuring Millie Gulley who was the top SDR at Sprinklr before her very recent promotion to an Account Executive role. It also fits nicely with our release of the final update to the LinkedIn Stars Stars Top 100 list for the year. Here’s Millie:
Millie Gulley: I think my favorite thing to do is to leverage LinkedIn because LinkedIn is such a great way to build relationships with people that are in like these awesome industries and different verticals. But for me, I’ve feel I’ve really mastered the art of building relationships and knowing the right time to turn it into a soft call to action.
So, you know, as I prospect all, always, no matter if I’m just going to email say 10 people today from that company, I will go ahead and add as many people from that company across our product line that I could potentially talk to, right. Maybe they’re not the number one or two days priority, but I’m going to add them so that I can eventually get to them on LinkedIn because it’s such an easy way to get wins.
And for me, I’ll always look at the profile, I’ll leverage the research I’ve done for the emails, and once they’ve accepted my connection request, I’ll always look for a way to personalize that. That was a gal once from Kentucky, I forget which company she was at, but she was from Kentucky. And I told her this story about how me and my mom were traveling across the country. And we went to Cracker-barrel and we thought it was the only restaurant that we hold. It was the only Cracker Barrel in America. And then we got to the next day and realized it was a chain. And so I told her that funny story and she found it hilarious and we went back and forth for a week. And eventually, I was like, “Hey, I see you do this like, you know, we work with XYZ. I would love to just know, see you open to learning a bit more about this.“
And LinkedIn, I think is just such a great way to build rapport and build a relationship before you just asked very softly, you know, can I just spend a bit of time, like learning more about your role. And secondly, on LinkedIn, I love sending videos. So if someone accepts my request and it feels right, like I’ll just pull out my phone and I will send them a really personalized video, for example, like, “Hey Scott, I saw your recent post. I love that you said this and this…” adding a bit of personalization in there, and then just throwing out a similar kind of email on the format. Like we work with XYZ. I see you do this. I imagine like this, and this is a headache, you know, would you be interested in learning a bit more about how we work in your space and I’ll send the video and I found it super effective, right. Because it’s a way to stand out and that’s really what makes you successful with SDR. Like you need to stand out from the sea of people that are trying to get to them. So I would definitely recommend like lean on those videos.
Scott Ingram: Yeah. So a couple of questions there. So as you’re sending out those initial connection requests and you’re kind of going broadly across the account, are you personalizing that connection request or are you coming back with personalization once they accept?
Millie Gulley: I always play around a bit and I think it depends if they seem like a real change agent and they are very social, then I’ll throw out like a little message when I do send the requests. But for the most part, I have found like a pretty successful connection rate, which I’m really fortunate about. Cause I know that not everyone has found that. And then I’ll go in with a very personalized note because to me, if someone’s accepting that initial request, like they’re open to a conversation, whether it be about sprinkler is another story, but they’re at least open for me to say like, “Hey, thank you for accepting” and a personalized note. So I’ll lean on it for like the change agents and like the number one person I want. But for the most part, like what helps me kind of spread wide and thin is sending as many of those and then leaning on the ones that accept.
Scott Ingram: For a link to Millie’s full episode and to the LinkedIn Sales Stars list, just click over to DailySales.Tips/668 and we’ll have everything for you there.
Then be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!