Purdue MEP LinkedIn Strategies for Manufacturers

Curt Anderson  01:13

All right at Planet Fitness what’s fascinating is that’s the judgment free zone. Okay, if anybody goes there so this is funny on the wall. They had this thing it’s called the lunk alarm. I thought this was hysterical. I wanted to bring to the program today. The look of warm look alarm is this one who grunts, jobs weights or judges, Ricky is slamming his weights we’re in a body building tank top and drink it now if I offend anybody. If there’s a Timmy out there, that’s we’re in there. But if you’re wearing your body, your body building suit right now, I apologize immensely. But what’s fascinating is this business is telling exactly who they don’t want to come into their business. They’re speaking very clearly, everything about this place, like they have the TVs on the wall. They’re so different sports, they’re doing the places immaculate, they’re speaking very clearly to their ideal customer was saying how can we do that with our with our LinkedIn profile without offending or hurting anybody’s feelings? But how can we really get that built down into those niches?

Wesleyne  02:21

Yeah, so what you want to do is you want somebody to self identify that, oh, yes, you will work with people like me, this is who I am. But you also want to whether it’s in your content, or your about section, say, these are the kinds of people these are the type of companies, organizations, individuals that don’t really work so well with our products or services, right? So it’s okay to say and when you think about it, a lot of times, in this online world, we only want to show the good share some of the, in the past, we worked with these kinds of companies. And unfortunately, our services didn’t align with what they needed. Because people want to know that maybe, okay, I’m not going to waste my time here. And we have to remember that people do probably 70 or 80% of their excuse me buying before they’re ever going to send you a message before they’re ever going to reach out to you pick up a phone or fill out a form.

Curt Anderson  03:11

Oh, that’s perfect. Okay, let’s keep it rolling here. So, you know, the big thing guys with LinkedIn is like, how can we establish and build that trust as quickly as humanly possible? And so you know, I’d love to say, Boy, there’s no greater means that’s more efficient, more effective than LinkedIn to really make that that connection as quick as possible. Let me run through a quick example here. This is a buddy of mine in West leans. This guy is Ron Higgs, God bless somebody served our country proudly. And look, I want to show a couple of things. So what’s the not going to do we’re going to kind of break down your profile. Let’s take a look at the banner at the top. Let’s take a look. My friend Ron here. Ron Higgs was in the Navy US Naval Academy he jeans you know anybody that was in the US Naval Academy by any chance, you know, navy, man, it’s on the call here today.

Gene Jones  03:56

I don’t I don’t know anybody that in particular, it’s on the call. And I don’t know Ron Higgs. But I did graduate from the Naval Academy.

Curt Anderson  04:03

Well, hey, that’s what I was looking for Jean. So God bless you. Thank you for your service to our country. So a fellow named Navy man is on the call here. So this is Ron Higgs. And what I love about what Ryan is doing on his profile here, is you look up you’re like, hey, he’s got this fighter jet. That’s pretty cool. But take a look. He’s got an arrow, Ron Higgs is flying that fighter jet. Like how cool is that? In his headline. He says, I help busy CEOs work on their business, instead of in their business was saying kind of talk a little bit about the banner, how important that is kind of catch people at Hello, and let’s go into the headline.

Wesleyne  04:36

So when you think about on LinkedIn, the first thing that you see is the banner. So if you have just a general LinkedIn banner, if your banner isn’t really speaking to your ideal client or giving your value proposition, you’re missing a lot of free capital because remember, we’re captivating people’s attention and people have a six or seven second attention span so they’ll click on you and click off of you very very quickly. And then when you go to that headline, include your value proposition. So we can clearly see what Ron does, he helps busy CEOs work on their business instead of in their business. So if you’re a CEO, and you’re like, I have that struggle, this is somebody I want to talk to, if you’re not a CEO, you’re going to click off of his profile in 15 seconds. So again, that’s another way that we allow people to self select. This is somebody I want to talk to you this is somebody I need to get in touch with. Now,

Curt Anderson  05:27

Wesleyne, let’s just warn everybody out there today. We did a little cyber stalking. I mean, I didn’t say stalking, did he? We checked out everybody in attendance. So guys, just be warned. I hope you’re paying attention. Hope you’re sitting down for this, because we checked out a couple of profiles. So let’s get into our first one here. Hey, is Matt I thought I saw Matt in here somewhere, man, I think you’re with us today. So Matt, I love your profile. Dude. We could I could probably learn from you actually. So what I love is program manager at reliable microsystems. Great pitcher there. But hey, another talk about it was Veterans Day. The other day, we’ve got Jean who served probably the Navy, my buddy Ron, who was in the Navy, in our dear friend Matt was in the US Army Reserve. So hey, God bless you, Matt. I absolutely love it. But what you’re what were the point I want to make here is like how important it is like to build that trust. Show your background show your expertise, what can you bring to the table to help that person immediately. So hey, let’s give a shout out to Matt. Matt, if you didn’t already drop your please drop your LinkedIn in the chat box. We would love for everybody can connect with Matt. Hey, rustling I saw if I’m gonna I hope I pronounced this correctly. Alyssia. Let’s see, am I saying this correctly? And I saw let’s see, I saw that you just popped in a minute ago. What’s the what do you think of this profile here?

Wesleyne  06:39

It’s fantastic. Your trusted wheels for your brain. It’s the headline is so captivating, right? And it makes me pause and think what does that mean? I want to learn more, I want to look below the fold. And we call below the fold your about section and look at your posts, because she’s saying something that’s really captivating. And I love the banner too, because I see a truck and then I see a car on top. So again, I mean, I see a truck and then I see the airplane on top. So again, it makes me want to learn more.

Curt Anderson  07:06

Exactly. So hey, let’s say would give me a little round of applause. If you didn’t already. Drop your LinkedIn in the chat guys to connect with her better logistics, better business. And I love that line. One of our favorite words, our favorite word is free. Maybe our second or maybe like a one point a right if that’s such a thing is trust, right? I’m trying to build that trust and Alyssia uses that Brayton or headline, your trusted wheels for your freight and we’re going to dig into that how I love that word. You’re right. We’re going to dig into that in a little bit deeper. Hey, is Lisa here I think Lisa did I see doesn’t my dear this my bestie she’s with she’s the marketing guru at Steel City Steel’s in the great state of Indiana a dear friend of mine, what a just a woman of integrity does an incredible job. Look at her banner, building today’s relationships for tomorrow, drop them migrate their brand awareness marketing enthusiast relationship builder advocate for the differently abled. So hey, again, Lisa, if you’re out there, man, we’re sending you lots of love my friend, drop your LinkedIn in the chat. You guys absolutely want to connect with Lisa. She’s wonderful. Now what’s the thing we’re working down the profile, we’ve got the banner, we’ve got the headline. Now man, I don’t know if I saw that. I don’t know if Matt’s here but just talk about that featured section that goes right below this.

Wesleyne  08:17

So this featured section is for anything, it doesn’t have to be a post on LinkedIn, it can be for something on your website, a press release a special offer. It’s anything that really should build that social capital. Because when we think about LinkedIn, this is building your social capital. And I don’t know if we’re going to talk about this later or not heard. But the reason why like why is LinkedIn so important? Why should you have a good profile? Why should you post it’s because of something that Curt talks about all the time, it’s your SEO. And LinkedIn has such good SEO if you are an SEO, search engine optimization. So if you go in Google and you type in my company name or my name or Kirk’s name, or his company’s name, our LinkedIn profiles come above our website. And so people will click on that because they know it’s a trusted link. They’ve heard of LinkedIn before, and then they go and they search. So again, if you have a press release, like Matt has here, if you have an article that you’ve written, if you have a new feature or blog on your website, put it here so people can see the things that are really important to you.

Curt Anderson  09:24

Absolutely love that. So guys, what we want to think about, you know, I just this morning, I was at the manufacturer across the border from you guys in Illinois, and we’re digging into like a little SWOT analysis, right, your strengths or weaknesses, opportunities and threats, but you know what, when you’re with a Purdue MEP, my friends, you have no weaknesses. Now Hey, Carolyn just says can’t hear Curt can everybody can we get a sound check. Can everybody hear Jim can you hear us? Okay? Yeah. Thumbs up. Everybody can hear everything here. Cheek Caroline. I apologize. Maybe if you want to pop out and pop back in or I’m not sure. So I apologize for that. We will other recording for everybody. So Caroline, if we can’t get through to you, I have the recording and hopefully I didn’t. I know I missed the first few minutes, but we got the rest of it. So let’s talk about those core strengths. As I was saying at the Purdue MEP, guys, this is like the perfect place man. You have no weaknesses. There are no threats. It’s only strengths and opportunities here with a Purdue MEP, but sometimes muscling, we can get a little carried away with our core strengths and make it a little bit let’s think about pop quiz. Jean. I don’t know if he told everybody that there’s going to be pop quiz today. Wesleyan. Let’s go there. What Wesley did you know that every person on the planet has one favorite radio station? There is one? Does anybody know what that answer is? If you could please pop in the chat box, we might have a little surprise for you. Does anybody know the answer to every person on the planet has one favorite radio station? Gene? Do you know what it is? Who knows that answer? Anybody? anybody? Anybody? Down to their name? are that close? Right there my friend. It’s love you i f m Jill just dropped it in there. For me Wesleyan. What are we talking about here?

Wesleyne  11:11

Yes, everyone. I mean, I love to say your family, your friends, they all love you. But your potential customers, your customers, they really don’t care about you. They care about themselves. They want to know how you can help them. They want to know how you can help them achieve their goals, fix their problems, move them from where they are to where they need to be. So when you are thinking about your profile, when you’re thinking about your digital presence at all, you should be asking yourself, what’s in it for them? Not what’s in it for me, but what’s in it for them because everybody comes and says what’s in this for me?

Curt Anderson  11:46

That’s right. So Wesleyne. Can you please introduce a new term to everybody? So we talked about the with them right now. I know you’re in Houston. I’m up in New York, you know, so maybe some people pronounce it wi Fi’s other pronounce it we fees. What does wi Fi’s are we fee Stanford? Can you please enlighten everybody?

Wesleyne  12:02

It is all about what is in it for your soulmate? So why do they why should they even take five minutes to talk to you or click on from a post to your website like what is really in it for them? Because as I said, everyone is coming to the table with a problem with a pain with a challenge. And they are online to fix that problem that pain that challenge. So that’s what you have to focus on. What is in it for your soulmate?

Curt Anderson  12:29

Absolutely love it. So guys now Wesleyan. I don’t know if you knew like, over the past few years there was this like this horrible, awful dreaded disease that was going around the planet? I don’t know. Did you hear about it? Like few years ago? Did you hear about this? And did you catch when you heard about it down in Houston? Okay. Yeah, it’s called now. It’s called the Wiebe syndrome. Now can you please enlighten everybody on the call? What on earth? I know you guys might have been thinking of that other thing that happened a few years ago. I can’t remember the name of it. But what on earth is that? We we syndrome Wesleyan. Could you please share with everybody. It’s

Wesleyne  13:01

when as organization you talk about how amazing you are. We are the best we have the best customer service. We’re amazing. We’re fast time we’re this we’re that we’re all of the things people don’t really again, they don’t care about you. And when you just say we are the best we have our top quality. But who said that like clarity substantiating that better than who better than what like give people facts give them things that they can hold on to instead of just saying we’re always on time, right? So instead of saying that you save 25% of our customers gave us a five star rating on Google like that takes it out of your mind and puts it into the customer’s mind. Absolutely.

Curt Anderson  13:47

So guys, I encourage you I invite you welcome you go through your company, your manufacturing website, go through your LinkedIn profile and just be a little cautious on how often we use the word we because like just we saw our friend Alicia remember she had your what was it? Trusted wheels or something or other but go back to Alyssa connect on her LinkedIn profile, but we might have make it about them and use the word you you you know what Wessling i is everybody sit down for this. I have a real I have a great example here. Man this is a client Am I believe it or not? It was from nearly 10 years ago. It was so good 10 years ago, 10 years later, I’m still using it so you can tell like this is a little outdated LinkedIn profile right? Wesleyan remember these about 10 years ago was a dear friend of mine is a manufacturer here in New York and they manufacture vertical filing cabinets who thought there was such a thing so if you think of like big architectural drawings, big maps, things that have to go vertical, not horizontal Company was founded in 1915. She created her about such and take a look at what she says. Name of the company is all Rick all Rick has been in the business of large documents storage now. Bam, right there. Wesley mentioned SEO, how great SEO is for your LinkedIn. That’s one of her keywords. Since 1915, and that expertise has only grown with each generation, you can make one call today. Notice he says you can make one call today and have access to nearly 100 years of large documents, storage expertise, leaving you time to focus on your business Wesleyne, my goodness gracious what just happened those first two sentences

Wesleyne  15:23

right there, what she did was she really made people self identify. It’s like if I’m talking to you, and I’m using language that’s resonating with a person, and then she’s also adding in her value proposition. So many times people like oh, I can’t talk about my company, I can’t talk about myself. That’s not what we said. We just need it to be customer centric in the way that you’re talking about it and make whatever solution you’re offering, tie it to a problem, whatever you’re saying, or the claims that you have about your company tied to something that is interesting for your ideal client.

Curt Anderson  15:57

And take a look for little social proof. And I know some companies you know, if you’re doing department defense or there’s some proprietary things that you can divulge, in their case they didn’t have that checked us out. Companies like NASA, Boeing, Pfizer, Hormel, Siemens, have all what’s our favorite word? trusted our vertical finding chemists to preserve their engineering drawings. These cloud engineering joints and quote, include our country’s first rockets into space. Are you kidding me? Do I want to do business with barberry Alberich filing cabinets? Of course I do. Man that was juicy. How about I saw Bruce is in the house here somewhere. Bruce, I hate to tell you, dude, I love your profile. I’m calling you out. Wesley check out what Bruce did. So guys connect with Bruce saying, Bruce, if if you haven’t checked your LinkedIn in the chat, please drop it in the chat box. Check this out Wesleyne. With a steady eye towards building long term stakeholder value. He gets stuff done without leaving bodies. How about drop the mic on that one, Bruce creates an order from chaos. He goes into strategic problem solving Wesleyan, any takeaway on our friend Bruce on his profile.

Wesleyne  17:04

So what I really like about Bruce is the words that he has written are really good, but he bullet pointed out to write because think about human nature. Think about how people think and process information. Lots of whitespace. So I can go if I want to say expertise, okay, problem solving, technical leadership. Okay, this seems like somebody who knows what he’s doing or what he’s talking about. So he has great content, but he also hasn’t format dwell. So yes, what we’re saying is important. But we also have to think about how it looks if you have a huge paragraph of your story of your career and your life. No one’s going to read that. They want to get to the point very quickly. So good job. It’s

Curt Anderson  17:45

great to ever give give Bruce a big round of applause. Brutal Thank you do for her. He didn’t know he’s participating today. But he did. And I think that I see my friend Alan Alan’s in house. Ellen has a New Yorker at heart, man. So Ellen’s like he, Alan, dude, I miss you, brother. So Alan is in Indianapolis, and Fishers, Indiana, and he’s a director of business development. But I love what he did here. And again, we’re talking about like, instead of avoiding that we read syndrome or talking about yourself. Look at this first line in his about section. If you’ve seen a property tax bill recently for your business, you might have wondered if your taxes are too high. Well, your business sense is right on point data data does. So Bruce, I’m sorry. Alan goes on talking about his expertise and how he is there to help and save the day. absolute love what you did, how about a round of applause for Alan Wesley and any takeaway that you want to share here from your perspective?

Wesleyne  18:36

So what Elon did really well is he appeals to emotion. Anytime the word tax property tax, anybody sees anything about tax, it’s like I don’t I don’t like that. I don’t want to pay it. I want to reduce it. So immediately, he is appealing to someone’s emotions. So what am I going to do? I’m going to keep reading, I’m going to read all the way to the end, because I’m like, Yeah, my property taxes are too high. I don’t want to pay all this money. How can I reduce them? So really good job Allen, of really appealing to somebody’s emotional coming right out the gate saying this. And so if somebody’s happy with their property tax, there’s no point in them staying on this profile. Right? So great job. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  19:13

And again, you guys might be like, hey, wait a minute, we’re a manufacturer, it doesn’t matter the solution that you offer, what product you provide, it’s an opportunity and what Elon also did he lists all the memberships? You know, again, we’re looking for that social proof. How can we build that trust immediately, and he has all the organizations associations that he belongs to, Alan, great job, my friend, appreciate you. Were saying I have a bunch of different little examples here of folks are like, Well, wait a minute, how do I not talk about myself? How do I not use I not use Wii U and just kind of throw out a couple of different examples here. What do you what do you thought? What are your thoughts here?

Wesleyne  19:44

So the the easiest thing that you can do is take it actually is an exercise where you might need to go line by line until you get a little bit more proficient with it anywhere you have I or we figure out how you can switch it to you right? So again, and committed to delivering you on time service that previously said, we are committed to delivering on time service. So literally, it’s just taking out the Wii and figuring out where to add the U N. And if you go and literally you want to start at the top of your profile at the top of your and this even goes through your website, any content that you have online, you should really be customer centric and customer focused and use you use if you are speaking specifically to supply chain managers, say supply chain managers if you’re speaking to operations manager, say operations managers help people self identify in your content. Yeah, absolutely love it. So let’s

Curt Anderson  20:41

keep it rolling. So guys, big takeaway, if anything that we just said, make it all about them. whistling, let’s slide into planting seeds, nurturing relationships. Let’s go here. So I’m going to I’m going to show you this. You and I were talking about this as dear friend of ours, we just did a webinar a few weeks ago, with this gal here she is absolutely crushing it. She’s relatively new in the manufacturing space. She’s a Director of Marketing at IQ manufacturing over the border from you guys in Michigan. And she does a wonderful job. She’s on an Association of Women in Aerospace. And she her boss was all in on going after LinkedIn. She’s completely blown up her personal profile. But she shared this that I found fascinating. She started posting on a regular basis different like all sorts of different things, maybe celebration of an employee, maybe something going on a floor. Here’s she was point and she was just starting to post different things with like products that they manufacture. If you’d see my arrows there 933 impressions for this post. Then you come down to this next one, she got 1500 then she just kept you know, just she just kept putting in the reps. You know, it’s like going to the gym. Then all sudden you look down here she posted this, this shot here 4200 impressions, you post, she posted these products over here 3100 impressions. Now, she posted this picture right here of herself 17,000. This is a video of a machine running. And she got once again just tons of impressions. So did the takeaway here is like a lot of people like our manufacturer who wants to know what’s going on behind our walls. We’re not doing anything fun and exciting. Well guess what? It’s your soulmate that machine that’s running that could be very exciting. What’s then you post daily, you have just incredible tips. I am I beg you guys connect with Wesleyan follow Wesleyan. What’s he talking about? Your the content you put out on a daily basis is just crazy. Can you just talk about how you put out content? Yeah,

Wesleyne  22:35

and before I talk about how I put out content, what I want you to realize is those are the impressions. Those are number of people that are seeing your posts, so you don’t always get likes, you may not get comments, and you might be like only have three people that liked it. But I have 350 impressions that’s 350 eyeballs, that you would never be able to get on a piece of content to get on you, if you will, if you don’t do something, so really focus on okay, I’m doing something I am making impact. So what my content strategy is, it’s really focused on my who my ideal client is. And I’m very unabashedly in the way that I share my content. And my goal is to make sure people self identify, and I serve, I don’t sell. So very seldom Will you ever see me saying, Hey, do this, do that, buy this, buy that because my job is to help people get from where they are to where they want to be. And so some people are like, but if I give away too much free content or too much free stuff, and nobody will want to work with me, nobody will want to they’ll try to do it themselves. Those are not your customers, the DI wires, those aren’t your customers anyway. So again, it’s another way of helping people self select. And when you think about what do I write, how do I write all I say is just start. It doesn’t matter what it’s about. It doesn’t matter how good it is. I look at my content from my four years ago. I’m like, I’m not even looking at the camera. What was I talking about? Did I even know how to write like it was horrible. But now four years later, it’s great. So just start somewhere.

Curt Anderson  24:10

Yeah, great point. Great tip here. And so let’s go. Let me give you guys an example. So this here is a manufacturer in Miami, they manufacture baby changing tables and err hand dryers K for restaurants. And they’re a group of millennials. They’re just absolutely wonderful. And I was working with them during COVID and they call me uncle Kurt and I was like, Hey guys, you need to get on LinkedIn. I kept telling them over and over. And they’re like, Uncle Kurt. LinkedIn is for older guys, or it’s for people like you. They’re like it’s for people looking for a job. So I finally you know, kicking and screaming, they started posting and what they do, they do some really cool things once a month as a team. They go out in the community and they’ll do something as a as a team. And so here they’re at Earth on Earth Day they’re cleaning up the beaches in Miami, another next month or at a homeless shelter. So they just start posting they start posting fun spreadsheet messages, that type of thing. Wesleyan, you’re going to love this. I get this note here. This is an email I get from the team at this company. Uncle Kurt, you are right. LinkedIn works and check this out their soulmate. College reaches out to them University says, Hey, Jennifer, I’m working on a three restroom renovation for the college. Could you please advise me on a latest design and trends? Look what look what happened here, Wesleyne, like they’re looking, she’s looking for a guide. She’s looking for an expert. It’s not about your product. It’s about the information you have about your product. Just a little bit about how important it is to be that educator.

Wesleyne  25:36

Yeah. So as you are your job is to educate your ideal client about how your product or your service solves their challenges. It’s about to show them a as a manufacturer, show them the behind the scenes, what is like working, excuse me what it’s like working on the plant floor. If you have customers that allow you to show behind their scenes, like people want to see the real stuff. They don’t want to see all these beautiful pictures like you see on Pinterest. That’s not what LinkedIn is about. LinkedIn is about I want to see the dirty stuff. I want to see what it’s like a day in the life. So don’t be afraid to peel back the onion a little bit and show what it’s like in the manufacturing plant. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  26:18

I absolutely love it. So let’s keep this party rolling again, guys. If you haven’t done it already, drop your LinkedIn in the chat box. If you’re just coming to us connect with a Purdue MEP for coming to us from another state check out your local MEP. Let’s type so we run through the profile you know what this has been fast and furious. We’ve gone through the banner we’ve gone through the headline a little bit of featured in the about section. We’ve talked about avoiding that dreaded we’d be syndrome. What’s the let’s talk about how important it isn’t to be that go giver be that connector. Let’s be the matchmaker. Let’s go here. Do you know this? Who’s this guy here?

Wesleyne  26:52

Oh, Dan bear, he is a master connector, the master connector.

Curt Anderson  26:58

So on March 10 of 2021 something happened that changed my life that day. Can you share with everybody what happened on March 10 of 2021?

Wesleyne  27:06

Well, I had interviewed Dan for my podcast I have a podcast transform sales podcast and I interviewed Dan and he was like wow I need to connect you with this person and this person this person and Kurt was one of those people.

Curt Anderson  27:22

So he drops a note and just I won’t read the whole thing just hey guys just did this pot. Just I just met Leslie and does this podcast Kurt you guys need to meet I’ll leave it to you to discuss Okay, let’s follow follow the sequence what happens this is crazy. You can’t make this up Leslie. I dropped Leslie in a note Hey impressive career well done. Great to connect with you through Dan bigger. Now guys, if you were here with us earlier, I threw out a little comment right in my headline I would love for you to connect with you guys. I dropped my LinkedIn in the chat box. My first thing says E commerce evangelists for manufacturers. My second thing says I’m a proud girl dad’s most important job in a planet to me. Wesleyan says girl Dad, I love it. I’m a boy, Mom, let’s grab some time to chat. I’d love to talk about e commerce for manufacturers. Okay, it goes next. Another outstanding chat. Thank you attach a couple bands, so on so forth. Let’s go here. I enjoyed chatting with you too. Thanks so much for the information about the M E PS. Hey Jean. What’s going on here at the National MEP conference? Why is Wesleyan on the stage of an organization that on March 10 of 2021 she had never heard of what is she doing on stage at Buffalo in September of 2023

Gene Jones  28:40

Wesleyne gave a fantastic and rousing morning presentation about her career and about her sales. And you know, what I really remembered from that presentation is whistling told you something about her sell. I remember that and more than the sales tips that she provided, which means that, you know, she either she connected with me as a person, somebody that I want to go back to, or she did and Wessling you connected with me. Oh,

Curt Anderson  29:15

Wesleyne was the keynote speaker of the morning session and I think I GNI there was about like 500 people in attendance to the conference or I’m not sure what the but it was it was a lot it was a lot of people hundreds and hundreds of people and Wessling all by just making a simple connection on LinkedIn was Leanne and I jump on a call we became immediate fast friends we’ve been partners since in my I was I was certainly a proud uncle right in the front row cheering a Wesleyan on So again guys I’m sorry to like rant and rave I know Wesleyne you’re super humble modest and I’m probably embarrassing you right now is the proud uncle. But this is the point is just like putting yourself out there. You just you know, I always tell my daughter, man, try every food out there. You never know your next favorite dish. unless you try just be daring if you don’t like it, then at least you tried it. You never know your next biggest customer. You never know your next great connection. You never know your next your next business partner right? by just putting yourself out there and making that connection was saying how much does it cost me on LinkedIn? I forgot

Wesleyne  30:16

0000 Gossip paddy

Curt Anderson  30:20

right. So, okay, I want to show you guys another fun example, here and again. You know, the thing was what was with LinkedIn Wessling? Like we have to show our examples, right? Because it’s, you know, I love when we do ecommerce, because I can show my clients examples for LinkedIn, we’re going to show our example. So in 2020, during COVID, there’s another MEP right up the road from Indiana and it happens to be in Alaska, Jean, it’s like just just little ways from you guys. Right. I sent a note to the director of the Alaska MEP, and I just said I here’s the note I just dropped. Hey, fantastic profile. You’ve built an impressive career, MEP centers play a critical role for American manufacturers well done. It’d be great to join your LinkedIn network, wishing you continued success. That’s all I said. I didn’t say anything else. I wasn’t trying to sell anything. Nothing. Right. Thanks, Kurt. Look, thanks for the connection. I’d like to hear more about how you’ve worked with any PC manufacturers. We’re doing a webinar. And I’m curious if you might be a good fit. Wesleyne. Do we love doing webinars? Or do we love doing webinars?

Wesleyne  31:22

Think we like to talk just a little bit? Love it, we’d like to talk. The next

Curt Anderson  31:27

step. So within two, three weeks, I knocked on this webinar for the Alaska MEP. Now it gets really juicy. Okay, is everybody sitting down for this? You ready? Hey, there was a picture of me in Alaska Wesleyan. Where’s that picture of you

Wesleyne  31:40

taking a hike in Alaska at 7pm. You

Curt Anderson  31:44

are in Alaska. And it’s just in so because of just sending that message out. We’ve become fast friends with just like our friends here at the Purdue MEP. And I saw my friend Kyle, Kyle, I want to thank you, because you’re the you’re my friend here. That guy knows our foot in the door here at Purdue. And so again, I’m just showing you examples. It could be now you could be like, hey, wait a minute, I’m a manufacturer or manufactured manufacturer or whatever I’ve got post it notes right here, whatever you manufacture, it’s about it’s not about your product, it’s not about your solution. It’s about building that relationship, right? It’s about establishing that trust. And if I when when Wesleyan and I connect, or when we connect with somebody from the Purdue MEP or the Alaska MEP. If I just send a cold email, they won’t know that Wesleyne a boy mom, and I’m a girl, dad, they won’t know that Wesley was a recovering chemist or that gene served in the Navy, proudly, we wouldn’t know these things about each other if we just send those cold emails. But man, when you do it on LinkedIn, it takes it to a whole new level, once they just share, you know, just we’re gonna start taking home here in a minute, but just kind of take it home for everybody. And like how important it is to establish those relationships and put yourself out

Wesleyne  32:51

there. And so one of the things if you guys have questions, please drop them in the chat, because we’ll have a few minutes at the end to answer. But when we think about LinkedIn, you can there are two distinct goals that you have to acquire new customers to build a network. So I encourage you to think about the people in adjacent businesses that are calling on the same customers that you want to call on, right. So maybe you may, in fact, maybe you have a machine shop and you say, Okay, I think a person who may be a good partner, for me is somebody who’s actually making tooling, right. So you will, you’d want to connect with him on LinkedIn, and you guys have a joint interest. So and sometimes a lot of times we think networking is you give me business, I give you business, but it’s not always like that you have other value that you can bring to that business owner. And again, when you’re on LinkedIn, they see your social proof. It’s not like a business card, you’re hanging out at a networking event, they can see if you’re using videos, they see videos, I see pictures of you, they see all of your content, they see your about a section. So they already know that you’re a human being this your real person and you’re not just trying to sell them something you actually want to network with them. So really think about the power of how you can use this social network to really build out a strong referral network for yourself.

Curt Anderson  34:13

You’re up to Mike West, whistling That was fantastic. So hey, in Alyssia she dropped a note I think Caroline dropped a note. Is there going to be recording? Other than Curt dropped the ball the first couple minutes? Yes, I have a recording and so every other other than a little fun intro that we had, I have our team at the Purdue MEP, Julie Michelle, they’ll be sending the recording out. And so let’s take it home guys. Trust, right. That’s what we’re really selling is like, you know, you know, I think John Maxwell says, you know, the three questions, you know, can I trust you? Do you care? And you have the information? Do you have the experience? Do you have the walk of life that can help me today? Like those are the three things that are going to convert those business relationships, right. And LinkedIn can cover those things. When you when you know as we showed different examples like Bruce and Alan and everybody out here that we showed Matthew Uh, you know, serving our country proudly, right? When you put that information out there and like how you serve your community, how you serve your clients, how you make the world a better place. And a big thing is consistency was saying, I’m gonna go here, you share and post literally daily. And you know, you’ve got some wonderful like, you’ve got great things right over your shoulder just like you what you like you’re not talking to talk, you walk the walk. How do you personally create? How are you such a content machine? And how are you intentional with the content that you deliver to your soulmates? So

Wesleyne  35:32

first of all, I like to talk with can’t tell. So I am a person that likes to talk. So I make my content easy for me. And so what that means is, it’s easy for me to record videos, it’s easy for me to explain something to somebody and be like, Oh, that was a good thing. And there’s so much technology out there. Now I can take a video and I can pull the transcript from that video. And I can just create a post. But if you’re more of a writer, just sit down and think about the last meeting you attended with a customer. What questions did the customer ask what concerns did they bring up like step into the world of the customer, go into walk along, go to the plant floor, talk to the machine operator, what’s your best tip that you can say is that you want to share today, right? Do employee appreciation, sometimes people don’t need to increase their revenue. They are trying to attract better employees. And you can use LinkedIn to show this is the kind of culture that you want to be a part of. But literally, if you sit down and I only dedicate one hour a week to my content creation, and I post every single day, and I’m able to do that because I sit down for a focused hour. And I take that time and I’m like, What is my theme going to be this week, I pick something out of my head, maybe something I’ve heard the week before. And then I just start writing, right and I record some videos. And then I have my everything’s ready to go. And you can schedule it out directly on LinkedIn. So you don’t have to be on there and post every single day. So like I said, the first step is just doing it just starting.

Curt Anderson  37:04

Amen, my friend, amen. Let’s see, I would just want to hit a couple of things real quick. So LinkedIn live, man, I’ll tell you, we, if anybody out there that this might be a bit of the advanced class, but if any manufacturers out there have been toying around with it. I have a client right over the border in Chicago, and they want to start creating content. I’m talking with the owner. And I’m kind of like well, you can do this, do this through this. He’s like, I want to go all in on live stream. It is I so we do I do two live streams a week, every Monday, every Friday, we bring in like high level experts on different topics. I’m never the smartest guy in the room. I’m not trying to be the smartest guy in the room. But boy, certainly, I tried to establish trust by hanging out with and bringing wonderful people like my friend was lean. This is an example where this is a manufacturer, they do covert antennas. And so now what we’re doing, we’re actually going on site to manufacturers. And we’re like talking about their company, their history, their background, the products, the incredible, maybe you’ll see products that they make. And so like here we’re on site another manufacturer is a grill manufacturer. They do like different arms, I’m sorry, arms for the grills and that type of thing. And so it’s just really exciting. Just like you know, we our tagline stop being the best kept secret. get that message out out there. These are two sisters, painful introverts. They wanted nothing to do with going online and are doing a live stream and now like I can’t get them off. They’ve done like three three more live stream sets. And now they just absolutely love it because they’re getting their message out there to those soulmates. What’s the let’s take it home? You do a podcast I do live streams you know putting that that live content out there just lets go there about and you’ve been on my you’ve been a wonderful guests, my live show probably a dozen times. How just how important is it to either podcast live stream. I know little manufacturing manufacturers might be a little hesitant. Let’s go there. What are your thoughts on podcasts or livestream for manufacturers, your

Wesleyne  38:55

customers or soulmates, they want to hear from you. They want to hear about you. And there’s so many different ways that you can go about this. Some people do just internal podcast, it’s interviewing people within the organization, some people interview their customers, some people interview industry professionals. My podcast is all about sharing what’s the behind the scenes of becoming a sales leader, right? You do a really good job of interviewing people from MEPs and different manufacturers from across the country. And people like to know they like to hear that I’m not alone in this like so if you listen to a podcast or if you listen, watch YouTube videos, think about how you can do something like that. And it doesn’t have to be twice a week like hurt or once a week like me maybe it can be twice a month. Maybe it can be once a month. But again, commit to doing it and do it commit and do it

Curt Anderson  39:44

and that’s the slide right here guys it’s just it’s putting in the reps right? It’s just going to the gym it’s like you know, man, we just you know, I can’t I can’t complain about not getting in shape if I don’t walk in the gym. Man speaking about gym you know should was seen as just a gene in the gym in the morning. And he’s in a He’s an animal at the gym in the morning. So let’s go here. Let’s make a pact guys, let’s make a pact Wesleyan. I would like to share, you know, like, a lot of people are like, Man, I just don’t have time. I don’t have time muscling. Let’s go there. What? Here’s some like minor little homework that people could take away with what are your thoughts for our friends out there for homework assignment?

Wesleyne  40:20

Yes, schedule, schedule, schedule, put like wherever you are, wherever you’re doing right now, say, look at your calendar and put one hour a week, literally put in put LinkedIn, that’s what I should say on your calendar, LinkedIn. And here’s a tip for you, when there’s something that is difficult for you, there’s something that you don’t enjoy doing. Or it’s not a muscle that you exercise often do it when your brain is most active. So if you’re a morning person put this in the morning, if you’re like that five, six o’clock, and you’re excited, that’s when that’s when you do the thing that you least like to do. That is a tip that I like to tell all salespeople do the thing you least like to do when your brand is most active. So with the one hour week on your calendar, five connections a day, that’s light work, literally go find your customers go look for prospects, find people like me, like Kurt, see who we’re connected to find your MEP connects with people there. And then just one post a week. What is the thing that you heard last week that was impactful for you? What is the thing that you want to share with your clients or the your network, just one post doesn’t have to be long, you don’t have to have video, it can be text only. And the comments are actually the sprinkles on top of really making LinkedIn work for you. So what I actually recommend is, so these five connections that you’re making per day, you want to comment on somebody’s post, like it and comment and give them insightful comments, like read the actual posts, and then you want to connect with them. If you comment on somebody’s posts, and then ask to connect with them, they’re 70 to 80% more likely to accept that connection request than just a cold one. And again, we want to serve we don’t want to sell so support your network.

Curt Anderson  42:11

Love it. And one thing you know with that with that when if you’re not if you’re hearing one hour a week, or you’re seeing it on the screen here 10 minutes a day. It’s a day just you know, it’s not a huge heavy lift. And just you know I think of like I call them profit killers and time wasters. I always say like, if we’re not achieving our goals and I you know, the pushback laminate, wait a minute, like I’m maxed out, dude, I can’t add one more thing to my plate. Well, if you’re if together as a team, we’re accountability partners today here, the Purdue MEP. If we’re not hitting our goals, something stopping us from hitting our goals, there’s a profit killer, or there’s a time waster in the way. Consider what could I take off my plate for 10 minutes and replace it with LinkedIn? If you’re in sales? If you’re in business development, man, this is the place to be I would make it an absolute top priority. And mostly and one last time for all of our friends here. What’s our takeaway?

Wesleyne  43:03

It’s all about them. Step out of your head. Don’t think about yourself. What if that affecting you impacting you focus on your soulmate. It’s all about them.

Curt Anderson  43:17

Now we’re seeing you have a little QR code for our sophisticated friends here. So guys, if you want to get break out your phone and grab this QR code, we have fun little information. And boy, if you didn’t get enough for Wesleyne and I don’t know how on earth you could possibly ever get enough of us lean gene, it’s not possible to get enough of Wesleyan right my friend. So I encourage you guys drop that grab that QR code, check out Wesleyan hurt LinkedIn profiles in the chat box. I dropped mine. It would be an honor and privilege to connect with you. We encourage you We invite you reach out to the MEP. We’ve got Jean on the call here. And I’m going to take it home as Wesleyan said if you guys have to run. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If you have a minute to stick around or you have questions, man, drop in the chat. Take yourself off mute. Wes and I are going to stick around. But I just want to give a huge, huge heartfelt welcome to each and every single one of you. Watson unite. We love to goof around a little bit. But man I’m telling you from the bottom of our hearts, we appreciate you We appreciate your time, your energy. We never take that for granted or take it lightly. We appreciate you reaching out to the Purdue MEP, and boy we’re here for your success and we just keep rooting you on into the endzone So, Jean, my friend any parting thoughts, words of wisdom you want to share with everybody from the Purdue MEP?

Gene Jones  44:32

No, thanks a lot. Once again, Curtin Wesleyan for the great content for the benefit of Indiana and you know, more broadly other suppliers. Really appreciate your work and energy on this.

Curt Anderson  44:45

Well, thank you Gene, and thank you to everybody to Purdue MEP and Wesleyne. We’ve got a great question here from Madison. Yeah, our company page on LinkedIn. Can you talk about how the content may differ from a personal page This is a fantastic question. I was just with a client yesterday through the Alaska MEP, and we were walking through the difference. If this is new to you, you have to have a personal LinkedIn profile to create your company profile. Wesleyan, do you want to talk a little bit about the difference there for Madison? Yes,

Wesleyne  45:17

yes. And can you flip back to the slide with the QR code to anyone who has Yes, and there are also some freebies that you can get after you give some feedback. So when you think about your company LinkedIn page, what I want you to remember is people buy from people, yes, this is a company LinkedIn page. But it doesn’t need to be to corporate, it doesn’t need to be only talking about where amazing work good. What is really important is you want to think about the customer. What does that customer need. So maybe you don’t have a picture of yourself on there. But you have a picture of your team. You are in the manufacturing plant, I keep talking about walking through the manufacturing plant because people love seeing that they never get to see that right? They never get to see how their products are actually made and manufactured. So you have that picture and everything that we’re talking about is in the voice of the customer. So think about what is that customer’s journey, what things are important for them. And when you’re doing personal posts on a company page. It’s like, hey, it’s the holidays, our company sponsored a fantastic holiday event. Let me show you a behind the scenes thing, right? We have moments of gratitude and one of our employees said this. So that’s how you have the personal touch on a company page. Use your employees voice. Yep,

Curt Anderson  46:37

absolutely love it. I see Ashley dropped a link in the chat box there. Ashley Thank you very much. So again, you can grab that QR code or grab that that link Madison thank you for the question and hopefully and again guys if you have any questions, take yourself off mute or jump into the chat box was something I would be happy to address an answer any questions before we wrap up? If you are, if you are good your rap you’re cutting out man. We wish you an amazing incredible day. Happy Friday Eve and yes. Are we doing let’s see. So got people in the house we got thank you again. Manda we got Brad Corinne Federico Janney. My friend Jamie would tack is here today, Jenny Happy Thursday. We’ve got Jen Jenny, Jill. Caroline. Caroline couldn’t hear us today. So hopefully, you’ll get the replay.

Wesleyne  47:28

I got her fixed up. So she started hearing. Oh, you did? Oh,

Curt Anderson  47:31

you’re the best. Thank you. Okay, scotch on thank you guys. Sue. And so one last round. I’m gonna let you guys hate we can get out of class a little early today. So

Wesleyne  47:41

give me five minutes back, Jean. Any thoughts or anyone else from the Purdue MEP that wants to ask a question or share some insights? We’re happy to hear

47:52

nothing additional for me. Thank you.

Curt Anderson  47:54

All right. Hey, thank you, everybody. Bustling. I got a big round of applause for Wesleyne for sure. After

Wesleyne  48:02

behind it off. Thanks, everyone. We’ll see you next time.

Curt Anderson  48:06

Happy Thanksgiving. Everybody. Have a great holiday.

Wesleyne  48:09

Thank you. Bye bye, guys. Thanks for you.