Podcast With Artem Klimkin

LinkedIn Lead Gen: What You’re Doing WRONG with Artem Klimkin

Show Notes

Are you struggling with LinkedIn lead generation and wondering what you might be doing wrong? In this eye-opening video, we delve into the common pitfalls that might be sabotaging your LinkedIn lead gen efforts. Join us as we uncover step-by-step strategies that can transform your social selling approach. In this episode of Agency Insider, we chat with Artem Klimkin, owner of Genius Social Selling, about the nuances of B2B lead generation, the importance of niche targeting, and how to engage potential clients effectively on LinkedIn. Don't miss out on tips to enhance your personal brand and stay ahead of the trends. Ready to transform your approach?

Chapters:

00:00 - Intro

01:00 - Artem's Journey into Social Selling

05:02 - Challenges of Starting a Business

07:09 - Previous Experience in Social Selling

08:56 - Social Selling vs Traditional Sales

11:24 - Traditional vs Social Selling Methods

14:01 - Future of Social Media

16:11 - Businesses Failing in Social Selling

18:23 - LinkedIn and Other Social Media Channels

20:23 - Tools for Outreach and Follow-ups

22:45 - Generating Leads from LinkedIn

25:49 - Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile

28:24 - LinkedIn Outreach Process

30:44 - Nurturing Leads on LinkedIn

33:23 - Importance of Personal Branding

36:31 - AI in Social Selling

39:48 - Services Provided to Clients

42:30 - Success Stories in Social Selling

44:55 - Challenges Transitioning to Social Selling

47:15 - Motivation Behind Artem's Work

48:55 - Advice for Starting a Social Selling Agency

51:34 - Resources for Learning More

53:51 - How to Connect With Artem Klimkin

Transcript

Intro

0:00 welcome to agency Insider the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of digital marketing world I'm your host

0:05 NAIT kosel CEO pce traffic each week I'm joined by a renowned guest speakers

0:10 industry experts successful marketers and digital Pioneers who will share their Insight stories and strategies

0:18 let's get started and unlock the secrets to thriving in this ever evolving digital industry today I have a very

0:24 special guest arim Clin owner of Genius social selling

0:31 [Applause]

0:36 [Music] welcome to agency Insider artm I hope

0:43 I'm my man right yeah you're good it's people call me Aram it's fine th of all

0:49 thank you so much for having me here it's awesome so I'm really really delighted so thank you for the

0:54 introduction and U let's go let's rock roll for our listeners who might not be

Artem's Journey into Social Selling

1:00 familiar with you can you give a quick elevator pitch about yourself and your journey into social selling but that's

1:06 what we're going to talk mostly 100% so I actually have a background in SEO link building I

1:14 started back in 2018 17 something like that and then I was just I had my Agency

1:20 for five six years and I was traveling around also going to different conferences at the time I met rent

1:25 fishkin who was the co-founder at the time of mos for all the old people people out there I have a cool photo

1:31 with him from Madrid Spain where we were in one of the conferences so I went to chanai SEO as well 2018 I was there I

1:39 went to other places back in Europe so I traveled around so I ran this Agency for a while but then I was like I love SEO

1:47 but I'm a people's person I love helping other people achieve their goals and and SEO is like you know yourself you really

1:54 care about all those keywords and rankings but you're not really good with people so this is when I realized that I

1:59 can go out there and help out agency Founders really figure out the whole client acquisition process Brandon and

2:07 whatnot so here I am doing the stuff that I'm doing right now and I love it so let me know if you have what the

2:13 other questions that you got so uh of course so was there any other reason

2:19 which made you switch from the link building to the B2B lead generation I mean correct this is B2B lead generation

2:25 right I mean I wouldn't call it like B2B lead generation because it's um right now like lead generation is kind of I

2:32 mean it still exists yeah if we talk about the traditional you know kind of definition what B2B lead generation is

2:39 yeah we have this agency or like a freelancer consultant reaching out at scale to different potential clients and

2:48 they get the database from different sources you know you can get a database from Polo you can get the database from

2:53 like Zoom info whatever it is you can scrape your own thing find the emails and then just send all those emails here

2:59 everywhere I don't do this yeah because the um selling a sophisticated service for a

3:08 lot of money what a decent SEO package should be like yeah is a sophisticated

3:14 process yeah so it takes a while we need to show our ideal clients who we are

3:19 they need to trust us because SEO does have bad rep we need to do all these

3:25 things to make sure that they are looking to that they will eventually buy from us so it's much more than just the

3:31 lead generation so I'm working with LinkedIn right now so I take SEO agency

3:36 and then I literally help them to position themselves pick a niche like I literally push my clients into picking

3:42 something very specific and then we go out there we find their ICP their ideal client profile we start sending direct

3:48 messages to first and foremost connect with our potential ideal clients so that

3:56 we can start a conversation with them because people AR ready to buy right way yeah we need to have some some sort of

4:02 connection with them interaction and then I also help them to create content video content carousels posts and images

4:09 all that stuff in order to ensure that the potential clients that we have they

4:14 when they check out the stuff they're like all their concerns are kind of being addressed ahead you know they're

4:20 like oh this guy really knows what you're talking about you know I like him I'm going to reach out to him talk to

4:26 him and maybe buy from him so that's what I helped SEO agencies with right now right so so what you do in Social

4:33 selling is mainly for the SE agencies right at the moment I work with SEO

4:39 agencies but of course I mean any agency can can be helped with this stuff

4:46 because it's really I mean SEO is like digital PR is right there so I had a digital PR client and we had amazing

4:52 results with what he was doing so it's not just agencies it's just agencies it's so much easier to find his clients

4:58 on LinkedIn so that's why right so so uh what were some of your biggest challenge

Challenges of Starting a Business

5:05 you faced when starting your business I mean the social and how how did you overcome so some interesting nuggets you

5:11 can share yeah that's the good one I was actually doing the podcast myself

5:16 recently with a co-founder of uh this one of the most famous uh LinkedIn tools

5:22 out there called ever booot yeah so if you go out there and you need to scrape these emails from LinkedIn like evero is

5:28 the go-to tool and um we were talking about a very very specific aspect of it

5:33 it's like how do you what do you base your business around yeah and whatever it is you have to be solving a problem

5:41 that your ideal clients the clients that have the money by the way to buy your service that they have like you have to

5:47 be very very specific with this so in my case when I was uh I mean link building was wasn't hard to start because I mean

5:54 okay link building agency everybody needs links even though it's a commodity right now now but back in the day it was

6:00 a little bit maybe easier so and um but the social silent thing was a little

6:06 tricky because I spent the entire year figuring the stuff out also fighting my

6:12 own demons because I didn't want to do certain things of uh I didn't want to get back to like this agency setup but

6:17 then I kind of uh found peace with myself in the way yeah I was like okay well I can do this maybe I I can

6:23 Outsource that and then I can try this maybe I like it in this setup and

6:28 finding the niche finding the position and it's uh it takes a while so you have to kind of go in there throw yourself

6:34 inside ideally finding something like an agency or somebody who's already doing

6:41 the stuff that you want to be do be doing and then kind of steal from them in a way and it will not be the same

6:47 anyway because they are different you are different but you kind of Ste the concept you know as Steve Jobs was

6:53 saying like a great artist copy best artist like steel more less that was it

6:58 called so gota go and do the thing and then you kind of can create your own

7:04 stuff but like afterwards you know if you wish so that's kind of it right so how

Previous Experience in Social Selling

7:10 has your previous experience shaped your approach to social selling I mean for link building and all that what you were

7:16 doing yeah yeah so um like to give you an idea of like when I came up with this

7:22 uh with this service I was like I know exactly how to approach um people and um

7:28 what like different stages of um my basically selling process they're at what I mean by this

7:35 is when I started launching my done for you service like this agency work that I'm doing right now I reached out to

7:43 three people in the SEO industry guys that already knew H so that goes to show

7:48 this is what the social sell and aspect is all about I reached out to them I didn't I was like bro I have this thing

7:55 to sell you if you got 15 minutes for a call that was pretty much the message so

8:01 out of three guys I got two of them I got on the phone one of them bought

8:06 right away and then the third one which didn't get on the phone with me he just didn't really fall into my deal CL

8:13 profile he referred three people towards me yeah and then two of these they again

8:19 they didn't fit my profile ID like really well but the third one that did he also bought an after call like we we

8:26 chatted for like actually look at the time it was like 18 minutes so that was it it was pretty pretty quick so the

8:34 aspect of this what I'm trying to get it is that uh once you build this relationships it's uh they are there for

8:40 you but you have to use them and people are already like they have the money to buy once you have a good offer right so

8:46 you need to have a good offer and people need to know you and kind of like you a little bit okay you know to make this

8:52 whole thing happen oh that's interesting so so let's talk more about social

Social Selling vs Traditional Sales

8:57 selling uh in your opinion and what are the key elements that differentiate social selling from traditional sales

9:05 methods social selling is more about connecting with a person first of course

9:11 that is the aspect you know it's like when you go to the best uh analogy I can give is like when you

9:18 go in a conference you know you are well some people are walking around and trying to sell their stuff but still

9:25 like you're not really like you know approaching random dudes and like y man I've got this thing to sell like you

9:31 know do you want backlinks like nobody does this right it's like we at least before we say something like that you

9:38 know that you have like this backlinks or whatever we talk about like the event

9:44 itself you know we connect a bit of a more personal matter but for some reason when it comes to online world it's so

9:51 different it's like hey man buy my stuff you know right away it's so weird so um

9:58 it's it's it's like social selling is basically nothing else but literally

10:03 injecting this component um from you know something that we do in real life yeah into the

10:11 online world but it's also being honest because I see a lot of like folks trying

10:16 to do this social sent thing trying to make friends on LinkedIn with people they want to you know they that they

10:24 want to become their clients right is kind of weird so it feels in natural as

10:30 well so that's why when you approach people you have to be upfront about your

10:35 about what you're looking for and it's totally fine but then you have to be also a bit Humane and approach them in a

10:40 manner that is not Pitch slapping which basically means not sending them the pitch right in the first message right

10:47 so that is the thing okay so so uh so but but you have

10:52 done traditional selling when you were doing your backlinks agency

10:57 right yeah of course so I did actually I I had both ways I did I had inbound

11:03 prospects inbound leads coming my way and I also had the uh from the cold Outreach so um I did both ways okay and

11:12 of course got it right so uh sorry so my next question was why I'm asking is

11:18 because what difference have you seen in the number of the uh number and the quality of lead generated using social

Traditional vs Social Selling Methods

11:24 setting compared to the traditional selling tactics so that's what I'm trying to okay no I mean there's no uh

11:33 there's no problem with the traditional selling techniques it's like um if I'm going to go like one step back and

11:39 explain a little bit of the the approach so there is this thing called the buyer's pyramid so it's made out of this

11:46 uh levels basically Stratus and basically it tells us that out of the entire population at any moment in time

11:53 for whatever it is you know people can be looking for new tires people looking for dentists people looking to by I

11:59 don't know uh houses at any moment in time in any given population it's only 3% of the audience that are aware of

12:07 this problem that they have and they're looking for a solution actively yeah just 3% it doesn't mean that they're

12:14 looking for your solution they're just looking for a solution yeah so that's why the conversion rate by default it

12:20 cannot be higher than the certain percentage for whatever population and then there is 7% of the audience that

12:27 are aware that they have the problem yeah and um but they're just not looking

12:33 for a solution just yet yeah maybe something else is going on you know like whatever it is they have they know yeah

12:39 I have to you know I have to go find the dentist you know but I still have some other stuff to do it doesn't hurt so much so it's okay so the traditional

12:46 selling and I think that's what you're getting at the traditional selling just targets like this 3% of the audience

12:53 okay so like literally trying to get these people that are all already aware

13:00 that they've got this problem and they're looking for a solution so that's like when you run ads say on Facebook or

13:05 whatever platform if you're looking for buyers people with money that are ready to buy these ads will be the most

13:11 expensive yeah like the cpms will be the highest so the same idea is kind of here yeah traditional selling kind of goes

13:17 into that direction whereas with social selling we are addressing this 3% we are

13:24 talking to this other 7% and we're also talking to the rest of the audience if

13:29 they are available to us because there is a large chunk of this audience like 30% of this audience that they know that

13:36 they don't need this like they know for sure like they don't need your solution regardless of what you have to it's just

13:42 the way it is and that's totally fine just have to know about that so that is the difference between social it's kind

13:48 of a funnel where you have tofu mofu and bofu so we're talking about not just the bofu bottom of the funnel we're talking

13:54 middle and the top it in that context yeah pretty much yeah it's a it's a pretty good yeah it's a good analogy

14:00 just just a little bit different that's it right so so uh how do you see social

Future of Social Media

14:05 media evolving in context of sales over the next few year do you because I think right now LinkedIn is the only Channel

14:11 which does that but how do you see social media evolving uh in the next few

14:16 years I mean for the in context of sales do you have any insights on

14:22 that yeah it's a good one it's always uh you know to predict the future we have to look in the past it's like uh you

14:29 know we've been using the same eating like you know we had forks for how many

14:35 years now and then unlikely to change in the future so this is called the the Lindy effect if I'm not mistaken so this

14:42 is You can predict the future by looking at the past um in this case with um with

14:47 content and everything um I think it's already with SEO I see like this case that is popping up it's like people went

14:54 out there and posted a ton of AI generated content and all of a sudden like these websites and plummet it and

15:00 then they went back and then rewrote the like had actual human right defend yeah

15:06 and then they posted the thing and then it went upwards something that I see every once in a while now on LinkedIn so

15:13 going back going back to our reality right now we might see I mean already

15:20 see like these Avatar videos for example yeah so when you like for I'm filming

15:25 videos myself but like people out there they create this Avatar and then feed it

15:31 some text or whatever and then it just speaks out for you so you don't have to go out there set up the camera and do

15:38 all this light stuff and anything so you already they already have this it's crazy and um with with linkon and so and

15:46 other social I think it will it will continue the same way yeah because people love content we love consuming

15:52 this stuff and we will just be there will we get to the stage where we have Bots talking to bots you know so for

15:59 example my Outreach bot is talking to your message response bot you know will

16:06 we get there we'll see that's an interesting one okay so so I mean uh

Businesses Failing in Social Selling

16:12 have you seen situations or businesses coming to you when they have uh tried

16:18 implementing social selling themselves and then it didn't work then they came back came to you something has this

16:24 situation been there um I get people that come in they tried cold Outreach and with social like

16:32 this with so social selling thing not really I get the people right away they they try to call Outreach and then they

16:39 come in they try social sell and it's it's different because what really social sell have a quick one social

16:45 selling is not just about directly getting customers even though it's a consequence that we observe every single

16:52 time but it's also about building up your brand which indirectly obviously

16:57 helps you to get better customers so my I had clients get invited to interviews

17:03 for example yeah so pretty nice you know and they because the way it works with the interviewers they also look for some

17:10 expert and then they check out your feed and that's exactly what my one of my clients what what happened to one of my

17:16 clients the interviewer went to his page she checked out this feed that he had

17:21 there and she she seen like some case studies she seen some content that we posted for him and she was like really

17:29 impressed and then that's how they did the interview afterwards so it's a lot more than just getting clients yeah it's

17:35 really because getting clients is it's kind of easy you know it's like especially in the short run like you

17:40 only get a couple clients you're are fine but what do you do next and next you have to go out there and grow your

17:46 presence online grow your brand so that it's much easier for you to convert new clients the referrals it's much easier

17:54 as well you can charge higher fees like that's what we do yeah that's about the long-term picture because you know once

18:00 you've got a once you're like an SE agency say SE agency founder with like 1,000 followers on LinkedIn and maybe

18:07 like couple of interactions here and there in your posts and then you're an Su agency founder with like say 10,000

18:14 followers and then you've got a lot of interaction from people so people treat you and see you differently and that's

18:21 what we want to capitalize on got it got it so so do you work primary with

LinkedIn and Other Social Media Channels

18:26 LinkedIn or other social media channels like like Tik Tok or Matas as well right now it's just LinkedIn

18:33 LinkedIn is says beautiful the way they kind of um become this uh platform the

18:39 way this whole algorithm is set up LinkedIn is great for B2B services not for everybody so I had actually I had a

18:46 bunch of SEO agency guys come into come to me and um I had a few people I said

18:52 no you don't have to do LinkedIn in fact I don't recommend it because they but they're working with more traditional um

18:59 Industries like say Plumbing solar like stuff like this you know so of course

19:06 it's much like these the plumbers are not on LinkedIn they are on site working

19:11 with their clients or maybe they can answer your message your call your email whatever it is yeah but so so then then

19:20 you say you then how does an Su agency benefits so when they I most of the icps

19:26 is not on LinkedIn and they want to yeah they don't that's that no they they don't like that's the thing I tell them

19:33 not to use LinkedIn because it makes no sense unless they want to I mean if they it it it's like you know if you if you

19:40 try to find clients and where they're not it makes no sense to to use it so that's why I say no it doesn't it

19:46 doesn't make sense for you you go and you do your C emails if they and they work you know they tell me you know try

19:52 C email and we got some clients from it I'm like okay beautiful keep keep doing that looks

19:59 looks perfectly fine just grow there not LinkedIn Maybe YouTube as well because I

20:04 mean YouTube is a more like a male dominated platform so I would imagine that you can find some plumbers there on

20:11 YouTube as well uh when it comes to Tik Tok again it's about like who is there

20:16 yeah what sort of an audience are you looking for who who are you selling to so you have to be very clear on that so

Tools for Outreach and Follow-ups

20:23 do you use any tool or platforms to manage your Outreach and follow-ups if you can share very good

20:29 question yeah yeah 100% I actually had a video done a couple like I think a year

20:35 ago I posted it it's like why you should use LinkedIn Automation and

20:40 um LinkedIn is very any LinkedIn Automation and I don't

20:45 mean just tools like sending connection requests or anything if you're using um

20:50 commenting tool or any tool that you have to like download Chrome extension for for LinkedIn is technically an

20:57 automation to to for LinkedIn and it's against terms or service so you can your your account can get restricted it it's

21:05 not like crazy right away but they will restrict you once maybe and then you can

21:10 have some issues so I'd rather not have that like at all because I don't want to risk losing an account because of that

21:18 so I don't recommend generally I don't recommend using cloud-based Solutions and cloud-based means that again once

21:24 you need to download a Chrome extension for that thing that's a cloud-based solution because LinkedIn and I was I

21:32 did an interview with uh one of the with a founder of one of the wider known

21:39 automation like Outreach tools for LinkedIn called linked helper 2 and he shared also like off the mic as well

21:45 about this whole security thing that they're working on currently because um chances are LinkedIn will make things

21:53 worse for certain tools so because they know they exist they track them and um

21:59 you have to be really care like you have to understand what's going on so I personally right now I use linked helper

22:04 to and it's actually running on my computer right now as I talk it's a tool

22:09 that mimics your activity on yeah so it's like as if you're doing it yourself

22:15 so the mouse is moving the things are like five it's not like a Chrome extension is it it's not Chrome

22:21 extension like not Chrome extension at all so it's like a separate program that runs on your computer and then that's

22:27 how it kind of connects and work works you can also have it set up on the uh remote machine somewhere I don't have it

22:33 set up this way right now I have it on my computer and that's the tool I use also for sending connection requests uh

22:40 sending messages send in follow-ups so that's pretty much it so let's talk

Generating Leads from LinkedIn

22:46 about process I because the audience here is mainly to understand how they can generate leads from LinkedIn by

22:53 social selling so let's go into a little bit of process and framework is is there

22:58 a stepbystep process for your framework in finding and engaging with potential

23:04 clients on LinkedIn some framework you can share yeah 100% it's super step by step

23:10 before we even start we spend a lot of time on the boring tasks of uh nich down because it's always the case all the

23:17 time like I started working with a client right now he is e-commerce SEO I

23:22 was like my man anything within that we have to kind of you know trim down a little bit a lot

23:29 because SEO something like that yeah like you can do Shopify but even if you

23:35 do Shopify SEO like what is it you know like are you is it Shopify seo4 I don't

23:40 know pet toys or are you doing be like whatever right in the case with this

23:47 client who went into a niche like um it was a beauty Niche so like okay let's do

23:52 beauty stuff it's a good Niche yeah so I went into Beauty and then uh because why

23:57 is this important first you are building up your presence for this specific Niche

24:04 and you're adding people that work in this specific Niche that are decision makers on this case maybe they are

24:11 owners of uh beauty beauty beauty stores or something you know maybe they

24:18 are maybe they're like co-founders of these things what whatever it is yeah so you adding them into your network and as

24:25 you can imagine once you add somebody new to your network they're like who the hell is this guy so what is it all about

24:32 and uh however once you start talking to them directly with your content because now you're addressing a very specific

24:38 Niche you say hey Beauty Brands I want to tell you about this and this and that and then they're listening it's like

24:44 you're walking around a supermarket and uh you have an announcement you know if it's General announcement like oh today

24:50 we have a discount or whatever thing you know who cares but then if an announcement is calling out yourself

24:56 like it's going like L it you know and then all of a sudden you're are more attentive because like you know what I

25:01 mean so you have to pick a freaking Niche like don't go past this on

25:06 LinkedIn like otherwise you will drown in all the noise and you will it's

25:12 brutal you know and that's really hard to do yeah to do it yourself to pick a yourself so that's why when people come

25:18 into me I literally like almost like grab them by the neck and like okay you're doing this you know I'm being

25:24 very yeah do they agree to that very yeah of course I very very totalitarian

25:29 manner so there is no there's no no of course I'm kidding but no I know you are

25:35 very just to put it in a more subtle way yeah because otherwise it just doesn't

25:41 work so we have to pick something we try something out for maybe three months if it doesn't work with switch but it works

25:47 okay that's important that's super important then you have to optimize a profile and by optimize I mean you have

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile

25:53 to have a good picture yeah so like yourself and your LinkedIn so whoever is checking out this video they can go check out your profile it's good you

26:00 know your profile image is good so you want to appear wearing something I don't know more or less casual is kind of

26:06 whatever it is you have to have a good quality image with lights you know

26:11 attributed because LinkedIn if you think about it it's like old emailing but it's

26:17 a lot better because you can actually create your persona you can provide more

26:22 information you can spice it up with social proof this is something we also included in the profile so look more

26:29 legit yeah because because the first time nobody trusts people on on these networks so people check you out and

26:36 like okay is he does he make is he a legit guy you know so that's the the

26:41 thing we want to kind of convey to our potential customers as quickly as we can

26:46 and also goes to like for example I run a lot of tests uh for uh the actual

26:51 facial expression yeah so if you're just like like that but if you show your

26:57 teeth all of a sudden people see as more likable person more trustworthy and so on so forth there a big difference so we

27:03 play with this new room marketing stuff as well okay comes the banner yeah right

27:09 yeah oh it's it's crazy it's crazy then comes the banner so this is again your opportunity to call out your ideal

27:15 target audience including any social proof that you might have the about section again you talk about your uh

27:21 customers again calling out specific Niche yeah and providing any social proof any testimonials anything also

27:29 there's this custom button custom link if you're using uh sales like Navigator

27:34 kind of Premium LinkedIn version it allows you to click away from your profile to whatever you have absolute

27:40 majority of people either don't use it at all or they use it for their calendar which is crazy because I mean who cares

27:49 about the like it's a bit of a too much of a commitment step you know yeah just

27:54 gonna come and click your calendar and book it right away right yeah I mean it's it's it's it's not it's not likely

28:00 to do it so that's why I say okay you have to have like a case study then people check out your case study and

28:05 from there they can book you know okay and you can do other things so once you've got this whole thing like this

28:11 whole profile optimized like in this manner it looks nice you know you're very specifically there's talking about

28:18 the specific Niche that you have you've had social proof you look absolutely stunning on your image then you start

LinkedIn Outreach Process

28:25 Outreach process yeah you go to sales Navigator you find your ideal client profile so you find your companies that

28:32 work um I mean where are they based the headquarters company size industry maybe

28:39 you can use linkedin's uh search bar to find the further kind of um right filter

28:46 them it right yeah you can also upload but this is for more advanced um sales

28:52 Navigator version Advanced you can upload your own database and let LinkedIn do the map and matching of

28:59 these companies that you upload to the decision makers it's really really powerful you go out there you find these

29:05 decision makers you start the Outreach campaign and then you start sending these messages trying to connect with

29:12 people in a you know subtle manner while clearly stating what you're up to yeah

29:17 that it's so give me an example how let's say I I find yeah sure ICP I have

29:23 to send them a request then then do I just click Send request or what do I write

29:28 yeah yeah exactly so you just click if you're doing this manually or with a tool whatever you just send a request

29:34 there's no need to write anything because that's a really crazy study that I first read on wxy actually when I was

29:42 using the tool at the time and they were I was like really it makes no sense and then I kind of tried it out myself I had

29:50 some other guys you know check out the stuff and try it it's it's funny but yes in reality is that you know unless you

29:56 kind of really know the person unless it's a lot more personal than just including like a line right um yeah it

30:04 just you save a lot of time if you don't write personalized stuff and uh it's not worth it afterwards so just don't

30:11 include anything so if you yeah yeah please if you want yeah if you want you

30:18 can again this is not possible for any for everybody if you want and this actually makes a big difference you can

30:25 comment on people's posts yeah before before uh before anything before sending

30:30 connection request and then you can send the connection request the problem with that the absolute majority of people

30:36 LinkedIn do not produce content so we cannot comment on everybody's Bo so

30:41 makes no sense right so so how do you nurer leads on LinkedIn let's say after

Nurturing Leads on LinkedIn

30:46 sending a connection request so you send a connection request the guy accepts it then what happens next and then we send

30:53 him a pitch and you know take his family as a hostage and how serve

30:58 excelling yeah it's good it's okay A bit of a you know it's good to change the strategy okay no I'm kid obviously no

31:06 it's um it's that's a very good that's a very good um question in a way because

31:12 remember how how I mentioned the buyer pyramid in the some time ago right our goal is to find these through our subtle

31:21 messaging our goal is to provoke the people that are aware that they have

31:28 this problem and are looking for a solution to show themselves okay so how

31:33 does it happen we send them a simple message yeah at the start and maybe

31:38 follow up once and then we we see how they react to this because people that

31:44 are interested they will check out your profile and then if Dots connect for

31:49 them and dots should connect for them because you've got all the right uh positioning you've got the niche you've

31:55 got the the offer you've got the social proof you got all of that and you've got some content already you've been posting

32:00 it for a while so people see that you're doing your work you know they see you as an expert right away at at a glance they

32:07 will write themselves they will be like oh man yeah I was actually curious about this can you tell me more and that's

32:13 when you get them on the quick sale not a sales quick intro call I call this

32:18 it's like an e Coffee type of thing 10 15 minutes the goal is to just get on

32:24 this new level of connection because right now we're just talking in messaging yeah we are just the messages

32:30 we need to take our relationship to the next level we need to call have a quick

32:35 chat with them like that 15 minutes nothing else we're not selling we're just sniffing each other's tails in dogs

32:43 terms okay and then and then we can see if it happens you know further and most

32:48 of the time most of the time with 15 minutes we don't even talk about work we talk about weather we talk about the

32:55 plans for whatever and then the last two or three minutes the prospect actually

33:01 ask so what is that that you do and then this is your chance to say you know we do this and this and that

33:07 we've done it for this and this and those companies if you're interested we can schedule another call where we can

33:13 drive through all this process and then yeah okay and then another call it's

33:20 it's the sales call essentially so so so I know you talked about how we can uh

Importance of Personal Branding

33:26 improve our LinkedIn profile but in a general sense I mean or a specific sense how important is personal branding in

33:33 Social selling and what tips do you have for professionals looking to enhance their uh personal brand uh

33:42 online personal brand has a lot to do with um on LinkedIn and any other any

33:49 other social media it's uh it's a very very powerful tool that allows you as a

33:56 agency owner in this case to skip many stages of this uh process of you know

34:04 building the report with your audience doing this entire kind of content

34:09 nurturing whatever you can skip all that really quickly yeah because people heard of you before and know who you are it

34:16 allows you to go directly to sell it I'll give you an example there's this one guy you probably heard of called

34:22 Ryan Stewart so um yeah so he pretty famous in the SEO field and um he

34:29 doesn't post every day I guess on LinkedIn but every time he posts

34:34 something people react to it and uh he started doing the these uh Spectacular

34:39 from my opinion the generation posts when he's like you know guys we were doing this whole thing local SEO stuff

34:46 whatever like this agency M was broken but we discovered a new one whatever it is and uh over the next weekend I'm

34:53 going to share all of the stuff and let me know if you're interested this will not be free and I'm running just once so

34:58 if you're interested let me know and then people just interested interested interested interested and then his VA I

35:05 don't think he does it himself his VA just sends the landing page to all these people and then they go on the landing

35:12 page and then there's this you know directly like a bit of information and then you can buy right here and it was

35:18 like I think was like $200 and then he sold off like from this one post I think he made he made a video

35:25 about it afterwards he saw like 60,000 right while like on a weekend you know

35:32 that's how powerful this personal brand is but the guy was like he was building out for a long long time like I remember

35:38 watching him back in 2018 you know he was running his Facebook ads like videos

35:43 etc etc just building up his presence and just to because that's what it does because you can then utilize the power

35:50 of personal brand to go directly into sellin and I'm sure like a large chunk of these people that were there they

35:57 they have they heard of him before but even if they didn't you know just find

36:03 this post on LinkedIn you see a lot of people there like interested and pushing this whole narrative and the offer is

36:08 great and you see that the guy got some decent foll looks legit you know right easy money you know so that's what it's

36:15 all about it's more like medium long-term stuff that's what it's all about this called personal branding

36:21 thing which of course is at the same time you can run degeneration no problem it's not a it's not like you are stuck

36:28 in this one mode or anything right right right so uh let's move on to Ai and

AI in Social Selling

36:35 automation of course how can we not have a talk on AI so so can chat GPT or other AI tools

36:43 be used effectively in Social selling process or do you use them if I use them partially yes I use

36:51 AI uh to work with some of the posts that we put together but it's all um

36:57 it's all like you have to feed it it's it's garbage in garbage out you have to feed it some quality stuff before you

37:03 get something quality you know quality out so in my case we actually sit down

37:08 like we're doing with you right now I do the same thing with my clients we sit down I ask them a bunch of questions

37:13 about their like the pains that their potential clients have and then we just

37:20 I I have these videos created for them and then I can you know use a bit of AI

37:25 here and there to create separate post out of these videos as well yeah but it's all like using the orig original

37:32 quality stuff you know because otherwise uh we're losing the touch with the human

37:37 like with the person's um person's personality if you wish because we're really you know some people like you

37:45 some people like me um other people don't like you other people don't like me yeah so the whole idea is to kind of

37:52 go out there and uh build this personal brand through being present as a human

37:58 being especially in this digital age when we're more and more disconnected from each other through social media I

38:04 know it sounds funny but that's a reality so so uh do you see how do you

38:10 see uh role of AI evolving in the future of social selling of course besides the bot talking to

38:18 bot like that's that's the direction where it's going and then uh and then we'll see it's it's an interesting

38:25 conundrum I'm I have no idea let's let's see let's check it out because at this moment what I can say

38:32 what AI has failed to do right now is uh create

38:38 decent comments let's put it that way so there was quite a few tools out there I

38:44 haven't tried them all but the ones that I tried they

38:49 are it's yeah it's a it's it's a waste of time because then before that before

38:55 comenting somebody's post I have to to look at the post and read the like part of it at least read part of the post and

39:01 then comment now I have to go check out the post um no I check out the comment

39:08 that it has been created by Ai and then I need to make sure that it makes sense so I read the post now again and then

39:15 check for AI does it help no it doesn't so that's that's how I see this um but

39:21 yeah it's it's it's a tricky one I mean you see is LinkedIn is doing this uh this this stuff with

39:28 um AI like oh you know you can summarize the post with AI whatever but in my

39:33 opinion it's kind of useless you know you kind of give it a glimpse and you kind of get what the story is so we'll

39:40 see we'll see it doesn't look like we're there yet and uh we'll be using it

39:45 anyway to to make work better let's talk about the client

Services Provided to Clients

39:51 servicing and what kind of a service do you provide to your clients when it comes to B2B lead Generations

39:58 we have two types of services so the first one is um done with you this is

40:04 when you come into me and you're like Aram I've got the team inside in house I

40:10 want to know all your secrets I want to have the system so I can use it myself I'm like okay no problem I have a

40:17 solution for you I come in basically become your partner for three months

40:24 because this is more or less the time that is necessary to have this whole and run it I'm there for you to change

40:31 everything what I covered before in the interview so we go over your Niche position offer we go your LinkedIn

40:37 profile I help you to find your ICP I show you how to create campaigns I help you to drop the messages for your

40:44 audience I show you how to interact with people in the direct messages I show you how to create content at scale so by

40:51 investing say two hours on a weekly basis you can have content for a month you know every single day different type

40:57 of content and that will actually generate momentum I'll show you comment etc etc so I help you to install the

41:04 system internally for your own fan and then you can you know go and use it afterwards and you also have my support

41:11 afterwards for for a while because I've got this uh group kind of thing going on as well that's the first solution you

41:18 come in as an agency it's like I want to have it all for myself I don't want to Outsource it the second type of agencies

41:25 they come in and they say artam it's all it's awesome we have no

41:31 time I have the team doing the work for clients we're fulfilling you know I want

41:36 to have the service done for me I'm like okay no problem okay and then I help

41:44 them to uh record this uh this these videos yeah I Al I also help with the

41:49 LinkedIn profile I help with a niche position all of the stuff I have I help with all of that also with messages and

41:55 everything but now I create the content yeah and uh we sit down I help them to

42:02 create the content I schedule it again I show some different tricks with direct messages but we basically take this

42:08 whole content and Outreach process in place and of course the client needs to engage once they get this reply because

42:16 afterwards like our our job is like lead U demand generation mod yeah so the goal

42:22 is to have client get those responses right and then afterwards they can take care of that themselves got these are

42:29 two separate things that I do so so can you share some success stories you had

Success Stories in Social Selling

42:35 uh from a work that highlights effectiveness of social selling I I know social selling works but just for my for

42:43 our listeners sake yeah I have I have a bunch of screenshots of of messages you know

42:49 I'm I'm I'm not able to kind of tell them right away but I don't know I have

42:54 a compatriot of yours I'm I had the compatriot of yours doing

43:00 digital PR and then when we started working together he was uh like he was pitching everywhere left and right and

43:07 then we sat down we figure out the niche we figure out the positioning and then he realized that he needs to be pitching

43:13 startups at the very spec specific stage of of their journey and uh once he

43:19 started doing that he's he started like he sent me message he was like the the

43:24 the screenshot that I have of that message was like like yesterday I booked

43:29 I think was it six calls I don't know and then he he he Clos three of them with an

43:36 average retainer of like $16,500 pretty cool is the moment when

43:42 it all started yeah because before and it really came after we figured out this nich and position that's digital PR um

43:49 with SEO guys I we did this uh one of the founders was doing CBD Niche so very

43:57 competitive a lot of money there and uh we started doing this whole process then

44:02 and then week 78 it's around week 78 that we start seeing the results um

44:08 again people kind of reached out from a huge like I I cannot say the brand but

44:13 it's a huge brand that buys ad space on like ESPN and UFC yeah so like literally

44:21 in the in the in the cage you can see their you can see their thing you know

44:27 like their logo in the cage so it's really about clients of that magnitude

44:33 that you can attract with these uh techniques by building your brand by you know having your presence improved

44:40 because if you you cannot get these clients by just sending direct messages uh sending messages in bulk doesn't work

44:47 like that right so that's the components that that are required to make this whole thing work with LinkedIn so so uh

Challenges Transitioning to Social Selling

44:56 so what are the common challenges business fails when trans uh when transitioning to social selling and uh

45:03 how do you overcome how do you help them overcome these challenges one I understand would be the ICP because that

45:09 seems to be the fundamental thing without ICP this whole thing won't work right what yeah ICP IC yeah like picking

45:17 the niche uh it's one of the the biggest ones but it's more it's it's like a

45:22 puzzle really right so it's like I look at the whole picture when I start with an agency I look at them and I'm like

45:29 okay so tell me where's your where your testimonials I mean you have the case studies but where are your testimonials

45:35 but well we don't have them I'm like okay well you know if your clients look at your at your case

45:41 studies excuse me your clients look at your case studies and they're like yeah

45:46 but he can write whatever yeah how do we trust that so you need a testimonial from your uh from your clients you know

45:53 from before so that's a huge aspect then and uh treating it as I just had

46:00 somebody pretty well-known guy actually in the industry so I you know I let him know what I have going on and he's like

46:07 okay yeah but I'm not I'm not like I'm not ready to pay the retainer I I love

46:12 to pay like four per per meeting schedule and I'm like I'm like okay

46:17 let's let's talk you know because I will just show him the stuff he's clearly not aware of what's going on uh but he

46:25 hasn't replied afterwards but that's not the that's not the thing so what I'm trying to get it here is people treat it

46:31 like a Le generation service which it's not yeah right like social selling is not about degeneration right it's all

46:38 about getting clients getting big clients but it can take a while right because big clients they need big quite

46:46 yeah sometimes to of course you can get lucky of course this also happens but

46:52 really the biggest challenge is just uh not having this puzzle put correctly have some missing pieces for example and

47:00 then not investing like uh enough time because it it is draining yeah you have

47:05 to do a lot of uh a lot of monotonous kind of repetitive things to make this whole thing work just like link building

47:11 in a way right so so uh that's an interesting take so so what motivates

Motivation Behind Artem's Work

47:18 you personally in your work I know and how do you stay inspired I know you are a people person so that will be number

47:24 one motivation but what else is there and how do you stay

47:29 focused oh man motivation it's the F it's to be honest it's the family thing

47:35 it's the like I don't have I'm not married I don't have a family like that but I do have my parents for example so

47:42 uh not long ago my mom she kind of reached out to me saying that they're going on this cruise with h with my

47:47 grandfather who's pretty old you know so I love him with all my heart and um she said like the only thing they could get

47:54 in the cruise was like some um like this VIP kind of cabin which was super like

47:59 crazy expensive for like five days it was like you know quite a lot of money

48:05 so I thought like oh I can and she didn't ask me for anything because they're they're well thank God you know

48:11 everything is fine but I was like okay I'm just I want to chip in you know so I

48:16 sent like a half like basically a part of that thing you know to pay it off and

48:22 she was like yeah but why did you do it I wasn't asking for anything I was like yeah I know that's why I did you know so

48:28 things like this are really kind of motivating and uh of course just like helping other people like I have this

48:34 one client right now and um sometimes just like sometimes they just need

48:39 company as well because it can get lonely and um once you're like on LinkedIn we're actually having quite

48:45 some fun you know working on the stuff together so that's also like a good motivator for me you can you can always

48:52 interact with another person as a people's person it's it's good so if you

Advice for Starting a Social Selling Agency

48:57 could just give one piece of advice to someone is starting social selling what would it

49:03 be starting social selling like for themselves as a career or as an

49:08 agency for both ah both well for let's for an

49:15 agency yeah I mean it's it's it's like you want to do this you know there's

49:20 this like I don't know they say it's a Chinese saying that the best time to plant the tree was 20 years ago and the

49:26 second best best time is to do it now yeah so exactly so it's like you have to

49:32 you you got to be there man if your clients are there if your clients on LinkedIn you got to be there so you have

49:38 to have it all set up and build up your presence because and it just doesn't matter about LinkedIn for example I

49:44 record my videos on YouTube as well so for my audience yeah I know that my target audience they're on YouTube as

49:51 well so and YouTube has a brilliant algorithm that actually works much better YouTube as well or no yeah this

49:58 is something that I'm thinking about going forward because it makes a lot of sense to do YouTube as well it makes a

50:04 lot of sense so um because you know yourself over over like medium longterm

50:10 period of time YouTube is is great yeah and you can play with this you can do LinkedIn is not like that so coupl in

50:17 say YouTube for longterm and Linkedin for more like short medium-term gains

50:22 it's very good but LinkedIn on itself works just as fine just like YouTube does as well it's just different beasts

50:29 and you should always like uh um diversify and um that's for the agency

50:35 yeah so once you're doing this whole agency stuff so invest into it and uh be

50:41 prepared to not see any results for a while just like you tell your SEO clients so guys you will take months and

50:49 that's reality what happens as well with with LinkedIn we see quick results every once in a while but come in with no

50:55 expectations and just share some stuff reach out to me if you need some help as a social sell and professional Guy this

51:02 is a tricky thing yeah because you can be pretty good but um how do you like say get paid for this that's a tricky

51:09 one yeah so you go train yourself again and find uh help your clients get

51:15 clients and then again get the testimonials get the case studies and then proceed onwards you know charge

51:21 higher fees figure out your commission structure if you want to or simply just either there for as a fixed fixed rate

51:28 person but on a really high rate for example so that's how I see this okay so

Resources for Learning More

51:34 uh closing thoughts what resources books podcast Etc do you recommend for those

51:40 interested in learning more about social selling I know you you should definitely

51:45 check out my YouTube channel And subscribe the link to your YouTube channel will be is in the link

51:52 description I'll tell no I actually have I actually have a really good advice from my perspective okay there's a lot

51:57 of people in LinkedIn that are like influencers in the way and then they try to sell their stuff okay just be

52:04 cautious of this stuff because a lot of these people they got their followers at the time when LinkedIn was still a baby

52:11 in a way this new algorithm wasn't here yeah and it worked pretty well they got

52:17 a lot of reach on their posts and then they accumulated all this followers at the time and uh it was different times

52:24 okay that's one thing that's one aspect so don't like listen to them as much as

52:29 you know you want to in a way second they are different people of uh

52:35 different countries different genders so the world of LinkedIn is very different

52:40 to a uh and I'm going to say this because I don't care the world of LinkedIn is very different to a an

52:46 attractive female than to an average looking guy let's put it that way so it

52:53 still is the same so as an attractive female you go out there take a selfie say business is business and then it

53:00 will get some interaction simply because of the selfie you know what I mean right for a guy you have to like do some legit

53:07 stuff for a long time before people kind of start appreciating so you know guys

53:13 we have to do the these things and uh just see if you if you find the source

53:19 of uh if you're looking for a source of information for yourself find somebody who is similar to you you know like if

53:25 you're from India find some Indian guy that nailed it you know if you are like I'm not from the states I'm not from

53:32 Europe in a way I'm from Russia yeah so like you know I and I'm managing to sell

53:38 my stuff to like Europeans to Americans and all these things so I know my thing yeah I figured it out so if you want to

53:45 be like me well you come to me then if you want to find somebody else you find somebody else that's the idea okay so

How to Connect With Artem Klimkin

53:53 how can listeners connect with you or learn more about about your work at genius social selling you have to go and

54:00 basically send out the connection request to me on LinkedIn okay I am not sure I will accept it I'm just kidding

54:07 we'll just send without any right without any yeah exactly yeah no no no I mean no if you like okay we do it like

54:13 that if you say that you come from the N podcast I'm going to I'm going to accept

54:19 invitation because I get a lot of ROM I don't want to get the spammy stuff of like things and anything all right all

54:26 right uh also YouTube so LinkedIn and YouTube uh 100% I have a lot of cool

54:31 stuff that I share there and there'll be a lot more so you have to go and sign up to my stuff right right right uh okay

54:39 Tim that was uh very insightful I'm sure our listeners must have gone and at

54:45 least got themselves interested in Social selling I'm sure at least send the connection request just do that yeah

54:53 repeat call to action go follow right right right right right right and thank you for joining us and giving us your

54:59 valuable time my absolute pleasure thanks for having me once again thank you