by Nancy Calabrese | Oct 10, 2023 | Podcast
About Jessie van Breugel: Jessie is the Founder of Realigned Coaching creator of Brand Yourself as A Creator: The Ultimate Guide and The Branded Creators Community. Co-founder of Build Your House Club, a vibrant community of creators to clarify your message, produce consistent value, & grow your audience. He views himself as a visual copywriter, using words and design to share his message. His vision is to bring wisdom to everyday life and inspire others to live on their terms—currently, 3x Top Writer on Medium in Inspiration, Social Media, and Entrepreneurship. A former employee of one of Europe’s hottest tech unicorns turned digital creator. He is building his business at the crossroads of writing, visual design, product management, and digital marketing. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Jessie.
In this episode, Nancy and Jessie discuss the following:
- How to make the most out of LinkedIn.
- Master the art of selling on LinkedIn without sounding too pushy.
- Understand how building connections on LinkedIn can lead to successful sales.
- Explore why the term ‘sales’ often has a negative perception.
- Determine the ideal posting frequency on LinkedIn for optimal results.
- Gain insights into the algorithms that LinkedIn uses to block certain accounts.
- Avoid common mistakes when creating content on LinkedIn to enhance engagement.
Key Takeaways:
- You never know who’s watching on LinkedIn because people are scrolling the feed and waiting for that message or content to help them act.
- Sales has a negative connotation because people often think about the door-to-door salesman or woman, car sales dealers, etc.
- To sell your stuff to your audience, people need to see it. That’s why reactions are essential.
- A lesson that I learned over time is that you want to let a post-run for a few days because if a post does well, even a week later, it could still reach new people.
- I am like, “Hey, educational content is great, but move towards more authority-building content, and then we can transform it into lead-generating content.”
“I would say the traditional thinking of LinkedIn is that it’s still a place where people share updates about new jobs or certain company updates. I had that too out of sight till about three years back, but I also figured out that LinkedIn is still the number one business platform in the world. And as we see with all the content platforms, like the social media platforms, there is a big drive towards content creation. I started writing online, and at a certain point, I wondered why not go to LinkedIn. Because as I just said, there are so many decision-makers, potential people watching there waiting for that, waiting for the call to action also say.” – JESSIE
“One of the frameworks that I heavily use for myself and my clients is the acronym FODOFs. It stands for fear, objections, desire, obstacles, and frustrations. Of course, we don’t want to always use them all in one piece of content, but by strategically using each for a specific type of content, we can show our audience or our prospect that we understand them.” – JESSIE.
“I hear that perspective, and I would say earlier on in my career, I also had this notion that selling is bad or self-promoting is bad. So, I had to debunk that for myself. And now I believe that if you genuinely know that you, your service, or your product is helping your audience or your clients, it’s almost a disservice not to tell them about it because I know I solve a very hot topic, like lead generation on LinkedIn. And I know that I help a lot of people with that. Like if I look at my clients’ results, I’m helping them get more business. I’m helping them make more money. So sure, like I’m selling to my audience, but I also know that the right people were like: “Hey, this really helps me!”. And I think that’s for all of us. Like if we know that because that’s what entrepreneurship at its core is, right? It’s like, someone has a problem, someone else has a solution, and it’s either a service or a product that helps them get from A to B.” – JESSIE.
Connect with Jessie van Breugel:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Jessie Van Breugel, a LinkedIn expert and founder of Realign Coaching and the Creator Academy. He is also a Co-founder of Build Your House Club, a vibrant community of creators to clarify your message, produce consistent value, and grow your audience. Jesse identifies himself as a digital creator who’s building cool stuff and helping as many like-minded experts generate high-quality leads for their service business through LinkedIn and email. Jesse was named as a top-50 LinkedIn creator worldwide. Congratulations on that, Jesse, and welcome to the show.
Jessie van Breugel: Well, that’s an interesting introduction, but thanks for having me, Nancy. I’m excited to chat with you and the audience today. [1:18]
Nancy Calabrese: The one thing that jumps out and you have posted on your website, LinkedIn has over 63 million decision-makers. That’s amazing.
Jessie van Breugel: Exactly. And that brings me to, I’ll say, one of my favorite sayings that I keep repeating to my clients. You never know who’s watching on LinkedIn, because there are always people scrolling the feed and waiting for that message or that piece of content to help them act.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So how, you know, as a novice, right, you’re the expert, how do you leverage the potential on LinkedIn?
Jessie van Breugel: Yeah, that’s a great question because most, I would say, the traditional thinking of LinkedIn, okay, it’s still a place where people share updates about new jobs or certain company updates. I had that too out of sight till like three years back, but I also figured out that LinkedIn is the, like, it’s still the number one business platform in the world. And as we see with, like, all the content platforms, like the social media platforms, there is such a big drive towards content creation. I got started on writing online and at a certain point I was like, why not go to LinkedIn? Because as I just said, there are so many decision-makers, potential people watching there waiting for that, waiting for the call to action also say. [2:51]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Sure. How do you know what to write to really get the attention of the audience?
Jessie van Breugel: Yeah, I think that’s like trial and error. It comes in the beginning from like speaking to as many people as possible from your target audience, like from peers, and competitors, but also from your prospects and to really infuse those emotional angles in your content. So, one of the frameworks that I heavily use for myself, and for my clients, it’s the acronym called FODOFS. It stands for fear, objections, desire, obstacles, and frustrations. Of course, we don’t want to always use them all in one piece of content, but by strategically using each one of them for a specific type of content, we can show our audience or our prospect that we really understand them. [3:46]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, okay. Can you repeat that acronym?
Jessie van Breugel: for sure. So, it’s FODOF, which stands for fear, objection, desire, obstacle, and frustration. So those are the main five buckets.
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, okay. So how do you sell on LinkedIn without being salesy?
Jessie van Breugel: That’s a good question because I think that’s one of the bad raps selling on LinkedIn has because people feel, okay, it’s too much promoting and like in your face. And I think that’s where like implementing the photos has been a big game changer for me, but also really applying like storytelling principles. Because in the end, we learn as humans through stories. And especially as we’re all working with our clients, mostly on a one-on-one or a group setting of service providers, we have tangible results of before and after with our clients. So that’s of course where a case study framework always comes into play because we can write a story about how their life was before working with us and that’s often painful or frustrating. [5:01] We did work together.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Right.
Jessie van Breugel: And at the end, it’s rainbows and sunshine. It’s like the desired state, and it comes with a lot of peace of mind and relief. So that’s, I think, a simple example of how we can infuse selling into storytelling. Because people on LinkedIn, they see the post, they see the first two, or three lines, and they want to click see more. And only at the end, if the story’s, of course, captivating enough, they will see, oh, I’m being sold to, in a bit of a quote, instead of straight out of the gate, like asking people for their contact details or whatever. I don’t think that’s the right way of doing it. [5:37]
Nancy Calabrese: You know, I have a colleague, and we didn’t agree on this, but she also works in the LinkedIn space, and she doesn’t believe that connecting in LinkedIn should be used to sell. And I disagree. You know, I mean, it’s very nice to have a conversation, but…You know, the goal is to connect with like-minded people in the hopes that it might convert to business. What do you have to say about that?
Jessie van Breugel: Yeah, I hear that perspective and I would say earlier on in my career, I also had this notion of like, like selling is a bad thing or like self-promoting is a bad thing. So, I had to like, like debunk that for myself. And now I really believe that if you genuinely know that you, your, service, or your product is helping you, your audience, or your clients, it’s almost a disservice to not tell them about it because I know I solve a very hot topic, like lead generation on LinkedIn. And I know that I help a lot of people with that. Like if I look at the results of my clients, I’m helping them get more business. I’m helping them make more money. So sure, like I’m selling to my audience, but I also know that the right people, they were like, hey, this really helps me. And I think that’s for all of us. Like if we know that because that’s what entrepreneurship at its core is, right? It’s like, someone has a problem, someone else has a solution to it, and it’s either a service or a product that helps them get from A to B. [7:13]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. I mean, why is sales such a bad word? I don’t get it. It’s just, you know, an opportunity to communicate with someone else. And if it’s a match, that’s like you just said, I think it would be a disservice not to want to go to convert to, you know, a client.
Jessie van Breugel: Exactly. Yeah. And I think sales have a negative connotation because people often think about the door-to-door salesman or woman the sleazy cars, car sales dealers. Back when I was in high school. I liked for one year I did like the door-to-door sales, but of course, like it’s Super cold because I was just walking like a small village in Holland where I’m from and that’s of course like that what gives selling a bad thing because people are just enjoying their dinner because we always went to like dinner time or like the end of the afternoon. And people were not waiting for us. So, they opened the door and there I was like pitching them straight out of nothing. So of course, that’s like the old way of like doing sales. I think has given a bad rep. But as your show is, of course, also like brilliantly named, it’s like Conversational Selling is a different aspect of that because you’re selling something based on like the conversation and like a mutual connection, understanding that you can help this person, or this group of people get closer to where they want to go. [8:37]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, you just triggered a memory when I was in, I don’t know, even think I was in high school, maybe junior high, I went door to door selling cards, and I hated it. I hated it. You know?
Jessie van Breugel: Yeah, exactly. It was not my favorite job either, but it taught me a lot about rejection and just putting in the reps and all those things. [9:00]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Right. You know, it’s funny. I want to talk to you about impressions. And maybe you can tell the audience what an impression is and how to convert them to conversations.
Jessie van Breugel: Yeah, so in a nutshell, impressions on any platform, but let’s take LinkedIn for the example, of course, is someone that sees your content. So that’s the pair of eyeballs that sees your content. And it’s often said that impressions are like a vanity metric. You don’t want to care too much about it. But still, to sell your stuff to your audience, to put it plainly, people need to see it. So, it’s like a fine line between, okay, I need to have people see my things, but I also don’t need to care about too much. And I think the interesting part is where, there is a difference between like, let’s say transactional things, like let’s say consumer goods or like high ticket services as we’re here doing here, because people that see my content for the first time the chances are extremely low that they will buy instantly, because especially with high ticket service, it also needs to be a lot of trust and credibility built. And by just having a consistent output of content, each piece of content will of course move the prospect closer to reaching out to you signing up for your program, or booking a call. And I think that’s why content is such a highly leveraged asset you can build. That’s how I see it because I push out content every day knowing that I see it as like an army of digital warriors. So, they all go out and they travel the world as to say, getting impressions, getting people to see my name, to see perhaps my profile, to get them closer to working with me. So, I think that’s like the short answer to the impressions and how they, I would say tie into getting people to buy your things or to do business with you. [11:15]
Nancy Calabrese: So how do you find the impressions of people who looked at it?
Jessie van Breugel: Do you mean where you can see them?
Nancy Calabrese: Like for instance, if you had 300 plus impressions, how are you going to find those people?
Jessie van Breugel: That’s an interesting question because I currently don’t use any external analytics for LinkedIn because I had my account flagged a few times, so I don’t want to risk it to add additional tools to LinkedIn. So, I’m currently just staring at the native analytics from LinkedIn. Basically, what it shows me is the people who are engaging or who are seeing my post. [12:00]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah.
Jessie van Breugel: But I don’t use it as a steering metric in my business. As I said earlier, sure, it’s nice to see for me that my impressions go up week after week. But I rate the success of my content more by the conversations it starts or the inbound leads it gets me.
Nancy Calabrese: Got it. So, you mentioned that you post every day on LinkedIn. Is there, you know, could people be posting too much content? What are your thoughts on that?
Jessie van Breugel: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. Before I got to LinkedIn, I was active on Twitter. And on Twitter, there was much more frequency. So, tweeting a few times a day is there the norm. When I got to LinkedIn, I kind of adopted that mindset. Understanding it wouldn’t be the most strategic decision because the LinkedIn algorithm works in such a way that the posts have more of like a long tail. But in the beginning, I really understood like, okay, for me to get more data on what works and what doesn’t work, I just need to put in the reps and to see what resonates with my audience. Ideally, it’s like one post a day, which for me works the best, but a lesson that I learned over time and that ties into having LinkedIn or LinkedIn having the long-term effect of a post is that if a post of you does really well, so let’s say it’s like sometimes it’s like it does like three to four times better than other posts, you just want to let it run for a few days because if a post does well, like a week later, it could still reach new people. So, I think that’s where the difference comes into play. And that ties in with what I said earlier, like the good piece of content, I see that as like an army of digital warriors for me just conquering new ground. [14:05]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah.
Jessie van Breugel: Tapping into new audiences and looking for new people.
Nancy Calabrese: Huh. You mentioned that you’ve been flagged. Why does LinkedIn flag accounts?
Jessie van Breugel: Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t have a finite answer to that. I know they are wary of third-party tools. So, I know certain accounts just have issues with it. I’m not saying that’s the case for everyone, because I know a lot of my connections, they thrive with those tools. I think my account just got, I don’t know, marked somewhere in the system. So I’m really hesitant about that. So yeah, I don’t have a finite answer to that. It’s hard to get. clear on the algorithm and the restrictions there. [14:51]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, huh. So, what are some of the common mistakes providers make when creating content on LinkedIn?
Jessie van Breugel: Yeah, so the first one would be right out of the gate, like promotional posts, which ties into the quad, one of the questions you asked me earlier, because especially as a service provider, no one buys from the get-go, right? There needs to be some trust and some credibility built, which is often done to like case studies and testimonials and seeing like, okay, this works. So, I think that’s one of the big mistakes that I see happening. And then on the other side of the spectrum is that when service providers, post consistent content, they stay too much on the educational side of things. So, all they do every time that they post, they educate their audience on, let’s say the benefits of their solution or certain elements or insights from their industry, which is great to a certain degree, because I know that my clients, for example, they’re not looking for more information. Like the internet is full of information. [15:57]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay.
Jessie van Breugel: they’re looking for implementation, guidance, support, accountability, like all these things that are currently missing, because if the information would be the answer to their problem, they would probably already have fixed it. So, I think that is like a big… It’s a minor tweak, but it has a massive impact. So, people that I work with, I’m like, hey, educational content is great, but move towards more authority-building content, and then we can transform it into lead-generating content, because…We’re all experts at what we do. So, I think, as I said earlier, our audience deserves to know it. But we don’t want to educate them only.
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. And that brings me to something that I get a lot of. I get invited to attend events. How do you feel about that?
Jessie van Breugel: To LinkedIn events? Yeah, they’re an interesting thing because even like the, like, let’s say you’re in a LinkedIn event, the comments on the event itself count as comments to the actual posts. So, there’s like an interesting dynamic going on there, but I never really used them that much in terms of my growth. Like I prefer to do like a webinar perhaps on Zoom. [17:14]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah.
Jessie van Breugel: Just use LinkedIn for the promotion and have people then sign up to the link. So that’s been my way of doing that. Plus, the fact that I don’t see that many events on my timeline and within LinkedIn’s inner circles that I’m part of, it’s just like, it’s not really talked about that way. So, for me, that’s a little bit more validation that what I’m doing and what I do to my clients, it’s not the best way of moving forward.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Wow. And you know, and we’re almost up in time, but tell me something that’s true, that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Jessie van Breugel: Hmm, within which context Nancy?
Nancy Calabrese: Maybe with LinkedIn, your area of expertise.
Jessie van Breugel: Yeah, I would say within my spheres, I think more people agree with me on that, but it ties into what I said earlier, is like selling on LinkedIn is not a bad thing. Like I’m pretty like hard on that stance because sure you don’t want to like to be this annoying salesman every day all day. But again, like if you do a great job at speaking into the emotional angles of your target audience, if you hint at a better solution, if you tell them…what better future is possible? And you showed that other people got results through that as well. I do think there is, I do know that there is a lot of potential on LinkedIn because so many people are watching there at this stage. I think we have over 900 million people on LinkedIn and less than 1% of people actively like post content. So, people are scrolling, they’re scrolling and lurking on LinkedIn. So yeah, I would say. If you know, okay, I’m genuinely solving this problem for the right people, that you’re doing a service to those people. And not everyone is part of your audience. So certain people will be tuned out by you taking a more promotional angle. But I think that’s fine. [19:16]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Wow. So less than 1% post?
Jessie van Breugel: Consistently, yeah. So, the stats on that differ a little bit, but less than 1% like post weekly. So, you can assume that even less than that post daily, like I currently do.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Wow, interesting. How can my audience find you?
Jessie van Breugel: Yeah, so the best way of course is LinkedIn. My full name is Jesse van Breugel, pretty Dutch. So that’s why I think a year and a half back I added a purple dot to my name. So, if people just type in my LinkedIn, my first name, Jesse, and then furlough the purple dot, they can connect with me. Or if they’re interested in one of the courses that I’m building, they can go to premiumleadsystem.com. And it has all the content and modules and all the strategies that I discussed today in different forms. [20:12]
Nancy Calabrese: Cool, how do you spell your last name?
Jessie van Breugel: It’s V-E-N-B-R-E-U-G-L.
Nancy Calabrese: You got it. Everyone, take advantage of what Jesse has to offer and make it a great sales day. Jesse, I hope you come back sometime.
Jessie van Breugel: Well, thanks again for having me, Nancy, and I will take you on that.
Nancy Calabrese: All right. Have a good one, everyone. [20:40]
