Need more leads? We’ve got you covered with our LinkedIn gurus! Guest starring Andrew & Rana from The Influencer Project

Andy
Hey guys.

Andrew
Hey, how are you doing guys? Great to be here. Couldn’t think of anywhere else we’d love to be.

Andy
Yes mate. , it’s gonna be a killer today. I’d love you guys.

Ange
So stoked. So I know you two are both huge advocates for trade business owners to get onto LinkedIn. So that said, I’ve got a question for you both. What kind of business opportunities does LinkedIn have for trade business owners?

Andrew
It’s a really good question. I guess LinkedIn is the way we always, and always have considered what LinkedIn is, as it’s the world’s biggest business database. Now, whether it’s professional services, whether it’s trades, if from a tradie perspective, if a trading can consider who their perfect future customer is. In other words, inside of a business that they wanna work with, you know, what is the role of the title? Where do they work? How big are the companies they wanna work with based on how big the invoices they want to get. If you can take a bit of time to think about who you’d love to work with, you can find them on LinkedIn and then you realize this is a database worth grabbing. So the opportunities for tradies is as good as for any other industry in the marketplace.

Ange
So true. Yeah. We’ve talked more before, haven’t we? About uh, how easy perhaps to find like real estate agents and strata managers, cuz it is a, you know, a platform perhaps where they play.

Andrew
Yeah, absolutely. If you think about, if you think about what LinkedIn has been designed for, it’s actually been designed to help us find people because it was set up originally as a resume platform for recruiting. So everybody puts their title on their profile, so, If you’re looking for real estate agents or strata managers, in all seriousness, you search for real estate agent or licensed agent or saying you wanna go for the key decision makers. You’d be searching for the principle of the agency in a location and do a search, and it’ll bring back the total number of profiles that you can now reach out and connect with. It is that easy.

Ange
Wow.

Andy
Yeah, and we’ve been talking with you guys for a while now, and the one thing I want to point out there is that you have some amazing people that are working with you at the moment that are absolutely killing it on LinkedIn. So it’s so cool what you guys are doing.

Ange
So knowing what you just said before, why do you think trade business owners aren’t already taking advantage of LinkedIn?

Rana
I think there’s two reasons for that. You know, the first one, Obviously not understanding the value of a platform, like what is LinkedIn? And two, I think we’re so conditioned these days to think that, uh, especially with trades, it’s very much a press the flesh kind of environment where you meet people, door knocking, those kinds of things, networking of groups. Yeah. Now, right now we’re in an environment where that’s simply not an option. So the mother of invention is a necessity, right? And so when I look at LinkedIn, the reason they’re not taking advantage of it is one, there’s a skillset deficiency. So how do I use it? And then there’s a mindset deficiency, which is that the only way we can get new business is through, you know, meeting people face to face. So when you can get over those two things and realize that the learning curve for LinkedIn is not that high, and then you can actually connect with people in the same way you connect with them offline, online, the opportunity of LinkedIn, it just exponentially grows and it, it’s an amazing, as Andrew said, it’s an amazing database for you to tap into at will in the palm of your hand using your phone.

Andy
Yeah, it’s absolutely huge. And, and I know you guys are doing some incredible stuff, but when you presented to our Lifestyle Tradie members and how they could get their business, LinkedIn absolutely nailed it. You mentioned there were three key principles, and the first one was people won’t engage unless you are active. The second one was, people won’t show interest unless you ask. And the third one was people won’t buy unless you solve, you know? Can you guys break these down for us and explain the importance of each?

Andrew
Well, like the first one is, uh, people won’t engage unless you’re active. You know, we always say when you have a community or a database, I mean, we all have one, right? Whether it’s an email database, yeah. It’s a LinkedIn following, it’s a Facebook group. If you are not active or people don’t see you being a thought leader or an expert in your space or making an offer or educating or entertaining or giving information, then you cease to become an option. So that’s where your journey online starts and finishes. So when you’re active, the question would be then, well, how many people do you know Andrew, do we get that? Say, well, I’ve got big databases, but I dunno how to monetize it. And it’s simply because they don’t ask the question, which is, I have this thing, would you be interested? Or, in the case of tradies, you know, what is something that’s happening right now? Is it bushfire season? Are there a lot of pests around at the moment? Are there developments, like what are the seasonal things that you could put together in content to reach out to your audience and say, Hey, would you be interested in this? Could we help you mitigate this? Could we help you set up this? So people just don’t ask and therefore they don’t get interested because they’re waiting for people to come to them, which is a very painful game. And finally, yes, when someone says, yeah, I’m interested, we’ll figure out why they’re interested and then create a what for their why and, and make the sale. So it’s a journey, but it starts with building a database, engaging that database with offers, showing that you’re an expert in your field, or at least have knowledge that can help someone who are your perfect future customers. And then when they’re interested, learning how to understand why they need you and what you can offer to create the how.

Andy
A hundred percent.

Ange
Yeah. Tradies are, and to be honest, I would say everybody is very much in a position whereby you don’t know what you don’t know. And in talking with trade business owners, we’re forever saying, you’ve gotta get really clear on who it is you wanna work with. So who is that avatar who, what we call our A-Grade clients. And then match what you said about, now talk to them in the language that is important to them and

Andrew
A hundred percent.

Ange
And understand what’s critically important so that you can now start having a conversation. So yeah, it’s really good for the listeners to actually understand how critically important it is to grasp that concept. So I’ve got another question for you from a marketing perspective, cuz we know from a lead perspective how critical this is for trade business owners. How does marketing on LinkedIn differ from other social media platforms like Facebook?

Andrew
Yeah. Wow. That’s a good question. I think the one thing that Rana and I talk about a lot is that every platform is different. You can’t just throw a blanket over the top of social media and try to do the same thing on each platform. Mm. Facebook, the secret to Facebook sits in the newsfeed. The secret to LinkedIn sits in the inbox. Mm. And so if you go to Facebook and create an ad strategy where you have to pay money and then come across and do an ad strategy in the news feed of LinkedIn. There’s not the same level of engagement, so you need to understand what the platform specialization of attracting leads and having conversations and getting engagement is now the beauty about where tradies play. This would be my experience over the last seven years with this that tradies are bloody good at having conversations. Yeah. I don’t know how many tradies I’ve heard and they’ve all got the nickname, you know, have a chat. Yeah. Yeah. , you know, you know, and, and every, every tradie is listening to that has just gone, yeah, well what? Well, that’s what we are. Well, it’s what you are. And as a result, have a chat. You know, don’t wait for people to come to you. And that’s what LinkedIn is, a brilliant platform for. It’s a place to wait for it, start a conversation. It’s not a place to say, Hey, do you wanna buy my stuff? It’s a place to say, Hey dude, I see you’re doing this in the development down in that place. You got any sparkies on site that can help you do this and this? And you know, like the example that, you know, our very first ever spark he worked with over in New Zealand, the very first connection request, um, and this is a full outlier, the very first connection request, the bloke he reached out to was a developer cuz he got very, very clear on who he wanted to go after. And a private message directly to the developer. Got him into a situation where the developer just sacked. Four different electrical contractors and he had nobody and he just picked up a 300 lot subdivision. Wow. You know? And so you go, wow, that’s just changed an opportunity. So all it does is show your, show your human, Rana and I have always said LinkedIn is about being social and conversational. The best place to use that as an example, as a business breakfast, it’s a networking event. So if you think about LinkedIn as the world’s biggest business breakfast, how you talk inside of a business breakfast is the same way you need to engage with people on the platform, in the inbox with direct messaging, Hey, Rana, tell me a bit about what you do, or, Hey, I’ll see you playing this space. Do you do any of that stuff? Short, social, conversational. And that’s the difference. You try to do that on Facebook, it doesn’t work. And so you’ve gotta understand different strategies, different platforms.

Rana
And I, I just think to add to that, which is, is bang on, there’s one very clear differentiator between LinkedIn and every other social media platform is that, and that is that people pay to use LinkedIn. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. So there are memberships, like, it’s like, yeah, it’s a hundred bucks a month, but that certainly qualifies the quality of the type of people that are on the platform and for the purposes of professional networking versus Facebook where people are on there. Sure. But they’re more likely to wanna share socially engaging things like pictures of their pets. What they had for breakfast, when you want to grow your business. Yeah. You know, you, you wanna make sure that the platform that you are on is geared for professional conversations and it gives you your email address and your phone number and the name of the business you work with.

Andrew
Correct.

Rana
So if you don’t have the phone number, you have the domain and you can go directly to them. If you are proactively going out to the marketplace, which you all should be.

Andy
Yeah, and it’s really interesting isn’t a lot of tradies don’t wanna be a pest and they go, I don’t wanna do that. I don’t wanna be a pest, I don’t wanna be in their face. But like you said, it doesn’t mean when you connect with someone, you’re necessarily gonna get work from them. But if you get them at the right time or they’ve been watching you for a while, there’s a really good opportunity for you down the track, isn’t it?

Andrew
I’ll, um, I’ll throw this one to you. Yeah, Andy and that is this, a tradie who doesn’t wanna be a pest is no different to a management consultant who doesn’t wanna be a pest? You know, Rana and I are now in 23 countries, 27 different industries approaching 3000 clients. And the one thing we hear all the time across industries is, I don’t wanna annoy people. All that says, hey, you know, you guys play in a coach. We all play in a coaching space, right? Yeah. And so the one thing that most people need to be humble enough to accept is that they say that because they’re not good at sales. They don’t wanna scare people off. But you know what? That’s sales.

Andy
Exactly.

Andrew
And so, and so, the question that we always put to people is, great, well if you are not, if you’re a bloody great tradie and you’ve never been trained in sales, why don’t you hire somebody in sales to not be offended by asking somebody? Cuz there’s a very big difference between being a pest and annoying the crap outta somebody. Yes. And asking somebody respectfully and politely, do you have interest?

Ange
Yes.

Andrew
Very, very big difference. Yeah. And that’s why you gotta, and it’s,

Andy
it’s just this tradie psyche, isn’t it? A psyche. And they’ve just gotta flip that. And everything in life is, is sales really. And we explain that and every single day, tradies a salespeople, but they don’t like to think that. So it’s just about changing that mindset.

Ange
It’s about like what Andrew was just saying, it’s about human connection. Yeah. Just be you. Yep. If you approach the right person, and you are very conversational when you are writing that one message in LinkedIn, well of course they’re gonna talk back. I loved your point actually about saying that they paid to be there already on LinkedIn. So they’re going to be open to receiving a message inside their inbox. And as long as you are being human and it doesn’t read like you are a sales, you know, like it’s a, uh, it’s a written copy written or whatever by some professional, like it’s really just human to human. Looks like you are doing that project. Did you need a X, Y, Z, you know, landscaper or whatever. They’re, of course they’re gonna write back. It does make sense to me. So that brings me to another question, which is, is there a difference between a personal and a business page? And if so, as a trade business owner, do we need both?

Andrew
Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, we get that all, all the time, don’t we? Yeah. People connect with people. People do business with other people. And so if you’re going to be on LinkedIn, your professional profile is what gives you that personal connection. So when you are personally networking with someone, as we say, it’s a, it’s a P2P platform, not a B2B platform. Yes. Which is P2P. Mm. Person to person. Yeah. But what a business page does is just give you a bit of, it’s just a credibility indicator so that if someone does look at you and then say, oh, what’s that company? And they go to your company page, it verifies that you are a real person who has a real business that does do the things that you say. If anything, however, when we first started, and we work with a lot of people in this same space, they didn’t have great websites. We didn’t have a website for the first year and a half. Our LinkedIn personal profiles were our website. Yes. Uh, and we generated all the business we needed from it. Uh, and the company page came later. I mean, here’s the, here’s the other little tech hack that sits inside of it, is like, think about a business breakfast. If you, I and Ange are meeting at a business breakfast, shake hands, and have a coffee. Tell me, tell me, tell me. Having a business page is like saying, oh, by the way, I’m gonna break this personal connection. Now, you should go across and have a look at my business page. It’s like, why would you, you wouldn’t do that. Yeah. , you know, so what? What do you do? Here’s my phone. Go to my website. Then you finish. Let me know. It doesn’t make sense.

Ange
When you’re ready.

Andrew
If you think about it, everything is a person to person connection. You know, your tradies if they’re gonna get a deal, it’s not because somebody sent an inquiry to the business page and the business page is replying back, saying on behalf of the business. It doesn’t work like that. Yeah. Wherein a person to person environment. The other little text stuff that sits inside of this is if anybody ever goes to your business page, you can’t see who they are.

Ange
Right.

Andrew
LinkedIn can see who they are, which sucks. Yeah. You don’t get any intelligence. If you are ever gonna send somebody somewhere to show them more information about what you do, you send them to your websites, you send them to other Facebook, you send them to YouTube. Why? Because when you send somebody somewhere in the backend, technically you have tracking information set up in the back of your website, so you can then follow those people around who come and see you, and then all of a sudden you’ll target them with ads and other things. So you can’t do that with LinkedIn. So the only place that Rana and I ever talk about mastering is the personal profile so that Brad or Tracy, or Phil or Tony can start a personal connection with the prospect, with the person who ultimately becomes a client.

Ange
Yes. Yes. So their, their personal page, although the business page is great to have on LinkedIn, it’s really just a credibility piece. Correct?

Andrew
Correct.

Rana
Yeah.

Ange
Got it.

Andy
So they say that you only get one chance to make a good impression then that’s especially true in the trade industry. So how can we make a good impression on LinkedIn?

Andrew
Ha Ha Ha…

Ange
Good first impression.

Andy
Good first impression. That’s right. How do you, cause you’re not using your business page, you’re using your personal page, how do you make that first impression? They go, these guys are killing us.

Andrew
Yeah, perfect. Great question. If you ever think about the way LinkedIn wants you to, to set your page up is about talking about, I’m the manager and managing director of who gives a toss, electrical. That’s a great company, by the way. Have a problem. A problem. Well, who gives the toss? So, the issue is that when somebody comes and visits your profile, all they do is see more about you, you, you, you. What’s about me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. That doesn’t give confidence that it’s solving a problem. When a person has a, you know, oh my God, I need a contractor, I need this, I need an aircon specialist. I need uh, whatever it is, they need to go to a profile that actually talks about what you’re the best in the world at, not who you’re the best in the world at, who happens after seven seconds. The first impressions are created in the first seven seconds. It makes me realize I’m in the right place. Safety, fight, flight, or freeze. It’s an Olympic response, but what we’re trying to do is in the first seven seconds, your profile needs to, one, the background picture needs to be a visualization of what you’re the best in the world at. Something to do with a sparky, with words, keep it easy. A professional photo. If you have a photo with your kids, unless they come out on site with, you don’t have the, it’s not a platform for that.

Ange
No.

Andrew
You know that photo needs to represent how you’re gonna turn up at the first meeting. Mm-hmm. You know, if you’ve got sunglasses on, on a surfboard, you’re probably on Facebook. You’re not gonna turn up like that. You know, be presented professionally, but then the wording around your profile needs a person within seven seconds to know I’m safe. I’m in the right place. This can meet my needs. Then they can start having a relationship with you to find out you are the owner of this place, and go from there.

Ange
Yeah, we’re, uh, all visual beings, right? So I can imagine that that photo makes such a huge impact. So, to make this really crystal clear for the listeners, I just wanna use a bit of an example. So, if a trade business target, like a Gregg Klein or target market, was real estate agents, how can these trade business owners find this market segment on LinkedIn?

Andrew
Okay. There are two options. One, you can have if you’re paying, you know, 50 bucks a month, you have a premium account, which is, that’s your premium membership worth. Yeah, that’s, so that’s the, that’s the absolute basic, and inside of that, you can then start on their basic search filter. And like we said before, go after the roles and the titles of the key decision makers, not the people who refer up to the key decision makers. Go to the key decision makers themselves. Yes. So often you hear somebody go, oh, I’m gonna go to a property manager. You go, why? Why don’t you go to principle and then go down. So you think about it from a business business perspective, you are gonna tell as a tradie or coach or whatever, you are gonna tell your team what you want them to do. When the team comes to you, when you’re not thinking about it and they say, oh, I’m thinking about this. You go, yeah, okay, whatever. Come back to me. Later. Gone. Referring down works. Yeah. So go after the principle. I’ll use this as an example.

Rana
It’s harder to go up the chain. It’s then, yeah, easy to go down, top down. You got it. So the way I’d look at it, there’s a search filter inside of the premium that allows you to search location, size of company, roles and titles. So I would select principle as the role or the title. I would, the industry is a real estate industry or real estate commercial. Mm-hmm. , uh, location, just choose your city. Not very good to search suburbs. The geotagging, the geolocation around suburbs isn’t very good. It’s not great. And then the size of the company, once again, if all you wanna do is get $400 jobs, just go after everybody. If you wanna get $40,000 jobs, go after the companies that can afford a $40,000 job. Make sense? So roll and title. Go after the principles, go after real estate. Go after the size of the company, and it’ll give you all the different sizes around headcount. And then location. Do a search. Now, if you want to increase the search probability or, or be able to get better filters, you go to a, a membership called Sales Navigator, which is about 80 to a hundred bucks a month, and then it gives you better options around search filtering, and then you’ll get a more defined result. But at a very basic level, go and get a premium account and search for those four things, and it’ll give you a result of, oh 2,900 in this city. And then guess what? Now it becomes a conversation around, how do I go out to those people?

Andrew
Connect with ’em?

Ange
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah. And that’s where it starts.

Ange
I love how, I love how practical that is. And a lot of tradies say to us, well, there’s always a gatekeeper, like how do we get past the gatekeeper? But in my personal experience, I would say LinkedIn seems to be that one platform that that principle that you talk about for instance, this is the one thing they manage themselves. So yeah, someone else might be managing their emails, even their Facebook pages, uh, like lots of different other platforms. But LinkedIn, I have found it’s the one place that that principal seems to check that location themselves and personally respond. Do you see that for yourself?

Andrew
True. It’s got their face, it’s got their name on it. And the beauty is, is that even if a gatekeeper is measuring and monitoring their account Monday outta Friday, on Saturday and Sunday, Bob is sitting there with their phone sitting on the, sitting on the, uh, couch with their phone, bored outta their mind cuz they’re at their four year old soccer game going, this is the stupidest thing I’ve telling. And, and they’ve now got, and they’ve now got five minutes to sit in their car with a coffee and things and they’re just thinking about themselves. Yes. And they’re inside their own account without a gatekeeper.

Andy
Yeah. Nice hack. So how do you start a conversation with this potential business owner? Like do you just say, Hey mate, it’s Andy here from who gives a toss, electrical, do you need some work done?

Andrew
That’s all you here to do.

Rana
That’s our exact template. . So we plan, but um, It’s funny, you know, so look, you’re gonna connect with someone on LinkedIn and then they’re gonna accept your connection. I think it’s like 30 to 40% of people you try, you reach out to will accept your connection. Right? Okay. The first thing that I see a lot of people do is they, they then start sending pitch messages like, Hey, you know, I’m from, who gives a toss PTY LTD, electrical. And we’ve been known in the industry for 35 years. Our service is, you know, second to none and blah, blah, blah. We get back to you on time, blah, blah, blah. About me, me, me, me, me, me and the person reading it goes, who cares about you? Yes. Yeah. So what we tend to do is we inject a message once someone connects with you, uh, which is what we call an intro message. And an intro message is exactly that, that sounds revolutionary. It sounds crazy. It is unbelievable. It’s, uh, you know, like it’s taken us years to perfect , but in 20 seconds we’re gonna give you access to this coveted intro message.

Ange
Listen up everybody.

Rana
If you look at someone, say you met someone at a business networking event, and they said, You know, Hey, hey, helpful Harry. How are you? And you would say great. Yeah, I’m really good. What do you do? Why are you here? Me, personally, I just, I, I work with developers. We still a, a high level electrical work and security systems. Um, but yeah. Tell me a bit more about you. So what, what Harry’s done is just asked about them, asked a question about them. What do you do? You know, why are you here? And, you know, give us a bit more information about your business. Oh, by the way, I do this, sets a bit of context and sets the seed for what, uh, the future conversation and then says, oh, and again. Yeah. So I’d love to hear more about what you do. So what he’s done is, it’s just, it’s, it’s not pitching anybody, it’s just telling me about you. By the way, he’s a bit about me and can you just tell me about you again? Mm-hmm. And what that does is we found nine times out of 10, the innocent intro message starts high level conversations cuz someone says, actually helpful Harry, we actually are needed. We need it, uh, security systems installed in our new development site. Um, we should probably have a chat. We’re actually working on da da. Um, can you give us a call? And it’s as simple as that. And, and, and I hope to God that helpful Harry helps himself and picks up the phone and calls, you know, Don the developer because then you know Don, Don, Don mate.

Andy
He’s got some names, doesn’t he?

Rana
Yeah. He sleeps, he’s marketing. He sleeps with the fishes. He’s done . Um, but uh, yeah, it’s, it’s, that’s as simple as it is and people think, oh, it has to be harder. Right? Surely you have to send, you know, a, uh, I’ll, I’ll email them or I’ll message back a PDF of what we do and our company brand, and it’s like 17 testimonials.

Andrew
Yeah. Here’s how we help, cut the shit, get to being human, have the conversation, be helpful, and then see what they need. Uh, why they need it, what, what you do and how you can help together. And that’s it.

Andy
And just, that’s the thing.

Andrew
And just accept it.

Andy
Doesn’t need to be so complicated, does it? You know, people freak themselves out before you’re doing it. It’s just very simple how you’re going.

Andrew
Yeah. It, I mean, and it, and it’s no easier than in tradies industries where, you know, the guys and girls know how to chat to people. Like, don’t try to be a market. Just try to be tradies, starting a conversation at a networking event.

Rana
Correct.

Andrew
Hey, dude, what do you do? I do this. Tell me a bit about it. Oh, well I do this and I’ve been helping them for about eight years. What do you do? Exactly, the way a tradie would speak. Yeah. If he and I met at an event, it’s exactly the way we would speak, and that is the secret. So a good conversation on LinkedIn.

Ange
And you know exactly how tradies speak, so you can imagine what those little messages in that inbox read, you know?

Andrew
Oh, and there’d be, and there’d probably be a shit ton of spelling mistakes as well. It’s all good.

Ange
But you know what I love about that, to your point, is that it is so simplistic. I think everyone gets so boggled with what LinkedIn is such this, uh, platform that is so elitism and it’s beyond me and I’ve got no idea how to use it, but I love that you’ve broken down how simplistic this can be if you are really clear about who, who to talk to and just be you just right like a human. So there’s tradies really need to consistently, as, you know, constantly drive new leads, right? So I’ve got a question for you. I know you guys say you have a few steps for creating more leads and customers in less time. If so, what are those steps?

Rana
First thing is find your perfect future customer base as Andrew said, do some searches and every day connect with 20 of them, right? First thing, every time someone accepts a message, within 24 hours, send them an intro message that introduces yourself, asks about them, introduces you again, and then just says, Hey, let’s have a conversation. Would love to see if or how I can help, right? Whether they respond or not, get back to people quickly. If you, if someone comes back with any form of interest, go to their LinkedIn profile, find their phone number on their company site, pick up the phone, call them and start the conversation asap, so the lead doesn’t perish into nothingness. And then if after seven days you haven’t heard back, have a message that goes out to them and says, Hey, listen, I’m working on a number of development sites, installing high level electrical and security systems. Didn’t know if you have anything on the go at the moment. I’ve got some team resources in the area. If you’d like me to swing by and have a look at what you’re doing, let me know. Love to have a chat and see how I can help and literally start conversations. It’s not about trying to close clients, it’s about starting conversations. Conversations are indicators of future sales. The more conversations you have, the more clients you’ll get and you, you know, that starts with just the simple action of connecting with people consistently. Um, and having a system that is consistent so you don’t just use LinkedIn for a week and then don’t use it for a month. I mean, you know, it’s easier. We have this saying it’s easier to keep up than it is to catch up. If you’re gonna start something, just be consistent enough to track the effectiveness of the strategy and the activity over time so you can measure the impact and the outcomes that you’re making.

Andy
A hundred percent. And I, and that, that just makes it sound so simple. And I know a lot of people just complicate things, don’t they? Those tradies, they go, it’s too hard. I can’t do it. I don’t have time. I don’t. But you’ve just gotta find that simple method like you’ve just explained, and you just gotta be consistent, time and time again. And I love it how you guys go, it’s just like a networking event and Yeah. Tradies talk like that every single time.

Ange
Yeah. I know that there’s gonna be so many listeners that are gonna have to press stop, go back and just replay that little bit you just said Rana so that they can be writing down. What did he say? Do this. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Rana
The other, the other thing thing, the other thing to add to is like by the A, if you, if you know, as Andrew said, don’t try to be a marketer. If you read the thing that you’re about to send someone, it doesn’t sound like you. Chances are it will read not like you. So just change it to be conversational.

Andy
Absolutely gold. Guys that has been absolutely incredible now, just before you guys head off, we play a little game here. We ask three questions. It goes for a roundabout, well, we’ll give you up to 30 seconds per the answer. Are you guys ready to play our game with us?

Andrew
Honestly, we just wish this was on video to see what we are wearing right now. .

Andy
Well, we can see it look like you’re in your undies and you’re from Queensland, so you got marone togs on and,

Andrew
But you’re lucky I’ve got undies on if I’m from Queensland.

Rana
Yeah. Mankinis.

Andy
We’re gonna get started now. So, ready, set, go. If you have one piece of advice for trade business owners, what would it be?

Andrew
Uh, if you want to grow your business, there are 22 business days every month. Be consistent going outbound to your perfect future customers every day. And if it’s not you doing it, find someone else who’s got an hour spare day and get them to do it on your behalf. Period.

Andy
A hundred percent. That is awesome. Being consistent is so critical in all marketing activities. How many hours a week do you recommend a trade business owner should spend on LinkedIn? I know you sort of touched on that, but can you elaborate, elaborate on that a little bit?

Rana
At least an hour a day, and that gives you enough time to connect with 20 new connections who are your perfect future customers. Respond to any interest that comes back within 24 hours. And, uh, spend a few more minutes sending out intro messages to those who have connected with you in the last 24 to 70 hours.

Andy
And the interesting thing you say, an hour a day and some of the tradies out there listening are like an hour a day. I don’t have time. But if they actually went through their phone and looked at how long they spent on social media looking at rubbish, yeah, they’ve well and surely got that time.

Andrew
It also depends if you, if you’re looking to grow your business or not, right? So like if you’re not, if you’re not putting any time a week into business development, well your business won’t develop.

Ange
Go bigger .

Andrew
Yeah, that’s, that’s just, that’s science.

Andy
Yeah. Oh, so guys, in your opinion, what is the biggest advantage of creating a LinkedIn profile for your business?

Rana
Uh, one, you’re gonna grow your community. Two, they’re gonna see you more often, more touchpoints. And three, you’re gonna have more conversations than you’ve ever thought possible. And your business is gonna grow because it’s not a referral business. Most businesses are built off referral word of mouth. And if you can make it 20% of your business rather than a hundred percent, your business will explode. LinkedIn will give you anywhere from four to 10 sale opportunities a month at your preferred sale value. That’s what it’ll do.

Andrew
And in words of, uh, a number of people who are in like trades based businesses. We are connecting and talking with people that we would never have been able to connect or talk with, uh, if we hadn’t used LinkedIn.

Andy
Absolutely huge. And, you guys obviously do this for a living. You guys are professional and you’re absolutely smoking it and the people that I know that are working with you are braining it so, get out there, have a dabble by yourself. If you need a little bit of a hand, then talk to these guys. They are superstars.

Ange
I know everyone’s gonna be frantically either updating their LinkedIn profile or they’re gonna be setting up their very first profile. That was awesome. Thanks so much, Andrew and Rana for sharing your amazing insights with us today. That was epic.

Andy
That was awesome guys. Thank you so much.

Andrew
Thank you.

Rana
See you.

Andy
See you guys. Well, what a great way to close off season three. I wanna say a massive thank you to everyone who helps make this show possible every week and to all of our listeners for tuning in.

Ange
But the good news is that season four is actually only a few weeks away. Woo. Andy and I are taking a short break from the podcast studio, but sit tight because we are gonna be back soon with even more amazing trade business insights.

Andy
Well, until next time guys, and because this is our last episode for season three. I’m gonna give you one hell of a hell yeah. 3, 2, 1. Hell yeah.