Get Commercial Roofing Sales Leads Using LinkedIn (The Right Way) With Jimmy & Justin

All right, Jimmy, Justin, welcome to the channel. I'm super pumped to have you guys here today.

Thanks for having me, man. Yeah, thanks. And, uh, what we'll be talking about is using LinkedIn to do what everybody wants. That's make sales, big sales, commercial deals, connect with the decision-makers, connect with, as you guys put it, connectors. So, uh, we're going to dive into the nitty-gritty because everyone's reaching out, "Adam, how do I get into commercial? What steps do I take? How do I sell it?" Everyone's chasing the whales.

So, um, again, both of you, thank you for being here. Uh, before we jump in, quick intros are in order. Jimmy, Justin, let's start with Jimmy. Just so we don't talk over each other. Lead Ballers, you, you are the founder of Lead Ballers, right? Tell the story real quick.

Sure. Yeah, really, it's a, it's a pretty natural progression. So coming right out of high school, I was selling Cutco knives. And that's when, that's, that's, by the way, I'm not, at no point in my story will you hear me say, like, I came from roofing or anything. So that's kind of cool that a very outside perspective. But started selling Cutco knives. So like, I understand the hustle of, of knocking on doors and stuff. And did that for three years. Actually, I was the top performer there. Thought I could make more money applying the same amount of energy to a different industry that wasn't kitchen utensils. So I started, I joined Northwestern Mutual, financial industry. Um, funny story, it's actually how I met Justin. He was one of my prospects. I was messaging him on LinkedIn. So, um, he might be able to get into that. And then while I was also prospecting, the CEO of the fastest-growing company in North Carolina, uh, responded to my message. And we were kind of, I was kind of selling him, he was kind of selling me on working with him and expanding his company. So after telling him no a bunch of times, and then also sending him over to Justin for him to talk to Justin, maybe sell him on working at his company, Justin, I drove down there and toured this guy's laboratory. It's a medical company. And three weeks later, decided that we're gonna leave both of our jobs and move down to North Charlotte, North Carolina. By the way, Justin was my friend now for maybe like four to six months, and we hung out like two or three times. So, so it's kind of a leap of faith for both of us. But then we went from, you know, for what ended up being, you know, uh, a couple years, two or three years, spending every minute of every day together, both working like 12 to 15 hours a day, grocery shopping, going to church, and all this, like, going to networking stuff, all everything. Um, but the important part of that story is we were taking the same processes that I was using in the financial industry to get meetings with people, to to get meetings with doctors and connectors for the medical industry. And easily, in the first year, they created a couple million dollars for the company. And then we started training other people on our team how to do that same approach. And, uh, it's easy to say that, you know, after this second year, we were there, the next, we were there, I created an extra eight figures in revenue for that company. And then questions started coming of people asking me how, how we're getting meetings with people. And started sharing free relief, friends in the company, friends outside the company, in different industries. And I kept getting the feedback that, man, this is way better than what I just paid another person to train my team on three months ago. And I heard that enough times that I started building enough confidence to to build a course, actually. So that way, it's easier for me to help people when they ask for help. And then I started getting paid to speak. Obviously, I ended up exiting that medical company to focus on just growing this consulting business. I held retreats, rent out lake mansions, had people flying from all over the country to hear me talk at them for a few days and learn my process. But I actually got a little frustrated because I found that when I would teach people, even if I would take thousands of dollars from them, they oftentimes would not go back home or go back to their office and implement it every single day. So we built an agency where we would just take the controller and do the work for people, regardless of whether or not we got enough sleep the night before, or had had the discipline, or just had the time that day. We were going to be reaching out every day from our clients' account. Um, and that way, they continuously had constant outreach, playing the numbers game. I, when I'm talking to my roofing clients, I just call it virtual door knocking, right? So it's not a matter of discipline. Like, you are hiring our team to reach out to a certain number of people every single day, regardless of any excuse that sales reps tend to make. So, um, so that's kind of the cool thing. And people are able to leverage their sales team. If you have 10 sales people, well, now instead of just having them knock on doors from, you know, whatever time of, you know, business hours they might be doing that, uh, you can also have them virtually knocking on doors at the same time, or even after hours. So, uh, built the agency. I mean, it's been a couple years since, two and a half years probably. But really, it's January of last year that, uh, it was just me and two other people. And now there's, you know, about 30 people in our company ever since we built out this done-for-you model. But yeah, that's kind of how it all happened. I turned, I was a top-performing sales guy and turned my process into a product and started offering to people.

Absolutely. Just awesome. And just for everyone tuning in, we're not going to be sitting here telling, saying to go buy anything. What we're going to be connecting with is is learning the actual strategies that Jimmy and Justin have developed and refined, have people using. So everyone tuning in can actually take this material and start using it. Of course, there will be contact information. If you click the link in the video or podcast description to get in touch with them, you are welcome to. In fact, I encourage it because, uh, leveraging time, as we know, is our limiting factor in our earning potential. And if you can automate or delegate these, uh, income-producing activities, your return is going to be crazy wild. So fantastic. Let's, eight figures in revenue is what you grew. I love that you focused on getting meetings. As we get into this, because I'd love to, to get to those like tangible, put-it-to-use tactics, before that, I think there's some groundwork we need to cover. Justin, I'm gonna turn to you. If it's okay, because you and I talked about this when we were on Armando Cox's, um, uh, podcast and talked about the difference between physically door-knocking. So, Jimmy, you mentioned digital or virtual door-knocking. We go right into it to a pitch pretty quickly. But what changes when we're doing this digitally? Justin, can I, or is that a better question for Jimmy?

Yeah, no, I think, I think kind of wrong with it. It kind of dives into a little bit of the philosophy behind Lead Ballers, what we do. And also, huge shout out to Armando. How do you say his last name again, Adam? Armando Dick-Jaycox? Is that how you pronounce it? Anyways, log short, he has an awesome, awesome contractor show. And, um, anyways, check it out. But, uh, yeah, on our side, it's that, you know, in the digital prospecting world, which you have to be really good at, the world is slowly moving towards, actually, even slowly, it was very fast. And you adjusted, or you adapted, or you died as a company. Um, is that you have to be careful of how you come across. It's a completely different relationship-building technique. And so, and a lot of platforms, you have to be careful of is if you connect with someone, and let's just keep it to LinkedIn, because it might make it as simple as possible. And then you send them a bunch of links and say, "Hey, let's connect, and I want to talk to you," and yada, yada, yada. Uh, they, they're not only mad, but it crushes them ever wanting to work with you ever again. Because who are you to know if you need to help me or not, right? Like, first off, if you're good in sales, you understand that you might be able to help them, and you might not. And at the end of the day, you have to build that rapport. There has to be a process of hyper-targeting to make sure you're getting in front of the right people to protect your time. Or else, and this can really crush your time, then it's how do you nurture relationships with the right people that you're targeting? Meaning, interacting with their content, loving on them, making them feel like you are a radical fan, that you are part of their community, or what they're doing, and you believe in them. And then you reach out in a really custom way. Jimmy and I talk a lot about this book called The Purple Cow. But it's like, how are you the purple cow? The person who stands out? Who's standout? Their outreach stands out. Standout reach is what we talk a lot about. And so you reach out to them in a customized way that they will never get ever again. Then they know that if you do that, if you put that much time and effort into before you ever know them, then you're gonna totally blow them away. And they, they almost can't sleep at night if they don't meet with you. So if you can do that and do it at scale, or automate it, that's when things get really exciting. And that's what you have to do in the digital prospecting world, or else you look like everyone else and you get a bunch of no's, and it hurts your brand.

Yeah, it's, I'm really glad that we touched on this philosophy because it's very difficult. Being in direct sales, door-to-door sales, we're so used to being able to knock the door, have, start our conversation, transition to our pitch, and have a one-call close. And when we transition to the digital landscape, and I, I want to repeat this for everyone to really let this sink in, it is a different approach and different strategy. If you go into that, kill, like, how many times have you reached out on LinkedIn, or someone connects, and then all of a sudden, I remember, I've even scrolled up, like, you literally just sent me a storybook. You are wasting my time. I don't know you. It's clearly, you saw, there's a bullseye on my back. You can sell me something. There's this pitch. I don't care about the free crap you want to give me. I don't care about what you've done. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me. Click to book a call. It's like, shut up, dude. Do you know what you're doing? But it doesn't work the same from in-person to to the digital world. And this is again, something that we, we need to consider. And patience. You mentioned connecting, engaging, supporting them, and then escalating from there. So now we got that groundwork out of the way. Can we get into some tactics about the commercial side? Because I hear this all the time, "Adam, help me land commercial deals. Who, what, what do I do? How do I get in front of the right people?" So there's some, some fundamentals here of who that decision-maker is. What I'd love to do is just turn over to you guys. If I just came to you and walk me through it, and I say, "Hey, Jimmy, Justin, I'm ready, ready for some commercial sales. What do I do to get started?"

Yeah, I mean, I got four, I got four steps if you're ready for me to start firing away. Yeah. So, and if anyone's listening, when I teach this, it makes, it's a good idea to have like, maybe at least four sheets of paper. And just at the top of each one, I'll give you the title for each one. But the first, the first step is actually profile optimization. And what Adam was just talking about with the difference between digital door-knocking and actually physically door-knocking, one of the things you have to remember is that in some ways, it's harder to get people to respond because, you know, anyone that's knocked on doors that's listening to this, they have had people slam the door in their face. But it takes a lot more courage, or someone's like, a much meaner person to slam a door on a real person's face than to do it digitally, right? It's, we talk like the social media, social media warriors and stuff, people that have so much courage to be mean to people when they're on the internet because they want to face the consequences of it, right? Well, that's, that's, that's what's happening when you're prospecting online. So you have to keep that in mind. And when it comes to your profile, that's why it's even more important for you to humanize your profile and for you to not just look like a headshot blending in with everybody else. Now, I will say that there's people that defy the odds. I want to give a shout out to, um, to Walker over at Cornerstone, who had one of the worst profiles. You know, he is the CEO of a really badass roofing company. And, and he, he listed himself as like a project manager, had this like frat boy picture from college, I think, um, as his picture and stuff. But he's still got great responses. So sometimes there's people that defy the odds, especially when you have a great offer. Um, and done is always better than perfect. So don't let, you know, perfection slow you down from actually just taking action. But if you're going to be working hard, if you're going to be taking action, you might as well make sure it's the most efficient. That's what an optimized profile does. So if you're taking notes on profile optimization, the two words that come to mind, one of them is authority, the second word is authenticity. So those are the two messages that you want to come across when you're creating your LinkedIn profile. People will go ahead, you want to tear mine apart? Are you about to pull it up? Yeah, is that cool? Awesome. Yes, please. All right, here's my LinkedIn. Great plug. This is perfect. Well, no, I, I mean, it's, it's easy for people like authenticity and authority are concepts. And if we pick mine apart, people will be like, "Oh, that's where that goes, and that's where this goes." So, but yeah, tell me what to expand, where to click, and just chew into it unfiltered.

All right. Yeah, let's start with the foundation. Then I'll, I'll, I'll use your profile as the example for those foundational things. So remember, authority and authenticity. Every, every, I'm going to give you four sections of your profile. The top, the, the one section is your banner. So the background picture, that's, that's, this is one area for you to, um, communicate either authority or authenticity. Another one is your profile picture, right? That circular picture. Another one is your headline, which is the stuff below your name or next to your name. And then the, the fourth big opportunity is going to be your about section or your summary. And you'll scroll down a little bit right here. Your about section. Yep. Yeah. So those are the four key areas. Obviously, there's a lot of other areas on your profile. But when people are checking you out, right? And also keep in mind that there's really two times that people are checking you out. And I'll write that down. When it's when you send them a connection request, and two, when you send them a message. In both these things, you're kind of asking them for something. You're asking for them to accept, accept the connection request, or for them to respond to your message. And both times, oftentimes people will go to your profile, check you out, see if they know where this conversation is about to go before they have to respond. So they don't get themselves into a conversation they don't want to be in, right? And we can all relate to that, right? People are smarter than someone on Facebook. You know, someone reached, like, "Who is this person?"

100 percent. Yeah, sorry to interrupt, Jimmy.

Oh, you're, you're fine, man. Uh, and please, you'll have to do that as I, because I'll steamroll. So feel free to like, raise your hand and interrupt, uh, as I'm doing this. No idea. Uh, all right. Yeah, so the four key areas where you can communicate authority or authenticity. So I think for you, especially, you, Adam, if you can pull off authority, then definitely do it. And a big area of opportunity is that banner. Because I know for you, man, you're next month, I'm going to see you. You're going to be speaking at RoofCon. I'm sure that's not your first time speaking in front of a group of people. And then my guess is that there's probably a picture of you doing that. And that is something that communicates authority, right? And authority, the reaction that you get from authority is, and keep in mind, people are going to be seeing your profile when you're requesting to connect with them, or you're asking them for something in a message. So they see that there's crowds of people that listen to you speak. Well, then it's, it's one of those things where, like, there's FOMO. If they don't respond to you, like, you look like an influential person, and they might raise their level of influence by having a relationship with you, right? It looks like they wouldn't be the first person in the world to say yes to having a conversation with you. There's that social proof. No one wants to be first. So make sure people understand that they're not the first person to ever say yes to having a conversation with you. So a salesperson might want to take use, uh, create an image with some reviews in there, customer interactions, maybe being on a roof with an adjuster, or anything of, um, uh, I don't know, I'm trying to think, like volunteer type work, or in front of a group of people. Is that, am I, am I on the right track?

Yeah, so there's a variety of ways to flex the, uh, the social proof. Uh, volunteer stuff, you know, where you, your, everyone's picking up a shovel and taking a picture of them building a house or whatever. Uh, there's, uh, you and your team. I'm sure you and your team have taken a picture of you guys having fun in the past. There's, there's any time. I, I've, I've consulted people on this before, and I'm like, "Hey guys, do you ever have like a morning powwow where it's like five of you guys talking?" Uh, well, have, have someone in your next meeting take a picture of you when it's your turn to talk in that conversation. And there might be three other people, but it looks like you're like consulting that room, you know? So there's a lot of ways to get the job done. Now, if you can't, if you can't like fake it till you make it, even then, no big deal. Then just double down on the authenticity. Now, whereas authority makes, gets people to respond to you as more like fear-based, fear of missing out. The authenticity is more like love-based. It's like, "Wow, this is a real human being that I can relate to." And it becomes really hard for you to, uh, to not respond to them when they're not just a digital pixel, they're actually like a person that has feelings and a family and all that stuff. I've had clients have, um, pictures of their family, like their family portrait as their banner. Which most people would assume is a big no-no on LinkedIn because it's supposed to be all graphs and charts and stuff like that, really boring. Well, the reality is, when it comes to like content related, the most engaging content on LinkedIn is still like cat and dog videos. Um, except someone might call you out for posting it, but still, people, it gets people going. So yeah, so basically, what I'm trying to do is capture like, what's that, what is the first impression I would make if I were walking up to someone's door, dropping in their office, if I could design how they'd feel from the minute they met me? In fact, the minute's too long. From the first few seconds they met me, that's the feeling that I want to capture and build into my profile. Is that, am I, am I processing this?

Yeah, you can probably do a, what's cool is you can probably do a better job here, right? Because you can show, you can't, when you're walking to someone's door, you might be a nobody, you might be a celebrity, but that person has no idea. But when you're on their LinkedIn profile, you can show that you have a really good reputation, right? So like, double down on any advantage that you can when you're on your profile, right? And show that the keyword is social proof is a big one. And, and, and what you can do as well as flip-flop authority and authenticity. So if your banner is all about authority and you speaking on a stage in front of a group of people, then in your profile picture, maybe it's like you giving your son a piggyback ride. You know, that's cool, just to be like larger than life, but still a human. So let's hit this headline. I mean, I've done a little bit of LinkedIn research and, and I know that this is one of the first things people read. So what needs to go in a headline and how could mine be better? Um, and something that each person, as they're creating a profile, has to assess is whether or not the person that they're going to be reaching out to is getting reached out to by other people that sell the exact same thing that you sell. Because if they are, then you do not want to make your profile like a billboard that you're just like, "Everyone else that has been spamming their inbox." You might have to go a little bit more incognito, right? And just double down on like, "Hey, I'm Adam. I'm a business owner. Uh, I'm a great guy." Something I tell people all the time is, think of the things that you have in common with your target market and showcase those things on your profile, both personally and professionally. That's why the, you know, giving your son a piggyback ride kind of thing goes a long way because, you know, I just had my son last month, so like, I, I can relate to that person so much more now. And they're a real human being. So you can kind of make, now, if you have, if you're pioneering something that's brand new, or maybe it's like the beginning of coronavirus and you're selling masks or something like that, and you know that everyone you're reaching out to is looking for a mask vendor, then yeah, publicize the heck out of that, right? Because people, people are looking for your service. Or you have something that they haven't seen before, or that they're going to roll their eyes when they see it. But if you're, if you're one of many people selling what you sell, then you just want to make sure that you're not losing an opportunity to have a connection right at the starting gate.

Gotcha. One other quick note here on there too, Adam, is that a lot of times, I would think about, if you were your prospect, and they came to your profile, what objections would they have? And then reverse engineer your profile to disarm them of all those objections. So if I'm in the lead gen space, and I know I'm, I'm one of 714 people who reached out in the last 14 days, then I might focus a lot more on my cover photo being the company to show that we've got 30, 40 employees, which makes us so much bigger than everyone else. So it overcomes that objection of, "Is this guy just working in his parents' basement? He's just trying to make some side money?" So we've, we've figured out these are the four or five objections. So they're gonna gravitate more to an authority, human being on lead gen, because I know that that's gonna be their objections. Where it might be different for each person. So just take that into account too, as you're building it out.

Gotcha. That's super helpful. So, Justin, and I don't want to, um, go too, or spend too much time on this, only because we have so much ground to cover. But I just want to summarize and then if there's any, like, key points, Justin or Jimmy, that you want to share, please do let's chime in and, and close that chapter until we move to step two, because I know we have three more steps. So, big one is your, your cover image, your profile image, and if you're listening on the podcast, unfortunately, you're missing the screen here. The headline is that little blurb that shows up beneath your name. And I've heard of various different techniques or strategies to use this. And then the about section, uh, which is kind of like a summary as well. So, is there anything within those that you want to leave us with as actionables before we transition to the next step of the process?

I think there's some good actionables there. The, I think to conclude, though, just remember to put yourself in the shoes of the person that you're prospecting. We all get pitched things every day. And, you know, and, and just keep in mind that they're, when they're going to be seeing your, your profile, and like, at what times. And if, if you're one of a thousand people pitching the same thing that you just want to make sure you're doubling down on, like, "Hey, I'm a business owner too. Hey, I'm a dad too. Hey," and then with specific with the headline, some people will put founder, vertical line, you know, "Roofing coffee connoisseur," right? Yeah, something, something quirky about their personality, or something like that, just to, uh, just to show that they're a fun person and show some personality. So just put yourself in the shoes of the person that you're prospecting. Be a human.

Yeah, be a human. Yeah, maybe I need a picture of like my dogs out there. Me and I'm like, "Absolutely." Adam, on yours, I would keep the cover photo. Profile picture could maybe be you speaking on stage in front of tons of people. You cover authority with those top two. And then your title could be you being a human, right? Sales, obs, you know, like, lover, whatever. Roofing obsession, coffee lover, dog lover, like, whatever. But I think you could marry the two, authority at the top with the genuine human being in the title. And then you got it all.

I wrote it all down in my thing. Pro photo on stage, title human eyes. Change it to headline. Take it. Thank you, by the way. That's, I don't want to say that when I'm looking down. I got my muscles.

So fantastic. So that, that summarizes step one, which is profile optimization for authority and authenticity. And by the way, if anyone who's tuning in, the far snapshot, fast action results snapshot, I'll have this typed up, sent to your inbox. All right, let's move on to step number two. Jimmy, what do we have for step number two?

Yeah, step number two is targeting. So the main thing I want to, I want you to keep in mind with targeting is it's okay to be very specific in the in the beginning. Everyone uses the example of Amazon starting off selling books, saturated that market, then expand, expand, expand. Do the same thing here. Start really picky about whatever your market you're going after. So obviously, you know, before this call, Adam and Justin and I were discussing whether we're going to talk more about people leveraging this to build sales teams, people leveraging this to get connectors, like realtors and stuff like that, or whether we're going to use it to go straight to the decision-maker with commercial opportunities. And we'll, we'll use the commercial opportunities as the example for this. So, uh, I'll give you guys some like real good actionable ones right now. So, uh, when you guys are searching people on LinkedIn that could lead to a commercial sale, oftentimes those job titles include, you ready? So those job titles include warehouse manager. So warehouse manager is one of them. Factory manager is another one. And I'll show you guys where to go to like plug these in too. Um, as a matter of fact, I'll pause real quick. Go ahead and, uh, and Adam, go where it says "People," "Warehouse Manager," and "People." Go and click that. And then it'll say "All Filters." Connect there. We go. Right. Scroll down to job titles. Did I miss it? No, very. Yeah, so yeah, title. Yeah. So that's where I would put "Warehouse Manager," comma, "Factory Manager," "Facilities Manager." And I'm a missing Adam, and I'm right there. Right there in the keywords. Second one from the bottom. Front. There it is. Gotcha. Gotcha. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, I see. Production Manager. So any of these things. Oh, Plant Manager. That's another good one. Any of those job titles indicate that this person isn't, is responsible for a very large roof. So, so that's how you can like hunt whales. Other people have used it for property managers and connecting with those people. I've had some clients leverage it to get in front of HOAs and stuff, which is, it's pretty rare that someone is like hustling their, the fact that they're like, they run the HOA on LinkedIn. But hundreds or even thousands of people do it. So those are big opportunities as well. But, you know, I, I'm drinking out of my big ass fans mug. And, and that's the commonality that they have with all my, all of our roofing clients, is they're going after those people that are in charge of, in their case, very large ceilings, which oftentimes have very large roofs. So if you find a hundred thousand dollar ceiling and multiple of them, you probably have an insane amount of square feet roof. Yeah. Yeah, right.

So that's super helpful. And, and one thing, if I may, Jimmy, and, and just tell me to pause if this doesn't make sense, but so many people just reach out and it, like, overwhelms me. Like, "Well, I just want to get into commercial." So they just feel like if it's the big roof, it's theirs. But there's specialty products, there's knowing your audience, there's like the guy that works on HOAs, there's the guy that works on multi-family, the guy that works on apartments. And I like when you said being specific. Like, if you don't know who that is yet, it's hard to, that's like going fishing and just being like, "Well, what bait are you gonna use?" "I don't know, just try like, everything." It's like, "What kind of fish are here?" "I don't know, just fish. They, something will bite." It's like, no, it doesn't work like that. You want to be efficient. Put the right bait. Know, know what, what kind of fish are in the area. Know what they're gonna bite on. And I know I use the fishing example all the time, even though I don't fish. But is that, that's kind of the concept, right? Just being able to, to know who you're, who you're going after, so to speak, in terms of relationship development.

Yeah, I think, I think there's a platform, Adam, where, uh, you can buy Sales Navigator, which we'll talk about later on. It's not really that expensive. But you could go after the title "Property Manager" and then use a lot of keywords of, you know, multi-family, yada, yada, yada. So what you could do is, you just can keep diving deeper and deeper. So you grab the title, you grab the geography, you grab the zip code, you can do within a certain radius, and then use keywords to double down on people who are in the exact part of the industry that you want, right? So there's just a lot of ways you can go eight layers deep to get the right people.

Excellent. I'm gonna zip it. Target. Yeah. And we're actually, this is like a very simple step. Um, so it's, once, once we're done, it's kind of set and forget it. But, uh, to Justin's point, the more specific you are in this stage, the more custom you can make your message later on. And just like, fire away. So something that, you know, Lead Ballers does as a service is we'll have our clients create one like video or one audio message so that we can send it at scale for a lot of people. So we usually tell them, "Hey, if you're going to go after warehouse managers, go after warehouse managers in North and South Carolina." So when we reach out to people, we can say, "Hey, what's going on? You probably noticed I've been checking at your profile the past few days. So that you're a warehouse manager in the Carolinas. And we actually just worked with another warehouse manager last month to get X result." And then you ask for a meeting. But it just allows you to be more specific. And the more specific you are, the better you also understand what they care about. And that's something I'm sure Adam understands really well, which all these job titles, all these people that do certain things, they have different motives. And, and you might be selling roofs, but the real problem might be profitability, or it might be like, whatever it is. And you can speak to whatever those things are they care about, and how your solution helps them with that. Yeah. So, yeah, which is that you can downtime and liability. Go ahead, Justin.

Yeah, yeah. And then what you can do is you can send, just like Jimmy said, you could have one video that you send to a lot of people, and they feel like it was custom to them. Because at the end of the day, like I said, you want to make sure that they feel like they're the only human being that ever got it. So if you don't have time to do a cust, like one video for three minutes to a bunch of different people, well, a lot of times we'll do it for you. But if you still want to do it at scale, make it so targeted in your video or audio, so targeted that you can send out to 300 people in that same position, and they still feel like you're talking to them. And that will help you save time. So sometimes more niche and more niche on your copy can get you really good results and save your time. Because you ultimately want that prospect to say, "Hey, that's just like me. They really, you know, that you want, you want that connection." So dig that.

Awesome. So anything else on the step two, which is targeting?

Yeah, last, last thing, which is just really, kind of, you create a list. Now that you've created a list, it's all about, you have to send them connection requests, right? So, uh, I do want to be clear that LinkedIn is experimenting with their rules as far as how many connection requests you're supposed to send in a day. And for some people, there are really people out there that are sending like 50 to 100 per day. And then there's other people that if they send 10 in a day, every day for a few days, then LinkedIn's gonna give him a warning, you know? And sometimes it has something to do with how many connections you currently have already. Um, but I'll just, my, I have people on our team that we're doing this process with. And, um, and these are like brand new profiles. They're sending it like 10 to 15 connection requests per day. Now, part of what's helping them, uh, is that they're actually getting a really high response rate. Because they're actually going to the person's profile, mentioning, "Hey, saw the article about Top Five Reasons to Work with Cornerstone Construction. Looks like you guys are killing it. Really happy to connect with you." Obviously, that message wasn't sent to a thousand other people. And just by, just by that person knowing that that, your outreach isn't meant for a thousand other people, you've already separated yourself from the pack. So, um, so that's another thing you can do to get a higher connection rate. And the higher connection rate is actually the more, uh, connection requests you can send. Because they don't want to see spam, I'm assuming.

Yeah, 100%. That makes sense. I, I can't stand with the connection requests that are like, "I am connecting with leaders in the industry, and I would love to." I'm like, "What? What are you talking about?" Dude, how many thousands of people have you sent this to? So like, make it personal. Which is funny, because that goes right in line with the whole SLAP formula that I teach at the door, which is about complimenting the homeowner, say hi, break the ice, usually a compliment, mentioning something on their property that captures your attention, to put the middies, and be a human, you know, and you're not just a robot there to sell. So really, like that. Shall we slide into step number three, please?

Yes. So step three is creating familiarity. So this is an important step because, as, as Justin, as Adam just mentioned, um, what most people do, if you log into your LinkedIn, most of you guys that are listening probably created a LinkedIn and just don't really visit that much. But then when you do visit it, you see your inbox is full with people that you've decided to accept their connection requests, and 45 seconds later, they have a bot that sends you, "Hey, auto-populated name, thought you had a really interesting looking profile, three paragraph sales pitch, calendar link." And, you know, maybe if you don't have a huge target on your back and you can make a $1,000 purchase, then, then you know, that might work on you or something. But when you are capable of making a $50,000 decision, $100,000, $500,000, million dollar plus dollar decision, you have a lot of people all over the world that want to have a meeting with you. And so you can probably imagine, they have seen everything. So in step four, we're gonna cover another way that you can, you can stand out. But before you even send a message, it's not even like what you send them, it's how do I make sure that I'm creating familiarity with them before I send a message so that the first time they see my name and face is not when I'm in their inbox. So best way to do that, obviously, content is one of the ways that you can do that. And content's great. The only reason that we don't even offer that as a service right now, and someday we will, is that it leaves it to chance. I want to make sure that I'm showing up in the number one place across any social media platform that people are addicted to, and that is that little red dot, their notifications. So if I know that if I do something to show up in someone's notifications, that there's a very high likelihood that they're going to see that because people always click on that little red dot. Then it's just a game of, "Okay, well, what are all the ways that I can show up in someone's notifications?" Right? So I'll give you guys a few right now. One of them, and it's common sense, reacting to someone's post. And it's a little bit, a little bit extra if you don't just thumbs up the post, but you heart it, or you clap, or like, LinkedIn has different reactions than Facebook and stuff. But, like, you can do that. You can also comment on someone's post. So you can, uh, you can do a very generic comment like, "Hey, great work, keep it up," when they post a team photo. Or you can, um, you can actually create dialogue with them in their comments before you send them a private message, which is great because they look really bad if they don't respond to you to a public post. So I've leveraged that for clients before. We actually have a client that works in the same building as us. And I said, and, and I said, "Hey, man, give me your phone real quick." Went to his number one prospect on his entire list, went to that guy's recent post history. And he was like, Chief Nursing Officer at, uh, at a big hospital here. And I just reacted to the guy's post and I said, uh, uh, "Hey, man, how long did it take you guys to complete that?" Because he was sharing about something that their company did. And he responded to the post. And then he saw my client's message from months earlier, messaged him back and said, "Hey, man, sorry for just seeing this. Here's my cell number. Give me a call." Wow.

Right. This, this is awesome. I love the overlap. Justin, you and I talked about this called the friendship formula. Creating familiarity. So this Jack Schafer wrote a book, he's an FBI agent, called The Like Switch. L-I-K-E. Proximity, frequency, duration, and intensity. How close are you? How often are you there? Uh, what did I say? Frequency, duration, intensity, proximity. And when you work these, it's the same thing that we teach in the neighborhoods. Create familiarity. That way, when people interact with you, there's, there's a cold interaction. "Who the heck is this person?" Too, "Oh, I recognize them." And that's the big shift. So I love that. So you're using this digital creating familiarity and, um, showing up in the notifications. It's a digital neighborhood, right? It isn't really taking the same psychology, you just gotta show it in different ways.

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that talks with your name on it at your neighbor's house, many times prior to them knocking, you knocking on their door, likelihood of them at least being open-minded to a conversation is much higher. I love that. And I love the tips about showing up in the notifications. It's a very simple way to break it down. Adam, Adam, one quick tip. Just make sure that you're not the guy that likes, likes, likes, endorses, comments, sends a message in like, five seconds. Because then everyone knows that you're just playing the game. There's no authenticity, right? Yeah. So, so maybe that on Instagram. Yeah, yeah. It's like, "Did you just like every post I had since 2016?" So, uh, so anyways, just be creative with it. Maybe have a couple likes and posts and go back and forth the next day. Come back in. In our system, we nurture the relationship multiple days, every 24 hours. Um, but that's because it's a little more systematic so that it feels natural. Like you're just, every day you're engaging with their content, you love it. So just don't take it to such an extreme that it looks fake.

That's awesome. So think about like dating. You're not gonna go be like, "You have beautiful shoes on. I love your eyes. Your hair looks great. You know, your dog's cute. By the way, I saw you repainted your house. Looks awesome." And now you're like, "Okay, this is getting creepier." So you got to play cool, like you're dating, right? Yeah. And, you know, and I always, you've heard me say it multiple times already, but, you know, done is always better than perfect. So, you know, what, what our team does for our clients, like the whole reason our name is Lead Ballers, is what Justin just said. We actually spread out our engagement with them. Where we put them at bat. When they agree to connect, when we like a post, we put them at first base. When we comment on a post, put them at second base. You know, endorse them for a skill, which is the third thing I was about to say, put them at third base. Then send message, right? So, um, so we organize like that. But if that, if all that organization is going to keep you back from just doing it, then just do it, right? Done is better than perfect. Uh, the endorsing thing is actually my favorite because oftentimes, uh, that will actually get them to message you. So before I had any, or I'm not the most organized person. I had to put a lot of organized people around me. Before I had any of those people around me, or any base system or anything, what I would do honestly, every day, is I would endorse like 50 people every day. And know that a percentage of those people are going to message me back saying, "Thanks for endorsing me for leadership," or something. Because what happens is, you go to someone's profile, you endorse them for a few skills, leadership, public speaking, roofing. And then they get a notification says, "Jimmy Coleman just endorsed you for roofing and two other skills." And then there's this big call to action button that says, "Say thanks." Well, they click that button. Automatically, LinkedIn will.

Have a message started with you and them auto-populate. The message is already typed out so that all that person has to do is click send. So the way I thought about it was, "Wow, if I endorse 50 of my A+ prospects every day, my, that's 50 times a day, my prospects are two clicks away from beginning a conversation with me." So that I don't even have to open the door myself. Cookie crumbs, right? Yeah, okay. Yeah.

So like that, that was, uh, and then it was just like, "Once they would message me and say, 'Thanks for enjoying me,' 'Hey, sure thing. By the way, notice that you blah blah,' and then go into my thing." But it was conversation at that point. They were the ones that made the awkward step of, of saying something to me. And it's rude if I don't respond back, and then they feel obligated to have to engage in conversation because they started the conversation. It really is the best, the best interaction you can do. Obligation. Real, real good. I dig it.

Um, awesome. So we're three steps into this framework. Fourth step, lay it on me. Fourth step is what I call stand outreach. So there's outreach, but then there's outreach that actually stands out from what everyone else does, right? So stand outreach. Um, so withstand outreach, it's somewhat of what to say. It does make a difference. Everyone's always assuming that it's all about the copywriting and stuff, and copywriting is valuable, um, in order for the message to land. But something I know from hanging out with my roofing friends is, uh, it's all about like, how many times did someone at least just open the door, right? You just want to get the chance for them to open the door because you could suck, but if you have more people open doors, then you'll, you'll beat Michael Jordan in free throws, right? That's the whole, the whole analogy.

So, um, so how are we going to get them to open the door? Well, we already have an advantage by having shown up in their notifications multiple times. But to take it a step further, it's not just about what, what you send or like what you say, but it's how you send it. So, not, and, and again, if you are truly doing this yourself, manually sending out messages to people, then make sure that people can tell. Because there are a thousand LinkedIn auto-generated bot companies I could probably name that will send spammy typed-out messages to your prospects. So how do you separate yourself from them? How do you get the person to know that this was truly meant for them? Even if you, because honestly, even if you go to their profile, point out something that they put in their summary, sometimes with me, you have half of a second to prove to me that this is something I actually want to read, right? And so just by being typed out, you might lose me.

So getting to the point here, try these two things. One of them is an audio message. Most people on LinkedIn don't even know that's possible. You can only do it on your mobile phone. I didn't even, I didn't know that was it. It's just like on your iPhone, you have to actually press the button and hold it and speak into your phone, and you can only do it on your phone and not your laptop. So, ah, that might be it. I refuse to have any social media platforms on my phone. There you go. Yeah, I gotta add it now.

So, so yeah, you can, instead of typing out what you're going to say, you just speak into your phone. That way they actually hear personality too. First off, they see that their inbox, most people have not received one of those before on LinkedIn. And so you're the first person to the race, and they're gonna have, they're gonna check it out, right? Just because it's something different and it's a pattern interrupt. Uh, and then they get to hear your voice. They know that again, it wasn't meant for a thousand other people because Leadballer is actually the only company in the world that has the ability to to do that at scale. So it's not a thing where people like, "Oh, great, another automated audio message." Um, we're the only company in the world doing that. So it's, it's not, it's not common. And, uh, and yeah, and, and you get to just show your human and your personality, all that stuff.

The other way you can send a message too is through a video message. And I would recommend mixing it up. But with the video message, same deal. Has to be from your phone. You point the camera at you. If you're watching this podcast or this interview, I would recommend looking at screen right now. And when you do send a message, write the person's name on a sheet of paper or on the whiteboard next to you and say, "Hey Adam." So that way, and make sure it's there for the first few seconds of, of that video. That way, when they open up their inbox, they're not gonna see a typed-up crappy message that everyone else sends. They're gonna see a video. And in the thumbnail of that video, their name is gonna be on that sheet of paper. So that way they know that it is truly meant for them, right? And so again, unless you're using Leadballer, we have technology that skirts around that. But, um, but they click on play on that video, and they'll, they'll see the video of you. You're in the name, and then you just go into the same pitch. The copy can be the same thing every time.

Now, I can give you guys copy that's pretty effective. By the way, normally it's, it's the same thing for most of our clients, just insert whatever case study here. But it's, "Hey, what's going on? You probably noticed I've been checking out your profile the past few days. Saw that you're a fill in the blank in the blank area, and we actually just got X result for another fill in the blank in the blank area last month. Obviously, I have no idea whether we could do the same thing for you, but what do you think about just maybe connecting a call, 15 minutes next week, and see if there's an opportunity for us to work together someday?" Very simple, right? But because it's coming from a real human being, much harder to slam a door in that person's face. And then it's just typed out, especially after you connected, nurtured their relationship, sent a custom video, and wrote in their name. Because even if they say no, Adam, the no is like, "Jimmy, this is epic. Thanks so much for the message. I'm not the right guy." But like, even your nos are awesome nos. And at the end of the day, the way you prospect is the same exact way that people are going to expect the quality of your work. So if it is white glove and badass, they're going to expect that from your company. And if it's spammy, then I'm probably assuming that you half-ass your job as well. And so that heart you put into that, it goes a long way, and it's a direct reflection of the work you're going to put in after the relationship's built.

Curiosity is so powerful too. I agree with everything you just said. When people see their name on a piece of paper, they're, they cannot help but want to know what's in it, what's inside, what did you put together? You know, the same thing we teach with the direct mail in the letters. If I left this on your door and it said, "Stop by 415 with just my name," and it's folded up, what are you going to do? You're going to open it. It's the same thing with digital, man. We be a force together as a team, people using these things. You know, you can't help. What we're looking for is, is when I mentioned to Jimmy, the breadcrumbs. First commitment, open it versus trash it, right? You're at the decision tree. Works the same with direct mail letters at the door, virtual door knocking. Are they going to delete it and ignore it? Are they going to open it? It's our first decision. We pick this curiosity. If we get open, then we do we keep the attention and then get them to reply, right? So there's all these different steps. And I love that you've laid out this, this framework to play into that, but also provide amazing service that's memorable. It's really sharp. Really, really sharp.

Thank you, man. Yeah, we work, we work really hard on it. And like I was just getting a testimonial from a client the other day, and they were, one of the things that they were saying is the most important reason that people hire us because anyone can hire a really cheap company to just like spam and that can replace humans, right? So we're teaching this to people, but you could just, you know, make a, have a shortcut and just hire something to have this seven-step spam sequence or something. But the downside of that is, let's say you have a thousand people on your prospect list, all people you want to do business with. Well, and, and you might, you might even book, you know, 10 calls from that, which wouldn't be such a bad, uh, stat. But it's not just that the 990 people decided that you had a great approach and you've, you've built your brand, and it's just not the right timing for them. That's probably like 990 people that really don't like you and never want to hear from you again, based on the way that you reached out to them and just spam them to death, right? So what we're, what we're teaching people to do is find a way to play the numbers game, but do it in a way where you're creating brand awareness and you're actually impressing people along the way. So even if today is not the time, they were still really impressed with you. And Justin's right, every single day, I have people tell me no, but it's like, it's such a nice note. It starts off the same. I can't tell at the beginning whether it's me yes or no, because it starts off really nice. And, and I've even had some people say, "Hey, send that to this, this other person on my team," because they just think it's so cool. So, uh, and it just, it just feels good when you're prospecting in a way that doesn't feel dirty, you know?

Right, especially the roofing industry, right, Adam, where like you have a finite amount of buildings, you can do commercial deals, you have a finite amount of realtors and insurance agents. If you're in the financial industry, and you got 1.9 million people you go after in each state, you have the flexibility on your side. Every single no has carries weight, every yes does too. And so that's why it's infinitely more important in this industry. And commercial property owners have friends who are commercial property owners. And what do they do? "Hey, do you know any roofers? Do you know anyone?" So having a good taste in someone's mouth is huge. I love it. And it is important. You don't want to be ruining your brand, which is one reason I am very against the throw mud at the wall and see what sticks approach to hiring sales people, because they're just out like destroying the brand image because they're going to be gone in a week.

So summarizing this, this four-step framework for landing commercial sales on LinkedIn. We got step one, profile optimization. Step two is targeting. Step three is creating familiarity. And step four is the standout reach to to be different. Uh, absolutely love it. So everyone here has actionable items they can implement in the field right away. Check your inbox to get the far snapshot. If you're not getting it, there's a link in the description. Um, and I can get this in your hands because I've typed all this up as we're we're going through. Um, there are people here who are going to say, "My time is more valuable than doing this on my own." And if that's that person, reach out to Leadballer. Jimmy, Justin, any closing remarks? And where can people find you?

Yeah, uh, I don't think Justin gets enough emails. He barely does anything all day. So if you want to email Justin, leadballer.com, uh, that'd be it. That'd be a great idea. Uh, you can also go, yeah, I'll, I'll delegate that to someone else's probably take care of it. But yeah, that would be awesome. Yeah, no, or, or obviously leadballer.com. And you can, if, if you're smart, you can probably guess what my email is too. Um, but those are, those are two places. Obviously, leadballer.com, there's a place for people to book a call with our team. And, and, you know, we're, we're very careful about who we, uh, who we allow to do business with us because, um, there's not everyone's at a stage where it does make sense for them. We're, we're fixing the problem of, "Hey, this is a great way to reach out," but if you don't, if you make more money by paying us to do it for you, that's what we're here for. If you don't, then we're not the best fit, and you should kind of just like suck it up and do it yourself, kind of thing.

So create the problem. Yeah, exactly. That's right. I dig it. I just want to say thank you both again. I really appreciate the value. It's why I wanted to set this interview up. When I connected with Justin, it was the focus on helping others. And that both of you independently upon meeting was like, "Here's the four steps. There's no like, 'Hey, you want the fifth magical piece to tie it together?'" Like anyone can take this. We shared the screen, we've seen this on LinkedIn. I have copious amount of notes. Um, I've got my own action items to update my profile thanks to you guys. So, um, let this be an opportunity to to put it to work. And again, connect with, connect with Leadballer if you guys need help. Is there any closing things you'd like to share with our with listeners before we, before we call it a wrap, since we are a little over time and I know you're both busy people?

Yeah, we'll be at RoofCon. So I'm assuming I mean, one of the sponsors there. And Adam, I think we're right next to where you are. So, uh, come and meet us there as well. But you can totally email me at justin@leadballer.com as well. But no, I'm excited to meet as many people in the industry as I can.

Awesome. Jimmy, Justin, thank you both so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you guys. Appreciate it.