LinkedIn Personal Branding for Revenue Generation

What's up everyone? Thank you so much for joining me for yet another episode of Lee Toobie, the Sassius podcast for B2B and Beyond. I'm of course Lee, your growth marketing host. Please remember to follow and leave a review that helps so much. So I'm talking a lot about LinkedIn today. I've been doing that the past few episodes, but I just can't stop. Today's guest is Laura Erdom. She's a sales leader at DreamData. She doesn't just wait for leads to show up. She built her own pipeline by treating LinkedIn like a demand-gen machines. She recently moved from Copenhagen to New York to help scale DreamData and Laura had to craft the code on social selling. She's not just posted and hoping for the best, but she's using smart content and intentional engagement and strategic timing to turn connection into customers. Zip back could say we're going to be talking all things LinkedIn strategies. I know you're going to write your company post, how to craft posts or so. So all these fun things. Welcome to another episode of Lee Toobie. Lee, it's so nice to meet you on the podcast and we're in the same city. How insane is that? Yes, yes. So Laura just last night she ran this amazing event for DreamData. So the fact that she's talking to me right now, we're recording us on a Friday at 10 a.m. is amazing and just goes to show the energy. Because if I was hosting a big event last night, I don't think I could do this. Yes, yes, yes, yes, you turn on the energy and then you turn it off and then it's like dwelling out. It's a Friday. That's a good thing. We have a day off tomorrow and the day after. So I want to start with the cultural shock from coming to Copenhagen to New York City where busy as city, everything smells like weed and peanut. I don't think Copenhagen smells like that. So tell us about some of your favorite or biggest cultural shock moments so far. I've been in New York many times as a tourist for work but for me, the biggest takeaway already by living here for a month is there's a different city for people who live there and a different city who visit. And it's so difficult to explain what is it but it's just a different city. You walk in the same streets but you see the dog shit, you see everything else that is happening in the city and it's like, oh my god, it's like, do I actually live here? And at the same time, like, you really hate this. The weather is awful right now. It's freaking cold. Windy. There are people which walking around with shorts and new things. Fuck how did you like how really? And then you see all the dog shit and all the weed smell and so on but it's like, I kind of love this. It's like no police in the world is as busy as this and for me, New York, it has kind of a, it's a 10-dimensional city. Seriously, there is a dimension for people who are on the streets but there is everything going on everywhere around. It's amazing. I love it. Yeah, no, so I worked in the city for years. I'd say once you start avoiding Times Square at all costs, then I say you're in New Yorker. Yep, yeah. Even my daughter said, "Mom, let's go shopping and she wants to go to H&M." So let's go over to Times Square because there is an H&M. So no, mom, please no, let's not do that. Well, welcome to New York. Let's get into some personal branding basics and personal and personal brand generating pipeline because some people think that personal branding, you know, it's it's it's more of an awareness play. You know, maybe there'll be some demand generation, maybe they'll be some leads, but you know, some people think it's just kind of like people are out there posting on LinkedIn, especially if you're not someone who's done this before or especially if you're not in marketing or sales yourself. So what do you say that? How does personal brand actually generate revenue? Yeah, so if we take a step back and look into our LinkedIn feed, what sometimes we think personal branding is are those videos that pop up once in a little like once in a while, they know life of me, of a salesperson or look at me, I'm at this event and we're doing this or sharing some really personal stories and so on. This is just a tiny, tiny part of personal branding. You do want to show your personality. So people recognize you for that, but all of those personal videos is not personal branding. People have to remember you for something. And hopefully it's not day in a life of a salesperson unless you're selling to the salespeople. So what you have to do to build your personal brand is take a step back and think who are my buyers? Who are my buyers that I'm trying to reach? And what is it that they care about? If you're selling to salespeople, fine, do day in a life because everybody wants to know what a salesperson does at the office and what type of a drink are you drinking. But if your buyers are for me, for example, are marketing and operations, I want to know for the keywords that I'm talking about that it makes sense for them. I do post once in a while about being a mom, that attracts those women leaders that are marketers because they say, I can relate. Then there's some other types of like day in a life. The reason I do those is to show that DreamDate is growing and it's insanely cool to be in New York. It's not about me. It's about the perception of the company that I work for and I'm trying to sell the product for. So me being on LinkedIn is purely a revenue play. If my buyers were not on LinkedIn, I would not be building this. My buyers care about the specific problem they're trying to solve. So when building a personal brand, you have to be known for these things. And then you can unpack what type of content am I going to create. Will this be technical? Will this be half stupid because I just want attention from those people? And then you build that out. It sounds like when you said that oh, strategy, I don't have a strategy. Me, I have just unpacked what is it that I want to be known for? And then organically post some of it's not that set-downs like, oh, to post about this to post about that. No, but I know exactly what works to attract those buyers and then once in a while I do mix in the personal stuff so people can remember me and when I reach out to them to book that meeting, I always get a response. Yeah, so so much there. One, I think just having that personal brand, having that out there, it's that even if that person isn't ready for a sales combo right now, that's not the point of it. The point is so they see you, they know about your tool, they know about you when they're being considered for different options. And then I say it's very much almost like product placement. And the whole thing with product placement, people thought it's like, okay, I'm seeing like a Jeep in Jurassic Park. I'm supposed to go out and buy it. That's not what it is. It's that no, it's that when you are ready for the next car, that that's going to be considered. Or maybe you really just wanted that car because you thought that actor was like super hot or something. So yeah, I guess there's something like that. But personal brand is about showing up to your audience and to your point, your audience can be different things. So on the sale side specifically, you described your persona, you know, sales people or certain things like that. But then on that personal side, you also expand your network into different factions. And what I often find is, like I've spent a long, long time working on some posts that I think is amazing. That has so many insights as more, you know, academic, maybe I'll say, than my typical post cricket. I'll post some kind of like dumb joke. And then like that I've thought two seconds about. And that goes everywhere. But it's a very good point for that. If you take that example and you get a lot of interest into the post that is totally stupid, the thing that happens from there, you probably also get some followers out of it. And they're totally irrelevant followers for you. So why do it at all? I mean, if you do it for the ego, fine. But then call it that. It's not personal branding is just self acceptance from whatever crowd that you don't actually care about. But then when you create that clever post, for me, those types of posts are the product posts. When I do the product posts, when I speak about technically, how does this work? What type of problem we're solving? Like you get 2,000 views of the video. It's just like a 10th of what you normally would do. But people remember those, they come back. They won't like it. They won't comment it because probably think, oh, so this is this is how the product looks like. And if I comment it, then people will see that I'm doing this and I will get pitches and she will reach out to me. Fine, I don't need to reach out to it. As long as you've seen it, read it or followed it. Next time when you're considering that product, even if it's a Jeep, and you remember me for walking through the technical details of that Range Rover, we're good. Alright, so let's say I am a salesperson and let's just assume I am in B2B SaaS. Let's assume I do have a vertical that is definitely on LinkedIn. So we already have that. But I'm a salesperson and I'm like, you know, I don't really want to be putting so much around me out there. Or I don't have the time to be posting on LinkedIn because I'm so busy selling. What would you say to a salesperson who has a mindset like that? Yeah, so to start with, there has to be some interest in posting. If you are not interested, you probably are better at doing something else as a salesperson. So just go through that. And we had dreamed it. We encouraged that a lot for people to look into LinkedIn. And if you can post it once in a while. There are a couple of things that we encourage doing. If you're interested, but don't have the time. So we're past that. Am I interested or not? I know this is working. I'm interested. Good. I don't have the time. Then there are colleagues who are posting and posting very insightful stuff. To start with, start freaking copy pasting and posting it as yours. You're working for the same company and none of your followers or your connections are the same as other colleagues. And even if they are, nobody will notice. So make it easy for yourself. Start copying and you will start creating a habit on posting. Good. The next step of that is having marketing involved in this. So you don't have to create a new post every single time. When we have a release or we have had whatever webinar podcast, whatever marketing cuts some of those pieces out. We've got amazing chatty beauty to help us out building texts for us as well that are specific personality posts, whatever you pick it up, adjust it if you want to post it. It could be it's not that good just yet. If you want to be there, you're putting the right keywords out. We're doing this. Good. The muscle is being built. And the further you're going, you will start seeing the results and you will start to want to do more of stuff that's working. Great. Great point. I would add to on the complete flip side, your point, like you kind of want to do it. If you don't want to do it, that doesn't mean to completely ignore LinkedIn. That just means great. You don't have to post just soak everything in. So you should be following the people who do want to post and who are posting or you should be following a very minimum, your target account less than the decision makers there and just casually engaging. So don't work at personal branders here. Obviously go do it. But I do want to emphasize, like even if personal branding is not your main thing, you should still be on LinkedIn and engaging with the people that you're reaching to. There's a really good thing for sales people doing that. Let's say you've got somebody in the sequence. You're trying to reach a company and do outbound and you don't want to post on LinkedIn. Fine. So you have engaged them in this outbound sequence where there's mostly emails and calls probably, but casually, even if you're not connected with the people that you're trying to reach, if they're posting on LinkedIn, like that post, you don't have to be cringe and comment all good insights whatever. If they're talking about cyber security, I have no idea about cyber security. Like it. They probably get like five likes and you're one of them, which means that your name is already out there and they can see that you're trying to reach that person. It's that easy. Yeah. Yeah. If I could tell you like, again, talk about the lurkers. If I could tell you like, I'll have posts that don't do anything. Don't really go anywhere. But then like so many people like who like, I don't know will come and say like, Hey, I really enjoyed your post or by the time we connect or maybe we walk past each other in a conference. Maybe they come up to me in a bar in New York City and say they recognize me from my LinkedIn. And then happened. That happened. That happens. Yeah. Yeah. So that was pretty cool. I mean, not everyone wants that, but it also so like I am introvert by nature. We were just talking about how I, one of my personal branding things that I am just very bad at is actually leaving my house and going to events and stuff like that. But that's the great thing about LinkedIn because you have all that control and you present the story and even I am not saying anyone should go to events. Obviously you should, but if you're like me and you have to really force yourself like LinkedIn, give you that control to put yourself out there and then do things like this where it's one on one where you can really thrive in a relationship building opportunity. I agree. Yes. I do. That doesn't happen to me when people recognize me. And I do like to go to events. But but imagine that part as well that if you do events or go to events as well, how much easier it will be for you to reach those people if you were in LinkedIn as well. So if you're for example, you're a ranging in event or going to big huge conference and you know some of the people are going to be there, you're already connected. So they probably know you a little more than if you just wear a salesperson. So it goes in to so many directions and you can pick it up depending on your personality. If you don't want to be recognized, that's fine. But be recognized for what you're trying to achieve. You're trying to sell. We're all in LinkedIn trying to sell. Either our ego or our companies services, whatever that is. So focus on that. And it will be so much easier to reach that goal and it does not have to be face to face. Exactly. Let's get into the actual part about marketing and sales alignment and something we're passionate about. Something I got marketer sales. We have we have a lot there. What is something? One very, very basic thing and there's so many things. But what's just a basic thing that sales and marketing should be doing to improve their alignment. They should be talking to each other. Seriously. This is so basic. But salespeople tend to lean back and do their own thing and it's hard. Outbound is freaking hard nowadays and you cannot do sequences anymore. Look, Apollo is banned right now. So how are you going to work today? So the more you talk with marketing, you will understand what is it that they're trying to reach. What is it that they're trying to do and how they are engaging your ideal customer buyers and what is it that you can pick up from that. But it goes the other way too. Meaning that if marketing is just doing their thing and seems like, oh, those leads are not closing and sales is doing a bad job. Whatever it is. Like sales is doing their best job and you will only learn that by talking to each other. Right. And not respect for the craft of a marketer and sales. You will start to understand how is it that they're working? Why are those leads not closing? Was it you or was it sales? Maybe your sales are not doing their job right. But maybe your expectations to their next step is different. So just freaking talking to each other. What is it that we're cooking? Doesn't have to be the big thing. It's like, what's up this month? Let's figure this out. 100% and talking to sales doesn't mean we have a monthly marketing sales meaning where we talk pipeline. Like that's one aspect of it. But you should be talking in real time. There should be that shared Slack channel. People should be reaching out to you. You should have individual relationships with not just the sales manager, the sales leader, and I'm saying from the marketing experience, but individual sales people as well. It's not going to be everybody on the team, but individual sales people as well. There is that close relationship. So always be talking, not just that once a month meeting, have the same dashboard, have the same shared Slack channels, and just have that ongoing communication. That's what I like to say. A dream data. It's freaking cool. When your salesperson closes a deal and we always check out what was the actual first touch? It's never sales. Never. But by talking to each other and looking into those customer journeys, they're like, oh, so that was a Google organic or it was like, I don't know, LinkedIn impressions have been showed up for half a year. Like marketing was that money right? It's been targeting this account for half a year, but probably because they did close. So then you can calculate what's the cost of acquisition of all of those impressions as well. So it goes both ways to understand how are we counting our leads or pipeline and how are we closing it. Yeah, well, let's let's get in more into dream data because you guys are doing amazing things. Again, literally you flew across the world to help scale it. So let's get into dream data. Tell us what you're excited about. I'm really excited about the growth in the US that we're having. So for me, very big tipping point was understanding that we could actually sell the product from Europe pretty well into the US. This is very often unseen for a European company. And that's one of the things that I've seen where companies do kind of fail. Most of the European companies, but up and open up their office would send one or two best salespeople to open an office, start hiring people, and it's like saying, it doesn't seem to be working. What is happening? Like we have all this revenue in Europe or selling to Germany or selling to France, but now we move to the US and nobody wants to buy. So before you move, and that's what happened at dream data, make sure that you have that product market fit in the country. And we have 50% of our revenue when we opened up our office. And then the next thing that happened is we hired a local CEO who is in New York and understands the market. So moving your person from Europe to the US, opening an office, usually you wouldn't know that. You wouldn't feel it that there is a culture difference. There is a difference of the network. You don't have your network in the US when you're coming from Europe. And this is what excites me so much because we have so many clever local people who are hired here and doing an insanely huge impact. I'm here as well, but it's mostly to help out with the growth, but I'm not leading that because people who are from this market, they know exactly what needs to be done because they have done it several times. Amazing. So let's get into spill the tea with me. That's right, this is the Sashis podcast for V2B and we are going to get juicy. So let's spill some tea here because we are spilling tea. If you had to ban a certain type of post on LinkedIn, one type of post, you get to ban it. What would it be? Oh my god. To start with, I would start banning people talking like companies. Like nobody as a person speaks as a company. We help with this and that or I'm excited to announce that this and that happened. Can you freaking talk like a normal person? I think it's okay for marketing to speak like that because like our brains and the minds recognize us, it's okay that the company does this. Actually, it works much better if a brand talks a little normal person language as well, but we accept it. But if people people do that. For me, it's freaking ununderstandable because I don't get what you're saying. Would you ever say this to a friend because here you're standing up in the group of people who are watching you on LinkedIn and saying whatever we help with the digital transformation and we're excited to announce that we got this award. I'm freaking excited and happy because we got the award and we have been working so hard to get this. So celebrate it with me right now. This is a person part in talking. Not even the word around. Yeah, no, I totally agree. Like one of my big things and as the marketer for like, I can't stand everything sounds like a press release. Nobody, nobody talks and press releases. Nobody talks and ends every sentence. It's like, let's get together. Like, nobody talks like that. Stop with the press release, stop with the AI and start just talking normal and talk to your people there. So let's do another spill the tea with me. What do you think is the cringiest part about social selling? For me, these are the life of somebody. Do them too. On purpose. Actually, I have two purposes of it, but I think it's so cringy and I get so tired of creating those as well. Yeah, it's like here. I got to the office. I check my emails. I got my Machiata. Yeah, I spilled much of you calls. The reason I do them, they're two. So one of them is because so people can see the personality, how it is and we're opening an office and she'd like that. I'm going look beautiful office and we've got money and we're growing companies. So people still, the ones who are buying, they're like, okay, the jet company to buy from. But the second one is actually internal. So people who are in Copenhagen, they don't know how the office looks like and all the people that we've hired. We see them in all hands and so on. It's like just the moving heads and we have no idea what's happening. And internally, all of our engineers and people who are on the ground with their building, this insane product also needs to be excited. So whenever I post that, that's also posted in our Slack channel. So people can see how it is to live in this life as well. Just a tiny little bit to be excited that what we're building is making ripples in the world as well. Amazing. Alright, so I'm going to wrap up soon again. You had a very busy night last night with the Dream Data team and New York based marketers. So let's wrap up and before we do, I just, where can people find you, Dream Data LinkedIn, how can people reach out to any other events you want to give a shout out to before you're at? This is your time. Nice. So we're not doing many events, but when we are a post about that. So follow me on LinkedIn, do that or we're in Hudson Yards. Oh, tell me you're here and we can find a cup of coffee to share or a cup of tea to spill. Nice. Well, thank you so so much being on. Thank you, everybody for listening and I will see you for another episode of Lee2B next time. Enjoying Lee2B? Please rate and review us wherever you get your podcast. You will reviews go a long way in supporting me. Thank you so much.