Episode #377: Chuck Shaver
Meet
Chuck Shaver
Chuck Shaver is a husband, father, entrepreneur, and business coach with over 25 years of professional experience in constructing thriving brands and enterprises. Over the past 5 years, he has committed himself to becoming a leading expert in LinkedIn sales training. Chuck imparts his extensive knowledge through a comprehensible step-by-step approach, enabling companies to acquire in a matter of hours the expertise that he himself spent a decade mastering.
Our Mission Is To Change The Negative Perception Of Sales People
Our Vision Is A World Where Selling Is A Profession To Be Proud Of
LinkedIn is your business card on steroids. Profiles used to be stripped-down resumes. They focused on personal accomplishments. Instead, your profile needs to become a story of who you help and how you help them.
With 308 areas and settings on a LinkedIn profile that you can tweak, there are hundreds of ways to make improvements. Chuck Shaver would focus on optimizing your SEO, upgrading your visual appeal, and filling your profile with story-based information to draw people in. How does he do it? Learn more in this episode of Sales Reinvented.
Outline of This Episode
- [1:01] Is a compelling LinkedIn profile important?
- [1:27] The elements to leverage on your LinkedIn profile
- [2:20] How to tell your professional story on LinkedIn
- [3:07] Balancing professionalism and personality
- [4:48] How often should you update your profile?
- [5:44] How to measure the impact of your LinkedIn profile
- [7:45] Chuck’s top LinkedIn profile dos and don’ts
- [10:04] How to build SEO into your profile
- [12:14] How to get better results on LinkedIn
Balancing professionalism and personality
Chuck’s personal philosophy is “Let it fly.” People do business with people. If you’re too business-like, they won’t get to know you as a person. If you’re going to be that impersonal, they might as well buy everything from Amazon. So get comfortable sharing some personal information. It will help build a better relationship with your clients.
Chuck shared a post about his two largest posts from the week before. One was dos and don’ts for LinkedIn profiles. The other post was about cheese. There was no rhyme or reason to what succeeded. You just have to tie what you’re saying back to your message or personal journey.
Chuck’s top LinkedIn profile dos and don’ts
Chuck has a few great tips to help you start transforming your profile:
- Take the time to design a great banner; It’s your free billboard.
- Use a great picture to drive visual appeal
- Use your business contact information (too many people enter their private email instead of business email).
- Don’t require people to enter their email before they can send you a connection invite. You’re turning away business opportunities.
- Don’t accept the default headline. It won’t do any good SEO for you. Leverage the 220 characters available and use keywords people are searching for to find you.
- Don’t neglect SEO. That’s how people find you organically.
How to build SEO into your LinkedIn profile
Your headline and “about” section are two great areas to focus on SEO. Your “about” section gives you 2,600 characters to work with. Your experience section is 2,000. Weave in keywords that are relevant to your industry that people are searching for.
Secondly, turn on the feature that shares the services you provide. This is an automatic way to embed SEO search terms on your profile. The links you use, your contact information, and even how you write your name are important things to consider.
Chuck’s given name is “Charles” but he’d never use it in his profile because no one knows him as Charles. And when you’re choosing what name to use, do not use emojis. It will mess with the algorithm and SEO.
How to get better results on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is about creating business opportunities, connections, and conversations you can have to make a better life for yourself and drive more revenue.
Use a banner that’s branded for your company. Share content that tells the story of customers that you help and how you help them. Share referrals. These are the things that will build your business. And after you make changes like this and start making sales, you’ll have an “Aha!” moment and realize how powerful of a tool LinkedIn can be.
Most of the people that Chuck works with used to do email campaigns, cold calling, and attended conventions. They’d spent weeks doing it the old way. Typically, they get better results in a few hours by leveraging LinkedIn.
Many of them are getting close to 50% of their business from LinkedIn when previously it was closer to 2%. You won’t see an impact overnight. It takes time to build and grow, as does anything worth doing. Why not let LinkedIn become your main source of revenue?
Resources & People Mentioned
Connect with Chuck Shaver
Connect With Paul Watts
Audio Production and Show notes by
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Learn More About Chuck Shaver
Are there any definitive guides or resources you recommend for crafting an effective LinkedIn profile? I post tip documents & videos regularly for free, I offer services both done for you & on-demand I help you for a cost too.
In the realm of LinkedIn branding and sales, who do you most admire and why? I hold myself pretty high up there with the best but there are a lot of greats in my field but Viveka Von Rosen is one of the greats that I have been lucky enough to work along side and she is the best in my opinion.
What are your top ten tips for someone looking to optimize their LinkedIn profile for sales – your golden advice set?
- Graphically pleasing banner with company colors, logo & a statement about what you do
- Clear, close profile picture with not distracting background
- Use the name you go by without emoji’s
- Customize your URL
- Record name plus intro for 10 seconds
- Turn on Creator Mode & add 5 hashtags
- Complete all contact info with Business info
- Hyperlink & name your greatest resource
- Activate the Services you Provide
- Activate & populate your featured section.
And do ALL while leveraging SEO & write with ICP keywords for Headline, About & Current Experience. Then complete the rest of the 308 areas & settings
What are the primary considerations that companies should be aware of regarding their employees’ representation on LinkedIn? They are bad reflections of the company & employee 90% of the time and horrible 9% of the time
Should this be a standard part of a salesperson’s induction/onboarding process? Absolutely and companies hire me to do it every week. Marketing can’t do it alone, sales can’t do it alone, and they don’t know how to work together and neither really understand LinkedIn. I bridge all those gaps.
Can you share some case studies or examples of how a well-crafted LinkedIn profile has significantly impacted a company’s sales or networking capabilities? Client: Lon Stroschein 2 years ago he quit his corporate career to become a coach with 1,500 connections. He worked with me and now has a successful business, is an author, has over 20,000 connections, and leverages LinkedIn for 100% of his success. Client: HIRECLICK hired me to do LinkedIn Profile Makeovers and LinkedIn Sales Training for the team and since have seen 35% growth in sales over the 1st year then hired me back 12 months later to do it all over again and are on track to see even more growth this year.
LinkedIn is constantly evolving. Are there any new features or strategies that you’re currently delving into or recommend sales professionals should explore? Many new things. Company page features to boost the team, Highlighting different activity on your profile appearance, showcasing Top Skills only, harnessing verifications.
How do you balance showcasing your hobbies and interests on LinkedIn, ensuring it complements your professional brand? I just highlight it if I can tie it into a message. Take this post about Cheese its about cheese essentially but the underlying meaning is that I am talking about it because I learned about it from a LinkedIn connection from another country and showed how LinkedIn can be a connector to people all over the world.
For listeners eager to learn more, what’s the best way to connect with you on LinkedIn or other platforms? Connect with me HERE on LinkedIn
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