Mastering LinkedIn: Strategies for Lead Generation with Colin Hirdman

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:00:58

Well, hello everybody and welcome to another amazing episode of the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast where we hear from amazing leaders and their game changing insights. You know, our goal on this podcast is to have and make great leaders. Even better, because great leaders at great companies make great team members.

So today we have Colin Hirdman. He has a wealth of experience, but he has true great experience building companies.

And he has a new startup, Rainmaker, which is going to actually help you reign in all the leads and the sales that you want on LinkedIn. So love the name. I just have to also share he does have another company called Monkey Ventures, Monkey Island Ventures.

And I had to mention that because my quote unquote spirit animal, I didn't share this with you is the monkey. And I actually collect monkeys. So if you came to my house, monkeys all over the place. So some people collect elephants, I collect monkeys.

Colin Hirdman: 00:01:59

So my grandma collected owls.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:02:02

Oh, there you go. Right. So welcome to the podcast, Colin. So you have shared, you've had a great career.

You started right out of college, right, Working with your high school friends?

Colin Hirdman: 00:02:16

Well, so the first company I started a week after graduating from college was not with my friends yet. So I had that company for a little over a decade.

I graduated a criminal justice degree, which I never used and I never took a business accounting or marketing class in college. So it was trial by fire. I learned entrepreneurship just by building that business. And then I sold that.

And in: 2007

His dad's side of the family is from there. He's down there for about a decade. And then Zach was helping a children's publishing company get sold. And so he kind of worked himself out of a job.

And so three of us, yeah, decided, you know what, let's go into business together. We'd been kind of conversing and talking about entrepreneurship and business ideas and all that.

And yeah, since: 2007

Agurian, our digital marketing company, Cloudburst, our software development company, and Rainmaker, which is kind of our LinkedIn startup. And you know, I think more than anything, you know, I've known those guys since we're all about five years old.

And Monk Island's named after a park the three of us used to play at. When we were kids, located here in the Twin Cities.

And having them as business partners has just been fantastic because we just know each other innately. We trust each other, and we've always put our friendship and family ahead of money.

And I think that has really allowed us to navigate a lot of the ups and downs of building businesses together. And we even came up with kind of the five Fs as our core value, which is freedom, finances, family, friendship, and fun.

And those are the kind of five core values that we live by. So, yeah, it's just been a fantastic journey with them, and I look forward to doing a lot more with them as well.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:04:28

That's really fantastic. So I just have to highlight this. So, listeners, that was a huge, huge insight. Your five Fs is your values, and having that. But, you know, a.

That you as a, as individuals live by, but as a, as a threesome team company live by is so important for any success. And I think.

So tell me, and tell the audience, too, that, like, how do those values come into the overall makeup, so to speak, of the company and how you guys lead?

Colin Hirdman: 00:05:13

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question.

So, you know, the, you know, the, the other two, the digital marketing company and the software development company that have employees and whatnot, we use the eos, the entrepreneurial operating system and traction to run those two companies. And that's where kind of we got the core values.

But there's lots of other aspects to that program that you follow that really, I think, leads into leadership and really trying to look at, I'll use your term, all the team members and trying to elevate them and also delegate in ways that allows them to become leaders.

And, you know, I think more than anything, what the three of us want is to, you know, build thriving businesses that are providing for, you know, us and on and our team members. And, you know, I think we do a really, really good job of that.

And I would highly encourage those listening that, you know, if there are people in your life that could be a business, the ways that Zach and Josh are, for me, the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, you can't get away from that. It's just incredibly difficult.

But having people that, again, you can innately trust and will be there for those ups and downs, I think just makes that journey so much more valuable.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:06:49

Yeah, no, and it's. And I think that's really true, you know, really key to have those people, you know, you. You need to always surround yourself. Right.

Whether it's with accountability partners and the people that you surround yourself with and it's. And the people that you're doing business with, it really does matter.

And so how does that incorporate, you know, those values into, you know, what you actually do for business every day? I mean, right now, you mentioned that you are working on your newer startup, Rainmaker.

Colin Hirdman: 00:07:20

Yeah.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:07:21

Those values transcend over into Rainmaker.

Colin Hirdman: 00:07:26

Yeah. Yeah.

So I think more than anything, the, you know, when you look at the five Fs, I think part of what we want and what we've learned is creating businesses that, that traction to get customers. I can say that we have built products in the past and we have thought, you know, the market needs this and we release it, and it's just crickets.

Right. It's not fun trying to grow a company that isn't getting traction.

And so I think part of what those five Fs do for us is also make us look at the reality of the situation and so forth. You know, for, for Rainmaker, kind of one of the reasons why we wanted to start it was, you know, as a. As another kind of revenue driver.

So it fits kind of the finances component.

It, it leans in the way that the model is created to still creating, you know, freedom for, for the three of us and kind of lends itself well to the way that we want our business to, to function.

And, you know, there's certainly in, for me, an element of fun in launching something new and bringing that to market and getting customers and seeing traction. So that's fantastic.

And then the friendship and family, when we get together quarterly, we plan events for just the three of us, but then also we're doing stuff with our wives together. And then we even will rent an Airbnb twice a year and bring all of our families together and do one in the summer and one in the winter. Winter.

So, yeah, I think just, you know, more than anything, just having businesses that, that work, that are getting traction, that provides a lot of value just across all those five Fs. And then that, you know, really kind of bleeds down into everyone else that's kind of joining us through this journey.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:09:33

Right. So I, you know, I looked. I was looking at the Rainmaker site, and as you're talking and you're talking about the F's, I'm.

I'm thinking what Rainmaker also does is that it's. Does provide some of those F's for your clients. Right. Freedom finances, the financial part. Yeah.

And it probably makes the calls or the conversations that they have a little bit more fun.

Colin Hirdman: 00:10:03

Right? No, very, very true. But no, I think that's exactly right.

I mean, I think on the freedom side, you know, because we're using an element of, you know, automation on LinkedIn that's just freeing up time for the. For the, for the client.

But then at the same time, the finances part, I want LinkedIn to be a revenue driver for my company, and that's what my clients want as well.

And I think a lot of times, you know, people get caught up in utilizing LinkedIn and really focusing, I think, too much on, like, posts and likes and comments and all those kinds of things, and not focused enough on kind of basic, you know, business marketing and sales fundamentals and how you can use LinkedIn.

And I can get into some of that at the appropriate time, because I think some of that your audience and you will really enjoy, because you could literally start applying that immediately after listening to this podcast.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:11:02

Yeah, well, and actually, that brings me to my next question, which is, what got you started down the path of Rainmaker and starting LinkedIn? I mean, I will, you know, I. Looking at your.

At the site, you know, you know, one of the things it said, it's like, we all hate being sold on LinkedIn. Oh, my God, the cringe. Like, you know, like, and, And I'm sure listeners, you've probably heard, you know, had this too.

And I've made posts about this because it's nails on a chalkboard for me, where it's like, yes, I want to connect with you. And I look at people's profiles. It's like, I help coaches, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, oh, I'm going to connect with you.

And it's going to be a sales call, it's going to be a pitch, and they don't want to get to know me, right?

Colin Hirdman: 00:11:46

Yep, yep, yep. No, agreed. And I think that's. That's really a key component.

So when I think of, you know, LinkedIn and the way that I've kind of broken out, the way that you should approach it, it's kind of three levels. One is around the philosophy of how you should approach LinkedIn. The level underneath that then is audience building.

And then the bottom layer then is activating that audience. And so the philosophy, really, for me, it's very simple. Number one, you have to be authentic and genuine on LinkedIn.

I think most people do a really good job of that. LinkedIn's not a toxic social network. It is the only real business social network that people are participating in.

So you need to be there and, you know, you need to Be authentic and genuine to yourself, but also to the brands that you represent. The second thing is you need to approach it with an educational mindset, because like you just said, nobody wants to be sold on LinkedIn.

We all hate getting those messages where someone wants to sell us something or they want to book a meeting right away when they haven't done anything to kind of build relationship with us. And the last thing is, and this is where there's a lot of kind of responsibility on the owner or the founder or, you know, the.

Anybody that's sitting in the sales or marketing seat, which is, you have to understand the pains and barriers your prospects are trying to overcome. And from that, you should start to identify, okay, well, what is it that they want to be educated on?

And most importantly, what is it they can learn from you? What can you teach? And I think that's really the philosophy that can have you achieve a lot of success in growing a network.

Leads and sales is being genuine and authentic, that educational mindset and then figuring out what it is your audience can learn from you. What can you teach?

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:13:35

Yeah, no, and it's, it's. I think that is so true. What can you teach?

And I, And I think the other key part is, you know, what you said is like, again, nobody wants to be sold to.

Colin Hirdman: 00:13:47

Right.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:13:48

At all. At all. And so it's like, don't be that. Don't. You know, if you're worried about being cringy, then I guess what then I going to.

I bet your message is cringy.

Colin Hirdman: 00:13:58

Right?

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:13:59

Right.

Colin Hirdman: 00:14:00

Agreed. Yep.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:14:02

If you're questioning it.

Colin Hirdman: 00:14:04

Right, Exactly. Yep. Yep.

So then kind of that layer, then underneath it, once you've adopted that philosophy, is building out, like, audiences of people that you actually want to start connecting with. I typically use Sales Navigator, which is the sales tool that LinkedIn offers, but there's a couple of growth hacks that I've identified.

So one is LinkedIn events.

So if you have any direct competitors that are putting on a linked event, or maybe there's a industry organization that's putting on a LinkedIn event that is around a topic that your business solves for.

If you go and attend that event, you can also see everyone else that's also attending that event, and you can actually start building out a prospect list of people that are publicly raising their hand and saying, this is who I am, and I'm interested in learning more about this topic. So that's one great way of starting to build out a prospect list of people that are already further down the purchase Path.

And then another one is using a person as a proxy. So there's a woman named Brenda on LinkedIn. She has about 70,000 followers.

She talks a lot about LinkedIn profiles and LinkedIn posts and likes and comments and all those kinds of things. So I reached out to connect with her, she connected back with me.

And because her connections are open, I can look and see, okay, who are the, you know, second degree connections to me, but our first degree connections to her that I would want to connect with, right.

So I could identify, you know, founders or sales executives, you know, in certain geographies, et cetera, that are following her, most likely because they're trying to learn how to grow on LinkedIn from her content. Therefore they'd be a good candidate for Rainmaker. Okay, so those are two kind of growth hacks.

One is LinkedIn events and the other is using a person as a proxy.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:15:48

Now do you have to have Sales Navigator for to, to, to work that way to work those texts?

Colin Hirdman: 00:15:54

Nope, nope. You can use regular LinkedIn search as well.

You just don't get some of the other benefits of additional filters and save searches and things like that that you get out of Sales Navigator.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:16:04

Yeah, no, that's. Those are really, really great hacks. Listeners. Really game changing insights on using LinkedIn.

So what, what made you like go down this path with LinkedIn?

Colin Hirdman: 00:16:18

Well, because I wanted to mostly for our software products. I wanted to get gauge interest and get beta users. And so using LinkedIn I could target people that would be good candidates.

And I was able to get, you know, lots of signups, like email addresses of people that would be interested in our product before we even launched and then also getting beta users to start using the software and giving us feedback and things like that. So that's, that's kind of what got me going kind of deep into LinkedIn and how to use it. So.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:17:00

Yeah, so, so I'm. Because I'm now like, what is one of the biggest pet peeves you have?

I mean, I know we've kind of talked about some of them, but like, what's been like one just that you see on LinkedIn that you're just like, okay, please people don't do this.

Colin Hirdman: 00:17:17

Well, I think people spend too much time and focus on organic posts and worrying about likes and comments and impressions. You know what, what I was talking about, you know, kind of that the first layer philosophy, second layer audience.

Well, the bottom layer is activating that audience. Right.

And the way that I'm typically activating the audience for myself and clients Is, you know, once, once I have the audience identified, the number one thing that I need to do is, and what I tell your audience needs to do is start building out those first degree connections. And our cadence is reaching out to 25 people a day, Monday through Friday. So 125 people a week, 500 people a month.

You're typically going to get about a 20 to 25% connection rate back. We're almost never using a connection message. And if someone doesn't connect back within 30 days, then we'll go and withdraw the invite.

And then there's a three week period of time in which you can't reinvite that person, but you could after that three week period of time is up.

So everything I talked about there, your audience could go do manually right now you can go withdraw invites, you can start identifying people that you want to connect with. You can start connecting with 25 people a day. And I think too many people undervalue the value of a first degree connection.

You know, once you get that first degree connection, then it's about relationship building, right? And there's all these different ways in LinkedIn that you can use to actually start building relationships with those first degree connections.

And you know, the, a few things that we, that I would recommend you do after you get that first connection, one would be building out like a message campaign.

And you know, with a message campaign, again you need to be like a, I don't know if you've read the book the Go Giver, but you have to provide, right? And without expecting anything in return.

And so that message sequence that we typically use is that first message, you know, goes out one to three days after someone connects with you that's just thanking them for the connection authentically. So you're not selling anything, you're not even trying to help, you're just thanking them authentically for the connection.

And if they respond, great, take that conversation wherever it goes. If they don't respond, then maybe a second message would go out seven to 14 days later. So I'll use myself as an example.

I was connecting with sales executives here in the Twin Cities and created a list of around 300. About 120 connected back with me. My first message was thanking them for the connection and something about, you know, both in the Twin Cities.

And then my second message was asking them if they knew of any good networking events here in the Twin Cities. Right. And so I started to get some, you know, response from some of those people, which was great.

The third thing I did was invited them to participate in a LinkedIn poll that was focused in on kind of the pain that they have around using LinkedIn, not able to generate leads and sales. And what do they see as the biggest problem to that? And I got about 40 of the 120 to participate in the LinkedIn poll.

And then the last thing that I did, which is really my favorite B2B tactic on LinkedIn, is I invited them to one of my LinkedIn live streams where I teach how to grow your network leads and sales using LinkedIn. And I got around 60 of them to register for that event, that livestream event.

And so that kind of example that I gave, if you'll notice, number one, it has nothing to do with organic posts. It has everything to do with understanding your audience and reaching out to them in ways that isn't spammy. It's not selling anything.

And what it does, it starts to open up the opportunity then for you to engage in a meaningful way, not only in sharing your knowledge and positioning yourself as a thought leader, but for example, the LinkedIn livestream to those, you know, 50 or 60 sales executives that signed up.

I send a message to all the attendees after the event and the message is typically like, hey, Jacqueline, thanks again for registering for the LinkedIn live stream that I led. Here's a link to the recording, right?

And the recording still lives on the LinkedIn event page that they can go and watch if they weren't able to make the live stream or if they wanted to watch it again. And then underneath it, you can have different calls to action.

My favorite call to action is if you ever Want to chat LinkedIn strategy, feel free to grab some time convenient for you here. And I give my calendly link, right? So because they're opting in to learn from me, they find that the content is interesting.

They see me enough as a thought leader that entrust me enough that they click the attend button when I send that message after the event is over and give them my calendar link. It doesn't feel spammy, it doesn't feel icky in any way.

It's just a natural next step for them to potentially interact with me and learn more and further the relationship.

So all that is just kind of a, I think the right way to use LinkedIn and that's why I've been using it for five years and have been doing it for about a year now since I stood up brainmaker for my clients.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:22:26

So, yeah, you know, Colin, I absolutely love it.

You know, I talk a lot about, you know, two Steps like the two steps that you need to take to create momentum and you know, you could break down your follow up sequence almost like, you know, it's like two, you know, the first two steps and then the second two steps and it's, it creates a really great pattern and it's, but part of that too is as you, as you shared, you're giving information and, and creating the trust with, with somebody and you are making the connection and building the relationship versus just throwing up on them.

Colin Hirdman: 00:23:05

Exactly. That's right. Yeah. So part of it is, yeah, really knowing and understanding your, your audience.

And you know, one of the things I've, I've created first connections across a number of different verticals. Typically it's founders, fractional sales executives, EOS implementers and business coaches. Right. And so I can tailor my messaging to each of them.

I can tailor, you know, my, my live stream content to them. Even though the live stream content itself, the deck that I use is almost the same to each of those verticals.

When they get to the event page, like the image I use will say LinkedIn growth webinar for founders or for sales executives. Right. And so even though the content's essentially the same, when they get to that page, they see the topic and that's interesting.

But then they also see, oh, it looks like this was made just for my title or for my industry. Right. So. And that's just a great way to increase your attendance rate.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:24:07

No, I, absolutely, I love that because goes back to one of my first loves and where I grew up in is actually direct marketing.

Colin Hirdman: 00:24:15

Yeah.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:24:15

And you're directly marketing to the right person, you're speaking to them, their language, their benefits. It's, you know, it's, you know, it's using somebody's first name in a message, it's sharing their, their title. It makes it so much more relatable.

Colin Hirdman: 00:24:33

Absolutely. Yeah. Yep. Nope, that's, that's exactly right.

And you know, with, you know, if you think about, you know, if you're growing out that first degree network week in and week out and you're doing some of these other activities in an authentic kind of go giver mindset. Well, when you do post organic posts now you have a larger audience of ICPs that might see it.

And when those people see that, it's also kind of getting meshed in the other things that they're seeing from you that we've discussed. So that makes your organic post even that much more impactful.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:25:06

Yeah, no, I, I, I, I, you know, all those activities because when you do again, as you just said, as you make those other posts, then it also makes you more relatable because people start to see you in a different way. So it creates that full package. It's, it makes it so that the posts that you're doing aren't a waste.

Colin Hirdman: 00:25:25

Right, exactly right. You know that you know, at least some of your ICPs are going to see it.

I think, you know, for any given organic post you do, maybe 10% of your audience sees it. And what percent of that are ICPs that you really want to get it in front of?

If you're not building that out, then it's going to be a bunch of people that you might have worked with before and friends and stuff like that. So you really that that whole process that I discussed, you know, your audience should go back and listen to that and just start doing that.

That will help you start to turn LinkedIn into more of a lead and sales generator.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:26:03

Right.

You know Colin, I love this conversation and I love also like just, you know, the audience to really take, you know, we're talking about LinkedIn and we're talking about, you know, Rainmaker, the company and Colin and what he's doing.

But also think about these key tactics, not Even just for LinkedIn but how you also are doing and how you're communicating with your team in your sales. Because it's about building the relationships that you have.

The more you can make those connections again with your team members and outside people as well, the bigger you are going to grow and the tighter the relationships. And people love doing business as we all know, people that know like and trust. So build those relationships, don't sell.

Colin Hirdman: 00:26:52

Agreed. Absolutely agree with that. Everything you said, perfect.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:26:56

So with that note, Colin, how can people find you and connect with you?

Colin Hirdman: 00:27:00

Yeah, rainmakergrows.com is the website so you can learn more there.

On the resources page you can actually download a one page PDF that outlines my entire live stream process from beginning end on how they should do it. There's also a PDF that talks about kind of sales growth on LinkedIn and the free consultation button just connects to me the calendly with me.

I'm the only person right now in Rainmaker, so it would be with me. And then I'm also the only Colin Herdman on the Internet so feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn and I'll connect back with you.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:27:37

Oh well that is fantastic. And we will put all of those links in the show notes as well. So Colin, thank you so much for being an amazing guest and my audience.

Thank you so much for listening.

If you have gotten amazing tips from this or insights, which I'm sure you have, please do me the favor of hitting the subscribe button and also share the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast with your friends and colleagues. Because if we can help make more leaders that are amazing and unstoppable, we'll make a world that's also unstoppable as well.

So I'm Jacqueline Stinger, your host, and I thank you all for listening. And again, thank you Colin for being a great guest.

Colin Hirdman: 00:28:14

Thank you so much.