Episode 007-Creating Lasting Client Relationships on LinkedIn With Kevin Knebl

Relationship marketing and authentic connections are a must to grow and scale your business.  My guest this week Kevin Knebl, is a master of LinkedIn but more so is a master of creating long-lasting relationships and connections with those he happens to also do business with.  He has been asked to speak all over the world to sales teams, entrepreneurs and others about his knowledge of using LinkedIn to further relationships and create authenticity when building your business.  Tune into this week’s episode to get the scoop on LinkedIn, building the know, like and trust factor in your interactions as well as some humor and hilarious antics.

Don’t Miss These Tidbits:

[01:47] “What I used to do for a living many years ago was I used to be a piano player in the New York City area. Completely different line of work than what I do now. And what happened was I was a piano player and then I met my wife when she booked me to play the piano at her wedding to another man. Now we don’t have time right now for the whole backstory on that, but she never married that loser and what happened was I got married and I figured out very quickly that late nights and smokey bars are cool when you’re young and single, so cool when you’re married, so I had to get a job, but back in those days there was no LinkedIn. There was no career builder. Al Gore had not invented the Internet yet, so you would buy a newspaper and you would look in the classifieds or the want ads and that’s how you’d find a job. The only job I could find was 100 percent commission sales, which you can pretty much find everywhere in the world. You could find a 100 percent commission sales job. I would not be exaggerating to tell you that a sex change would have been more in my comfort zone, but I did it because I had to because my family is bad habits, like wanting to live indoors and eat warm food. “

[03:24] “So I started studying that and I ultimately became the top salesperson for four separate companies in four separate industries, including being the top salesperson in the world for an international consulting company in 15 countries. Even though I’ve said that countless times on stage, every time that comes out of my mouth, it still surprises me because in my heart I’m still a piano player. That’s what I do. Right? But apparently, I had this really successful sales career. And then what happened was in 2003 on Cinco de Mayo, the fifth of May, LinkedIn was launched. I’m not a computer geek even though people think I am. They’re like, oh, Kevin, you’re this internationally recognized social media expert. You must know a lot about computers, and I say, Oh, you drive a car. You must know how to fix the transmission. And they go, no, I don’t. I go, yeah, I’m not. I’m not really good with computers either, but I got an invitation to get on LinkedIn. Sixty days after it launched, so I got on LinkedIn and I went, oh my God, it’s a Rolodex and because I had already accomplished quite a bit in sales, I understood the potential of a Rolodex, so it makes sense that if somebody understands how to use a Rolodex, whether it’s online or offline, the phone or LinkedIn, a fax machine or two cans and a string, they’re going to be able to do some pretty cool things with a Rolodex. So I started using LinkedIn, worked very well in my sales process and I was typically selling to small to midsize business owners and then the business owners started saying to me, Kevin, would you train my salespeople to sell like you do?.”

[07:25] “LinkedIn can be a pretty dry sterile place, but any place is a dry sterile place until you bring your personality into it, now you’re totally correct at LinkedIn is not facebook, it’s not Twitter, it’s a different animal, but Alisa is Alisa no matter where she goes. So it’s funny. LinkedIn is older than facebook and twitter and. But to your point, a lot of people don’t realize the potential of LinkedIn. So I’ve been able to help my clients generate hundreds of millions of dollars using LinkedIn, but because we’re using it effectively as a tool, not as a spamming device. So people tell me that I have Kevin, I have lines that I say so I’m going to tell you one of my Kevin Isms right now, which is totally in alignment with what you just said. A communication tool is only as effective as the communication skills of the person using the tool. So you’re getting spammed and harassed and stuff on LinkedIn, which is not an indictment on LinkedIn. It’s an indictment on the idiots that are spanning you and harassing you. So wouldn’t it make sense that if somebody sucks or as it says in the good book, suck it. If somebody sucks at interpersonal skills, it really doesn’t matter if they’re on LinkedIn or Facebook or at a BNI meeting or at the Chamber of commerce or on a telephone. If you’re Hannibal Lecter, before you get on LinkedIn, now you’re just Hannibal Lecter on LinkedIn. Right?”

[10:41] “So what I teach people to do is improve their communication skills. People look at me and they naturally say, Kevin, you’re a marketing guru or you’re a social media genius, or you’re a social selling Oracle. And, and these are, I know that they’re complimenting. I mean, these are compliments, but then I tell people I’m really none of those things. What I really am is I’m just a guy that takes a sincere interest in people and doesn’t try to shove his tongue down your throat and the first five seconds because what we’ve been trained to do is we’ve been trained in America to really walk up to strangers and try to kiss them. Now I’m going to say a couple things that are a little controversial here, but I’m okay with that. By the way, folks. I’m in no way putting down Alisa when I say these things, Alisa has a black belt in marketing and there’s gonna be certain things that I’m about to say that are going to sound like I’m throwing marketing people under the bus, but I’m not. Okay. If you look at what most people do in terms of marketing, a lot of it is really just variations. How do we walk up to strangers and try to kiss them, but in reality, if you look at your own life and if you’re married or if you have a significant other when you first met them, I’m predicting that you didn’t try to kiss them in the first 30 seconds? You probably just started a conversation and then that blossomed into, hey, let’s go have coffee or let’s go see, let’s go to a movie, you know, and then if it blossomed at a certain point you probably kissed and then if it blossom beyond that, maybe it got a little bit more intimate and then maybe there are children involved, you know, so. So what I’m saying is things follow a natural course.”

[13:57]”The first thing you need to do is make sure you have a LinkedIn profile and make sure that it clearly accurately reflects your credibility and the value that you bring to the table. Most link people’s LinkedIn profiles look like crap, but they’re not crappy people. They’re just making a bad first impression, so you need to make sure it looks good and then you need to learn how to use LinkedIn to find the people that you would like to do business with. So I, I help individuals and organizations all day long with this. If you said to me, Kevin, what I’m looking for is I’m looking for women over 50 in Tulsa that like line dancing and they went to Rutgers University. I’m using a very weird example to prove a point. I could help you find those people in 30 seconds and I could help you put LinkedIn on autopilot so that anytime somebody else shows up that fits that parameter, LinkedIn will email you and say, Hey Alisa, while you were sleeping, we found three more people. Here they are. So when people understand how to use LinkedIn as a lead generation machine.”

[16:42] “This isn’t about LinkedIn. This isn’t about Facebook, this isn’t about Twitter. Those are just tools. This is about the art of conversation, so you’re absolutely correct. We are losing to some degree, the interpersonal skills that you and I just naturally accumulated as a result of growing up in a world where we were not posting selfies every five minutes because prior to the invention of the Internet folks, you would actually have to look at somebody when you had a conversation with them, right? And, and you couldn’t distract yourself by looking at cute kitten videos on facebook while you were supposed to be talking to somebody.”

Listen to the entire episode here.

Resources Mentioned:

How To Win Friends & Influence People By Dale Carnegie

Key Takeaways:

1.  LinkedIn is the world’s largest Rolodex it just did 600 million people, 2-5 two to five new people join LinkedIn every second.

2.  All things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to people that they know, like, and trust.

3.  Success is reliant on creating, sincere and authentic relationships. Read something every day that’s positive right out of the gate to program your mind for success.

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