Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Jordan Clemons. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.
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Introduction
Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now your host. He has seen many great opportunities come out of LinkedIn connections is my dad Brandon Burton.
Brandon Burton 0:22
Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
Our title sponsor is Harmon brothers membership sales solutions. Let’s hear Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Tony Felker, President and CEO of the Frisco Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for him.
Tony Felker 0:45
One of the key benefits that we’ve realized from Holman Brothers it’s actually happened many years after we started using them. We just completed our new strategic plan and understanding those subtle differences between transactional benefits and transformational benefits. The companies that knew what they expect has been a key part in our strategic plan. And we really want to thank Holman Brothers for that.
Brandon Burton 1:06
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Guest Introduction
Our guest for this episode is Jordan Clemons Jordan is a senior investor Development Manager at Greater Louisville Inc, the Metro Chamber of Commerce in Louisville, Kentucky. His role at GLI is to work with their 1700 Plus investors to facilitate connections and foster goodwill among the Louisville business community. In his role, LinkedIn plays a paramount role in developing new relationships and staying top of mind in the local community using LinkedIn Jordan as his primary prospecting tool. Jordan has exceeded his sales goals for 2021 and is on track to do even better for 2022. Jordan, I’m excited to have you with me here on chamber tap podcast. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all Chamber Champions. and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Yeah. Hey,
Jordan Clemons 2:35
Brandon, thank you so much for having me. And it will come as no surprise to anyone listening after hearing that bio that Brandon not and I met on LinkedIn. So a testament to the platform right there. I’m really excited to get into this topic. I’ve been giving a lot of talks presentations I’ve spoken at the last two ACCE sales conferences in LinkedIn has been a topic that people ask about time and time again. So there’s a need for it out there and I’m here to try to deliver that knee but As Brandon mentioned, Jordan, I work at the Louisville Chamber of Commerce here greater Louisville, Inc. Interesting fact about me, I guess. I’ve got twin two year olds, twin two and a half year old boy and a girl. I’m looking at them right now on my desktop wallpaper. So when I think of interesting facts, that’s that’s my other job in life is being a dad to them, and they keep me extremely busy.
Brandon Burton 3:37
That will keep you running. I’ve myself, I’ve got four kids, but my youngest two were 14 months apart. And so like as one was walking, the other was crawling and was just constantly chasing one, you know, different directions, but yeah, keeps you in shape. That’s right. Yeah, that’s for sure. Well, tell us a little bit about GLA kind of size staff budget, just to give everyone kind of perspective. I mean, we know Louisville and being a Metro Chamber, but just kind of give us some perspective for our discussion.
Jordan Clemons 4:08
Yeah, absolutely. So Louisville is blessed to have a few chambers here. We’re sort of big, small town as far as Jefferson County goes. So we have a few neighborhood chambers here in town. But when you were thinking about goI critical voices, were the Metro Chamber of Commerce, so we encompass 10 counties in Kentucky, and five in southern Indiana. So if you’re looking at the map, and you put Jefferson County in the middle, it’s a pretty big circle around all of that. So that’s our MSA. That is the region that we’re working to grow. So we’re agnostic as far as Kentucky, Indiana County, we’re really just looking to bring economic growth to the region as a whole. So that’s sort of our thing growing the regional economy. at GE ally we have it hovers around 1700 to 1800 investors more on the on the top side and our staff is around 30. We do work in economic development, talent, workforce policy and advocacy, business development for our investors, which is the word the part that I work in the traditional chamber side. Budget, I think it’s 5 million plus somewhere around there. So as far as the categories of ACCE we compete and the top category for the awards and things like that, did that answer all your questions? Brandon, did I miss anything? Yeah,
Brandon Burton 5:29
no, that’s, that’s good. Sometimes people will, you know, have some added information in there. But yeah, I think you covered it all. So that’s it. It’s interesting with more of that regional focus, and to not be agnostic, like you said to Kentucky, but even focusing on some of those bordering counties in Indiana, and looking for the overall growth of the region, I think is great. It’s great approach.
Jordan Clemons 5:52
Yes, absolutely. I mean, what’s good for southern Indiana is good for us, too. We’ve really seen a big boom, over there. The last few years, Google has seen a huge boom as well. So it sort of bleeds across the river. And we’re more than happy to see development over there.
Brandon Burton 6:05
Right. So as Jordan mentioned, our topic we’re going to focus on LinkedIn, specifically LinkedIn for growing your membership at your chamber. And we’ll get into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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Topic-LinkedIn for Membership
All right, Jordan, we’re back. So you came recommended to me it’s kind of a roundabout way that we we ended up connecting and like you said LinkedIn was our first interaction with each other which is very fitting for this topic. But the idea of using LinkedIn for membership, I think is an interesting thing. I don’t know that a lot of chambers have really dived in to exploring LinkedIn on this one. level, they might connect with some of their members. But I’m excited to learn some of these strategies that you’ve employed and what’s working for you. And let’s just jump in there and tell us kind of how you came around to using LinkedIn as a tool, and how things have evolved for you.
Jordan Clemons 10:18
Sure, yeah, I’m gonna get up on the soapbox. And if you need to knock down, please do it. But I spend a lot of time up here. And I’m very comfortable here. And I think that there’s a lot to say. So I’ll try to be as brief as I can. It was, so I wasn’t always working at Goi. I was previously a financial advisor before this. And when I started as a financial advisor, I had no experience in sales or networking, or talking to people over coffee, all of the things that are crucially important to sales and crucially important to the job I do now. So I was at a conference, and I heard this guy speak, his name is Kevin Canibal. And he’s this sales coach, the old school scale sales coach, and he gave this presentation on how to use LinkedIn, for financial advisors, financial advisors, traditionally door knocked people and cold call, you know, it’s a numbers game. That’s exactly what they did. And that’s the advice that I got when I started was go knock on some doors. So I did it for done. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I had to tell myself, I didn’t just totally ignore the advice. But I knew there was a better way to get people to know like, and trust you. So when I saw this talk from Kevin, this light bulb clicked, I took his course, it was sort of like an intro to LinkedIn, and just a way to look at it. But it was geared specifically for financial advisors. So I used his approach for years and years in that in that role, a lot less freedom, compliance wise, and everything like that. But when I came over here to goI three years ago, I had in place the perfect network, the perfect platform, the perfect strategy, to supercharge my efforts here and make myself known and seen and seen as a thought leader in the business community using this platform that I had gotten really familiar with, over the last few years. So now or I’ve gotten three years into this, it’s it’s, it’s exploded, it is.
It is my basically source 100% of my business, through LinkedIn, by just employing a very simple strategy every single day. And I can sort of go into that I can go into the philosophy of why it’s such an important place to be for someone in the chamber world. Let me just try to start there. Yeah, yeah, because I talk about the strategy sometimes. And I think it’s better to talk about the why, versus the how first, because if you don’t really understand what makes LinkedIn different from other social media platforms, none of which I’m a huge fan of, then it’s not really gonna stick. So LinkedIn is purely for business networking, you can caveat that with, it’s great to shout out your promotions on there. It’s great to humble brag about your community volunteer experience, all that stuff’s great. But the whole point of LinkedIn is to connect business professionals, and to advance your career. And both of those things are symbiotic because the more connections you have, and the more robust your network is, the more resources you have at your disposal, when you’re trying to climb the ladder, or make a lateral move, or whatever that is. So sometimes people get lost in understanding exactly what the platform is there for. It’s your online resume. It’s your online Rolodex, if that’s even a word that people use anymore. I have it’s my outsource brain. For business. I’ve got like 10,000 Plus connections, most of them are here in the market. And when I’m trying to recall how I know someone where they work at what we’ve talked about, it’s all there. It’s not in our it’s not in my CRM I use for sales at work, because that’s all manual data inputting. It lives on LinkedIn. And guess what, whenever you talk to people and they end up moving jobs, LinkedIn knows that if they update their profile, you don’t have to put that information in your you’re notified of it, even if you have that notification turned on. So for someone whose job is to be in the business community, to know what’s happening in the business community, to talk to people in the business community, to stay engaged with them and to be seen and known as a thought leader in the business community. It’s it’s like the perfect perfect platform. And it’s it’s it’s not hard to use, that’s the other. That’s the other piece that I think people get tripped up on, they might understand exactly what I’ve just said. And, you know, that might be copacetic with their way of thinking, but then they’re like, Okay, that sounds great. But I’ve got no experience using the platform at all. It’s, it feels weird and awkward and indifferent to me, but it’s really not it, you just got to kind of find your voice. And I did that over a number of years. And I hope people do that all the time these days.
Brandon Burton 15:29
Yeah. And I think that’s important to cover that, that philosophy and kind of the thinking behind it. And one of the things you mentioned is showing that you’re a thought leader in the space or in your community, what are in maybe I’m getting into more of the steps and strategy of how you do that, of how you go about using LinkedIn. But I want to make sure we touch on that part about becoming a thought leader in showing that you’re a thought leader. So as we go through strategy, let’s make sure that we cover that as well.
Jordan Clemons 16:01
Yeah, I mean, you can find a ton of people on LinkedIn that are doing this already, to, to great success, you know, you think of great sales, mentors, and people that have really carved out their niche. And the thing that they’re really good at, you can find them on LinkedIn and look at this content that they’re putting out in the post that they’re putting out, they’ve established themselves at this thought leader about whatever it is that they do. And when you work in the chamber world, your job is so dynamic, and you talk to so many people and do so many interesting things. There’s just an abundance of content that you can create. And it’s really, you know, creating content seems like oh, I don’t know how to use Canva. That’s not for me. No, it’s just writing about what you do and pulling out the amazing camera that’s in your pocket and your smartphone, snapping some pictures while you’re out. And then tagging people and sharing them. It’s it’s not super hard.
Brandon Burton 16:54
Yeah. That’s great. So let’s let’s dive into some of the strategy then about how to you. So you, I think you’ve established you need to kind of create a base show that you’re a thought leader, and what’s next, how do you go about making those connections? How do you decide who to reach out to? And how do you do it in a way that doesn’t seem salesy, you’re like you’re, you’re coming at him to strictly for a membership and come join GLA?
Jordan Clemons 17:21
Yeah, absolutely. So I’m glad that you position that last part, because that’s exactly the way that this strategy works. And, and I, every conversation that I have, is, is a warm conversation, there are no cold conversations like zip zero, none, I do zero cold calling, zero cold outreach to anyone, obviously, that’s like, that’s a crucial part of your, that should be a crucial part of your sales strategy. If you’re newer to LinkedIn or newer in your sales role, or not to say that it doesn’t have a place, but this is where it can get is what I mean by that. So I’m gonna, I’ll tell you the steps, and they’re just gonna sound super easy. I’ll go into each of them. Yeah. But it’s almost like they’re so easy. They’re the people who really don’t understand how to take them or they’re disarming. So this is what I do every day, I post once per day. preferably in the morning, I try to get it in at like 755 or so I found that if I post around eight o’clock, preferably right before eight o’clock, the post, my posts do the best. It’s like it’s 1026 on a Friday. And that’s not to say you can’t post them. But if you can try to get your posts out early in the morning, to post once per day. It some people are like, Oh, that sounds easy. And then some people think that’s a ton to do. It’s five posts a week, you can do it, I promise, verbally in the morning. Number two is reach out to those people who are interacting with your content. So every day I post something, and then my next step is to look at what I posted yesterday, and to see who was liking this post who was commenting on this post. And then I go through, and I look at all of these people, a lot of them are first degree connections, which means that we’re already connected, and we’ve already had a conversation. But some of them are second degree connections. So the second degree connections, that means they’re connected to someone in your network, who are interacting with your posts saw it because someone in your network reacted to it. You know how this works. We should all pretty familiar with this by now, as far as social media goes. But those are people that just saw your face and just saw your name and liked something that you’ve posted, you know enough to press the little button, either clap at it or thumbs up it or whatever you may have. So I always reach out to those people and request to connect. That’s the second step. So you’re posting content every day. You know, positioning yourself as a thought leader. So writing a business showing people the cool stuff you’re up to, I could talk strategy. And I’m like, which posts do really well for days and days and days. But the point is that you just do it. You do it every day, no matter what, okay, consistency is key. And then you harvest your engagement, and you look at who’s actually engaging with the stuff and it will naturally grow your network, by way of reaching out to these second degree connections, and connecting with them. You know, it’s, it’s totally fine. It’s not a cold connection, they saw something of yours, they’re familiar with you, they might have forgotten that they liked your post, who I mean, you can’t control that. But what you can control is reaching out to say, Hey, thanks for liking my post about so and so would you like to connect, that’s I literally write that out,
Brandon Burton 20:46
I was gonna ask if you include a message when you reach out, David.
Jordan Clemons 20:50
Exactly. That’s, that’s him. That’s him. That’s a little more granular, the details, but that’s exactly what you do. There’s a couple of reasons. Number one, most people don’t do that. So you’re going to stand out. And then number two, when you start doing this a lot, you’re going to be getting 2030 connections a day, sometimes I’m telling you, it’s it really, really ramps up. And when you connect with them, they fall in your little messages, area of your LinkedIn. And you there’s no way you’re going to be able to remember how you connected with this person, what caused this. But if you include that message, and say thanks for commenting on my post about such and such, then you’ll be like, Oh, that’s what it was. And then you can keep the conversation going from there. Literally Ctrl C, go to the next one, Ctrl V, enter, I’ve got this down to the minimal amount of time that it takes to complete this process, because it’s getting so busy. That’s the second step. So you’re gonna reach out and connect with people that engage with your posts, second degree connections, specifically to grow your network, but when you’re starting this out, when you’re starting this strategy out new, you’re not going to get a ton of second degree connections, you know, doing this at least, that’s my, that’s my thought. But look at all those first degree connections to, you know, like anyone connected to you on LinkedIn, if they’re not a member of your chamber, is a potential prospect. So even if they’re a first degree connection, is it someone that you would like to start a conversation with, if it is, that’s, that’s the prime time to do it, it’s just like, going into a coffee shop, seeing somebody that you know, oh, it would be great to pick back up on a conversation with them, but I really don’t have a reason to call them. And that might make you feel uncomfortable, say you just like saw them in a coffee shop waved at them and said, Hey, how’s the family and we’re on your way. Calling them after that is a lot less intimidating, and will probably lead to more success. If they comment or like something on LinkedIn, that’s the exact same thing. As far as I’m concerned, you know, it’s just the digital version of networking. Right? So well, I’ve
Brandon Burton 23:00
heard that explained is returning every handshake, you know, if they’re engaging with your social media, it’s like they’re putting out their hand to shake your hand. And if you just leave them hanging, you know, they’re not going to engage with you anymore. But if you return that handshake, it continues to build that relationship.
Jordan Clemons 23:15
That is, that is a perfect way to put it, Brandon, I’ve never thought of it that way. But what I do, essentially, I wish I could return every handshake, I wish. My posts get like 10,000 views now they always get like over 100 reactions or so it would literally be a full time job responding to every single person, something I wish I could but all the second degree connections, you better believe they get a connection request saying thank you. And then that leads to the third step. So what have we gone over so far? You post once per day in the morning, not not super hard. You reach out to people who engage with your posts. You know, this is just that the next step, if you just do this again, consistently, it will get you the results. And then number three, you once you connect with these people just start the conversation with them. You know if more conversations equals more sales, so I can’t tell you exactly what to say to folks. But when I talk to people on LinkedIn, if it’s someone I’ve never met before in my entire life, but I found them and connected with them through this process, then they’re going to wind up in my messages inbox. I’m going to see why they what what post it was that got us connected because I put it in that message right so that I can have that to reference. Then you can go to their profile and look what they’re about. Did you go to school with them? You can see common connection requests. There’s so much data on here to help make the sales process go much more smoothly. And think about that compared to looking at a phonebook and dialing a number of a person you’ve never even heard before and you’re on the phone and you have no Data to go off of whatsoever. That’s literally how people used to do sales or knocking on their door. And I mean, you have the benefit of, you know, being face to face there. So it’s a little more of a connection. But on LinkedIn, you can see everything professionally about someone that they want to share. And they have it on there because they want to share it. And you don’t have to think of a perfect response. Right? That second, as if you were on the phone or in person, you can take all the time in the world, I don’t suggest you do. But I’m just, I’m trying to highlight the fact that there’s so much potential here. But if I connect with someone, we just have a conversation I, we talked about what they liked, we or the post or whatever, you know, we talked about, if it’s one if it’s their business, and if I really don’t have anything else to say, I’ll just say like, Hey, this is the first time I’ve heard about insert whatever their business name is, can you tell me more, or whatever. I mean, if you’re a sales professional, you know how to do it, you ask open ended questions, you get people talking. But the point is, you can have conversations with people on this platform that you meet naturally through this way. And then get them to a coffee, and then do your normal thing, the exact treat them exactly as if you met them at a networking event. And, you know, ask them out to coffee. So that’s the whole thing. It’s posting once per day, preferably in the morning, connect with people who engage with you, and then start a conversation. And by doing that, I’m on track to hit my annual sales goal by the end of this month, that will be June. So it’s working out pretty well. It takes some time for this stuff to build up. Don’t get me wrong. But that’s why I believe in the platform so much.
Brandon Burton 26:44
I think there’s a lot to be said about that, as you can call it asynchronous, asynchronous. I’m not saying the word right communication are Yeah, you get that time you get a little bit of a buffer, if you need it to respond in a way that’s going to provide the most value, it’s going to answer their question the best that’s going to align them with the right people, if you’re helping them make other connections and and it’s not that immediate response need to give if you are talking to somebody in person or on the phone where you need to have that back and forth dialogue immediately. So I wanted to circle back on the posts that you do. So posting once a day. Couple things came to mind. Do you ever use any scheduler? And how do you decide when it’s worth tagging another person or business in a post?
Jordan Clemons 27:35
Yeah, so great questions. I don’t use a scheduler, I’ve tried to go down that path a couple of times. But what works best for me is I like when I’m out and about is um, this is so ingrained in my my process every day. Pictures are great for LinkedIn, if you’re at cold places, doing cool things, take a cool picture of it, people love that stuff. I just sort of bank them in my phone. Sometimes I’ll schedule what I want to post that day on the calendar. So I don’t forget, but I don’t put it in something like buffer or anything like that, you totally can. But I think you’re missing out on the ability to post about cutting edge like current things. You know, if you’re subscribed to say the business first publication of your area, they put that stuff out, it’s fresh, it’s like happening that day. And tying off to that and being a person that shares something that’s like, that just happened, there’s a lot of value in that. And not to say you still can’t do that. But you are missing out a little bit of that if you do schedule it. But if it would work better for you to block off time, on a Monday or Friday and like get all of these scheduled so that you know that they’ll go out at the right time. I think that’s a great strategy. And there’s tons of free tools to be able to do that. What was the second part of the question, Brandon, sorry. So
Brandon Burton 28:55
yeah, before. So using a scheduler, I’m wondering if if it’s a Monday afternoon, and you know what you want to post on Tuesday morning, but you’ve got a standing Tuesday morning meeting or something that still work the same as you know, to say, this is what I’m going to post I’m going to post a schedule, so it goes 7:55am and then not have to think about it. When you’re in your you’re standing Tuesday morning meeting.
Jordan Clemons 29:22
Yeah, absolutely. Whatever works best for you, like know yourself as a sales professional. There’s a ton of value in that knowing your strengths, knowing your weaknesses, know how you operate the best sometimes. So I go to the gym at seven in the morning, a lot of days, and it’s over like right before eight so I literally will get done with the workout and go sit on the bench and get on my phone real fast. And post something it’s not ideal. I probably be a little bit more strategic about it. But yeah, if I if I was more adept at using the scheduler, it’s just that Have a matter of habit for me at this point, you know, it’s going to have morning no matter what, for me. But if if if you think that that’s something that would help you achieve step one, because without step one, step two and three don’t happen. Definitely look into that some of them. I’m not sure if you can tag people, though, if you do that, which I think was your second part of
Brandon Burton 30:20
your question, it was yeah, some things are obvious where you tag somebody, but how do you give thought as to whether or not you tag a person or another business on the post? Well, I
Jordan Clemons 30:29
would say automatically default to tagging as many people as you can that’s related to your post, that’s going to increase the visibility of it, they’re gonna get a notification, their network is going to see it. Again, social media has been around for a little bit of time now. So I think we all understand that the more people you tag, the more visibility your post gets, which is what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to get as many people to see this as you can. You know, that’s the that’s the purpose of the post. That’s one of the purposes of the post. Not everyone has LinkedIn, but most people do. Honestly, it’s, it’s it’s kind of crazy that most people do not every business does. But most Well, I wouldn’t say most businesses do but more more than you would think do. So I would default to you know, if you’re taking a picture of a ribbon cutting your app, definitely post the the business or I’m sorry, tag, the business tag, the business owner, tag anyone that would be related to whatever it is that you’re posting, so that it gets as much visibility as it can.
Brandon Burton 31:32
Okay, the next question I have for you is, so I have the the alerts set up on my phone. So if somebody interacts with something with me on LinkedIn, I’m seeing a message or a icon on my phone, but I’ve got a new, new alert. How do you manage your time? Do you block out time specifically for responding to LinkedIn? And, you know, an hour to a day just to block for that? Or do you just respond as it comes? Or? What’s your strategy for responding?
Jordan Clemons 32:03
Yeah, great, great, great question. So if you’re asking my opinion, I would say turn off the notifications, and block time out every morning, the LinkedIn strategy is literally the first thing I do when I fire up my computer, I don’t open my email, I don’t do anything else, the link, LinkedIn comes up, I knock it out, and then it goes down. That’s how that’s how I think is the best way to manage this. I mean, when you’re when you’re starting out, you can, you know, check it a couple times a day depends on how busy you Davis but the beauty of the of the whole system that I just told you is that you you open LinkedIn, first thing you do is you you post your content, you have that it’s done, it’s gonna live there for the next however long. Second thing you do is go to your notifications, and their groups nice neatly is going to be everyone who’s responded to something you posted yesterday, or the day before content can live for a long time, there’s some times it only lives for a day, you know, the feed is is sort of different than other social media platforms, you don’t have like a page where you can well, you can navigate to see everyone’s posts, but you know what I mean? So you can post and then say, I’m done with that part, then you go to the notifications. And you can look at the whole list in chronological order, I literally right click on each one, open in a new tab, and then knock it out that way. So I don’t lose that page. And I’m done with all of those notifications, it’s very methodical. Once you’re done with that, you have harvested all of that engagement 100%. And you put all that out there, you’ve sent out all those connection requests, you put all of it in motion. And then once you do after that step through, you’re gonna go to your messages, and you’re gonna see all of those people that responded positively to your connection request yesterday, or the day before, or the week before, you never know how much someone uses LinkedIn. But you do this methodically, every single day, then whenever it is that they come around to it, you know, they’re either gonna get back to you or they aren’t, it’s not really anything you can do about that. But you just make sure that you come through this every day. So respond to all of your messages. You know, keep that going if someone responds back, or if it’s something that you really want to make sure you don’t let slip through the cracks. You know, if I have, I literally have 1000s of messages, 1000s of conversations, it’s, it’s crazy. So you can keep it open if if the dialog is going, but you don’t have to. So when you first start, when you first start out using this method, it might take 510 minutes, do this, and then like be on with the rest of your day. But if you’re worried about notifications, sidelining you all day long, just turn them off. You don’t need them. Like you’re saying that asynchronous communication. That’s the beautiful part about this is that no one’s expected to get back to you immediately. You’re going to be totally forgiven. If someone’s like, I want to join them. chamber today because we connected Can we do that? They’re not gonna do that, just because you responded to them the next day? Because you’re busy doing the rest of your job. Right. So that would be my answer to that.
Brandon Burton 35:12
Yeah, no, that’s I think that’s a good response. So one thing that I noticed as I engage with people on LinkedIn is the response rate is much better than, say, email or other methods of reaching out there. Do you see the same kind of thing? I see your head nodding?
Jordan Clemons 35:30
Well, um, I don’t know. It’s, I get that. I mean, I should really be saying, yes, absolutely. I guess I’m just trying to think I can’t really put my finger on that. I would just say, Here, cut that maybe cut that a little part of the answer out, because I could definitely a better answer than that. I would say yes, yes, people respond on LinkedIn, a lot more than you think they were. And they will respond to you on LinkedIn, a lot more than you think they will. If you’re genuine. With your outreach, if you don’t try to sell them, the moment they start talking to you. If you’re just easygoing, and work a normal sales process, it’s really not hard. Think about the messages that you’ve received on LinkedIn. In the past. I’m sort of outlier because I use the platform like crazy, but if you don’t, you’re probably like, oh, anyone who’s ever reached out to me is sent me a paragraph about how they want to secure my financial future or something like we’ve all been there, I get it. So you can either look at it one of two ways, you can say, Okay, well, that’s just, that’s a useless part of this platform, because that’s all anyone ever does. Or you can say, well, the bar is set pretty low. Actually, if I just provide someone a message, that’s not as sucky as that, then they’ll probably respond positively, which is what happens. The other part that I would add to that, Brandon is that, as far as responses and communication goes, in the messaging part, specifically, the people that are going to be good prospects for you, at least as far as this whole strategy works out, are going to be the ones that respond to you. And then the people that aren’t, are going to be the ones that don’t connect, and don’t respond. So what you’re left with is the people that are self selecting themselves in to your pipeline. And then the people that are going to be a waste of time, because they don’t use the platform a lot. And they’re just going to be difficult to reach in this way, are just going to let you know that by either not responding to your connection requests, or not responding to your message that went along with that. So you can totally forget about them focus on the people that are engaging with you. And then the pipeline goes down from there. If that makes sense.
Brandon Burton 37:52
It does. And what I like about this strategy is when you’re reaching out and engaging with people that are engaged with your posts, you know, their user of LinkedIn, because they were on there to make that engagement to begin with, then you reach out with that warm interaction, that warm handshake, you know, returning, your response is going to be much higher than just the cold calling and knocking on doors is a traditional membership salesperson. So I love you know, the strategies you’re implementing. I know we can go a whole lot deeper in a lot of different channels of this. But I wanted as we start wrapping up here, I wanted to ask if you have maybe one tip or strategy for Chamber Champions listening that they can implement to help take their organization up to the next level?
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
Jordan Clemons 38:39
Yeah, absolutely. Well, it’s gonna come no surprise, and I’m just gonna say, use LinkedIn, it’s such an I use the free, I use the free version. I’ve always forget to caveat that because when I give these talks, it inevitably comes up that someone thinks that you premium versions pricing, there’s a lot of bells and whistles with that you can do this with an account that you create today. And there’s I’m not, there’s nothing that’s gonna stop you from doing that. But I’m, I’m not a social media savvy person. All I’ve done is what I’ve told you here today for years and years and years. And here I am talking about it with people all the time. So the juice is worth the squeeze as far as spending a little bit of time every day, getting familiar with the platform, and finding your voice and figuring out how you can comfortably use it. But the best tip is just to do it, put it on your calendar, five minutes every morning. You know, it doesn’t take a lot of time I promise you. But there’s only so many networking events you can go to and the day and the week in the month LinkedIn lives on there and perpetuity people can secret shop you all day long. So if you don’t really put time and effort into just getting that off the ground then you’re missing the boat on a ton of sales. I promise you.
Brandon Burton 39:55
Yeah. I love that. You mentioned that use the free version. And because there is so much power that comes with that. And it reminds me of back in the day, if we can remember back when Facebook was a lot more robust. As far as you know, if you had a Facebook page for your business, you know, all your followers would see all the posts that you put out there because they followed your page. And then now Facebook, of course throttles it, they make you pay to get in front of your audience. So right now, there’s a lot of power in the free version with LinkedIn. Who knows how long that’ll last for before they put on, you know, a different pay barrier or whatever. So for anyone listening, I would say, jump on this now start building that network, because you never know how long a good thing is gonna last?
Jordan Clemons 40:41
Yeah, well, I mean, I have confidence. Microsoft purchased LinkedIn. A few years ago, I can’t remember exactly how much so I have confidence that it’s it’s like the last unpainted social media platform as far as I’m concerned. Right. So half of me is saying, like, shut up about talking about LinkedIn. But the other half is just like, This is so great. I can’t not tell people about it.
Brandon Burton 41:04
That’s right. So Jordan, I like asking everyone, as we look to the future and chambers of commerce, how do you see the future chambers in their purpose going for?
Future of Chambers
Jordan Clemons 41:14
Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I wish I had a correct answer. Or if there was a correct answer, I am 34 will be 35. In about a month here. I’ve been in July for three years, I’ve been involved in the community via networking and sales since 2013. So that’s, that’s my experience, in my view, I would say, chambers of commerce in the future. I don’t, I don’t know, membership based organizations, there are two types of members, there’s transactional members, and there’s transformational members. So transactional members want the value that is equal or greater to the amount of dues that they pay you. And the transformation or members are bought in for the vision and the strategy. And the goal of what it is that your chamber is out here doing, you’re going to have to have a mix of both of those types of members in order to thrive in the future. Obviously, younger businesses, I don’t know that they’re super familiar with a chamber of commerce, I’ve not started a business of my own. But if you’re young and upcoming business, I think of some of the other older organizations that you don’t hear about too much anymore. And I’m not sure who’s out here. Besides, you know, you and me and other young chamber professionals that are advocating for chambers for these smaller businesses that I have sort of a fear of that as we go in the future. So I think there just needs to be a lot of education around what it is that chambers do, which is literally what I do all day long. But that’s a long winded answer that probably didn’t tell you anything.
Brandon Burton 42:52
That’s all right. It’s all about perspective, you know, everybody comes to it from a different perspective. So that’s why I like asking that question. Because we can kind of aggregate those perspectives and maybe come up with some sort of a crystal ball as to what the future looks like.
Jordan Clemons 43:06
Yeah, I’ll say that, um, the future will be the future. And, you know, efficiency is what is where things go. And that’s, that’s economic. So I’m excited to see what happens there, change is a good thing. I don’t think change is a bad thing at all. So I’m, I feel good to be in the position that I’m in to help navigate whatever that looks like. So bring it on.
Brandon Burton 43:28
Right. So I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information, because I’m sure listeners to this episode are going to hear this and think, you know, they’ve got their own questions they’ve got they need to connect with you on LinkedIn if they’re not already. And so how can they reach out and connect? Obviously, LinkedIn would seem to be the obvious choice, but what other ways and you know, opportunities are there to reach out and connect with you?
Connect with Jordan Clemons
Jordan Clemons 43:52
Yeah, just use LinkedIn. I mean, you can email me but I want less emails, rather than more honestly. Reach out to me on LinkedIn connect with me, and we can message it will help get you familiar with the platform. I’ll get back to you. And we can just have a one on one conversation there. It’s super duper easy. Go to LinkedIn search for Jordan Clemens, senior investor Development Manager at GE ally you can do it I promise you, you can find my profile, click that little Connect button. And then when it says do you want to include a message include a message say You know, you heard me on the Chamber Chat Podcast or whatever you want but that I’m coaching you on how to use the platform here, but I can help you from there too.
Brandon Burton 44:37
Absolutely. And I’ll I’ll put a link to your your profile in our show notes for this episode as well. So we’ll make it easy for people to find you and connect. But yeah, I’m all about making it easy. Connect with Jordan say Hey, I heard you on Chamber Chat Podcast help. So and Jordan is air with a wealth of knowledge Ah to be able to help you help your chamber through using utilizing these tools that he mentioned with through LinkedIn. So thank you, Jordan, for joining us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. And I think you provided a ton of value in the little bit of time that we had together. But hopefully it ignites in interest for those listening to explore the opportunities that LinkedIn provides.
Jordan Clemons 45:26
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity, Brandon. Sorry if I was a little long winded, but anybody that has any additional questions again, just send me a message. I’m here to help.
Brandon Burton 45:34
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