Rathling's Ramblings (Edition 4)

In this edition:

• What's been happening at Linked Inbound?
• Goal Setting for the year ahead, an insight into how I set my goals
• 21 ideas for your LinkedIn activity in 2021
• What I'm listening to...
• What I'm reading...
• What have the snow and social selling have to do with each other?
• Special offer for February
• Final thoughts...
• About the Author

What's been happening at Linked Inbound?

WOW! What a start to the year. It's been a whirlwind month, and I can't quite believe it's February next week!! We've launched my online Academy to over 160 sales professionals in both channel and direct sales for one of our corporate clients, I've been booked to speak at 5 events in the next few weeks. Yesterday I delivered an interactive workshop to over 30 eCommerce agencies across the globe, to help them better understand social selling here on LinkedIn. This has now resulted in an invitation to deliver more in-depth training in Gran Canaria, once we can travel again! (Oh how I miss travel ?? so much).

Next month, I will kick off training delivery for 6 weeks, at the beginning of a complete transformational change programme, for a client who is embedding social selling across their entire organisation. They have heavily invested in LinkedIn Sales Navigator, but their team just aren't getting the results they hoped for. So, initially, I will be working with a pilot team in Europe, followed by a global rollout of the online Academy for 200 salespeople.

We had our internal kick off meeting at Team LIB and set some sustainable, realistic and achievable growth targets for the year, which will see us increasing headcount and creating more jobs in 2021. I am excited for the year ahead, despite the challenges we are all facing and I could not be prouder of my amazing team, working from home, juggling work, kids, homeschooling and the extensive lockdown period.

Goal Setting for the year ahead, an insight into how I set my goals

I have been a student of goal-setting for over a decade, I have been refining my methods and people often ask me how I set and achieve my goals, knowing that I am a very driven and focused business owner. I am sure most of you reading this by now will have set your 2021 goals, but just in case, here is an insight into my goal setting (I have been doing this with my kids since they were 4 years old):

21 ideas for your LinkedIn activity in 2021

I recently posted a document post with 21 ideas to help you with your LinkedIn activity, to date it's had thousands of views so I felt it would be pertinent to add this to my newsletter just in case you missed it.

What I'm listening to...

I normally mention a podcast that I am enjoying in this part of my newsletter, but this week I am going to share my current Audible library, and some of the books I am listening to for the first time as well as some classics that I regularly listen to:

What I'm reading...

Andy Lopata has recently released his new book "Just Ask" and it could not be more poignant at the moment. In a time when you, your teams, your friends and family are struggling to cope with the reality of what's happening in our world, we need to get good at asking for help.

I am guilty of it, I battle on, I get my head down and focus, but I often fail to recognise when I need help and support. Not only that, even if I do recognise it I don't always ask for help.

In this powerful book, you'll learn strategies and techniques to make you think, and understand how to recognise and utilise the support around you.

Get a copy of Andy's book here, it's on offer in paperback for just ￡11.99 at the moment, or ￡4.99 on Kindle, on Amazon.

What have snow and social selling got to do with each other?

Now it's not often we get snow ???? in the UK, and as always it brings the whole country to a standstill. But more importantly than that, it brings a smile to the face of every child and adult alike, across the land. I took a morning this week, to stop working, build a snowman, go sledding, and have multiple snowball fights with my kids and it was one of the best days of my year so far, creating snow memories that will last a lifetime. Magical.

But what have the snow and social selling got to do with each other?

Well firstly, the snow is visible for a few days and then just like that... it's gone again. That can sometimes happen to your LinkedIn posts, and in some cases, it's how people treat their LinkedIn approach. They get all excited for a few days, show up on the newsfeed and then life and work gets busy again and they stop and go back to how it was before. Consistency is key if you are going to get real traction here on LinkedIn.

The snow brought so much joy to so many faces (including my youngest daughter Lily pictured here with her lovely snowman), it brought fun and laughter, and much-needed distraction to so many people in these challenging times. Your content should do that too. It should make people stop what they are doing and enjoy something different.

I live in a small village in Derbyshire, and the roads got really icy here this week... cars couldn't get up the hill, cars were abandoned and I watched this one gentleman, in a silver Jaguar attempt to get up the hill at least 3 times! His wheels were spinning, he just couldn't get any traction (sound familiar?). He even tried driving down the road on the wrong way on the one-way system just to be met by another car and have to reverse all the way back down the road at another failed attempt. BUT, he didn't give up... After multiple ideas, he got out of his car, in his expensive suit, with his briefcase and he braved the icy pavements in slippery shoes, to head to the village centre to find an alternative mode of transport. He didn't give up! It's the same with social selling, it takes time, patience, testing different methods, perseverance and effort.

Finally, every snowflake is unique, just like you. Don't try to be like anyone else. Be your true, authentic self. Show up true to your values, build your personal brand speaking to your exact target market. Authenticity is key.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." -Steve Jobs

Special offer for February 2021

It's very unlike me to discount ANYTHING! (ask my sales coach!). To celebrate the official launch of my Academy, we are offering 6 months access for half price! Yes, that's 50% off membership to my Pipeline Academy PRO, which is an on-demand, online course with more than 40 training videos on all things LinkedIn and social selling, PLUS monthly group mentoring with me. I will provide more details in the next newsletter but for now, if you would like more details and early access to this offer, please send a LinkedIn message to Lianne Saxton. The Pipeline Academy is suitable for sales professionals, marketers, and business owners who are looking to strategically build sales pipeline through LinkedIn.

NOTE: This special offer is for companies looking for 1-10 licenses. For all enterprise enquiries for larger teams, please book a call with Lianne using this link: https://calendly.com/linkedinbound/discovery.

Final Thoughts

I hope you have enjoyed the ideas in this edition. If you have, please subscribe for future newsletters, and share it with someone you know it would help. Please drop a comment below with your favourite idea or tip that you are going to use and implement from this edition. Thanks for being a part of my ever-growing subscriber base (6000+). My goal is for this to be one of the most useful newsletters on the LinkedIn platform, with practical and easy to implement tips, so thank you for reading and thank you for your support, it means the world to me.

About the Author

Sam Rathling is a LinkedIn Expert & Social Selling Strategist based out of Derby in the East Midlands. She is on a mission to generate over ￡1billion in sales for her clients by 2025. 

An international Speaker and best-selling Author, Sam is a global authority on building sales pipeline through LinkedIn. 

As the Chief Visionary Officer & Founder of Linked Inbound, she inspires C-Suite leaders, business owners and sales & marketing professionals to generate massive results through social selling. Since Jan 2019, Sam and her team have helped companies to generate in excess of ￡96.3m in new business from the LinkedIn platform. 

Sam educates and trains people on LinkedIn through her on-demand, video-based online Academy with live group mentoring. As well as delivering in-house and virtual programmes with large organisations looking to fundamentally transform their sales pipeline, upskilling their teams on building brand awareness and prospecting effectively.

Linked Inbound, is a specialist LinkedIn marketing agency delivering premium outsourced marketing campaigns within LinkedIn to supercharge client's results, strategically building sales pipeline on behalf of clients. 

Whether you and your team want to get trained to do it yourselves, or you want us to help you, we might be able to help. However, we aren't a good fit for every business, so we need to determine if you qualify to work with us first.

Book a Discovery call here if you want to discuss how we may be able to help your organisation: https://calendly.com/linkedinbound/discovery