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Josh: Good day, everybody. Welcome to the Deal Scout!
Josh, here on today’s show, we’re going to talk about creating Deal Flow on LinkedIn. Patrick, welcome to the show, man.
Patrick Burns: Thanks for having me, Josh.
Josh: Absolutely. So tell us a little bit about who you are and what you’re up to.
Patrick Burns: Yeah, so I started my entrepreneur journey in 2015. I’m originally from Indiana. My first tech startup was basically Uber for Lawn Care. I was the city manager for that company for three to four months. I would just generate users on both sides. So we get people that need their lawn mode. They could click a button and have a service provider come there. And then I would reach out to Lawn Care people and get them as service providers.
So I did that for three to four months. That was my first taste of entrepreneurship. So I just went all in and got super aggressive with it. And I was working 80 to 100 hours weeks doing that. And even the founder said, he’s like, you probably should just go build your own business because you’re so driven and determined and you just have this relating energy. And I didn’t have any equity in that company.
So I’m like, well, I might as well just go build my own thing, and then I can go as far as I want to take it. From there, I pivoted, and I started an online personal training platform. Essentially, I was going to connect online personal trainers with clients with no marketing required for them, and they could get clients. I was using another third party software to kind of facilitate the relationship, and I would just drive awareness and growth for it.
That was sort of a fail. I mean, I was still young and green. I just graduated college and got into that venture. I did that for about a year, and I realized from those experiences that I was naturally good at marketing and branding. So I then pivoted and was like, okay, why don’t I just become an expert in this domain and then help other companies with their marketing and branding efforts? So that company has been going five plus years, and I basically work with B2B models, and I’ll help them with their content strategy, viral marketing, lead generation and all that stuff. So they just grow awareness and grow the revenue. That’s essentially what I do.
Josh: Awesome. Yeah. So I think that this is such a great point you were building for another person and you’re diving in enough to get the CEO’s attention and they go, hey, have you ever considered starting your own before working there? Did that thought ever cross your mind or you were just like, oh, startup, this looks cool, and then dive in?
Patrick Burns: Yeah, I just couldn’t find my fit trying to work just a regular job because I had a career counselor that would try to just get me because I got a bachelor’s in business management, and they would just present me all these different regular nine to five jobs and I just wouldn’t gravitate towards them. And then he brought up this tech startup and I’m like, that’s exactly what I want to get involved with.
So once I had that opportunity, then I just fell in love with I love just the intensity and the competition aspect of it because I’m just a naturally competitive person. So it was a great outlet to use that mindset energy. And then I always had ideas to start my own business. Way back, I was wanting to start a gym, and I actually met with a contractor and I had a guy that did real estate development.
But I was so young and it was such a risky bet that I backed out of that because I was going to have to take out massive loans. And I knew that I wasn’t experienced enough to really make sure that that succeeded. So I wanted to start a business that was more just time was the resource I was investing instead of a lot of capital and putting a lot of liability on me to experiment and to figure out my entrepreneurial path.
Josh: Yeah. So how did you stumble now as I’m looking on your LinkedIn, for example, over 70,000 followers, you’ve created an incredible content base there. How did you fall into LinkedIn?
Patrick Burns: Well, when I was first starting off, I would just spend a lot of time on a bunch of platforms, and I was just getting to understand the analytics and see what really was growing. And I honestly used to spend a ton of time on Instagram. I would just spend night and day on Instagram and I barely did anything on LinkedIn.
And then I connected my Google Analytics and I was seeing that I was getting way more traffic from LinkedIn than I was Instagram and I was spending ten times amount of effort and energy on Instagram. So I’m like, oh my gosh! And then once I saw that, then I’m like, okay, I need to go into LinkedIn. And then I just saw that there wasn’t as big of a user base and it wasn’t exploited as Facebook and Instagram are because everybody uses those channels.
So I’m like, okay, this is a channel that’s underutilized. I’m getting natural, organic growth from it more than my other channels. Let’s really dive deeper on there. And I would take on a lot of varying business opportunities though, too. I mean, I did stuff in business, consumer. I was a digital marketing manager for a fitness franchise for two years. So I did a lot of consumer based stuff. But what I realized was I was best in B2B because that’s how I built. My own brand was business to business. So I’m like, well, it’s a lot easier for me to replicate those results for my clients. And LinkedIn is the best for the B2B marketplace, bar none. Nothing can compete for B2B like LinkedIn does.
Josh: Yeah. So when you’re looking at some of your background and the trials and things that worked really well and maybe the things that didn’t, you look at kind of like two different segments, B2C, business to consumer, and then business to business. Give me a comparison of the two. And why did you choose and why do you really like B2B?
Patrick Burns: The biggest difference would be the platforms that you leverage for each one. LinkedIn is meant for B2B. If you’re wanting to do B2C, then you’re going to want to leverage Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, those are more consumer related platforms. And LinkedIn is more of the B2B platform. The reason that I did B2B was I had the most experience because I did it for my own brand. So it was easy to pass on that knowledge. And I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel to help another brand grow because I already went through all the trials and tribulations growing my own brand with that.
And then there’s a lot bigger opportunity for major deals. I mean, we have a lot of tech partnerships, and if you can get involved with a product or service that’s an enterprise type deal, you can get massive cash flow from just one client that you bring on. So I like that excitement of, oh man, if we land a six to seven figure contract for this software, the game can be completely changed. I like that. Instead of just selling small, high volume products and services.
Josh: Yeah, I like B2B. That’s why we focus on commercial real estate or private businesses. The B2B space just seems to fit me a little bit better. I started in consumer selling consumer real estate, right? So listing grandmother’s house, and I just find, man, I work so much better when I’m dealing with investors, business owners, other people like me. What about you? What is your fit? Is there a specific industry that you like working in the best in the B2B world?
Patrick Burns: Yeah, it would definitely be the tech space that I like to get involved with the most. So software and information technology and services, just because that was a big factor of why I moved to Austin because it’s really growing for the tech industry. So I’m in an ecosystem where it’s thriving and growing. I mean, they’re about ready to move Tesla’s headquarters down here.
And with technology companies, it’s just an ever growing trend. And then it has infinite scale like possibilities. I mean, if I can partner with certain technologies, it’s not like you have added expenses for every license that you sell or you know what I’m saying? So there’s infinite scale, and I like that because we could take some serious moonshine. It’s more exciting, too. It’s a lot more risk. That industry is definitely a lot more risk, but there’s a lot of excitement because one partner, one tech partner could change the whole game for you.
Josh: Yeah, absolutely. Now, when you’re working on these big deals, right, big deals are awesome. They’re a lot of fun, but sometimes the sales cycle takes a long time. When you started early on, what did you do to keep the lights on while you’re hunting for bigger deals?
Patrick Burns: Well, it’s actually interesting how I have this strategy. So my company, when I’m servicing people, are actually small to mid-sized deals. So they’re not really large. I mean, we don’t work with large enterprise clients. I work with small to medium businesses, but I can partner with tech companies that have products or service. I can generate them business, and they have products and services that can be for the enterprise deal, and they can manage those sales conversations and close those deals, and I just generate them, the leads and the deals.
So that’s how I approach that. So my business model is actually small to medium, so I got quick sales, short sales cycles, and a certain amount of revenue. And then I position myself with other partnerships where they can get into those enterprise deals, and then they’ll close.
Josh: Got it. So in what you’re doing on a day to day basis using LinkedIn, what have you found? Really works with LinkedIn and maybe some things that you see and you’re like, you guys are doing it so wrong. There’s such an opportunity there.
Patrick Burns: Well, the biggest thing, I recommend all my clients and partners that they use the Sales Navigator Premium Membership on LinkedIn because it gives way better targeting ability. You can reach out to more contacts, and then it has its own CRM system where you can actually save conversation from interested parties and then effectively follow up with them.
Because if you don’t have that upgraded version, it’s really hard to get granular as far as your targeting goes. I mean, I can target somebody that has an investor title that works at a specific company size in a very specific location. I can target years of experience that they have, and it just makes it so I can be very granular with my targeting and have the best conversion rate possible. That’s a huge factor, is using that upgraded membership.
And the other thing is that there’s just a lot of people doing messaging campaigns because essentially we’ll just make a target market search within sales Navigator and then we’ll come up with messaging sequences to engage that market. And where a lot of people get it wrong is they try to make it too fluffy in the communication and they make it way too long of copy. That’s probably the biggest mistake I see time and time again.
If you’re reaching out to a contact that you have no previous relationship, you need to make it very short and concise communication and focus on what benefits you can bring to them. And not even talk about yourself because nobody wants to read a novel from a stranger that they don’t know. So you want to give the spotlight on them and then you want to be very clear on the value proposition of this relationship, like what could happen here so they can just immediately understand the opportunity. So you want to be very specific with your targeting and then you want to be very clear and concise and focus on their value that they can get with your messaging.
Josh: So what’s a good outreach like? Message what’s good and bad? So bad could be too long, but give us an example of a good outreach. Now this is a cold B2 B outreach. What’s good and bad?
Patrick Burns: With a bad one? It can get way too technical if you’re like breaking down all the technical language of your offer. Because I mean, I work a lot in the tech space, so if we make a message and we put like ten bullet points of what our technology can do, they’re not going to read all that information. But if I can simplify that and then I could provide see, that’s the thing of it too. You can have shorter copy, but you could add links to really in depth material and then they’ll click that link and they can do a deep dive.
But in the actual body of the text, you just want to make it really short and concise. I mean, I can give you an example of something that I’ve used that’s getting great results and it’s just basically for referral partnerships through my company. Okay, so I’m looking to just build a strong referral network and all I do is just say, I hope all is well, First Name I want to reach out. We are offering, like I’m very direct about we are offering 10% commission on any contact that you bring us and we close. If you’re interested in winning with us, let me know.
So I’m just being super direct about it and I’m clearly labeling what reward that they can get from it and then they’ll reply back and show interest. They’re like, oh, well, let me know more. Then I can do a lot of dump of information on I don’t want to do the dump of information on them until they show strong interest and they show curiosity, then I can give them a lot more of the details.
Josh: I think everybody goes for the home run right off the bat because either they don’t like being on LinkedIn or they don’t know the best way to do it. So here’s all the information, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Are you interested? And why do you think that those get low results, even if it’s the same kind of outcome?
Patrick Burns: It’s just overwhelming to a recipient. Attention spans are so short and there’s a million things going on. So if I see a message that’s just really long winded, I’m like, that’s going to take too much of my time to digest that information and make a decision. If I can streamline that time and make it way faster, then I’m going to take action on it. You got to think of the cognitive load of the message. Like if it’s just too much to go through, then they’re going to move on. You want to just be very simplistic so they know the value proposition, the opportunity within seconds and then they can respond. That’s the biggest thing.
And you can be really direct too. A lot of times people and people can see through that. If you’re just trying to connect with somebody and you’re ultimately trying to pitch them something but you play it off like you’re networking, people can see through that. I mean, I can tell that you’re going to pitch me something right off the bat.
So I’m very candid with people. I will pitch them sometimes completely straight up the first message. But I’m just very direct and concise so I don’t waste their time having to read a bunch of material and people appreciate that, directness actually. And it cuts the noise because, you know.
Josh: Yeah. I think we all know when we get a LinkedIn message or like a connection request, we know based on their title, right, that this person is going to sell me some type of financial product, right? If that’s what their headline says. I work at so and so. Financial advisor. Whatever.
The first thing they’re going to ask me is do I have someone taking care of my life, health, whatever the case may be, right? So with that, what’s a good way on how to position yourself if you are in B2B sales? What is something that your LinkedIn should have or shouldn’t have?
Patrick Burns: You mean the actual profile optimization?
Josh: Yeah, absolutely.
Patrick Burns: There’s a ton of ways that you can optimize. You know, people, if they get the link to my profile after this, if they have that material, then they can look over it. But you want to be very clear in your value prop in your headline. So if anybody that reads that a quick scan, they instantly know what value you provide for your headline. Obviously you want to have a background photo that’s relevant. You want to have an actual picture for your profile. They actually have this upgraded and it’s not live for all members. But there is a way that you can make if you look at my profile, if anybody visits my profile, it’ll have like a 30 second video message where my profile picture is.
So if somebody visits my profile, I just give them a pitch. Thanks for visiting my profile. If you need help with this and this, feel free to contact me. That’s a little added feature that LinkedIn has with that. There’s also a creator mode, like a content creator mode where you can add relevant hashtags to the content that you create.
There’s ways that you can add services to your page so it’ll list all these different services that you provide at the very top and if somebody clicks that, they can send you a message about those services so it can help get you more quotes. The featured section, you definitely want to have a featured section of a variety of content. I mean, you can pin posts, you can pin blogs, you could pin videos, but you want to just have a lot of media if somebody visits your profile that they could interact with.
And then the brand story, just making a compelling brand story and I always take the frame that you want to position it. When you’re developing a brand story, you just want to take your end customer or client or partner through the before and after journey, after getting involved with you.
So before for me, I break down all the hurdles that they experience when they’re trying to do a digital marketing campaign and all the emotions that they experience, that kind of negative emotions. So I amplify those pain points and situations so they come real top of mind and then I intervene as a resource for them to overcome those challenges and come out on the other side successful. But coming up with a compelling brand story in your bio, that’s good to do as well and then ending the brand story with call to actions and your other handles the social media profiles is good as well.
And then also asking for recommendations from people that you work with. I mean, if somebody looks at your profile and they see that you have a bunch of received a bunch of recommendations, it’s going to give you a lot more credibility in these conversations.
Josh: Yeah, now for recommendations, I’m looking at mine right now. I’ve given like 63, received 22. Right. So it seems a little unbalanced by the amount of how much I give versus how much I receive. Is that a normal thing or am I just missing something?
Patrick Burns: I mean, it kind of depends on I request them. I don’t know if you are just receiving them just with goodwill of people, but if I have a client or a partner that I’d really like to have their recommendation, I’ll send them a request could you please write me a recommendation? Then they’ll fill it out. Are you doing that or are you just hoping that people fill it out themselves?
Josh: Yeah, maybe this is just me. I have a hard time asking for testimonials, recommendations because that self-promotion thing is a little challenging for me, and I might be alone out there, especially because I’m a deal maker. But yeah, so maybe that’s a challenge or something that I just haven’t focused on.
Patrick Burns: Yeah, I just judge it based on the depth and length of the relationship with the person that I’m wanting a recommendation from. So I never do it in the beginning of the relationship. I have to be working with them for a long time until I would ask that because once we’ve developed that relationship with a certain level of depth, they’re going to be completely fine with doing that.
I’ve never had somebody go, no, I don’t want to do that. But you got to just be tactful of when you do it. I would say I would have to work with somebody for 6-12 months or something before I would even ask for it. But if I’ve worked with them at least that length of time, I’ve never had anybody say no to giving them.
Josh: Got it. What’s a good way. So you’ve built an audience of 70,000 followers. You’re a LinkedIn influencer. What’s a good way for people who are starting to starting from scratch, who want to get to that point where they’re building a following in ecosystem here on LinkedIn?
Patrick Burns: Well, what I did wrong in the beginning was I would just connect with anybody and everybody when I would add new people. But now I’m very specific on the network that I want to have. So you want to be very detailed. What target market segment do I want to engage with? Okay. And then you just want to be very consistent on connecting with those people on a weekly basis. And you can send out invites to connect, and then you can attach a personalized message and get those conversations started. And you just got to be very disciplined and very consistent. It’s definitely a compounding factor with LinkedIn.
When you start off, it takes forever to get that momentum, but once you hit a certain critical mass of connections and views and stuff like that, then it’ll have a compounding factor. I mean, all the people that do investments, they understand that it works exactly the same when you’re building a brand on there and then also be able to find content that stands out and pops. I mean, just for instance, what’s going on right now, LinkedIn is really favoring poll questions. It’s crazy. They favor on the algorithm dramatically compared to other forms of content.
So you got to stay on the trend of what content types are getting the most engagement and then double down with those approaches. So the connections that you’re building, they’re going to be highly engaged with your content. So it used to be, I mean, it’s still videos and stuff like that, like inspirational emotional videos those can spread like wildfire. I mean, I’ve gotten millions of views on just warm, heartfelt, like emotional type content.
But now I’m seeing an uptick in a lot of results through polls because it makes it engaging and people are making votes and you can ask questions and then you can even collect more data from your audience. I mean, I could collect data like how many deals do you get from LinkedIn in a month? And then I could have it broken down 1-5, 5-10, 10-15, 15-20.
And then people would vote and then I could identify, okay, these people don’t get barely any deals from LinkedIn based on those results. Now I could reach out to them personally and help them. So there’s like ways that you can make content that you can actually collect data on your target market segment and then you can engage with them in a meaningful way too. You know what I’m saying?
Josh: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve asked those kind of questions. What kind of deals are you looking for? Commercial real estate, private businesses, alternative investments. And then it’s essentially building out a target list for me afterwards. And I connect with them and I say, hey, saw you’re looking for commercial deals, what do you like? And it starts a conversation.
Patrick Burns: Yeah. And also with the content strategy, you want to balance between being very specific on your value proposition and what you get involved with and then also having more generalized content that any professional can gravitate with. Because if you do that, some types of content, it’s more generalized, but it can spread because everybody can relate to it. So it’s going to increase your visibility overall.
And then if you balance it with very specific content that’s connected exactly to your value proposition, then you can get people that are wanting to go in more depth and are really relevant to what you offer and what you do. So you want to be on both sides of the algorithm because if you were like super narrow and niche about every single piece of content, like it would have to be related investing.
If you did that just all the time, you’re not going to be favored on the algorithm because it’s only a very select people are going to engage with that. And then if you went completely generalized where it was like anybody and everybody could relate to it, then you’re not going to be searched for known for any specific value prop. So you want to balance between those two types of content. Does that make sense?
Josh: Yeah, absolutely. So kind of like have a different approach. One is the generalist to kind of grow the wide network and then the specialization to kind of dig deep with a certain group.
Patrick Burns: Yeah, exactly. Because then you’re going to be looked at as an expert, and then you’re just going to have overall visibility. You want both of those, not one or the other.
Josh: Awesome. What’s the biggest mistake you see people making on LinkedIn? Like when you’re taking in a new client, what’s the biggest mistake you see?
Patrick Burns: Well, a lot of it would come down to that direct message copy and stuff like that. And another thing too is I don’t know, from my experience, I leverage people’s personal LinkedIn profile, and I don’t use the company page very frequently. The company page, I mean, you can use it, but you have to do paid advertising with the company page, which can be very expensive. I’ve seen it to be $75 to $100 a lead for that.
So I leverage my personal account to get a lot of organic growth, and then I can have people follow my company page as well. But that’s not my main growth driver because I could see a lot of advertised spend if you’re trying to do it through your company page as opposed to your personal profile. So I would start with your personal profile, get a certain amount of growth and revenue from that, and then you could reinvest in paid advertising through your company page. But I wouldn’t start with your company page to grow to be really lean. So that’s a big thing.
Josh: Yeah. That’s a great piece of advice there. What is your favorite thing when someone’s working with you? What’s your favorite question that they are asking you about business, about their business investments or revenue? What’s your favorite thing to work with, with an organization?
Patrick Burns: I like to develop the strategy. I really like to brainstorm the strategy of finding the best points of leverage because I could do strategic partnership campaigns, I could do direct customer campaigns. I got to assess which target market segment based on the results is going to perform the best on the platform and how can I communicate with them in a compelling way.
So I really like the high level strategy. When I work with a client, we’ll do the tactical stuff, but if I can lay out a giant game plan with them bullet by bullet, then I give them a lot of clarity and confidence in their marketing campaigns.
Josh: Yeah. Now, having 73,000 followers or something like that, do you get a lot of requests for connection, for sales? Do people just bombard your inbox all day long?
Patrick Burns: Yeah, people send me quite a bit of requests, but I basically know because when you have the Sales Navigator membership, okay, you have your own inbox. So I have my campaigns running all through Sales Navigator and all the communications on there. And then anything that’s inbound comes through my regular LinkedIn inbox.
And I used to be I mean, it’s kind of dependent on where you’re at because I’ve grown up such so many connections. I’m pretty picky now who I accept and who I engage with before. When I’m first starting off, though, I’m accepting everything because I want to get that initial critical mass of connections. But once I hit a certain threshold, now I’m very particular.
So, I mean, I scan through every single profile that sends me an invite, and if I see opportunity there, I’ll accept it. And if I don’t, I just don’t accept it because you can also only have 30,000 connections, first degree connections. I mean, I can have infinite amount of followers, but an actual first degree connection, I can only have upwards of 30,000. And I actually hit that limit. I’ve hit that limit. And then I had my VA go through and clean my network, kind of Prune my network so I could add more relevant contacts.
Yeah, so I’m very particular and picky, but I wasn’t in the beginning. If I was in the beginning, I would accept anything just to get that growth and get that visibility. But now that I’ve built it up so much, I’m more picky about that who I engage with.
Josh: Cool. What is the perfect deal for you when you’re looking at an organization? What’s the perfect opportunity where you’re like, oh my gosh, if they were on LinkedIn, we would absolutely crush it?
Patrick Burns: Well, I mean, I run a lot of the campaigns of people that are on LinkedIn. They’re just not really utilizing it. So if I look at their company and I barely see any engagement, barely any following, and it’s a B2B model, I know that I can provide a ton of value, especially if their branding isn’t developed and it’s just very generic. I know that I can give them a lot of value.
So, I mean, that’s the biggest thing. Like, how engaged are they on the platform? How much can I help them? And if I see a big opportunity that I can help them, like, okay, that makes me feel good because I’m not walking in a situation where I just can make subtle optimizations. And they’re already up to speed. They need help from the ground up. So those are the best for me.
Josh: Awesome. So for people listening in, what’s a good place for them to connect with you and do a deal with you? Like, if they have a B2B business, and they’re looking for some help creating deal flow and some revenue.
Patrick Burns: Yeah, they can connect with me on LinkedIn. And I would also attach the personal message, I heard you on this podcast because if you contextualize that, I’m going to be really responsive and see that. So I would bring that up, when you add the personal note to it. You can also reach out to me on email. It’s hello@patrickburns.co. And those are the two ways that you can engage with me.
Josh: Awesome.
Patrick Burns: I mean, I have Twitter and stuff, but I’m not very active on those platforms.
Josh: Right. So if you had to start over again today, right? For whatever reason, LinkedIn had a glitch. All your connections, all your network, everything was deleted. What’s the one thing you would focus on for the next 20 to 30 days?
Patrick Burns: I would just know how to grow my network back very fast. And I’ve built up a bunch of contact data through a lot of other campaigns, so I can be really aggressive on other channels. I always have contingency plans. Like, LinkedIn is my main driver, but I have data contacts, and I have campaigns set up.
So as soon as something went south with that, I could do an email campaign, I could do a ringless voicemail campaign, I could do a text campaign, I could do Twitter camp, I could do a bunch of other stuff. So I always have these contingency plans in the back of my mind in case something was to happen, because you don’t want to be vulnerable just leveraging one network.
I mean, I do leverage a lot of my resources and time with that, but if it went out, I would grow my network back quickly because I already know all the tools, tactics, and strategies to do it. And then I would leverage other marketing channels with all the contacts that I’ve built up outside of LinkedIn.
Josh: Awesome, man, awesome. So, Patrick, thanks for coming on the show. Talking about creating deal flow on LinkedIn. Ladies and gentlemen in the audience, if you’re trying to really build out your LinkedIn and you need some help, if you’re in the B2B world, reach out to our guest. Reach out to Patrick and say, hey, heard you on the show. Connect and find a way to do a deal with our guests. Until then, we’ll talk to you all on the next episode. Thanks, Patrick. See you, everybody!
Patrick Burns: All right. Thanks, Josh. Take care!