Why Staying Visible Matters: Wisdom from Karen Gunther | RR292

presence. She's passionate about networking and relationship building, offering expertise in crm management to support consistent and meaningful connections throughout the sales process. Karen is here to share her insights on creating authentic business relationships that drive success. Welcome. Welcome to the show. Karen, super excited to be here.

Janice, thank you. You're my pleasure. We've been talking about this for a while and and I guess I want to start by saying I love that you you see the power and value of LinkedIn to help people with their businesses, because you know that that's where I live and and yet, a lot of people who who use LinkedIn don't see the relationship side of it. They see content, content, content, and that's about it. So can we

start there? Can we just, can you give me your take on how you use it with your clients, or what you you know, what you teach or what you share with people? Yeah, my,

So when it comes to LinkedIn, specifically, as a rule, it's important to understand the algorithm. Now, I don't know what the algorithm is, only LinkedIn knows what the

of 24 so we have this timestamp for it. When you go look for a company and you go look for the people in the company, you used to be able to do multiple search terms to narrow down the person you were looking for. Now they only give you one in the keyword part, yes, yes. Just learned that this morning when I was working with somebody. So it's just they're constantly changing

things. So when it comes to the algorithm, and I was training a person this morning about this saying, LinkedIn was purchased by Microsoft in 2016 and they have done a phenomenal job of monetizing it. So the important thing is, is that, how can you use the the algorithm that LinkedIn uses for monetization for their own business, to help you with your business. That's how I look at it. So it comes down to visibility. So how do

you use that visibility? Well, they look at interactions. So when you are posting, you want to make sure that there's a hook in there so that people will respond, and then that creates an opportunity for you to talk to people. If you're going to like something, you not don't want to just like it. You want to also comment on it, because if you comment on it, that has more credibility when it comes to the more hooks for the

algorithm. If you're going to repost something, repost something with a comment, because that helps you and the person that posted the original post. And when they go to their notifications, they will see that you did that. So the more often you're popping up, the more visible you are, the more opportunity they have to be reminded that you exist. There are so many ways to connect with people. There are so many connections that we've all made over our careers, it's almost

overwhelming. You don't remember you know somebody. So to be able to make sure that when you are, you know, calling on a particular prospect or trying to get deeper into particular client, you want to make sure that wherever they are that you're popping up and that visibility can be done through LinkedIn if you do it carefully and you do it authentically. That's

students or grad students and things like that. But you also work with individual, small business owners and bigger teams. Is that correct?

easier for me. I can understand that more than going business to consumer. Consumers have a lot more variability, so I prefer the business to business landscape. But more importantly, I work individually with the sales people, as well as with the sales team. I recently served with a new client where they want me to help them review their website and making sure their branding and their their messaging is correct with what

they're saying the workplace right now. They also want me to work with their individual sales reps, because we were going to be starting a LinkedIn posting, you know, campaigns for them. And I want to train their sales reps, not only to have a good LinkedIn, strong LinkedIn profile, so that when they're going after their prospects and clients, they look very professional, but also to train them how to use technology, tools, chat, GPT, the scheduling task, the scheduling piece on

LinkedIn and others, to amplify the company's message. So when we do the posting for the company, the sales reps are authentically posting and reposting and amplifying that message. And so I'm literally working with a brand new sales rep tomorrow that's as an on an individual basis, teaching them technology tools to make them more savvy and better and to up level their their their own personal profile and their brand in the marketplace, but by doing that, rising up the brand of the

company as well. So it's an organic search. It's an organic lift all the way around. I also started with helping them with their sales force, and I will probably be putting together more email templates for them to use in their Salesforce, so that it makes it easier to use technology for their sales reps to reach out to their prospects and clients with a message that makes sense. It

understood it way more than I did, because I'm just the people person. I'm not I'm not the tech person, I'm the people person. And I don't say just, I shouldn't say that, I just mean that that's my my zone of genius is building relationships with people, and that's what I like to teach people to do as well. In the process that you go through with, say, these new sales people that you work with, I'm just curious. I remember

back, I'll give you a little back story. And back in the day when I was doing corporate training, and I would be the trainers, were always the last people to go out to the customer site. They put in, I worked for the telephone company, or I contracted to them, and somebody would sell them, the sale the phone system, somebody else would design it and implement it so that, you know, it rang three times here before it went to this person and all of the different things around it. And

then the installer would go in and install it. And then we came in and we trained on how to use the system, from the receptionist to the CEO to the IT people all different versions of what they had to do. But inevitably, we'd get there and we'd see how it was set up, where we had the book that showed and we go, like, why did they do it this way? Right? Because nobody asked a trainer or asked the right people to get

those answers. So when you get these new sales people, do you ever wonder what this guy's doing selling, or what that woman's doing in that kind of industry? Does it ever not mesh for you when you're dealing with them? Because you have to deal with what you have but I. Does that ever happen?

problem doing that in person or, you know, virtually. It doesn't matter. I'm happy to do that. But I find that the greatest shift can happen when I work one on one with a person, regardless of who they are in the organization. If I can work with them one on one, we figure out where their speed bumps are with the technology, and then we move them past that so that their lives are easier on a day to day basis. And like I worked with somebody this morning who had their outlook set up, but they

didn't have it set up so that the images downloaded. So every time they went into an email, if they wanted to see the images, they had to click the button to download the images. Is a very common thing, right? Well, what happens is the as I went through, I said, Do this, and I walk them through the process for the settings, and I had him go through and shift that so that it downloads it completely right? Every single time. He's like, Oh my gosh, that's going to save me so much time every

day. And it's just little things like that that just make our day so much better, you know. But I sit there and I wonder, why isn't somebody going through and helping these people, you know, work through this process, you know?

more complex. So how do you ensure that your clients emails land in the inbox and resonate with their audience, because it's hard these days to even get people to open those emails.

to get emails delivered. And I didn't know anything about that, but now it's just second nature for me to whenever I set up a new client, to go in and to manage this process to make sure their stuff gets delivered. So there's that one piece of it right there is getting it into the inboxes. For those of you who are listening to this podcast, it's called the DNS text record, feel free to contact me. My information will be in the show notes, and I'll be happy to walk you through

that so you can understand that for yourself. For that, it's too long to explain for this process, talking about here's way too techie. It's not even worth it to take the time to talk about that. Now the second thing is, is that, how do you get the person to open it? Well, there are times and days that are better to send so that emails will be seen as part of the normal business day. Somebody think about how you

yourself approach your email in the morning. So in the morning you get you either looking at your phone having your cup of coffee, or you're at your computer and your finger is hovered over the delete button, or you're swiping delete one of the two. And so that means everything that comes in in the morning prior to the normal business day starting is now

subject to being easily deleted. So you want to make sure to send your emails during the normal business day, so not before people start their business day, and not right, and not during lunch, because that's another time where people spend time deleting. So it's just there's a time frame that you send it now. So the time that you send the email indicates whether somebody

will actually open it or not. The only other thing. Thing that is contingent on whether somebody will open the email or not, is the subject line, Oh, there's one other thing and that they actually know you. So if you receive an email from somebody you don't know, then you look at the subject, subject line to see, gosh, do I Is there something beneficial for me in this email? That's That's it, that that's all there is. So you always want to make sure it comes from a person's name or a

well known company, you know, if it's a well known brand. So if you're a smaller company, you want to make sure it comes from your name as the business owner or the salesperson. And then you

want to make sure that this the subject line. So that's just for, like, third party emails, even for sending emails during the day, just as a normal course of business, to reach out to people, to prospect, you want to make sure that your subject line is not very long, and that it has you know, relevant information, so that somebody will open it, and then once people open it, that's where we get to the does this resonate? Right? What I really love, and I'll give you these kudos.

Janice, what I really love about your newsletters that you send out is you do have an engaging subject line. Number one, they are sent at a time that makes sense for people to open it, at least for me. And the third thing is, is that I know that when I receive those newsletters from you, that there's going to be something in there that will touch me and make me think about something differently, because that's what I've because I've spent time looking at your newsletters. At first it was

like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, right. It's just another newsletter. But when I stopped to actually take the time to look at the newsletter and read it, I'm like, oh, there's going to be something interesting in here. I'm going to want to read this. And so I will set it aside so that I have time and I'll flag it so I can go back and look at it, so that I can say, Okay, I went through and I read it, and I picked up

the one really cool tip. And it may not even be the thing that you were intending for people to pick up Janice, because that's the interesting thing. But I do know that when it comes to certain people, when they send me emails, that there's going to be something, you know, in that there for me. So let's get let's go to the next point. You're sending out marketing emails to people you don't know and who don't know you. How do you make sure it resonates? Well, you need to understand their

industry. You need to understand their challenges. You need to understand what keeps them up at night. You need to understand what they might be interested in learning more about. And you need to provide education. If I'm just trying to hawk something and sell it. It's not going to go through, but if I offer education as part of the content, then it becomes more valuable. It's

that that the message is clear, right? It's either about, well, there's different parts to it, but it's about, you know, gratitude, or it's about, you know, trusting people and staying connected and all of that good stuff. So thank you. Thank you for for that. And okay, just a minute, there was something else around that I wanted to ask you. Well, let's

go to, let's go back to staying visible. Because it's important that we stay visible in the marketplace, that we're in front of the people that we want to be in front of, in a, in a in a useful way. But what are the common mistakes that businesses make that cause them to lose visibility. And how do you help them address these issues? So salespeople, it's, it's kind of

an important thing that they stay in front of people. And we've all, I find we forget the follow up, or we forget to come back to people that we've you know, spent the time opening the door with. Do you find that with your people that you train? Yeah, what

can't remember everything, and neither can anybody else. So based on that, the sales reps need to use some sort of CRM, because you're having to contact so many people, so many times

with. So many different messages that you want to be able to track what you've done, how often you've done it, when you've done it, so that you know that you're not pestering the person too much or too little, and that you provide and you schedule those tasks for yourself, so that sales, sales force, or the CRM that you're using becomes your brain to remind you, so that when you get in in the morning, okay, I have these 10 things I need to do today, and then you set your

next tasks, you know, for whatever the future dates are for those so that you're feeding into the system, so that over time, the first half hour of the day is 100% spent doing specific prospecting based on previous actions. And I find that most sales people are reticent to use their CRM tool. But I must say, this new generation, this Gen Z, that's coming into the workforce, they are completely willing to use a CRM, which I have found that to be really gratifying and so much easier to

work with Gen X. Heck no, that's my generation. Nope. We have no interest in doing that. Millennials are kind of interested, but only if they see how, based on my experience, and see how it benefits them, and only if they can see that, and then the the Gen Z's what I've noticed when they come into they're like, Okay, this is a tech tool I get to use cool. They does it for me, great, and they just move into it, and

they've got no problem. And I've been really gratified to work with the new generation coming into sales, I was a little concerned at first, but

yourself to create some sort of script that you can use. Not that you're going to only use a script, but it gives you something to work with, to start with, because if you don't know a product, you have to start somewhere. You need to bone up on the product. You need to understand the you know, the brochures and the information and why it benefits the client. And you need to go through and use that voice memo function on your phone, because there's something about saying the

script when you are just reading it. I could just pick up a piece of paper and read it or read it off a monitor, but when you have that voice memo on and you've got that record on, it changes everything in the brain, and all of a sudden everything's engaged and you're practicing, how do these words come out of my mouth?

opportunities? They're not using CRMs. They're not practicing, you know, in a live situation where they can hear themselves and going back and verifying. And the other thing that I find that people don't do that they should be doing more of is continuing to learn. Oh, really, just the constant learning there is, there are so many different ways to learn. There are so many different ways to improve your skills. Mm, hmm, in all areas of not only your life, but in your business, aspect of how to do

this better, how to do that better. You know, constantly learning, you know, listening to podcasts like yours and others, where you can pick up one more thing of, oh, I didn't think to do it like that. I remember I had this large meeting that I was going into, and I really wanted to sound smart. Wanted to

make sure I had all the questions. So I went into my my podcast app, and I typed in, you know, how to whatever it was, how to do something or another in a sales call, and, like, three or four different podcasts, you know, pulled up ones I've never listened to before, and I was in the airport, so I took the time to listen to them, and I was busy taking notes, and I was ready when I had that meeting to ask some of those questions. So I sounded really smart, and I

actually got really good information. So now those questions are part of what I do. But it was really interesting because it was like, Okay, I better bone up on this. I better learn. There's so many resources out there right now that you know, something that people don't do, that they should be doing, is continuing to sharpen that, sharpen that sword. You know,

television that I want to know more about. But we also are so busy today. Now, I'm also surprised, though, because the young people are the the Gen Z's you were just referring to. They were brought up on their phones. And they go to it for everything. So I think they go to

I'm going to practice this on my phone, talking to myself. Or do they willingly do it? Or do you have to push? I

like, oh, I can do that. Oh, that's cool. I'm going to try that, because they're really so interested in learning, but they just don't know all of the resources. And you would think, well, God, they have a phone in their hands. Well, they don't use the well, they don't use those apps. Yeah, you know. So if you introduce them to the apps, they're like, Oh, okay. I'd say, when you're driving, you know, listen to the podcast,

and don't do it every time. And go listen to music and take a break and let your brain relax, for sure, but at least once a day, be listening to something.

heard yourself on the phone? And I would give them something to to say, and I say, you know, or they had to record the the greeting on the voicemail system, or whatever. And I say, you know, go home, go in your bathroom. Don't let anybody hear you and record yourself. And then listen to what you sound like and you'll know whether you need to change it or not. That's what you used to have to do in the old days, right? And it

wasn't as easy because he didn't have a phone too. You had to get a little tape recorder Exactly. Yeah, I understand all that, but it's just so interesting, okay? And it just, there's just so many interesting things that the kids today, the kids today, the young people today, do so differently than than we do and but so much

You do marketing stuff, right? I said, Yeah. And he wants to go into the supply chain, and so it's nothing to do with marketing. He says, Well, I was just at this event last week, and I think they need help with their marketing. Is it okay if I present the information? I said, Oh, what event was it? And he told me. I said, oh, and I held up my phone and I said, I'm already texting with the executive director of that

organization. I started working with them two days ago. Oh, that's so funny, because I and by the way, the person you met with, you know, three weeks ago at the networking event. Was also at that event, but she was in the wrong place, so you didn't recognize her. So now you have a way to go back to her, you know. So now we have this total connection. I said, if you could please do me a favor, could you please let that person

know that you know me and make the recommendations? And now he's hearing from two people that I'm a good person to work with, right? Well, that person turned around immediately sent me that text not an hour ago. Nice, nice saying, oh, this person recommended you as well. I mean, isn't that it? And isn't that the way? So business still works that way. It's all of who you know. And I think that the the incoming you know, business professionals very much value what their who, their network

knows more so than anything. It's surprising to me that you would think that they would just go online and find sources, but they don't. They talk to their the people around them, certainly

students, I think, have to come about. They have to learn, or they do learn more quickly how important it is to build your network, yes, but yeah, but yeah. Today it's a lot of them were struggling with that and, and, and it's fun to be able to share with them, you know, conversation, or to to show by having those conversations with them in the groups, and they start to see how much easier it can be to to build rapport with

people and to talk with them. But, yeah, it's, that's the thing I love to to look at and and so and networking today. What do you think about you know, we got so much away from face to face networking, at least I did, because I've rarely gone back to the face to face thing since, since the COVID disaster, and I stay online, mostly doing it on LinkedIn, but then having one to ones with people. What's your take on that? Are people seeing that they need to be out there in

front of people? Or are they doing it online? Are they using LinkedIn? Or all

people. They're craving that, that one on one interaction with, you know, another human being, you know, just standing in front of rather than just the computer. But in addition to that, we've also layered on the LinkedIn and the virtual connections as well. I mean, so it's like, it's like the pandemic tripled our opportunities. That's right,

with how to do things. And then I do also use it as for sales purpose to and I train salespeople on how to use it for sales purpose, so people can show what they want to share about with a prospect. As opposed to just leaving a voicemail message, they're actually having their face there. They're having visual for people to look at. It's really powerful.

weird noise. It's just not physically possible, right? So you pull out the loom video, you show the client there, you start the button, you show the client, and you have the video. They see the part running and all this stuff, and then the weird noise happens, right? And then you send it, and they're like,

that works for me. So I'll go through and I'll create a bunch of work for him. I'll do it on loom, I'll show him everything, and I'll send it to him, and he'll when he gets in and when he starts his shift, he just looks at everything, and it reports back to me that he's looked at it, so I know he's engaged.

happening, right? And I take this video and I send it to you, I see when you opened it, and I can see time you spent on it, yeah, I know when that happened, and so I need to follow up with you later that day or the following day. Yeah, that's beautiful. Or if you haven't opened it, maybe the video, the email didn't go through, yes? So I can say, Gosh, I'm not sure if you got this email, you know, but I want to make sure you saw this, you know, yeah.

Calendly, but that's what I'm missing. You can set it up with any of the services, and even if you do it through Outlook or Gmail or however you manage your email or your calendar, you can set it up so that the calendar link goes through, and heart has that templated information in there, so the person can just, you know, and it'll come through. And you have to set it up in a very particular very particular way. Again, I was working with a client this morning, explaining how to do

this so that you can do informational interviews. And it was information, and I said this, and I showed him my screen. I said, Here it is. Take a screenshot so you can set up yours the same way. Because if you set this up correctly, and you do it one and done, then you don't have to think about it again exactly. It just makes your life so much easier. There's no fretting, there's no worrying. There's no did they

have the right thing? And especially when it comes to these, you know, teams, or zoom, or any of these platforms, as soon as you you know, you have to think about it. Can my 95 year old, you know, grandmother, yeah, get on a meeting with me if the answer is no, because it's a weird password that you have to hit Shift to get to the, you know, the ampersand or whatever. I mean, it's like, no, we have to make it as easy as

possible because it's so hard to sell. Yeah, we have to make it as easy as possible and let tech make it easy for us to be accessible.

the custom GPT. Because I do marketing, I set up LinkedIn posts, blog posts, website content pages, refreshes, LinkedIn profile. I have certain things that are already set up. So all I need to do is put in just two or three pieces of information and it'll spit out what I need in a close representation. Because it gets not, you know, 80 90% of the way there. You have to check it and, you know, make it right, but it

gets you most of the way there. And so I have the paid version so I can have more opportunity to use it more often without being stopped. Two to be able to create the custom gpts, which already has the information parameters in there. It already has all the instructions in there, and then. So those are the, you know, yeah, those two things because I just use it all the time. So you asked to go to the top. Things. The third thing that I would suggest is continuously learning how to use

it. Most people think, Oh, I'm just going to use it to write an email. It's like, oh, did you know that you could take this brochure, attach it to the chat, even on the free version, you can, you know, attach it brochure and say, Please create a presentation for me, a written presentation to send to a client regarding this product. This is their situation. And it'll, poof. It'll bring out an entire proposal for you. Wow. Number one, I know it's pretty amazing. It will create PowerPoints for

you. It will create, it will literally create Word documents and excel sheets. It will actually output to those documents. There are so many different ways, if you can think about I've had it create, I've had it plan trips for me. I just came back from a trip to Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska to go see the northern lights, and it was fabulous. And it literally found the place that we stayed at. I wouldn't have sounded otherwise, you know. So it was really interesting. So the how it can

be used. So what I do is I consistently keep up, either on YouTube or through articles that I see online, of the new features, and I listen, and I join peer groups where I can listen and see how are people using this technology. I'm of a mind, and I'm old enough to remember when cell phones were the size of a shoe box, yeah, back in the early 90s, and they went really small, and now they're larger again, thank God

so I can read the screen, yeah. And what happens is, is that I think chat GBT is the shoe box cell phone right now, and it will transition and shift and change as we go. So I need to be able to transition, shift and change along with it, and need to learn how to use it every time I think I don't know if chat GP can do it, I just throw it in interesting that's the question, just to see why not. Well?

Times one as well. And because I'm a word person and crosswords at night, so it's fun to see that you're doing them so on. Have you ever done any of the LinkedIn games?

to them if you want. So that's kind of fun and different. Okay, last question, and I'm sure you'll have an answer for this. So curiosity is my favorite word, and I love to ask occasionally two things. One, it's two. Part question. One, do you think curiosity is innate or learned. And part two, what are you most curious about today? And you don't have to overthink it, because there's no

item. And I think that's what I try to teach people when I work with them in the sales training, is how to be curious. How do you be curious about how to do things differently, right? Yes. And then, what am I curious about today? I am. I'm curious about, literally, like you're asking me, and I'm telling an answer. I'm curious about 2025, because I'm starting to think now, because it's, you know, in the middle of November, to how

to, how to plan my year. You know, I you and I have talked about a a program that I'm putting together to reach out to reach out to my clients monthly. I'm going to be using the Send Out Cards that you talk about to reach my clients as well with that. And I'm curious to see how that program comes together, because I think it'll be really impactful to my business. But I haven't yet fully formulated that, so it's always in the back of my mind of, how am I going to put this together?

booked him to be on my podcast. But we started talking about one of his companies, and I think he owns, he's a he's a coach, a business coach, but he also has this carpet cleaning company, and I asked him how he you know what? Anyway, I got into conversation with him, and I gave him a couple ideas, and he said, Oh, you and I need to brainstorm some more. I love that. And I sent him a card, and now we're going to talk about the cards in a brainstorming session tomorrow. So wonderful.

Yeah, that's kind of fun. So I love doing that. So if you're when you're ready, let me know and and thank you so much for being on on my podcast. I so enjoyed having you as my guest, and I appreciate your expertise and in more ways than you, than you know. So thank you, Janice, so much for having me here. Oh, you're so welcome. Quite fun to have this conversation. Actually, know what I'm really looking forward to you. I know you love to travel, and you're coming up my way next summer,

and we're actually going to meet in person. So that's really exciting. And