[Susan Friedmann]
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books.
Today. My special guest is Joe Apfelbaum he's the CEO and founder of Ajax Union, a B-to-B digital marketing agency based in Brooklyn, New York. He's a business strategist, LinkedIn expert, and certified Google trainer. He's the author of “High Energy Networking how to Get Anything You Want,” building meaningful relationships that last a lifetime. When Joe is not on the stage speaking about LinkedIn strategy, professional networking, and personal development in his seminars and webinars, he's enjoying playing and laughing with his five kids as a single dad in Brooklyn.
Joe, what a pleasure it is to welcome you to the show and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.
[Joe Apfelbaum]
Thank you for having me on the program. I'm really excited about talking to you about these important topics yes, and especially.
[Susan Friedmann]
Your book, High Energy Networking and Building Meaningful Relationships. I think that is so important. And authors often say to me, I know I need to network, but how do I do it?
Where do I do it?
How do I start building these relationships?
So give us some basics that our authors could really use.
[Joe Apfelbaum]
First, I want to say congratulations to everyone listening to this. If you're listening to this and you're a nonfiction author, then you've accomplished something incredible, which is taking information that's extremely valuable to your target market and putting it out there. Now, you may have a relationship with your target market because they're reading your book.
They're reaching out to you, telling you how amazing you are, and leaving your reviews on Amazon.
But do you have a relationship with them?
Do you know who they are?
Do you speak to them?
Do you have conversations with them?
Do you meet with them?
Do you really understand them?
And most authors that I speak to, don't really understand what it means to build a relationship with their target market, with their centers of influence. Networking is something that most people don't do, even authors. They don't necessarily network.
The best opportunities that I ever got in my life is through my relationships. So, you might think that you can build fancy funnels you could advertise your book and you can get people to promote it through joint ventures. But the truth is, if you really want to be successful, it has to do with building meaningful relationships with the right people.
Even Tony Robbins, when he sells his book, he doesn't just sell his book. He sells it through his relationships. He sells it by getting on other people's podcasts. He sells it by getting on other people's platforms. And it's because of the relationships you have with those people that can really expand his reach. One of the ways that I build relationships is by using a tool called LinkedIn.
A lot of people have LinkedIn, and many people are connected to hundreds, if not thousands, or tens of thousands of people. But they don't really understand what it means to get on the phone with someone, to build a real meaningful relationship, to get to know people. And if you learn how to do that correctly, and you also have very specific goals as to what you want to do, when those relationships ask you, how can I add value to your life? Then you'll be in the position to get supported by your relationships. So making sure that you have a goal, a strategy for your networking, for your relationship building, is going to be really important.
I want you to think about this. If you're listening to this, think about, like, what is your networking strategy.
What is your way of building relationships?
How many conversations do you have with who?
What do you talk about?
And how do you build those relationships in a meaningful way and stay top of mind with them?
Do all your relationships know that you've written a book?
Do they know what your book is about?
Do they know who needs to be reading your book?
I set a goal to have my top 250 relationships take a picture with my book and email it to me. That means they only need to buy my book. That means they only need to read my book.
[Susan Friedmann]
I love that strategy that you get them to hold your book and then show people that they've got a copy of your book. LinkedIn is such a powerful platform. What are some of the best ways for authors to use it? Specifically? Because authors are looking to sell books, they're obviously, as you rightly say, looking to build relationships as well. What are some easy, you know, hacks, let's say, to using LinkedIn strategically?
[Joe Apfelbaum]
Well, step number one is to have an account and to connect with the right people. If you're not connecting with the right people, you're not going to be successful. There are 850,000,000 people as we record this podcast that are on LinkedIn. 40% are looking in every day.
But who are the people in the position to buy your book?
Who are the people in the position to recommend your book?
Or the people that are talking to your target market?
Are you connected to those people?
Making sure you have a strategy, and that's where the strategy comes in, is having a strategy first is going to be the key. Understanding your plan, understanding who the people are that you need to be connected to, and understanding what you need to be saying to them is key. And then having assets.
If you take a look at my Zoom background, you'll notice that I have my book on my Zoom background. If you take a look at my LinkedIn posts, you'll see often that I post information about my book, not just in the post, but also in the comments I posted on my profile. Everywhere that you go, you will know that I am an author, a speaker, an entrepreneur, a trainer. People often look me up, and they see by looking at any of my properties front and center, that I have my book.
Most authors don't write that they have a book on their LinkedIn profile. They just don't. And they also don't post about their book. How do I know that? Because most people don't even post, period.
I get my clients, my friends, and my relationships to send me pictures of them with the book. And then I ask them what insights they got from the book. And they send me a list of insights, and I say, do you mind sharing that on LinkedIn? And I like and comment on it, and I communicate with people about it. I do readings on LinkedIn Live where I read parts of my book for my audience. And people come together, and then their friends come and they all want to buy the book.
These are things that you can do to be able to get out there. I could probably give you 50 or 60 ideas of ways that you can promote your book. The key is to start by having a strategy and then building up some assets that include talking about your book.
[Susan Friedmann]
I think that's such a major thing is that just talking about the book, it's not, hey, buy my book. Because this is what freaks authors out often, is they feel that they have to sort of like, I wrote a book, don't you want it? They forget that there's value and that they have to talk about the value because, yes, there are millions of books out there, and there are millions being published every year.
Why should I buy your book?
What's in it for me?
One of the things that you're bigger on, and I love it because it's near and dear to my heart, and that is selling books in bulk. And you talked about that. You and I had a little bit of a conversation before we went on the air, and you talked about how you use LinkedIn to sell books in bulk. Can you address that for us and give us some ideas of some of the things that we need to be doing in order for this to happen?
[Joe Apfelbaum]
In order for you to sell books in bulk, you need to find the right organizations that will buy your books in bulk. So it could be trade shows, conferences, or organizations that are associations. You need to reach out to them and ask them if they're having any events coming up and that you'd like to be a speaker.
Then they might say, hey, I'd love for you to come and speak about this topic, that you're an expert and that you wrote a book. And then you say, one of the things that I do is charge speaker fees.
But also every place that I go speak at, they usually want to buy books for the attendees. And I can give you a special deal if you buy 500 books. If you buy 1000 books. This way, you don't have to buy directly from the publisher. You can buy directly from me. And often people will take me up on that. Sure, $500. I'll buy 50 books. So instead of them paying the full price for the book, they get a major discount.
They can then sell it to the attendees, and it's like a win-win situation. I highly recommend thinking about how you can do it as part of your speaking and also just letting people know, just letting them know that this is something that you are doing this is something that you are doing on a regular basis, that you are offering them the ability to buy it in both from you.
A lot of your relationships don't even know that your book is the perfect gift for the holiday season. I had one of my clients buy books for all of his employees. He said, Joe, can you send me 100 copies of your book? I'd be like, Happily, this is what I was going to charge you. It's a fraction of the cost of what you could buy online. Instead of spending $23 a book, I'll charge you $10 a book.
Well, you know very well that if you're buying the book directly from the publisher or you're printing it yourself, it'll cost you less than $5 a book. You're still doubling your money, but the main thing is that you're selling it in bulk, and a lot of people are getting their hands on your book. So that's the idea.
[Susan Friedmann]
One of the things that you mentioned, which I love as a strategy, and the idea of people buying books to give them out at trade shows so that a company relates to the subject matter of your book. You can say, hey, how would you like to give it to everybody who comes by your booth? I can come there and sign them for you if you want as well. So there's a different attraction. I mean, I was in the trade show business for 25 years. There are so many opportunities there. So I love the way that you mentioned that. Thank you.
[Joe Apfelbaum]
It's very powerful to know that your book is really a business card, and that if someone is spending 10 seconds looking at your business card, they might spend a four-hour flight reading your book. That's a powerful way to get to know someone. It's a powerful way to get into someone's strategies, and it's a way to build a more intimate relationship. When people read my book, they feel like they kind of get to know me a little bit. I feel like because I share stories of my life sometimes in my books, people feel like, wow, it's not just information. This is a powerful connection.
[Susan Friedmann]
People like it if they feel that they know you, even though they may never have met you. But like you rightly said, is that through your writing, you've shared something personal that they might relate to that. And all of a sudden, well, I know this guy. I like this guy. I relate to him. I've had similar experiences. All of that is critical, as you rightly said earlier, about building these relationships. One of the things you talked about earlier, Joe, was, yes, there are all these millions of people on LinkedIn, and it's finding the right people. Talk to us more about that, please.
[Joe Apfelbaum]
When it comes to finding the right people, the idea is, how is it that you are able to know if somebody is the right person for you? There's your target market, who your ideal client is, and then there's the center of influence, the person who's working with your ideal client. I want you to think about that.
Like, who is your ideal client?
Are you connected to them?
So, for example, somebody told me recently, I'm looking to work with CFOs. I said, how many CFOs are you connected to right now? And he said none. I'm not connected to any CFO. And I said, how are you supposed to build relationships with CFO if you're not connected to any of them? And he's like, I never really thought about that. And then he's like, well, why would CFO even want to connect with me? Because they're on LinkedIn. And that's what happens.
People go on LinkedIn to build a relationship, to connect, right? That's what they do. Why do you think people go on LinkedIn, to begin with?
Why do people show up to networking events?
Because they want to build a relationship. That's what people want to do. They want to build a relationship. They want to build a relationship, and they're on LinkedIn. Why not connect with them and build a relationship with them? So think about who your target market is, and think about, are you connected to them?
And then think about who your centers of influence are, and who works with your target market?
And then think about who are your fans?
Are you connected to your fans?
So, for example, if someone emails me and says, Joe, read your book, I loved it.
One of the first things I'm going to do is I'm going to connect with them on LinkedIn because this is a fan of mine. Does that make sense?
[Susan Friedmann]
It certainly does. You're going after influencers. You're going after fans. You gave this example of this gentleman who wants to connect with CFOs, but he hasn't connected with any. What might his first move be in order to connect with other CFOs, first.
[Joe Apfelbaum]
The thing is to determine where the CFOs are. So if they're on LinkedIn, you can find them on LinkedIn. And you can send them a connection note saying that you want to connect with them and send them a connection request. That is something that you can do on LinkedIn. You can also go into groups that they're part of and send them a message. You can message people for free in a group and you can send them a message asking them how engaged they are in the group or what they think about the group. And then just start seeing the people that respond and build a relationship with them. And then ask them if you have permission to connect with them. And most of the time they're going to say yes.
When you go to trade shows and you meet your target market, the first thing that you need to do is pull out your phone. When you have somebody a conversation with them, say, hey, do you mind if we connect on LinkedIn? They'd be absolutely something to do.
Do you know what I mean? It's like something fun to do. You're in front of somebody, use it as a time to ask for permission and then connect. And if Susan, me, and you are at a networking event, and we had a pleasant, lovely conversation and I said Susan, would you mind if we connected on LinkedIn so we can stay in touch?
What do you think? You would say, why not?
[Susan Friedmann]
I would love to.
[Joe Apfelbaum]
Of course, you would absolutely love to connect on LinkedIn. And I would pull out my phone. Or pull out your phone, type my name on your phone, and then I would guide you through the process of connecting with me on LinkedIn. Because it's not always straightforward, especially if, like me and you have a creator mode turned on, we're going to have a follow button instead of the Connect button. So I'm going to tell them, go to my profile, and I said, don't click on Follow. She like, why? Just click the More button and then press Connect. And then I'll go to my phone and I'll press Accept. That's the process.
[Susan Friedmann]
Then you're connected with this person or people, obviously, because you want more than one. Then what kind of activity do you need to be doing on LinkedIn? I have to admit that I'm on it. I've got lots of people who are following me or I'm connected to, but I do very little because part of it is I'm not even sure what I need to be doing on LinkedIn in order for people to see who I am and what I do. What would your recommendation be?
[Joe Apfelbaum]
There are three things that you want to get out of LinkedIn. Number one is you want to get exposure. You want people to remember that you're at one of our clients, we taught him the most effective way to post on LinkedIn. He took our course and he went to learn businessnetworking.com. He took our course there and he learned how to post on LinkedIn. He got a $2 million opportunity. He's a mortgage broker. That's a lot of commission. Just from a post, he posted. Somebody reached out, he built a relationship.
And this is not an information post telling people, oh, buy from me. It's not about that. You don't want to just sell things on LinkedIn because it's a networking platform. It's about building relationships. So understanding the right way to get exposure is going to be the key. The second thing that's extremely important is understanding besides how to get exposure, is understanding how to build credibility.
You want authority and credibility. Understanding how to build credibility is also extremely useful, and extremely important. How to use engagement, how to get engagement, and how to use mentions in a positive and powerful way. Once you learn how to do that, you now have more credibility. So now people know you because you have exposure.
People trust you because you have credibility. And then you have to learn how to use the DM to get on the phone with people because it's all about the conversations conversions come from.
What conversations? That's where they come from. If you're not having enough conversations on LinkedIn, I highly recommend learning the art of conversation on LinkedIn, the art of DM. Not just selling, not just wasting people's time, not just saying, how are you? To people that you don't know well. Instead building real relationships using a greeting, feeding, and meeting approach.
Now, once people know you, they like you and they trust you. If you took the time to educate them on how they can buy bulk books from you, hire you as a professional speaker, are you as a trainer, know how to get into your world and how to build relationships, and know who you want to meet? Once you understand how to do that, now you're powerful. Now you're able to make a difference for other people, and now you're able.
[Susan Friedmann]
To sell more books, you talk about DM. I just want to clarify that. That's direct messaging, correct?
[Joe Apfelbaum]
Yes. On the LinkedIn platform, you have the ability to send people messages directly. For example, if I go to your profile, maybe I'll search Susan Friedmann with two ends, and once I search Susan Friedmann with two ends, I find the one that says, CSP. You're a certified speaking professional. Is that what it stands for?
[Susan Friedmann]
It certainly does.
[Joe Apfelbaum]
And you're probably also a member of the National Speakers Association as well. Correct?
[Susan Friedmann]
I am.
[Joe Apfelbaum]
Just like me. And so I'll go to the DM and I'll be like, thank you so much for being in my life, and I'll just press send. And now you get a notification on LinkedIn that Joe Apfelbaumm just sent Susan Friedmann a message. And that message will often also come up as an email if your notifications are turned on, and they are turned on by default. I don't know if you received the message, but I know that you didn't see it yet because we're on a podcast, but also because Lincoln notifies me.
When you actually view the message, you can actually see the picture of the person showing up under the message. And that means that the person viewed the message. So it's kind of like the scene thing, was it seen, or was it not seen?
And also, what time was it seen? That's a very powerful thing that you don't often get that using other technologies where you could see if the person saw it, you can message them directly. I just got off the phone with the CEO of a major retailer. This guy has over 200 locations, and 200 stores. He's happy to get on the phone with me. We built a relationship and it started with a direct message with a DM on LinkedIn.
[Susan Friedmann]
Now, timing is so key here. How often do you connect with people? How often do you, let's say, post what's too much? What's not enough? What's the optimum?
[Joe Apfelbaum]
Joe 40% of people log into LinkedIn every single day, but most people are just not posting on LinkedIn. Most people are just lurking. That's what they're doing. They're lurking, they're just watching, they're just waiting for things to happen. And what I always tell people, it's a missed opportunity. You don't have to post every five minutes on LinkedIn, but because 40% of people are logging in every day, it would be a missed opportunity not to post something of value. Each day on LinkedIn.
There's only a million posts going up a day on LinkedIn and most of them are coming from me. I recommend posting at least once a week on LinkedIn, but if you have the bandwidth, post Monday through Friday on LinkedIn.
Post something interesting, informational, engaging, and entertaining, and you're going to see more and more people will start noticing. And if you do it the correct way, because maybe you hired a trainer or someone like me that can coach you on how to use LinkedIn. You end up getting a competitive advantage. You end up wasting less time in, getting more traction, generating more business, and spending maybe more time with your family or whatever you love doing.
[Susan Friedmann]
Joe that is an amazing segue into letting our audience know how they can get hold of you and how you might be able to help them with networking or LinkedIn or both.
[Joe Apfelbaum]
If you want to learn how to use networking with LinkedIn, what you need to do is first have a strategy for networking outside of LinkedIn. Susan Friedmann is just a tactic, it's just a tool, it's just the technology. Like, somebody once came over to me and said, Joe, what CRM should I use? I said, Use any CRM, but use it. So before you start using a CRM, you need to actually have a strategy, am I right?
[Susan Friedmann]
Correct.
[Joe Apfelbaum]
And so what is your strategy? That strategy could be applied to any CRM. Now, Links is the only professional social network. What I recommend doing is taking a look at your LinkedIn and thinking to myself, okay, what's my strategy? What do I need to achieve here? What do I need to do? And then based on that strategy, then you can implement the networking strategy. Some people implement the prospecting strategy for LinkedIn. Do you know which tool they use for prospecting on LinkedIn?
[Susan Friedmann]
Tell us.
[Joe Apfelbaum]
It's called Sales Navigator.
Have you heard of Sales Navigator?
[Susan Friedmann]
I've heard of it, but I don't know anything about it.
[Joe Apfelbaum]
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is an upgrade from the regular premium. So you could have a LinkedIn free account. You could have a LinkedIn business account. And then on top of that, if you pay an extra $20 a month, you can get the LinkedIn Sales Navigator account and the LinkedIn Sales Navigator account.
What it does is it gives you an additional dashboard to find people that will allow you to like with using.
For example, with in-mails, you're allowed to just message people that you're not even connected to using in mail.
So let's say, for example, I'm targeting sales directors at companies that have 50 to 500 employees. Maybe I'm not connected to them. Maybe I want to take a direct approach and ask them if they want to hire me for my LinkedIn training so I can train their LinkedIn team using Sales Navigator. I can just send them a direct in-mail. I'm not even connected to them. It will show on their profile that I send them an email. It'll come in as a regular message for them, but it will say the word In Mail on it, and if they're intrigued, they might press the button. Yes, I'm interested. And now I have a lead.
That's a direct approach called prospecting that you could do on LinkedIn, and people come to expect it. But when it comes to the LinkedIn organic version, the non-paid version, the natural page version, that is a component of LinkedIn that's extremely powerful because it's networking, not prospecting. So there's more trust. It's not like I'm trying to sell you anything. I'm just building a relationship with you. Does that make sense?
[Susan Friedmann]
It does. And if we want to make a relationship with you, how can our listeners do that?
[Joe Apfelbaum]
If somebody wants to build a relationship with me, you can go to Joelinkedin.com. I bought the domain, so it's easy to remember because my last name is Apfelbaumm, so it's hard to spell my last name. You just go to JoelinkedIn.com.
It'll forward you to my LinkedIn profile. Then you can connect with me. There.
You click the "More" button, and you press Connect in the notes you write.
Hey, I heard you on Susan Friedmann's podcast. I'd love to connect with you here on LinkedIn, and the chances are very high that I'll accept that connection request because I read all the notes.
I have over 10 people that are trying to connect with me, but most of them are thoughtlessly trying to connect with me trying to sell me things. But if you send me a thoughtful connection, I go through it, I read it, I look at it and I say, well, this is a real author, this is a real person. I'd love to build a relationship. Alternatively, you can go to Learnbusinessnetworking.com and you can check out our offers there for getting LinkedIn training.
[Susan Friedmann]
I love it and I'll put all of that in the show notes. Joe, I know that you and I can talk about this for a lot longer. Maybe we'll have you back again to talk more because I know that the platform is probably changing all the time. So what we're talking about now might well be obsolete in a few month's time. In the meantime, let's leave our listeners with a golden nugget. That's how we like to end the show. What would you like to leave our listeners with? What pearls of wisdom?
[Joe Apfelbaum]
The Secret to Living is Giving I wrote a book, High Energy Networking, which some people call the Bible of networking because I did include the Ten Commandments for networking. Networking is not about faking and taking. It's about giving and living. When you give to somebody else, whether you give them a compliment, where you give them a lead and introduction, whether you give them some ideas or information, whether you give them your time or your ear, you are actually making the world a better place to go out there and spend some time adding value to other people. Ask them, what can I do to add value to your life? And the more you give, the more you'll realize that indeed the secret to living is giving.
[Susan Friedmann]
I love it. That feels so good. It's such a feel-good thing, literally that appreciation of being able to give to other people, that's where I come from. It just sort of makes my heart warm. Thank you. I appreciate you sharing your wisdom.
By the way, listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected it to, let's jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales. You've invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy, and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. So go to Brainstorm with Susan.com to schedule your free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparked some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, he is wishing you much book and Author marketing success.
