The LinkedIn DM Strategy That Gets Decision-Makers to Say YES (Without Sounding Salesy)

GGGR Episode 311 – Final

00:10

Karen, hello, hello, and welcome to the good girls get rich Podcast. I’m Karen Yankovich, and I

am going back to my roots with this episode. We are talking today about the LinkedIn DM

strategies that gets decision makers to say yes. And I bet, if you’ve ever opened up LinkedIn,

you saw somebody you’d love to work with, right? And then you immediately freeze trying to

figure out what to say, because you know that there’s all kinds of weird, cold pitching

happening out there, right? All kinds of bots sending all these crazy messages to everybody,

and you know you don’t want to be one of those people, and I know you don’t want to be one of

those people, because you listen to the show, right? And if you listen to the show, then, then

you understand the value of showing up authentically, right?

00:56

So if you, if you do that, if you open up your browser and you open up LinkedIn, and you’re like,

Okay, I really want to connect with this person. What the heck do I say? You are not alone. You

are not alone. And that’s why we’re doing this today. This is because here’s the thing, we can

do this without being pushy. We can do this without being pushy. It’s about stepping into a

powerful presence and stepping into a place where you can invite the exact right people into

your world. I can tell you that I have said many times, probably many times on this show, but

certainly many times across my life and my business, that my LinkedIn DMS is the most

valuable piece of online real estate I have in my business. It is where almost all of the business

is happening for real right? It’s where almost all the business is happening. It’s so so, yes, we

want the visibility that we get on LinkedIn, and we want the visibility that the PR brings, that we

talk so much about on the show and in our she’s linked up world. But the real magic and the

real money happen in those conversations, not just the visibility. So remember that you’re not

bothering these people, right? You’re on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is virtual networking. I like it’s kind

of like going to a networking meeting, right? With a bag over your head, right? You’re you’re at

a networking meeting. You’re on LinkedIn, you’re at a virtual networking meeting. The bag off

your head, and talk to people, right? Because if you’re offering value,

02:20

I promise you that the decision makers you want to talk to, they love that clarity, they love that

confidence, and they love that perhaps you have solutions that they want to hear about, right?

But you have to have the confidence to take that to the next step. Take that to the next step.

So, you know, there’s, there’s so many, there’s so many things that we could talk about here,

right? Remember that when you DM someone on LinkedIn, there’s two different ways to do

that, right? There’s the DM in your first degree network,02:51

which is my preference almost always, to to reaching out to people. But you can also use

LinkedIn in mail, which you know, you know if we’re if we’re comparing InMails and LinkedIn

DMS, LinkedIn DMS wins hands over fist in my book. But if it’s somebody that you’re not

connected to, or hasn’t accepted your connection request, or for whatever reason, a connection

isn’t in the cards for you, you can use a LinkedIn in mail. And the response rate of LinkedIn in

mails is can be over three times higher than a cold email that goes to their inbox, right? These

both go to their inboxes, their email inboxes. So, you know, first choice for me would be a direct

message to a first degree network. But if, for whatever reason, you are not first degree

connected with somebody and it’s important that you reach out, then by all means, use an

InMail and and you have the ability to reach them three times more likely than if you were just

regularly going to email them, make sense. So let’s talk a little bit about, like, what the

framework of this, of this message might look like. And I will say that we want this to be short

and sweet. No one is reading your books. No one is reading your novels. No one word wants

your your lead magnet. Yet they don’t know you. You haven’t like you want to just, you want to

just kind of open the door gently, right? So you want a short, personalized opener. Is there a

short, you know? Is there a connection that you have in common that made you want to reach

out to this person. Is there a recent post you saw that maybe you commented on, and you can

say, Hey, I just saw your post about this. You might have seen my comment, or maybe you saw

them, you know, you heard them interviewed on a podcast, or you saw them on a TV spot, or

whatever. Right reference that I just heard your interview on the good girls get rich podcast. I

loved your take on blah, blah, blah, right? And I love the conversation you and Karen had. So

start with that kind of like a hook, right to get to let them know that you’re not sending the

same message out to 400 people, and that you are truly and warmly reaching out based on a

specific.

05:00

A thing that you saw, that you loved what they did. Does that make sense? And then, as I felt

as in my head, I’m thinking, I’m rambling right now, so don’t ramble. Okay, the next thing you

want to think is, you don’t want to ramble. Just quickly explain why you’re reaching out. You

know, maybe just language like, Hey, I work with this type of people navigating this type of

challenge, and thought maybe we should be connected, or we’re already connected. So I

thought maybe there would be a conversation worth having. Okay, so as I’m saying this, you

may want to take some notes if you’re not driving, or come back to this and take some notes,

or go into the show notes, and you’ll see all this there and then. But edit it for brevity, right?

Like, edit it for brevity, I am talking through this, so it’s going to sound a lot longer than than it

will be when you send the message out, okay, and then make it an easy yes. Make it an easy

yes. In my shoes, linked up program, we teach 15 minute initial calls. It’s a lot easier to get

somebody to say yes to a quick 15 minute call than a half hour call. First of all, and it may not

even be on this first pitch. It may not even be time to ask for that call. It may, you know, you

could say, if that feels aligned, I’d love to hop on a quick call and explore some strategies,

right? That, that, that maybe we can collaborate on, right? So you want to kind of create this

into a possibility, not a pitch. You may, you know, I like to leave it my, my favorite way to leave

this is, can I, you know, would you be interested in hearing more about this, something like

intriguing, you know, we just made some changes to our she’s linked up program. I know we’ve

talked about you joining us in the past. It’s a really good time to have this conversation,

because we’ve got some relaunch bonuses. Do you want? Would you like to hear more, right?Something like that. So, so rather than telling them all the things you want to tell them in this

first thing, get them to say yes, give them something that’s an easy yes to respond to. You

could use voice notes on this. You can use video notes. If you use your cell phone, you can do a

quick little video in the DMS, and then just send them the video. Right now, I will say that first

of all, voice notes and videos certainly make you seem more human. So I do like them

generally, but there are definitely things I don’t love about them. I mean, I can think of right at

this moment in time, a few videos I’ve gotten from people that I haven’t watched yet, because

when I got them, I wasn’t in a place to watch it right, like you’re whatever, you’re in a meeting

or you’re on a call or whatever, if they had given me a short note, I would have been able to

respond already, but because I have to stop what I’m doing and listen, and I’m not always in a

place to do that, sometimes the videos and the audios are not a good idea. So again, use it

judiciously. It’s just, I’m just giving you my personal experience with it. I love them, but I also

recognize that sometimes it poses me a little bit in responding, because I can’t listen to it when

I get it, and if I had just seen it, I would have been able to respond more quickly, right? So, so

use those DM use those voice notes, use those video the video opportunities in the DMS, but be

mindful of the fact that it may take a while. It might take a little bit longer for people to get

back to you. Here’s the thing. What we want to do is we want to be doing this in a way that

you’re bringing your heart and your energy to this conversation. Okay, your energy leads the

way before your words ever do. If you’re showing up from a place of Pick me, pick me, pick me,

it lands very differently than when you show up like the the wealthy woman, with the wealthy

woman mindset that you are and that you have. And if you’re not sure if you hear that and

you’re like, Ah, I know you think I have this confidence, Karen, but I don’t really have it yet.

Borrow mine. I can’t tell you how many people have said to me, I heard your voice in my head,

Karen, and I either stopped talking and let them talk, or I doubled the number that I was going

to to give them. Right for the quote, borrow my confidence. You are welcome to it. I would love

for you to have it. Because here’s the thing,

08:59

this isn’t really fake it till you make it. But there is a reality in that sometimes you have to bring

the confidence when you’re not always feeling it right. And you might have heard me talk about

on the show how my background has was in technology, and I was often the only woman in the

room in a in the technology industry back, you know, 2030, years ago. It’s not that I didn’t

always know what I was talking about. I sometimes I would have to say things like, I don’t

know. Let me get back to you on that, right? It takes confidence to say that. Or I’d say, Sure, we

can do this. We could do that. Or I know a little bit about this and a little bit about that. And I

distinctly remember walking out of a meeting with a colleague one time who looked at me and

said, Do you know any of that? I was like, No, I don’t, but we’re gonna figure it out now. Now we

gotta figure it out, right? So I don’t want you to bullshit people, right? That might sound a little

bit like bullshit. It’s not. It’s about knowing that you need to be confident. If I didn’t think I could

figure it out, by the way, I would have said absolutely not right, like I am never going to step

into something that I don’t I’m not fully confident that I can handle I was fully confident that I

knew I could figure it out.

10:00

Does that make sense? And that the confidence I want you to bring to these DMS. I want you to

bring the confidence of, hey, like, I think there’s a real opportunity in this conversation.10:12

Are you interested? Just really, really lean into that confidence. Really lean into that confidence.

And here’s the thing I can tell you that I have had, I have landed big, fat, juicy clients in the

DMS without ever getting on the phone with them. Sometimes it leads to getting on the phone

with them, right, corporate contracts or podcast bookings, right? These are the kinds of things

that can happen when you approach the DMS like a networking conversation, not like a pitch

fest. Do you see the difference there? Do you see the difference there? So there’s a couple

things you want to avoid. You want to avoid long, rambling intros. You want to avoid asking for

things, especially without context. You want to avoid sounding overly formal or robotic. Okay?

And here’s a really important thing you need to be in it if you are going to use these DMS with

this confidence that I’m talking about here, then please, please turn your notifications on

LinkedIn on your phone so when somebody responds, Yes, I want more, you can get on it and

you’re not ghosting them, because four days go by before You look at your DMS again, right? If

you want your LinkedIn DMS to be the most valuable piece of real estate in your business, and

you want to be responsive on that, right? You want to be responsive to the people that are

answering you. So you have to, you can’t, you can’t go in once a week. You can’t go into

LinkedIn once a week. You have to be responsive. LinkedIn is the only social media platform

that I have the notifications on on my phone. It’s the only one and I have it on, because if

somebody says yes, I want to be able to jump right back into that conversation and not wait till

tomorrow or the next day, right? So you want to make sure that you’re not ghosting people.

People are. You know, I’m just thinking of a conversation I had with a client earlier today, where

she started going into this whole long story about how somebody didn’t respond to her, and it

was all about her. And I was like, Hold on hold on hold on you know, it’s probably not about you,

but we think it is. When people don’t respond to us right away, right? They get all this. We’re

giving them the opportunity to come up with all these crazy reasons why this wasn’t a good

idea, right? So stay on it when it is a good idea. All right. So remember the framework here in

this is you want to hook them. You want to bridge it with something like explaining why you’re

reaching out without rambling. And then you want to make you want to give them some type of

an invite with an easy Yes, right? Some type of an invite with an easy yes, please take

imperfect action here. Open up LinkedIn, right now, pick one person you would love to connect

with and send them some version of this message. Don’t overthink it, right? If you need to have

my head, my voice in your head, please do. Okay, please do.

12:52

Take imperfect action. Do this outreach. There is nothing, I mean, I have, especially in this

2025, market, where everybody’s scrambling to figure out where, how and where marketing is

working. This has it worked back when I was doing tech in, you know, I don’t even know to tell

you the year, right? Or the year 2000 it worked then that the specific, the imperfect outreach,

genuine outreach, and it works now. People like to hear from other people. Okay? You want to

do this in a in a very soulful, heartfelt, confident way. Does that make sense? Okay? So I want

to drop just a couple of statistics here for you before we wrap this up. LinkedIn in males have

an average response rate of 18 to 25%

13:43

way higher than the one to 10% average for cold emails, way higher. Shorter messages giveway higher than the one to 10% average for cold emails, way higher. Shorter messages give

you better results. Under 400 characters have a 22% higher response rate than longer

messages. And here’s a cool one that I did when I did research for this episode that I did not

know, but I can tell you that I blocked two hours now on my calendar for every Thursday,

because one of the statistics that I found is that prospects are more likely to respond to

LinkedIn outreach messages on Thursdays, Saturdays have the lowest response rate. So in

addition to doing that outreach, go into your calendar, put an hour block an hour every

Thursday for LinkedIn outreach. Just do it. Just do it right, and then you have that hour there.

Okay, you have an hour there. And the last stat I want to share with you is that messages that

that reference a shared group or a mutual connection, or I heard you on that podcast, will

increase your response rates by up to 21%

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okay, so if you’re planning your message accordingly, like, Don’t overthink this. Don’t, don’t.

You know it’s so easy to say, well, it’s not Thursday. I can’t send a DM No, no, no, please send

your DMS whenever you want. I don’t want you to. This is about imperfect action. Put that hour

on every Thursday, but still reach out on those other days. Right? Remember, this is not about

being salesy. It’s about making genuine.

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Genuine connections that can lead to meaningful opportunities, right? Genuine connections

that can lead to meaningful opportunities. These are all the kinds of things that we do in our

she’s linked up program. We have got so many we’ve just revamped the whole program. We’ve

got so many new, amazing tools in this program, and the goal truly is to connect you, to build a

network around you of the most valuable people, so that you’re spending less time for more

with more bang for the time that you’re spending on this business getting stuff. I don’t want

you to spend a lot of time. You can if you’re looking at the video, you can see back here, I have

an a sign that says, ease. I’m all about building more ease into your into my business, and

that’s what I share with you as well. If you want to know what it looks like to get some help,

then grab a spot on our calendar. Go to Karen Yankovich com, slash call, and we’ll ask you a

couple questions. If we think that

15:58

we it’s something we can help you with, we will book a call with you, and the calls are

completely, you know, complimentary. And we’ll chat, and we’ll, we’ll let you know a little bit

about the program. We’ll learn a little bit about you. We’ll see if there’s a fit, and if there’s a fit,

we can, we’ll continue the conversation and tell you what it looks like. Honestly, I am so picky,

picky in the way, that if it’s I don’t think it’s a good fit, I’m going to tell you, I’m not looking to

put square pegs in round holes, right? So if you’re intrigued by all of this, and if you want a

community around you of people that can help you with your DMS, or, you know, if you get

somebody responds you’re not sure what to say, you can jump into our community and say,

Okay, this great opportunity came up. What do I say? We’re there to help you, right? But it all

starts by booking a call on the calendar at Karen yankovich.com/call16:40

alright, I have more of these LinkedIn episodes coming up for you in the next couple of weeks,

so make sure that you subscribe to this show and leave us a review if you think this was really

valuable, and we’ll see you back here next week with another episode.