Recently I was interviewed by John Paul Mendocha, a.k.a. Dr. Speedselling for his Winners Circle. This interview was done exclusively for his Winner’s Circle members (his premium coaching program) but he was kind enough to let me share it with you. The interview is focused on how to sell more using LinkedIn.

In case you don’t know John, here are some interesting tidbits about him. I’ve known John for a few years through Perry Marshall and I’ve learned a ton about selling from him. As you’ll discover in the interview, John is very intense and cuts to the chase. He’s a no non-sense guy that gets incredible results.

Click the button below to listen to the interview now

John Paul Mendocha, a.k.a. Dr. SpeedSelling™ always wears two watches. Why? Because he knows time is the most cherished and irreplaceable element in anyone’s life. As a serial entrepreneur with now 39 years of experience, consulting for 30 years, he at times leads several lives at once. To most, this level of activity and pace would be daunting, but John loves the action.

John is an intense speaker, delivering actionable, knowledgeable insights for business owners, professionals and entrepreneurs with rapid-fire, humorous delivery.  As a “turn around consultant” he has faced head on, the most difficult challenges in business, and is able to spot problems and provide solutions for their successful resolution.

As a turn-around expert and professional speaker, John’s expertise covers many areas. His business structuring insights teach you how to overcome obstacles with actionable steps, set up or debug your sales process, identify and handle staffing issues or delivery problems. He can ferret out reasons for declining sales profits within minutes of hearing your business issues.

A four-year stint as a professional gambler taught John that in business as well as in life, math, odds and probability are on one side. On the other is human psychology, the emotional drivers that determine what motivates us to react or take action. These lessons have led to traveling the world, coaching clients in dozens of industries and helping rack up profits that most only dream of. As a direct sales representative he has been number one in several companies, helping one land at #18 on the INC 500 list, which is no small feat.

Never one to rest on his laurels, he pushes to use the best of leading-edge innovative techniques without forgetting the power of foundational knowledge.

Let me know what you think of John’s interview with me by commenting below. Also let me know what your biggest takeaway from the interview was?

Image via CrunchBase

Are you mad at me for unfollowing you on Twitter the other day? Did you even notice? I bet you didn’t!

I decided to unfollow everyone and start fresh with Twitter. I joined Twitter near the beginning and experimented with it in the beginning. I’m still experimenting with Twitter every day but in the early days my testing was less focused. I tested some of the programs that autofollowed everyone who followed me whether I knew them or not. This was a quick way for me to connect with people who were interested in Following me. The consequence is you have the same number of Followers as the people you are Following.

I didn’t use the gimmicky tools for long because I didn’t use Twitter very much back then and lost interest. My account sat idle for a long time before I jumped back on the Twitter bandwagon. Today, most people still think Twitter is a waste of time because they haven’t taken time to master its power. Twitter is an incredible traffic generator and marketing channel if used correctly. It can be a big time waster if you’re just Tweeting pictures of your food or letting people know how hungover you are. If you create a strategy for Twitter, you’ll be amazed how powerful it is.

So how does it feel to not be Following anyone? It feels great, like cleaning out your closets! I was Following a lot of people I didn’t know so my Twitter Stream was full of noise that I didn’t care about. Now my Twitter Stream is so clean!! I still Follow people on Twitter using Lists which lets me see their Tweets but it’s in an organized stream on my HootSuite dashboard. I also started Following a few people that I want to Direct Message but I’m going to be very careful who I Follow from now on.

My next social media experiment is going to be with LinkedIn. I’m going to spend at least one hour every day on LinkedIn posting new content, connecting with more people, participating in Groups and experimenting with the new LinkedIn features like the enhanced Contacts. I’ll be posting my progress on this blog so stay tuned!

Feel free to comment below and let me know how you feel about Following people on Twitter and using automated Twitter tools.

How can I promote my company in LinkedIn groups without being annoying?

You probably know the feeling – someone asks a question in a LinkedIn group and you know that your product is the best solution for them, but you don’t want to come off as annoying, pushy or boring.

I’m interested in hearing about any successful experiments, psychological tricks or original responses you’ve seen or can think of that get a positive and informative message across without irritating the pants off all the other group members, including the one who asked the question to begin with…

My first thought was this guy needs to buy my book, Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business and my good friend Susan Roane’s FACE TO Face: How to Reclaim The Personal Touch In A Digital World because he needs to learn how to network.

This was posted by a guy using a cartoon characture as his LinkedIn profile picture. I guess he’s into using deception and psycological tricks in his marketing. Just the kind of person I love to do business with. (Just kidding, of course!)

I was pleased to see two comments from people recommending a different approach. One comment provided very detailed suggestions on how to build relationships in LinkedIn Groups and obeying the forum rules so he doesn’t get banned. The other comment suggested adding value to the conversation by demonstrating his knowledge and expertise instead of self-promoting. Both comments were excellent.

With the new, stricter LinkedIn Group rules, you can be tagged by the forum moderator which carries over to all of the Groups you belong to. Every post and comment you make in Groups has to be moderated by the person in charge of the forum. This person is a prime canditate to be tagged if he aggressively self-promotes in Groups without adding value.

Of course I had to jump into the conversation too! Here is my response:

Think about it this way: 

You go to a party and someone comes up to you. He never stops talking about himself or his company. He’s constantly bragging about his accomplishments or how great his product is. He keeps telling you that you should try his product and you can’t get a word in edgewise.

Would you ever buy from this guy? Would you ever want to see this guy again?

The other side is:

You go to a party and someone comes up to you. They ask a lot of questions about you and what you do for a living. They are genuinely interested in learning more about you or what you do for a living. They never say anything about themselves. They are completely focused on learning more about you. You really like talking to this guy and think he’s really interesting.

Would you buy something from this guy if he had a product or service you needed?

When you self-promote or try to sell in groups or forums, you are the first guy. Nobody wants to hear about your product. They’re looking for people who are genuinely interested in building relationships. Nobody likes to be sold to in forums.

There hasn’t been a response from the person who originated the conversation. I’m not sure if he’s offended by our advice or he’s busy promoting his company in other groups. I’ll let you know if he responds.

How would you respond to this post? Comment below and tell me if you agree with my response and how you would respond. Also let me know how you feel about the new LinkedIn Group rules which are designed to clean up the spam and self-promotion.

To learn more about LinkedIn, visit my blog frequently at www.tedprodromou.com and grab my book, Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business now.

In Hacking, A.P. Twitter Feed Sends False Report of Explosions …

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.comTue, 23 Apr 2013 17:57:07 GMT

The episodes raise questions about the security of social media passwords and the ease of access to brand-name accounts. Logging on to Twitter requires the same process for a company as for a consumer — just a user …

When was the last time you changed your Twitter password? Change your password now because bots are constantly scanning Twitter trying to crack your password.

Twitter is notorious for allowing easy to crack passwords and the number of successful account breakins is increasing. Many celebrities have had their accounts compromised and over 250,000 Twitter users had to change their passwords in February.

Just because Twitter allows you to use simple passwords doesn’t mean you should use an obvious password. Here are some password best practices from Twitter.

https://support.twitter.com/articles/76036-keeping-your-account-secure

Some simple tips include:

1. Don’t use common words found in a dictionary
2. Don’t use the names of your children or pets
3. Don’t use your birthday or social security number
4. Don’t use sequences like “abcd1234″ or “qwert”

Your password should:

1. Be at least 10 characters with a combination of uppercase, lowercase, numbers and symbols. I know you are thinking you’ll never rememer a long, complicated password but once you enter it into your phone or computer, you rarely have to retype it.
2. Change your password occassionally. Your Twitter account password isn’t as important as your bank account password but it does connect with many other apps when you allow it letting hackers into the back door of many accounts.
3. Follow the Twitter guidelines for a secure password or search Google for “password best practices” to learn more about password security.

One more thing you should do periodically is to log into your Twitter account and see which apps you have authorized to use your Twitter account. Go to https://twitter.com/settings/applications and you may be surprised to see how many third party apps you’ve authorized. If you don’t recognize the apps, Revoke Access immediately.

To learn more about Twitter security, check out my new book Ultimate Guide to Twitter for Business now and to stay updated subscribe to my blog here.

I spent the past weekend with Ray Edwards at his 3 Day Intensive which he promoted as a copywriting workshop. Ray promised we would leave the workshop with a completed sales letter that would be ready to post on our website to promote one of our products.

Ray held a few webinars over the past few weeks to promote the event. A while back he did a webinar called the “1 Hour Sales Letter” where he wrote a sales letter live on the call. Last week he charged $47 for a webinar called “The 2 Hour Sales Letter” where he spent two hours online writing a sales letter. Your $47 investment included a recording of the webinar and templates to help you create your sales letter and autoresponder sequence. It was a bargain at that price and he could easily charge a lot more for the templates alone.

So I jumped on a plane to Phoenix on Thursday pretty much expecting to see the webinar performed live over three days. I was excited because I would be forced to write the sales letter I’ve been avoiding for months. I expected Ray to spoon feed me the information throughout the weekend and I would leave the workshop with my final draft of the sales letter. Not bad for a $97 investment.

Boy was I wrong. Ray totally tricked me into coming to a workshop that was promoted as a copywriting workshop but we only spent about 25% of the time learning copywriting. We spent the other 75% of the time digging deep into our personalities to figure out what makes us tick.

Ray calls it the Wisdom Thesis, The Simple 5 Step System for Creating Your Unique Profitable Idea. You assess a product or service and identify what’s not working or could be improved. As you work through the Wisdom Thesis you develop a theorical solution then eventually the final solution.

Seems like a simple, not-so-revolutionary process doesn’t it?

Well the Wisdom Thesis is very different because the work you do is from the inside out. I’ll explain the Wisdom Thesis in more detail in an upcoming post but can learn more about it at http://wisdomthesis.com/ or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBlYYIAX9pE. The bottom line is the Wisdom Thesis lets you create something extraordinary instead of just ordinary.

The entire weekend had us thinking from the inside out. Lots of self-evaluation. Deep inner thinking. Spiritual thinking. Thinking from perspectives we didn’t know exisited.

Everyone had many revelations and breakthroughs throughout the weekend. We could feel a dramatic difference in the room on Sunday. We were all playing at a different level. Everyone was seeing the world through a different set of eyes that were laser sharp. We knew exactly what we had to do as we returned to our “normal” lives on Sunday night.

I encourage you to learn more about Ray at www.rayedwards.com. Sign up for his newsletter and listen to his inspiring podcasts. WARNING: His website makes him look like a copywriter but watch out…

The other day I accidentally discovered a cool way to connect with people outside of our LinkedIn network. In fact, I didn’t connect with them. They reached out to connect with me even though they didn’t know me. I’ll show you my new trick in a minute after I explain why it’s not easy to connect with people outside of your network.

Have you ever seen someone’s profile who would be a perfect addition to your LinkedIn network but they were a 3rd degree connection or out of your LinkedIn network? You can’t easily connect with them unless you have a 1st or 2nd degree connection who can introduce you. You can try sending them an InMail which is an art in itself. If you’ve never sent an InMail, you need to do your homework to ensure your InMail will be opened or it will be more difficult to send additional InMails. You can learn more about the art of sending InMail in my book, Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business.

Watch this video to see how I find people out of my network who I want to connect with and get them to connect with me.

LinkedinAnswers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

LinkedIn is a great way to demonstrate your expertise and become a recognized leader in your industry.

It’s actually pretty easy to do if you use LinkedIn Answers. In my latest article on Entrepreneur.com,

I show you how to use LinkedIn Answers effectively.

Read my latest article here.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224581#

I’m also doing a free webinar this Saturday, October 13th at 10 AM Pacific/1 PM Eastern time. The webinar is called 7 Steps to LinkedIn Success where you’ll learn how easy it is to use LinkedIn to grow your business, build lasting relationships and how to build a strong professional network.

 Register for 7 Steps to LinkedIn Success now. 

 https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/369053530

I will be recording the webinar so make sure you register so you receive the link to the replay.

I wasn’t planning to write a book until my friend and mentor, Perry Marshall, called me. Entrepreneur Press wanted him to write books about LinkedIn and Twitter because his Ultimate Guide to Adwords and Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising are the best selling books on those topics. Perry and I were going to co-author the books but he backed out at the last minute because he was too busy. All of a sudden I had 2 signed book deals!

I’ve never written a full book before so I was excited and scared as hell at the same time. I’ve written hundreds of blog posts and numerous ebooks but I’ve never written 75,000 words about one subject. I was totally overwhelmed at first so I quickly contacted my friend, Ron Person, who has written 36 books about Microsoft Excel and business dashboards. Ron mentored me and helped me create an outline of each book.

Ron taught me how focus on one chapter at a time and not be overwhelmed by the scope of the project. Once I created the outline of each book and focused on one topic at a time, the project became much easier. Since I work full time, I spent a few hours every night after work and every weekend for almost 8 months working on my books. I had no problem writing 75,000 words about LinkedIn and actually wrote almost 90,000 words by the time I finished. Of course some of the content was edited but I felt really good that I wrote that much content.

I thought I knew a lot about LinkedIn when I started the book, but I quickly realized there’s a lot to learn about LinkedIn. They are constantly improving the site and adding new functionality. They’re doing a great job of creating an online business portal where you can log in every day and find engaging content and conversations. I have to say LinkedIn is now one of my favorite websites and I spend a lot of time there every day even though I’m not looking for a new job. By the way, if you think LinkedIn is only for finding a new job, you need to spend some time there. It’s so much more than a job site!

If you want to download a free chapter, click here.

You can also pre-order  Ultimate Guide to Linked In for Business on Amazon now or on Barnes & Noble here.