I’m trying something new this week—going straight to our interview and skipping the news and tip of the week. Please hit reply and let me know what you think of this streamlined format!

I’ve been interviewing a lot of sales leaders recently, because sales something I’m personally not confident about. LinkedIn is, of course, great for sales, and this week’s interview, Leslie Venetz, tells us how she brings her outbound sales experience to the inbound world of LinkedIn.

Welcome, Leslie. Please tell us about yourself.

I am the founder of my own company called The Sales-Led Go to Market Agency. But I found my way here after 15-plus years in corporate as a seller, and now I have the privilege of being my own boss for the first time in my life.

What’s your industry?

Management consulting. It’s probably most representative of my work because I'll go into the organizations I partner with, review their strategy, understand the gaps, and figure out how we can create processes to fill them. Sometimes, I'm creating a strategy from the ground up. 

I spent my career as an industry hopper, where I sold a lot of different types of products at different price points and different sales cycles to different types of personas. I'm really lucky that I get to serve a lot of different industries. So, I'm industry-agnostic in who I serve, which keeps it interesting.

What does LinkedIn do for you?

It’s my inbound lead source. I'm a bit of a traitor to my people because I am an outbound sales girlie, and that is my first passion, especially writing the script and the email copy for outbound.

However, I run a hundred percent inbound lead flow. To be fair, I'm not trying to scale. I am running a lifestyle business. I am a solopreneur by choice. So, I need to do different things with my business than my customers. However, LinkedIn has been an incredible source of inbound leads, allowing me to leave corporate and pursue entrepreneurship. Beyond that, it has become a real community for me.

What are your main goals for using LinkedIn?

Because I run an inbound business, one of my primary goals on LinkedIn is to write content that speaks to my ideal persona. So, I keep an eye on making sure that my content is written in a way that aligns with what I think will resonate with the people who are ultimately going to hire me.

But I am so, so, so passionate about sharing knowledge. So another element I try to keep an eye on as I create content is: Is this accessible? And I do spend a considerable amount of time really drilling into the basics, that fundamental sort of mindset shifts or maybe techniques that were the things that I used earlier in my career that took me from a low-performing to a consistent quota overachiever, so they can use it to better their own sales careers.

Leslie’s content strategy

Who’s your target audience on LinkedIn?

Sales leaders. I'm either going to come in and do a broader strategy engagement, or I'm coming in to do a sales kickoff, a workshop, or a training series. So it's either the founder that hires me or a VP, SVP, EVP, or Chief Revenue Officer title. I’m trying to make sure that I am speaking to that persona as often as possible in my content.

How do you decide what content to create and share on LinkedIn?

Whenever I have an idea, I read something that sparks an interest, and I text it to myself, so when I sit down to create, I'm just going through all of these texts I've sent myself to get my mind running. Then I also follow a strategy of how I post content. So, I ensure that in five of my seven posts, the majority of my content is content to sell. Then I have one post a week that is like content to brand build. Then, one post a week is like a post that could go viral, speaks to a broader audience, and isn't specific to sales leaders.

I batch-create all of my content and schedule it. That is the only way I can show up on LinkedIn the way I do. It means that on a daily basis, I can prioritize the time I spend on LinkedIn engaging in comments, which is extremely, extremely important to me. Comments are where the community happens. So I batch create all my content, which means that once or twice a month, I'm sitting down and spending probably a day writing all of it out, going back and trying to improve the hooks or the calls to action, and then getting everything scheduled. 

How do you differentiate your content from others on LinkedIn?

One is that I have done the work. There are a lot of people on LinkedIn that can speak about topics very superficially. Still, they aren't able to get into the nuance and the nitty-gritty because they've not done the work. So you see a lot of content that is more like paraphrasing or sometimes even plagiarizing other people's work, and it doesn't perform that well because it's not adding anything new or substantial to the LinkedIn zeitgeist.

The other piece of feedback that I get often is around authenticity, which is such a buzzword. But I think how it shows up for me is that I do hold Sundays for a post that is more of a point-of-view post. Sometimes, they're about sales; sometimes they aren't. Often, I will share a personal story about what's happened as a woman in sales or just generally like a female founder or a woman in business. So I think it is the combination of coming from a place where I have deep expertise and experience.

One more thing I would add is that I also am increasingly unafraid to piss people off. It's taken me a long time to get there, but I have realized that to do my best work, some people will be angry about it because they won't agree with me and will feel called out. They're going to see a version of themselves they don't like in what I write, which will make them feel abrasive. Or they're saying something different in their content, and they only have three or four years of experience. 

It's the combination of experience, expertise, being confident in my point of view—confident enough now that I understand that confidence means I will upset some people—and then combining that with enough of my personality, like raw personality, that people feel like they are getting a small piece of me, not just a robot face posting sales techniques.

What makes your content successful with your audience?

One is authenticity—I share a lot of personal stories, and I’m not afraid to show my personality. I also try to make my content practical and accessible so people feel like they can immediately apply what I share. Another big piece is consistency; I’ve posted every day for years, and that builds trust and familiarity with my audience. And finally, I’m not afraid to have a point of view or to share my perspective, even if it’s polarizing. I think that helps people feel like they’re getting something real and unique from me.

What are the processes you use to create content? 

• Schedule in advance ✅

• Batch create content ✅

• Optimize for SEO/keywords ❌

• Follow an editorial calendar ❌

• Have specific content pillars/themes ✅

• Repurpose content to/from LinkedIn or reuse on LinkedIn ✅

• Use AI in any part of the content writing process ✅

• Have team/human support for any part of your LI process ✅

• Keep a list of potential topics somewhere (Notes, Notion, etc.) ✅

• Design or source visuals including infographics and carousels and video ✅

What types of content do you post to LinkedIn?

• Text only ✅

• Polls ❌

• Audio ❌

• Video ✅

• Carousels ✅

• Photos of yourself (selfies) ✅

• Photos of other people or things ✅

• AI generated images ❌

• Infographics (single image) ✅

• Links to outside content ✅

• Reposts of others’ content (repost only) ✅

• Reposts of others’ content (with your thoughts) ❌

• LinkedIn Live events ✅

• LinkedIn newsletters ✅

How much time does it take?

How much time do you spend each weekday on LinkedIn on comments or Direct Messages (DMs), outside of content creation?

I try to limit it to an hour. Try being a very operative word. I will generally use LinkedIn from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. every single day. My posts are scheduled to go live at 8:30, so as soon as my post goes live, I am on LinkedIn. I always like, reshare, and comment on my own posts.

Then I have a number of other folks who talk about similar topics as I do, and I have rung all of their bells. So, their posts are all at the top of my newsfeed, and I comment on them immediately. Then I'll go to my post, respond to those comments, and scroll the newsfeed. I will check my inbox and reply to those people because LinkedIn is more likely to push your content out to them if you're engaging in the inbox with people. So I spend an hour just doing all of the things—engaging, commenting on other people's posts, responding to my own comments in my DMs, responding to those.

Are you active on LinkedIn on the weekends, either posting or commenting or both?

Monday is the day I take off, and I do that because the weekends have been really kind to me for engagement, which is happening for two reasons. One, fewer people post on the weekends, so more people are looking at my posts. Also, Saturdays are the days I always post a video, and Sundays are the days I post that content from a brand-build point of view. I look at my top-performing posts throughout the year, this year, and last year—it is always the post to brand build. So, it's worth spending a couple of hours on the weekend being active on the platform.

How do you use DMs (direct messages) in the service of your goals?

I’m terrible at it. Part of it is because I run a B2B business, so I simply don’t need as many clients because I’m doing bigger engagements at a higher dollar value. So when I say like, "Do what I say, not what I do," it’s because I am running such a unique business. However, a strategy that works in my business is I have a really aggressive away message set in my LinkedIn. It says, "Thank you for your message. This inbox is not routinely monitored, so a reply is unlikely. You can find me in the comments and subscribe to Earn the Right," my LinkedIn newsletter. 

What I see as a trend is people finding me on a webinar or podcast content, following me on LinkedIn, signing up for my newsletter, or joining my book club. Like, we have some sort of relationship. So when they come into my inbox, I know their name, and they have a really specific reason for reaching out to me and an idea of how I can help them. So, I pay close attention to those DMs but ignore others.

Charlotte [Lloyd—read her The Networkist interview here], her strategy for DMs is incredible, she is the gold standard for utilizing your inbound connections to catalyze that conversation and that interaction and turn those connections into leads and, ultimately, clients. 

Leslie’s biggest growth levers

What has contributed most to your growth?

I have a very slow growth count. That’s not the story you often hear on LinkedIn, right? It’s the "how I went from 3,000 to 100,000 followers in six months." That’s great for those people. That is not what I have experienced on LinkedIn. For me to grow, I’ve had to show up every single day. I literally posted every single day for over a thousand days in a row. Now, I post at least six days a week, every single week. So, my growth has resulted from consistently showing up with high-quality content, a desire to share knowledge, and an appetite to engage and create community. It hasn’t been one specific thing.

I have the blue "top voice" badge the LinkedIn editorial top voice badge. When I got that, I said, "I’m gonna just take off to the moon now." That was not the case. I think it adds credibility, but people aren’t following me because I have a blue badge.

In March of this year I made two really big changes to my content. One is that I started including even more videos and a lot of pictures of me just doing things—which I had already been doing video, but maybe not as consistently as I should. Now, I have at least one video every single week. Every Saturday, at least, is a video. Prior to that, I thought that posting pictures of myself was so cringy, but I started doing it, and people really responded well to them.

How do you track what’s working and know what to change?

I do track my analytics and keep an eye on what’s getting the most engagement. I also look at which posts drive DMs or specific inbound leads. Beyond that, I pay attention to feedback—what people comment on or mention when they reach out. If something I’ve done feels stagnant, I evaluate whether it’s still aligned with my goals and adjust accordingly. I also follow a strategy for content to sell, grow, and build my brand. When I saw that certain posts resonated more, I doubled down on them.

How Leslie makes money

How do you generate revenue in your business?

I have three primary revenue streams. One is the larger management consulting engagements. The second bucket is live or virtual workshops or training. That’s what I built the business off the back of when I was still doing it as a passion project side hustle while I had a full-time gig. The third one is influencer marketing. This year, when a pending deal closes, I’ll have made $56,000 from creator economy work. It’s not insignificant.

How do you quantify your success on LinkedIn?

I attribute so much of my success to LinkedIn. It’s hard to quantify because it has changed my life in ways beyond just metrics. LinkedIn was the catalyst for me leaving corporate and becoming an entrepreneur. Without LinkedIn, I wouldn’t have had the lead flow or the community to make that leap. At least 70% of my inbound leads this year will have come from LinkedIn. But more than that, it’s given me a sense of fulfillment and joy that I never had in corporate. So, while there are numbers like revenue or followers, the real success is the life I’m able to live because of it.

Leslie’s top tips

What challenges have you faced on LinkedIn? What’s made you almost—or actually—quit? What got you back on track?

I have thought about quitting. Not recently, but when I was getting started, it was hard, and I know everybody has experienced this. I went a whole year—like 300-plus days—posting every day, and it was eight likes, 11 likes. I was growing slowly, but if I looked at the engagement, it was like, "Wow, big day, 17 likes."

What kept me going was the DMs I got. People told me they used my strategies, saw results, or felt less alone because of my posts. I also faced a lot of hateful comments and even threats when I started posting, especially as a woman in sales. It was tough. But over time, I found my voice and rebuilt my narrative. The support from my community and the impact I saw from sharing my story became my fuel to keep going.

What advice would you give others who are looking to grow and, ideally monetize their LinkedIn platform?

The number one thing I hear is that they don’t believe what they have to share is worth sharing. So, first and foremost, let me dispel that myth. You are the only one of you. You are the only one with your unique lived experience, expertise, and point of view. Your voice matters because you matter.

What doesn’t work is coming to LinkedIn with the attitude of, “This is the only way to do this.” It rings false, especially if you’re new. Instead, root your content in your day-to-day experiences. Share something you learned from a call, a conversation, or even a failure. What you tried, what didn’t work, and what you’ll do differently next time—that’s relatable and authentic.

Focus on creating content that feels good to you and reflects who you are. People will connect with you because your content feels real and believable.

How to network with Leslie

• Follow Leslie Venetz on LinkedIn

• Check out Leslie’s company, The Sales-Led GTM Agency

That’s all for now—I look forward to seeing you again next week for another Networker interview.