By Editor Morten B. Reitoft

In the past few days, I have participated in three webinars, and I thought it could be fun to share my views of the content, so you can either decide to see the replays (if and when available) or discuss whether you agree or disagree with me. The three webinars I joined were very different, and I genuinely joined with an open mind - I wanted to learn.

This is the last of the three - and I must, regardless of how much I like Joanne Gore; I only rate this 1 out of 5 stars. All webinars serve a purpose - directly or indirectly, always with the intent of some action. In my view, the tradeoff is always essential. You get my time; I learn, which can lead to business.

The "sales part" was presented by Art Hoffman, who runs In-Link Advisors company. The company offers, similar to Joanne Gore's product Business Connect. In this service, they essentially manage your LinkedIn profile (in your name) and target an audience to create a lead - and when scheduled, you take over the conversation yourself.

Joanne Gore and her JGC Communications are, as the name suggests, a Communications company, and with the headline "From Cold Canvas to Warm Conversations," my hopes were high.

But when one of the slides states: 'It's all about clicks, engagement, and ongoing communications,' I get skeptical - because that's not true. In business, the sentence should be, 'It's all about sales.'

But let's start somewhere else. Joanne Gore is Canadian. Since leaving Avanti as Director of Marketing, she has established her communications business, JGC Communications. I believe her reputation is good, and I find her well-organized, structured, and always on.

She is also very open-minded and often participates in other people's webinars and events - for sure, to learn, but also to use every opportunity to promote her business through her views and opinions. She is working with industry names like The Print Whisperer Warren Werbitt and Taktiful, to mention a few.

I am disclaiming this, as I don't like to give a webinar like this only 1 star. On the other hand, I also want to share my opinion and look forward to learning from other people's views. I, for example, saw a comment from Amanda Bronowski, who also has a pretty strong voice and appearance on LinkedIn, and her words are opposite mine "Hey everyone, check this out! This by far is the most unique social media tool I have seen! You need to really see it, to believe it! So register now and see first hand from Joanne Gore - JGC and Art Hoffman how powerful your LinkedIn account can be!!"

The webinar's title, "From Cold Canvas to Warm Conversations," is excellent. Using the LinkedIn platform worked VERY well (100+ attendees), and what I liked about using LinkedIn is that you can connect and communicate directly with other participants - which aligns with today's trends. That is - unfortunately - also THE positive thing I can say about the event. The event gave 'insights' into how to use LinkedIn for lead generation and building a professional network. One of the slides shown was a diagram about the flow of what-ifs.

For example:
1) Invite to connect on LinkedIn with a custom note
2) Then a diagram with actions based on whether a connection was made or not
3) What to do if not connected, and if connected
4) And so forth. 

This is SO basic that you don't need to waste 100 professional people's lives for 30 minutes. After watching the event, I couldn't see anything "Warm Conversations" appearing on the radar. The Cold Canvas isn't necessarily to send invites and messages - real cold canvas is - as also Warren Webitt says in an interview with Gore, to take the phone and give people a call. The 'Warm Conversations' may refer to the "closings" Gore and Hoffman speak about, but depending on who you sell to and what you are selling - selling and closing isn't something done in just a few online meetings, chats, or exchange of messages - but often a process that can last for months.

The event was mainly to convince the attendees to buy JGC Communication (and her Business Connect package) to manage their LinkedIn profile, the inbox with ALL the leads supposedly generated from using the Business Connector tool.

This was entry-level CRM, and if it had been only that, I would have given the event two stars - but after about twenty minutes - and in my mind - almost painful 20 minutes, the event stopped with a pitch from Joanne Gore to become a customer with her.

I am not sure I hope she gets a lot of customers; however, I will say that I doubt the price and the value of the product she pitched. The pitch was $500 for onboarding and then $895 per month (with an introductory offer), and for that, you'll get:

• Optimized personal profile
• Continuous new connection requests
• Ongoing engagement messaging
• Funneling and follow-up
• Target list and messaging development
• Contact information extraction
• Live coaching/support
• Monthly progress reports

Here is an example:

First of all, LinkedIn, for me, is a connection tool. I use it to reach out to people when I have something relevant to talk about. So the connection itself is irrelevant - it's getting to know each other is relevant. When using LinkedIn to SPAM me or others, the bare minimum you can do before pitching is to view my profile, understand my business, and understand my needs - but that is not what happens. I get hundreds of in-mails and connection requests with a pitch seconds after connecting, and most of them are fucking freaking irrelevant. I also asked during the webinar - why would you expect people to answer messages on LinkedIn when Americans, in particular, are SO bad at answering emails?

Being a media is maybe different, but if I were constantly pitched by the almost 9,000 connections I have on LinkedIn, I would have to close my account. I can also tell my 9,000 followers that I won't pitch you. I will reach out individually if I need your information or if you have written a request somewhere on LinkedIn where I feel it's appropriate to answer.