Selling. The next frontier to get the all-mighty social prefix. I recently had a chat with Brynne Tillman of PeopleLinx to see if she can sell LinkedIn prospecting to you.
Have a listen to the interview on iTunes, SoundCloud or keep reading for a summary of our conversation.
Why is LinkedIn important to salespeople?
"Whenever you're doing any kind of prospecting, you have to first go where your prospects are hanging out. I've not yet met a professional that hasn't at least heard of LinkedIn, and most of them are at least on it minimally, which means you can find them. And so I think that's number one.
Number two, LinkedIn is the only platform that allows you to search and filter your connections' connections. So in this particular case, if you find an executive that you're looking to get in front of, you can quickly identify if you have shared connections that can help you gain access. And to me, I mean there are so many wonderful platforms out there, but this is the key platform that can really help you identify the right people and gain access through your current warm market."
What are the five steps to LinkedIn prospecting?
"So the very first thing, when I'm working with folks, is that we have to begin to identify the Boolean search - the search criteria of the types of people you're looking to have conversations with. And this could take a little while initially. I mean, if you really understand your prospects and your potential buyers, it could be a 15, 20 minute process. If, you know, you're the kind of person right now that says, "Everyone needs what I have," drilling down to those right people can take a little bit longer. But once you've got that, which are the... like for me, it's vice president of sales, director of sales, vice president of marketing, the CMO, sales enablement. So I have my list, and I've created it in a way that makes searching for these people on LinkedIn very simple. And so that's the number one step.
Now, it depends on if you're account-based marketing or if the world is your oyster. If you're account-based marketing and you've been assigned 100 accounts, then that's where you would begin. You'd look up those companies, plug in your now new Boolean search, and see who in the organization is it that you need to be working with or talking with and then who can help you get there if possible.
If you're not account-based - even geographically based - if you have Sales Navigator, it's called Lead Builder. If you have regular linkedin.com, it's called Advanced Search. But creating your advanced searches based on that Boolean search is the next place to go. See who comes up on that list and strategically reach out to your shared connections, whether it's email, text, phone call, tweet, whatever your normal process would be. Just say, "Hey, Joe, I notice you're connected to Fred at ABC Company." Try to get in touch with him. How well do you know him? "Can we have a quick call?" "Can we talk about this?" And so that becomes really the next step is going through your warm market.
If you don't have anyone in common, it seems like it's going to be a cold reach on LinkedIn. There are things that you can do prior to doing that. You can follow them. You can like or comment on their recent activity and start to build a rapport before you ask for a connection. Once you've done that... Or maybe you comment on an article, and now you connect, "Anne, great article that you posted. I really enjoyed it," she knows that's true because you liked it, and you commented already, "Would love to connect with you and explore ways we might be able to work together." And so you're relating that back to them.
The next process after that is how they connect - and this is where almost everyone drops the ball - you need a welcome message. I have two welcome messages, one that asks for a phone call and one that just provides more value. So if I'm not necessarily looking for a phone call with that person now but they're someone that I want to nurture over time possibly, I'll say, "Thanks for connecting on LinkedIn. Not sure if you're using LinkedIn for sales, but here's some templates I've put together that might be helpful." And it's one of the most valuable pieces of content I have. So if they're using the platform for sales - which kind of qualifies them for me - then they can download these, which I have a gatekeeper, so I know who's actually downloading them, and I bring them incredible value from the very beginning."
What pitfalls are there with LinkedIn prospecting?
"Oh my gosh, that list could go on forever. I would say the number one pitfall is sending a non-personalized connection request. Number two pitfall is when someone connects with you that you don't send a welcome note. You connect and forget. Number three pitfall actually is ignoring your first degree connections, the people you're already connected to.
If you say you have 700 connections, you may have 80 people in your network that you would want to talk to if you were prospecting. But instead, we go meet more people, more people, more people and ignore them. So go back to your first degree connections, and you can do this in Lead Builder on Sales Navigator or in linkedin.com in advanced searches.
When you do that search with that Boolean, you know, with those exact titles, click under relationship first degree, and that will show you all the people that meet your criteria that are your first degree connections, and send them all notes saying, you know, "Nancy, we've been connected for some time now but we haven't really had a chance to have a conversation. I'd love to set up a brief call and explore ways we might be able to help each other out now or in the future." And your numbers will go up a little bit higher. So out of 10 that you asked for, you're probably going to get 3, maybe even 4 phone calls out of that if you haven't burned them yet with pitching."
Follow Brynne on Twitter @BrynneTillman and read the full article on the Link Humans blog.