Tweet

LinkedIn - How to win business in 5 easy steps

Written by: Tony Restell

Article Overview: Like many people, I have been a member of LinkedIn for a number of years. And like many people, I sat back and waited for potential clients to find my profile on the site - and for enquiries to come flooding in. I got barely a trickle of interest as a result of my "efforts" and had all but given up on LinkedIn. Until now that is!

LinkedIn - How to win business in 5 easy steps

Having 'seen the light' and discovered how to generate tons of new client interest using LinkedIn, I thought I would share my experiences so that you too can win business through LinkedIn. By way of introduction, let me say that in just one month I've connected to thousands of consulting professionals and arranged meetings with dozens of potential business partners, clients and business schools. So for any doubters out there, results can be had and it doesn't take years to get payback on your efforts.

So without further ado, let me share with you my 5 step process for building relationships with new clients via LinkedIn:

1) Write a comprehensive and well thought-out profile on LinkedIn. Once you have yourself a LinkedIn profile you need to achieve two key goals. Firstly you want suitable business partners / prospects to find you quickly on LinkedIn. That means you need to think of the types of keyword searches they would conduct on LinkedIn and then ensure your profile has been written in a way that maximises your chances of being found in those searches (Note: this doesn't mean writing a spammy profile, it just means taking a moment to reflect on how people search for business contacts on the site and then revising your profile accordingly).

Secondly, you want to ensure that everyone that may know you on LinkedIn is prompted to link to you. By putting in every employer you've worked for in the past and your full academic history, you maximise the chances of LinkedIn connecting you with alumni and classmates (even while you're on holiday!)

2) Get endorsements / testimonials. Once you have a profile, invite a few of your best clients or former colleagues to write a testimonial or endorsement of the previous work you've done. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, LinkedIn prioritises in its search results those professionals that have got endorsements of their work. So someone with lots of endorsements will be featured more prominently in search results than someone that has very few or none. Secondly if someone reads your profile and does not know you personally, they are far more likely to take the leap of contacting you if you have got third party endorsers singing your praises on LinkedIn. This de-risks that first contact and raises your credibility as a potential supplier.

3) Invest time in making connections. LinkedIn provides some pretty neat tools for cross-comparing everyone you have on your Outlook contacts sheet with everyone that is a LinkedIn member. In just moments LinkedIn's tools can give you a list of all the people you know that are already LinkedIn members. So a small investment of your time can make the difference between you being connected to 50 people or 500 people.

Let me share some exciting news though. At the time of writing, LinkedIn has something like 7 million members. Once you get to 500 connections, you are likely to have access to 1 million business contacts on LinkedIn (as you are able to connect friends of friends). By contrast, if you make it to 5000 connections, you are likely to have access to only 2-3 million business contacts. The reason is that the more connections you have, the harder it is to find new connections who will have friends that are not already connected to you on LinkedIn. So the exciting news is that a lot of the gains of LinkedIn can be achieved by simply getting to 500 connections - and that's a goal that should be achievable for most consulting professionals.

4) Be proactive and approach potential business partners and prospects. The single biggest reason people don't get much from their membership of LinkedIn is because they wait for others to come to them - rather than going out and approaching people in the network that are of interest. This is the equivalent of being at a networking event and then being shy of going and talking to anyone other than the person you came with. All the value is in meeting those you don't already know, not hanging around with those that already know who you are and what you can do for them. If you ask people to introduce you to contacts of theirs that you can really help, you will find nine times out of ten that they will do so without hesitation. And when I tell you that there are senior executives at just about every client firm you could possibly want to do business with, that's an awful lot of doors just waiting to be opened...

5) Offer something of value to the LinkedIn member. Last but not least, approach other LinkedIn members with an offer of something they will want and that you are offering freely and unconditionally. Offer them something of value. Something that will make them want to get in contact with you. Something that starts a dialogue. A common LinkedIn weakness is to approach members with a simple sales pitch. Example:

DO NOT SAY: "We help businesses to solve business transformation challenges, if you're interested in such services do get in touch" (no value to the recipient, simply says 'do you want to buy our services?')

DO SAY: "I'd welcome the chance to take you for lunch and hear the business transformation challenges your company is facing. There may well be insights I can share from the way other major corporations are handling these issues that could be of considerable value" (considerable value to the recipient, for no cost they could learn some valuable insights from an expert in the field)

If you get this part right, you should find that 80% or more of the executives you approach on LinkedIn will follow-up with you. Now how's that for an easy way of filling your sales pipeline with potential prospects?! It works, pure and simple.

Linking with me

I hope that through reading this article you have been inspired to make greater use of the wonderful tool that LinkedIn has evolved into. To help the growth of your LinkedIn network, please feel free to view my LinkedIn profile and to request that we connect:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/89/aa8

Wishing you great LinkedIn success!

Related Articles
  Social Media Marketing: How to Build Your List Using Linkedin
  Legal Marketing: More LinkedIn questions and answers
  Legal Marketing: LinkedIn's professional growth
  Part IV: Can LinkedIn Increase Your Sales?
  The Truth About LinkedIn That You Might Not Want to Hear

Article Tags: business contacts, business contacts, business partners, business partners, LinkedIn



Related Forum Posts
Re: On Which Social Media Sites Are You Most Active? - I'd be curious to hear how you guys use LinkedIn. I have close to 3,000 connections and never use it. I've been told the secret is to use groups (which I don't) so I'd love to hear how you guys are benefiting from LinkedIn.
Re: Twiiter an sales - [quote="soldlab":1ycb8vnm]I guess though LinkedIn is better for actual leag generation and personal contacts. What do you think?[/quote:1ycb8vnm] I've had a lot more success (thus far) with Twitter than LinkedIn or Facebook.
Standing out among the men - Hi Sara, I worked in Fortune 500 companies for 13 years and have run my own business for 10. Getting clients that are women, especially through women's groups is much easier. Most men are more commodity-driven whereas women are relationship driven. So depending upon your business, you may not be able to compete as a commodity. My business is very relationship-driven. I have a lot of male business owner clients. However, that only came after I had clearly established community expertise and credibility. I got my own radio show on NPR and I got a lot of business after that. Networking is HUGE. I believe in giving away tons of free information. People who don't wish to become a client and engage your services after you've talked to them at length are not people you want as clients. However, good people become clients at this point. They realize your knowledgebase and expertise. Also, your website needs to sell. Even if you simply have a LinkedIn website. I happen to have a public and private LinkedIn profile as well as a commercial website for my business. I've had a lot of folks tell me that the website convinced them to call me. I can't overstate the importance of establishing credibility through a forum where you are presented to the public as the expert. Check out Joan Stewart's publicity hound newsletter.
Re: Social Media Effectively? - Personally, I use social media to build my company brand in order to get awareness of the various franchises I work with. I am active on LinkedIn and Twitter (@DougSchadle), always posting information about the franchise opportunities I work with. I have started discussions and basically just try to get the word out there. Also, I turned one of my clients to social media as well. I work with Doctors Express, the first national urgent care franchise, expanding their franchise base. They are quickly spreading throughout the country and I told the founder to jump on to Twitter and LinkedIn as well. He just started a few weeks ago (Twitter handle @Doctors_Express) and tells me he is loving it. He is posting different medical issues he sees and is tweeting about Doctors Express. He is joining medical groups on LinkedIn and trying to connect to other doctors. So in short, I do think franchises can be very successful with social media, they just have to put in the time to do it.
Re: Twiiter an sales - Thanks Evan, Jackie! Vey helpful tips! Evan, I agree, Twitter is great when it's used as a tool for analysis for specific industry - it's easy to learn about relevant news, trends, challenges. Then you get the idea about what solution can be used to help solve the problems the prospects are facing. I guess though LinkedIn is better for actual leag generation and personal contacts. What do you think? Jackie, how to dvelop strong relationships with your followers? Just by retweting? is it going to have an effect?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

The Golden Rule of Communications

Small Business Internet Marketing

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.