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!
LinkedIn - How to win business in 5 easy steps - To learn more about this author, visit Tony Restell's Website.
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Tony Restell
(Visit Tony's Website)
A former strategy consultant and graduate
of Cambridge University, in 2000 I
co-founded the management consultancy
website Top-Consultant.com.
www.Top-Consultant.com is now the leading
global careers website for Management
Consultants and as testimony to this was
acquired by newspaper group DMGT in 2005.
The site attracts ~1/4million readers each
month and our recruiter client base
includes most of the world's leading
consulting businesses including Accenture,
Capgemini, Deloitte, Ernst & Young...
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