I love LinkedIn. I talk about Linkedin regularly and I am always on the Platform. I will talk about Linkedin in the future.
In this article I just wanted to briefly touch upon 5 different points all relevant to Lead Generation on Linkedin. If you ignore any of these steps you do so at your own peril – ignoring any of these points doesn’t necessarily mean failure but it lessens your chances of success.
Your LinkedIn Profile
Your LinkedIn profile is not your resume. It’s a credibility building building tool to show that you have the ability to serve someone – to show the benefits you provide to potential customers and potential members of your network. You need to make sure that your LinkedIn profile is keyword rich as the LinkedIn search algorithm ranks profiles according to these keywords so you must make sure you have the right keywords – those that people are searching for if they might be searching for your product or service.
You can also have a number of Media files attached to your Linkedin profile. These could be videos, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files and similar. You must make sure you take advantage of these opportunities on LinkedIn.
It is also important to get testimonials and endorsements from people in your network as those you are potentially going to do business with want to know that you are good at what you do. Testimonials and endorsements build trust.
Your Initial Connection With A New Prospect
You are not always going to connect with people on LinkedIn that you know or have met in real life. I’ve covered who you should connect with on LinkedIn in previous articles but today I just wanted to talk about your initial connection request. Make sure that you change your connection a message from the standard template that LinkedIn offers as this is not personalised and won’t get you the best return on your connection requests. Make sure you tailor a connection request to the person you’re trying to connect to – explain why you are trying to connect with them and what you hope to get out of the relationship.
Your Credibility Building Process
LinkedIn is a great credibility boosting platform. You get to share some great content in the newsfeed and publish posts using LinkedIn Pulse. You should regularly create content and share it with your network. The more content you produce that is high quality the more likely you are to boost credibility
Furthering your relationship
Don’t be a LinkedIn spammer. Don’t be one of those people that sends sales message after sales message to people in your network thinking that that’s going to get you a positive response. Make sure you actually read someone’s LinkedIn profile. I’ve lost count of the times that I’ve been offered Consulting Services or telecommunication services when that’s actually what I do in my business. Not only does this massively tarnish their credibility but it also makes me less likely to want to develop a relationship with these people
Your relationship development may take a few weeks, a few months or even a few years. For example, I have a telecommunications company and often times when I meet people there in contract sometimes anywhere up to 2 years. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t still be building relationships with these people. That way, when they are ready to review their telecommunication systems I’m in a position and I have built my credibility in so I should be able to help them out.
Credibility building happens over a number of pieces of correspondence you may message backwards and forwards over a number of months about a number of different topics. Some things you might want to connect about include – sharing interesting articles, commenting if you’ve seen them mentioned in the media, or even asking their opinion on a certain. Whatever you do just make sure you keep the conversation going.
Closing the deal
I called this point “closing the deal” not “making the sale” for a particular reason. If you’ve spent time properly developing your relationship with someone there is a chance that there can still be benefits from the relationship even if they don’t end up becoming a customer of yours. If you properly build relationships with someone they may have a reason they can’t purchase from you but they may become an excellent referral source. Develop a relationship with someone on LinkedIn the same way you would develop a relationship offline.
LinkedIn is a great lead generation tool because you can find out a lot of information about people that they are freely sharing with you in their own profiles. But like any more traditional lead generation you still have to worry about rapport building and credibility building. You need to prove that you can actually offer the benefits that your potential customer is seeking. I’ve briefly touched upon some of the points above that you need to consider on LinkedIn if you want to put yourself in the best position to close deals.