Are you a professional services firm? If you are, you’ve been in the same place Mark Davidson was in his prospecting cycle before Social Selling… curious if there was a better way.
All professional services businesses have one thing in common – they sell themselves! Their intellectual capital is trading the wisdom & success stories that have been accumulated over time. Unfortunately, getting Trexin’s success stories across to a new prospect via the telephone/email was becoming increasingly difficult.
Challenge
“I need to build a bigger pipeline of prospects, and I’m concerned my cold calls are falling on deaf ears”.
Solution
Mark committed himself to becoming familiar with Social Selling. Mark decided to invest his time & energy in a new form of selling that’s…. different and new. For most sales professionals, this can be scary. Learning a new golf swing this summer can many times mean a summer of bad golf scores. This is why many sales professionals are fearful to try a new sales methodology, as any downtime could adversely affect their pocket books.
Result
Mark had digested our various Social Selling strategies – from Social Listening using LinkedIn Signal, “ Sphere of Influence” selling & nurturing prospects with curated content. Surprisingly, Mark’s success has not come from direct InMail’s to his clients “Sphere of Influence”. The results didn’t generate the kind of return he’d hoped for.
BUT – here is exactly what did work, very well. Mark opened doors with major opportunities, all with simple LinkedIn Introductions. These are the following steps:
- 1. Make a list of your top clients & network contacts that “would go to bat for you”.
- 2. Craft two LinkedIn messages, 1 for your direct contact & 1 for your contacts connection (your prospect in a 2nd degree). You need to make sure your messages are “client ready”, meaning don’t rely on your connection to sell for you, only open a door. You need a compelling message that your connection can forward to your prospect. These messages will be sent using LinkedIn Introductions.
- 3. Mark always made sure to ask his connection “would you be comfortable making this introduction?” – never being presumptuous.
- 4. Choosing these connections to leverage is part of the art & science. While you had a solid network of clients, there are certain types of people that are “Mavens” – always willing to spread the good word. Find these connections and leverage them.
- 5. After you’ve tapped out of Introductions, make sure you use LinkedIn Signal. Mark has started countless conversations with companies, all because of LinkedIn Signal. He had no idea that existed, but those activities triggered an ice-breakers for social conversations.
The Bottom Line:
If you don’t want to be left behind the 8 ball – you need to start to take action. The following dozen blog posts on utilizing Social Selling strategies using LinkedIn can help you start. If you are really looking for some hidden gems on how you can attract a very specific prospect, I recommend you check out 42 LinkedIn Tips
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