Sales professionals are constantly asking “what is the best way to get a prospects attention on LinkedIn & Twitter”? There is no one answer, as there are dozens of examples I can give. However, I thought I’d highlight our most profitable Social Selling touch-point I’ve ever made.
In August 2011, I was on LinkedIn reviewing Profile Updates when a past business acquaintance, Terry Foster changed his profile status to “Current Title – President, Cision Canada”. As any good sales leader should, I used this opportunity to congratulate Terry on his new role. I clicked “Like” and commented “Congratulations on your new role, as you grow your sales team, don’t hesitate to reach out”. This was a simple gesture that changed the course of my business forever.
Client Engagement
To give context to the value of my “Like” and “Comment” on LinkedIn, read Craig Elias’ book. Craig has spent his 10,000 hours developing a methodology around Trigger Events. Craig has highlighted 6+ trigger events in a prospective account that are absolute windows of opportunity. One of these trigger events is a new decision-maker brought on board. New decision-makers bring a fresh prospective, ideas, connections (which included me), and cares little for incumbent service providers. If you want into a specific account, these moments are your best chance – but they need to be acted upon immediately. Timely means responding to these trigger events faster than your competitors.
Back to my story – Terry sent me a LinkedIn message 24 hours after my comment, “we should get together to discuss my new sales team”. Within 1 week, I was in his office talking about a small consulting project that has now grown into a 2.5 year engagement (as we’re contracted until 2014).
What Are the Lessons For Aspiring Social Selling Champions?
1. No small gesture goes unnoticed.
2. Pick your opportunities, and be ready to take action. You have no idea how important that opportunity may become.
3. Set-up monitoring feeds in LinkedIn & Twitter to identify these trigger events in a prospects business.
If you are unfamiliar with monitoring tools like LinkedIn Signal, Hootsuite, Twilert & Google Alerts (all free), I highly recommend you take action in 2013.
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
Find the topic of Social Selling interesting? Click Here to book a time in my calendar to explore further!
