How to attract leads, appointments & sales on Linkedin

The business of buying and selling has changed so much in recent years that some experts have suggested the role of the salesman is now dead. While it’s true buyers have become better informed, with greater access to information than ever, sales and marketing professionals have never had greater access to tools and technology to help them bypass gatekeepers, contact decision makers, and guide them through the otherwise overwhelming volume of information.

Linkedin is one of the best tools for the proactive sales or marketing person who wants more leads, appointments and sales, whether you’re a solopreneur consultant or part of a team at a large corporation. Here’s are just some of the many key steps to using Linkedin to build a consistent pipeline of opportunities to grow your business:

1. Optimise your profile for maximum visibility

Once upon a time, Linkedin was a place to list your career achievements in an online CV format. The trouble is, no-one is actually interested in reading CVs. They only exist to help with candidate selection during job interviews. What people are interested in is other business people who can help them get where they want to go in their work and career.

If you want to get results from Linkedin, your profile is a place to create a powerful brand image that attracts interest from your ideal potential customers with useful information and an engaging story that is of direct benefit to people looking at it. Never forget, potential customers are not really interested in you or your profile; they’re only interested in how you can help them solve their problems and achieve their goals. Key areas in your profile to focus on include:

• Photograph – Make sure it’s consistent with your brand.
• Professional headline – Use these 120 characters to grab attention and encourage the right types of people to read more about you.
• Contact information – There might be very good reasons you don’t want potential customers to contact you directly, so make sure your contact information takes people where you want, not where they want.
• Keywords – Linkedin is a searchable database of business contacts, so make sure your profile contains the words you want to be found for.
• Summary – Rather than talking exclusively about what you do, share valuable information that solves your customers problems and positions you as an expert in your field.
• Multi-media – Why rely on text alone when you can include images, videos, brochures, catalogues, testimonials and much more to help you profile stand out from the crowd?
•  Skills & endorsements – It’s extremely important you list skills for which you want to be recognised, as this will have a big impact on your so-called ‘keyword density score’
• Recommendations – Rather than simply getting testimonials saying your service is good, focus on getting recommendations where people explain why they were apprehensive about buying from you but why they are delighted they did. Make sure you include reference to concrete benefits customers got as a result of buying. Ideally, include these in terms of extra money they made, money they saved, time they saved or some other hard measure of the benefit they received.

2. Build a valuable network

As the old adage goes, it’s not what you know but who you know that counts. If you connect with the right people, then build and nurture relationships with your connections over time, your Linkedin network can be a valuable resource throughout your career. Focus on building a large network of high-quality connections where there is the possibility for win-win relationships. People to consider bringing into your network include:

• Colleagues & coworkers
• Existing customers
•  Previous customers
• Potential customers
•  Strategic allies
•  Referral partners
• Industry influencers
• Direct and indirect competitors
•  Friends

If you have an existing database of customers in a CRM or spreadsheet, you can use this to rapidly expand your Linkedin network by uploading your contacts and inviting them to connect with you.

3. Attract traffic to your profile

The best profile in the world is not going to help if no-one sees it. For that reason, it’s essential you have a system in place for getting potential customers viewing your profile – the more of them the better. For best results, it’s important that when potential customers see your profile, they not only see what you do, but they are persuaded to take a step closer to becoming a customer of yours.

I recently spoke to the head of a technology company who was using an extremely effective system to drive traffic to his profile and get regular meetings with CEOs of much larger corporations as a result. Each appointment was potentially worth tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds in revenue if he closed the deal.

To find out how to implement this strategy in your business, book a free consultation chat with me here: www.tommallens.com/free-consultation.

4. Establish and build your professional brand

Has it ever struck you why some business people get treated differently to others? Some enjoy VIP status with reporters hanging off their every word while others are ignored and struggle to get their calls put through. The strength of your personal brand is one of the biggest factors in determining your earning potential, career opportunities and day-to-day success. Being known as an expert in your field is a powerful way to build your personal brand.

Here are three apps that will help you interact and help more people on Linkeidn more quickly and easily, so you can spread awareness of your expertise.

• Linkedin mobile app – A fast and easy way to connect with contacts and share insights even while you’re busy 
• Pulse mobile app – A great way to find what’s hot on Linkedin and share your ideas about the latest trending topics
• Buffer - A simple way to stay at the forefront of prospects’ minds with a consistent presence through scheduled updates and posts

5. Create and distribute content that captures leads

According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is . . .

A strategic approach to marketing involving the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant and consistent information to a clearly-defined market, designed to drive profitable customer action.

In other words, giving helpful information to potential customers in exchange for them taking a step closer to becoming a customer.

Whatever the medium, good content typically has three characteristics: It’s useful, meaning it helps the target reader solve a problem; it’s emotional, meaning it communicates a point effectively and with impact; and it’s relatable, meaning it resonates with the target reader and impels them to pay attention.

The number of tools available to help you research, create and distribute content are almost limitless. The most common types of content on Linkedin are:

• Written content – either as native posts on Linkedin’s publishing platform Pulse or 3rd party content from other sites or blogs
• Visual content – whether it’s static images or video from sites such as YouTube or Vimeo

Here are a few of my current favourite apps for helping with content creation that you might like to try:

• Canva – This site allows anyone to design professional-looking artwork for ebooks, reports, banner images and beyond. 
• Typorama – By far the best image design app I have found; making it quick and easy to create graphics for social media posts.
• Videorama – This mobile app is a highly advanced yet incredibly easy-to-use video editor, allowing you to create powerful marketing videos on the go.
• Ernest Hemingway was known for short, punchy sentences. This app highlights long or complicated sentences. Which means you never confuse your audience with corporate waffle.
• BlankPage – This site helps you focus on writing with a distraction free interface that sets you daily word count targets, so you always have more content.

6. Nurture relationships and leads over time

However good you are at sales, not everyone wants or needs to buy from you the first time they discover your services. Many people confess that after connecting with potential customers on Linkedin, they are at a loss for what to do next. That’s why it’s important to have a plan in place for keeping in touch with customers over time to nurture and develop relationships. And alongside the plan, you need a way of keeping in touch quickly, regularly and easily. This means you’ll be first in the queue when your prospect is in the market for your products.

Most people don’t have time to send regular messages to hundreds or thousands of connections. Fortunately, there are numerous ways to reduce this time-consuming task to one that can be done extremely quickly. To find out how to communicate with hundreds of your prospects quickly and efficiently on Linkedin, book a free consultation chat with me here: www.tommallens.com/free-consultation.

7. Retarget ideal prospects on and off Linkedin

Once you’ve found and connected with potential customers on Linkedin, you have a great opportunity to contact the same people through other mediums, including other social media platforms and email. This approach takes advantage of the fact that the majority of sales occur long after the first interaction with a prospect.

If you’re hoping that connecting with potential customers and sending them a message introducing your company will result in business, you’ll be waiting a long time. And you’ll be waiting even longer to get a consistent stream of inbound enquiries from people who want to work with you. The alternative is to record useful follow-up information about your prospects on Linkedin, then export the data so you can use it on other platforms. To find out how, book a free consultation chat with me here: www.tommallens.com/free-consultation.

8. Have a system to getting prospects off Linkedin

This is by far one of the most valuable points for creating a process that delivers a regular stream of leads. If you’re relying on hoping people will get in touch on Linkedin, you are robbing yourself of opportunities on a daily basis. For most people, an appointment scheduling system works best for delivering a stream of in-bound appointments.

• Calendly - An extremely elegant and simple-to-use scheduling tool (pictured below)
• Acuity Scheduling - A brilliant way to qualify potential customers before you speak to them

To find out how to implement an appointment booking system in your business, book a free consultation chat with me here: www.tommallens.com/free-consultation.

In summary

This list is far from exhaustive. The possibilities that Linkedin offers are vast. The good news is, there has never been a more exciting time to be in sales or marketing. The tools and technology to contact almost anyone in business and create a regular stream of opportunities for warm phone calls, appointments and face-to-face meetings are available to almost anyone – at very low or often zero cost.

If you’d like to know how to put any of these steps into practice so you can start attracting a non-stop stream of leads, appointments and sales, book a chat with me and I’ll help you break down exactly what you can do on Linkedin to get results: www.tommallens.com/free-consultation

Until the next time, stay winning!

Tom

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tom Mallens is a consultant and trainer in social media marketing and a DISC behaviour profiler – the world's leading system for helping companies build strong teams, managers and leaders who enjoy their work and perform brilliantly). He is author of the book Get Past The Gatekeeper and director of manufacturing sales business Fibrecore, which sells aluminium honeycomb and panels to the automotive, marine and composites sector