Do you regularly connect with prospects on LinkedIn? If not, you are missing out on valuable opportunities. Social selling is powerful. Sales professionals who use social media are more likely to make their sales quotas and often outsell those who do not use LinkedIn.
Worried you don’t have the time to prospect on LinkedIn? Jake Dunlap, founder and CEO of Skaled, says you only need about 20 minutes a day. In this issue of Promotional Consultant Today, we highlight Dunlap’s three-step framework to get more leads from LinkedIn.
1. Add buyers to your network. To generate leads on LinkedIn, you can’t simply share content and wait for the right people to see it. You must actively add buyers to your network, says Dunlap. Otherwise, the people who see your content are likely current or former colleagues, college friends, and family. You need fresh connections. To do this, Dunlap recommends spending 10 minutes each day sending 50-100 connection requests. This will get you about 50 connections a day, meaning 130,000 potential connections—buyers—in a year.
2. Commit to posting regularly. It can feel intimidating posting on LinkedIn if you have never shared anything other than your company’s content. But Dunlap encourages sales professionals to step out of their comfort zone by regularly sharing their own content. This positions them as experts in their space and keeps them top of mind with buyers. To get started, Dunlap suggests setting aside time to write 2-3 posts at a time. This simplifies the process so you’re not trying to write posts on the fly. What do you write about? Dunlap says you should always give value more than you sell, so teach your audience something or share something you have learned.
3. Engage with your buyers. The final step to getting more leads on LinkedIn is reaching out and connecting with your buyers. When you have the right audience and you are sharing useful content regularly, you’re now ready to get social. Talk to your audience and build a rapport through comments. According to Dunlap, this will help you land better leads than simply just posting your own content. However, Dunlap advises against pitching in post comments. Instead, respond to comments and add value wherever you can.
It does not require a major time commitment to get the most value out of LinkedIn. If you carve out 10 minutes a day to send connection requests and take another 10 minutes to engage with potential buyers, you can exponentially expand your sales pipeline. Remember that people like talking and connecting with other people. Use LinkedIn to give people what they want by adding, posting and engaging.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s issue of Promotional Consultant Today for fresh tips on prospecting on other social platforms.
Compiled by Audrey Sellers
Source: Jake Dunlap is founder and CEO of Skaled. As a C-level sales leader and entrepreneur with more than a decade of experience, he has developed and led high-performing sales and operational functions, specializing in building out repeatable, sustainable processes.
