In this video, you learn four sales tips to help you grow your business on LinkedIn.
Resources:
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- Connect with me on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/andyneary/
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- Connect with me on Instagram: instagram.com/andy_neary/
Video Transcript:
This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.
If you are not using LinkedIn to grow your business, you are missing a huge opportunity. In this video, I am going to share four tips to help you grow your business on LinkedIn in 2024. So why aren’t more businesses growing using LinkedIn? Well, there are several problems I see when I look at how most sales professionals are using the platform today. But let’s pinpoint three.
The first problem, they’re sending out way too many sales pitches. They’re using LinkedIn as a sales platform To go at it with that mindset is setting yourself up for failure. What do I mean? I see too many sales professionals today using the platform, using some kind of automated sales service that is automatically sending out a bunch of invite requests.
And the second people accept those requests, you are pitching them immediately. People can sniff those messages out faster today than they ever have before. It looks disgusting. It doesn’t work. So just get rid of the sales pitches. The second mistake, you’re not posting any kind of content. You just come on the platform to try to send messages and an invites and engage and hopefully turn those into appointments without any kind of content.
You are not establishing any trust or credibility with those you are connecting with. And the third mistake is using the platform to impress your peers instead of engage with your prospects, which is the whole point in the first place, right? You got to use the platform the right way. You’ve got to be effective and you have to come on the platform with one goal in mind.
You are here to talk to your prospects. And in this video, I’m going to share four tips that have helped us grow subsea organically in the last two years, using LinkedIn as our number one platform for lead generation. Now, before I get into the four tips, I want to share an analogy with you that I think is going to be incredibly important for you to understand if you are going to use linked in the right way.
I want you to link approach LinkedIn like this. I want you to go look at your total following on LinkedIn today. Maybe you have a thousand followers, 5000, 10,000. It does not matter. That number represents your community. And I want you to look at yourself as the mayor of that community. And as mayor, you have two jobs. Number one, you want to bring in more of the right residents to your community so it can grow.
And number two, you want to make the ones that feel that live, ones that are connected with you feel good. They live there. And you do that by creating great content. That’s your two jobs. Go make connections with the right community members and to create content that brings them a ton of value. Now, let me share four tips with you around those strategies that are going to help you grow faster in 2024 if you deploy them the right way.
The first tip is the call to action buttons sitting inside your linked in a profile. You see, if you look at your LinkedIn profile today and you go right below your name, you are going to see a call to action button where where were you aware? You could even add that to your profile today where you can you see your goal should be to make it easy for prospects to do business with you.
And if all you’re doing is sending them a bunch of automated sales pitches, trust me, you are not making it easy for them to do business. However, if you add a call to action button to your profile, you’re giving them a chance to come to your profile and put themselves on your calendar. You see, the whole point of having this call to action button is to Gen rate interest from a prospect who happens to take the time to come to your profile to learn more about you.
And then when they see that call to action button and they realize you could help them with their problem, they now can book time with you, and before you know it, you have an annuity, you have a new appointment on your calendar, and you might not even know how it happened. And it was all because of your effective use of LinkedIn.
So my suggestion for you is if you are not using a calendar service today to book appointments with prospects, you need to start immediately. Simple services like Kalon Li and a bunch of others out there make it easy for you to set up a calendar link so your prospects can put themselves on your calendar. All you’re going to do is embed this into your profile so that when prospects come upon your profile, maybe it was because of a piece of content you posted.
They now can look at your calendar, see it, put the time in, they want to meet with you and little did you know your LinkedIn usage generated a new appointment. So my first tip is ensure your LinkedIn profile as a call to action. Tip number two, let’s talk about content. Yes, If you are not posting content today, you have got to get on it immediately.
Now, I used to tell people at least start once a week with content, post content once per week, minimum. Today, I don’t believe it’s enough. In fact, you need to work hard to try to find a way to post content multiple times per week. Why, when done right, it builds likability and credibility. Let’s talk about the kind of content you should be posting.
If I’m going to post two types of content today, I’m going to post personal stories. So you my prospect can get to know me and I’m going to post educational content that brings you a ton of value. You see, the more personal I get and the more educational I get, two things start to happen. You start to get a feel for who I am, which builds likability.
If it resonates with you, and if I bring you a ton of value through educational content, I start to build credibility with you. And we have clients today that are building enormous likability and credibility with their prospects. Before they walk in the conference room. They’re walking into discovery meetings with the credibility they need to win the business. And there’s not a better feeling than that today.
So my advice to you, tip number two, you have got to start posting content. You have got to do it often and you have got to bring a ton of value. Let people get to know you educate the heck out of your prospects and your usage of LinkedIn content will create the opportunities you are looking for. On Linked in tip number three, let’s talk about link in newsletters.
Did you even know that was a feature? Yeah, it’s been around for about a year and a half. What are LinkedIn newsletters? A LinkedIn newsletter is an opportunity for you to create a list of subscribers on LinkedIn who have a violent literally opted in to receive your newsletter. Really? LinkedIn newsletters are nothing more than a LinkedIn article, but it’s your opportunity to give your articles a branded name.
It’s your opportunity to put out a newsletter on a frequent basis, and it gives you an opportunity to actually build a lead list. You see, one thing most people don’t realize is that LinkedIn connections are leads, just like LinkedIn’s newsletter subscribers. You see, when we look at our newsletter, The Inside Pitch, our newsletter today has over 3300 subscribers.
Better yet, when I click on the newsletter, I can actually look at who those 3300 plus subscribers are. These are leads. So my suggestion for you as you go all in on content here in 2024, make sure you’re starting a LinkedIn newsletter, put out good content via the written word, because a feature like LinkedIn newsletters gives you an opportunity to build a list of leads.
This is a lead list from which you can engage, which leads to tip number four use DMS the direct messages to generate conversations, not sales pitches. The feature DMS as we know it on social media is an opportunity for you to interact with prospects one on one. It’s not an opportunity just to puke a pitch on them one after another.
You want to generate a conversation because it’s conversations that ultimately turn into appointments. And the one tip I want to give you today is learning how to use this profile views analytics effectively. Now, if you are not paying for a paid LinkedIn subscription today like Premium or Sales Navigator, I am going to urge you to think about investing in that this year because it gives you access to additional analytics you do not get with the base of subscription that can help you become more effective.
On LinkedIn, one of those analytics is profile views. When I click on profile views, I get an unlimited list of the people who are looking at my profile. Some are going to be first connections, some are going to be second, some are going to be third. Here is a very effective way to use this analytic to your advantage.
Number one, if a second connection is looking at your profile and they could be a prospect, you got to send them an invite request. Get them in your community because they’re the right type of resident. You want to grow your community. But what do you do with the prospects you’re already connected with that are looking at your profile?
Here’s the approach I want you to take. Imagine you’re a clerk in a store and this prospect just walked into the store to check you out, to check your store out. Well, if you’re a clerk, what are you going to do? You’re going to approach the prospect who walked in the store and said, hey, welcome. Is there anything I can help you with?
Is there anything I can help you find? Now, if they’re just checking out your profile, they’re just checking out the store, looking around. What are they going to say? No, I’m good. I’m just looking around. Right. However, if they came to your store, in this case, your profile for a very specific reason and you ask if you can help with anything, there’s a decent chance they’re going to say, Yeah, I’m looking for this, not in what I need to know what I’ll this screw this not is so I can get in and get out right.
This is how I want you to apply this feature to your business development strategy on LinkedIn. When you see prospects coming to your profile and checking you out, especially those you are already connected with, why not shoot them a quick message and say, Hey, I was looking at my analytics, noticed you jumped in my profile. Is there anything I can help you with?
Be surprised how often they return that message with. Yeah, I would like to jump on a call. There is something I want to ask you. Works for us. We do it here every single week and we generate inbound leads from that simple message. Noticed you jumped in my profile. Anything I can help you with, give it a try.
See how it goes with these four tips in hand, you are going to be more effective using linked in to grow your business. So as you sit down to plan out a hyper successful 2024, I want you to leverage these four tips. Number one, add that call to action button to your LinkedIn profile. Make it easy for prospects to book time with you.
Number two, start posting content. Focus on personal stories. Focus on highly valuable educational content, and that will build the likability and the credibility you need to build trust with your prospects long before you ever meet them. Number three, leverage the LinkedIn Newsletter Feature Write newsletters that bring value to your prospects because that list is a lead list of people who have opted to receive your newsletter.
And number four, live in the DMS, but use the DMS to start conversations, not throw sales pitches. Look at who is looking at your profile. Ask them if they have anything they need help with and you will be surprised how many conversations you generate. The only thing that is going to make this not work is if you choose to not do the work.
So give it a try. Let me know what you think. We are handling more than two or three inbound leads every week from LinkedIn by using this strategy. I know it can do the same for you. It’s a matter of getting clear on what your goals are with the platform and then putting your head down, executing and putting in the work to be consistent.
Business is no longer about who you know. Business is about who knows you. In a noisy industry like we’re in gang, you got to get people to know who you are.