Get Sales Appointments With Qualified Prospects Using LinkedIn... Here's How:

?? Are you highly motivated to make a bigger impact with your business?

?? Do you want to learn specific strategies that can help bring you more sales appointments with qualified prospects using LinkedIn?

If you answered yes to both of these questions, then I invite you to keep reading.

?? In this article, I am going to teach you exactly what you need to do, step-by-step, in order to schedule 5-10 additional appointments per week -- or more -- with qualified prospects.

(In my case, I've been able to generate up to 20 appointments per week, and you might be able to as well.)

And I'm going to show you how to do this without the need to setup a sales funnel and without the need to spend any money at all on paid advertising.

?? Depending on your business and goals, it might be a good idea to use a sales funnel, and also to invest in paid advertising. However, you don't need to do this to get started, and I'm going to explain to you how.

So, let me ask you this: what could you do, with 5-10 additional appointments per week?

What would that mean for your business?

If you believe that this result will help you move closer to your ultimate goals, then I encourage you to keep reading.

However, before we get into the details, I need to remind you of a few important things first.

?? A Disclaimer: What You Need To Know Before Starting

Before we dive into how this method works, I need you to be clear about the following:

• You still need to invest ample time into getting this done. And when done right, this can be a part-time, or even a full-time endeavor. I'm going to share a blueprint with you, but this is not a "done-for-you" solution. (However, at the end of the article, I will share with you some options to have part or all of the work done for you, if you wish to outsource it)
• No instant gratification. If you're just getting started, expect to invest a couple of weeks to build up momentum in order to get this process fully running and optimized.
• Only as good as the value of your product or service. You can't fool the market, at least not for long. So always start by making sure you're offer is unique and exceptional

Are we clear on all of these?

Great ?? 

Then let's dive right in:

?? Start With A Blueprint, And A Solid Foundation

If you were to undertake the construction of a new house, or building, where would you start?

With a blueprint, of course.

And once you had the blueprint approved, and were ready to begin construction, where would you begin?

With the foundation!

So, before you start trying to get more appointments on LinkedIn, you need to make sure your foundation is ready and solid, and in this case, it should consist of the following:

1. A market niche and USP that defines very clearly who your target client is and what's the problem you're going to help them overcome.
2. At least one or more success stories in which your clients can attest to the value of and results offered by your programs
3. Ideally, you should be offering your services through one or more results-driven packages, rather than charging for your time or materials.

#1 is of the utmost importance to get the best results here. If you feel you need some help in nailing this part, I encourage you to reach out to a marketing coach or marketing strategist who can help you with it.

How's your foundation looking?

Good! In that case, let's keep going ...

?? Step One: Optimize Your Profile

Your LinkedIn profile is going to serve as a kind of landing page and sales funnel for this exercise.

I'm not saying that it's a replacement for a real web page or sales funnel. But in terms of getting you started, and on your way to success, you can really leverage your profile in nearly the same way as you would a sales funnel.

As such, you want it to appear in top form, and to speak directly to your target customer.

There are many ideas and approaches to profile optimization, but to simplify this exercise, I'm going to focus on the following six areas, where you can take action immediately:

1. Your profile photo should be a professional head-shot that clearly shows your eyes, your face, and an expression that invites your client to get to know who you are.
2. Your cover photo artwork should be professionally designed to represent your brand, and must be congruent with your message and offer. Consider using Fiverr or other resources online to get access to great design talent, at an affordable price. Canva is great if you want to design it yourself, but make sure you have the skills to make it look great!
3. Your headline is the first text your client will read, other than your name, and is visible everywhere on LinkedIn. Ideally, it should be in the first person, and be an expression of your USP or elevator pitch. In my case: I take business coaches from 6- to 7-figure income, by helping them find and close clients on their premium offers.
4. Your summary should address your USP, Elevator Pitch, your WHY, and provide a clear call-to-action, which is to schedule an appointment with you. Take a look at my profile summary for an example, as well as those of your mentors, or those whose work you already follow and admire.
5. Ideally, you should list at least 6-10 skills on your profile, and ask your existing connections to endorse you for each.
6. If you're already connected with one or more clients, whom you've helped, ask them to write for you an authentic recommendation that appears on your profile.

These six areas are definitely not all that can be done with your profile, but from my experience, they are sufficient, and necessary, to get started.

?? Step Two: Search And Connect

As I mentioned above, you need to be clear about your target market. You may have several, but I recommend picking one to focus on for a start.

Having that in mind, the next step is to begin to connect with people in your target, or even people who might know your client, and can give you better access to him or her.

Using LinkedIn Search, or Sales Navigator, begin searching in your target, perhaps segmenting by geography or other aspects, in order to build lists of no more than 1,000 people each.

Then begin researching the profiles, and connecting.

How To Research

Since time is of the essence, you want to develop a means to quickly discard profiles that probably do not match your target client, or whom you feel would not add much value to your network.

For each profile, you are going to determine as quickly as possible, whether or not they would be a valuable connection for you, and if they show that potential, you're going to connect to them with a personalized message.

?? Since the vast majority of people on LinkedIn still connect without a personalized message, doing so will set you apart from the majority.

Which brings us to the next step:

?? Step Three: Publish and Engage

If you think about it, the real power of LinkedIn, or any social network, is the rich media content that you and others can share with each other, as a way to add value, learn and grow.

In the case of this network in particular, the content is more focused specifically on nurturing and expanding business relationships.

Therefore, if you want to win over clients on LinkedIn, you need to share relevant content that clearly defines your focus, and demonstrates how you can help others, in a consistent manner.

This step is ongoing. You should be creating and sharing content every week.

If you can do it, and if the content you share is really valuable, sharing daily can set you apart from the pack.

What kind of content should you be creating and sharing?

1. Videos that share specific ideas, how-tos, customer success stories, tips or stories and experiences that your customers will find engaging, relevant and valuable.
2. Articles (like this one!) that show your customers how to get stuff done, or share important and powerful concepts, experiences and ideas
3. Posts, that may or may not include images, where you quickly share ideas or tips, showcase other people in your network, and more...

By following influencers and top marketers whom you admire, or in your field, you can get a lot of ideas on the kinds of content to be creating.

If you're willing to invest more money into it, you can hire marketers or companies to create content for you, or at the least help make your content look more professional.

No matter how you do it, you should be doing it all the time.

Don't Just Create... Engage

The flip side of content creation, is engagement.

Your clients, and your peers are also creating content. So get involved.

Like, comment and share their content in a meaningful and sincere way.

Don't just comment for the sake of commenting. Share personal anecdotes that are relevant, and ask good questions that others might want to know the answer to.

Get involved in other's content in a way that adds value and creates relationships.

?? Step Four: Create Meaningful Conversations

I personally ?? this part!

This is where the real magic comes in.

Conversations can start in many ways. In particular, there are going to be conversations initiated by your connections. And then there are conversations that you'll start with them (if you choose to do so.)

The truth is, you can't really predict where a conversation will go. You just have to be open to the possibilities.

But if you've followed steps 1-3 above dilligently, then that will be reflected in the quality of the resulting conversations that you strike up with your connections, and they with you.

Conversations Started By Your Connection

A certain number of people you connect with are not only going to accept your connection request, but they are going to "raise their hand." ??? 

Just because they do so, doesn't mean they are ready to speak with you right away about your product or service.

But they might be, and chances are good that a certain percentage will be because you happened to connect with them right at the time of their need.

I know there are different schools of thought on this, but I personally believe in investing in long-term relationships.

So, even if someone is not showing buy signals right away, I will still engage with them, to see how I can help them, or how I can add value to our relationship.

But if they are ready to buy now, or at least showing strong interest, by all means, get them on a call!

For Those Who Connect Silently

If someone connects with you silently, it just means that, for one of many reasons, they're not ready yet to engage in conversation with you, which could be because:

• They're really busy
• They're not sure how to start a conversation
• They're not sure if they really need your product or service, at least not right now
• They're not confident enough in your brand to strike up a conversation
• They're not used to striking up conversations on LinkedIn
• They're worried you're going to pitch them right away (a common concern)

And so on...

How much time you want to spend in engaging these folks is entirely up to you.

Let me tell you how I personally do it.

Since I connected with them, there was something about their profile (and thus their business or themselves) that caught my attention.

So, as a way to warm up the engagement, I will most likely comment, like or share some of their content, and perhaps send them a personal message thanking them for the connection.

If I can find something very relevant to mention in my message, I'll do so.

Note: please do not pitch your connections on the first or second message.

?? Step Five: Setup Appointments

As you develop the above conversations, you are going to see over time that a certain number of your connections are going to ask to speak with you.

In other cases, you might suggest a conversation yourself, as the online conversation becomes more extensive and involved.

Either way, you want to have your appointment scheduler handy and send them a link.

I personally love using ScheduleOnce, but feel free to use any scheduler that you find works best for you.

The point is to take the conversation offline.

If you're concerned about spending a lot of time on the phone with potentially unqualified prospects, then one way to manage this is to set your introductory call to be very short: 15 to 20 minutes.

When you get on the phone, set expectations that the call will be brief, and if there's further interest to discuss real business, you can either opt to extend the call, or schedule a second, longer call with the "pitch."

The details of how you do this are really out-of-scope for this present article. Nonetheless, I wanted to leave you with a few ideas for further exploration.

?? Step Six: Close Sales From Appointments

Now that you have those appointments coming in, you can follow you existing sales process to close them and turn your new connections into clients.

Congratulations! You've now implemented a basic process that can garner you more clients from your LinkedIn connections!

Need More Help?

If you've followed the above process step-by-step, then you will get results.

Nonetheless, I understand that this can be a time-consuming process.

And as an entrepreneur you are busy working on various aspects of your business, or working with clients.

So you might not have much time to devote to this implementation.

If that's the case, then you might benefit from hiring a sales and marketing expert to help you implement this process.

The choice you make will depend on the investment you want to make.

I personally offer a done-with-you version of this process where we take about 30-40% of the work off your hands, in exchange for a modest monthly fee of less than $1,000.

Other services range from around $2k all the way up to $10k or more for fully done-for-you services that create all of your content, and outsource 100% of the activities.

As a good rule-of-thumb, you should probably consider investing around 10-20% of your revenue into sales and marketing, so that will give you a guide of where to start.

Regardless of the route you choose, I can make some recommendations for you, or point you in the right direction.

Close More Clients On The ?? 

If you want help closing more clients on the phone (or via video-conference), I offer a performance-based closing service, where you only pay for results.

There are no up-front fees or additional charges, other than a percentage of sales closed.

This service works well with a prospecting system like the one I've described here. Or any system that has you setting up appointments with qualified prospects, who are ready to take action.

In Conclusion

I hope this has been helpful for you, and provides you with a solid framework to start creating relationships, getting appointments and closing sales.

Now, let me ask you this:

?? Would you like some help implementing this process?

?? Would you like to hire someone to implement it for you?

?? Do you need help with any aspect of your sales and marketing processes?

???? Click to book a call with me https://meetme.so/davegreen

I'm excited about the opportunity to help you be more successful.

And, please share this article with anyone whom you feel could benefit from its content.

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