Great Network But No Leads? Your LinkedIn Problem Solved…

In case you’re interested...

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Let’s dive in….

Does your LinkedIn network look seriously awesome?

So why is it that, when you look at the monthly leads generated, it goes like this:

All that effort for what exactly?

If you’re not getting the leads you expected from LinkedIn, despite taking time to connect with plenty of people, I would bet that it comes down to one (or two) of two things:

1.      You’re connecting with peers rather than prospects

2.      You’re not engaging with your prospects in the right way

Let’s deal with each of these in turn - the first one is relatively simple and the second more complicated…

Connect with prospects - not peers

If you’re a business owner, it’s highly likely you joined LinkedIn NOT to have industry chats or to hire people.

You want leads; you’ve read about how it’s possible for LinkedIn marketing to become the hub of all your marketing activity (and it can be!) and you want a piece of it.

To succeed in this, you first need to make sure that you are finding prospects to connect with.

LinkedIn has the potential to connect most business owners with tens of thousands of prospects. Your first job is to find them and connect with them - get them into your network.

How do you do that?

1.      Identify clearly who they are - don’t assume that everyone wants your products…they don’t! If it helps to create a buyer persona, do that.

2.      Search for these people using the facilities right on LinkedIn: It’s the world’s largest database of professionals and you can trawl through it and search for the people you need to connect with. Search by the keywords you have defined, or by location, company type, position, industry, or other filters. You can also search by group. Get a premium account (rather than a free one) and your ability to search is unrestricted.

3.      Send personalised connection requests to people, pointing out why you want to connect (make it specific to something in their profile).

Engage meaningfully with prospects to build relationships

Once you’ve gathered your prospects together in your network, it’s time to start building a community.

How do you do that?

You get personal and, at first, focus on giving.

Think about this. It’s no different to how you should be working offline: in business, you need to build real human relationships to succeed. People buy from people that they know and trust (and it’s even better if they like you too).

LinkedIn is just the vehicle to do this - it doesn’t change the basic underlying truth.

The first time you meet someone at a business breakfast, networking meeting, or in a lift, you don’t immediately start telling them all about what you can offer them.

So why is it on LinkedIn we regularly see professionals sending out messages like this, just after connecting:

**************************************************************************

Hi Andrew,

I don’t usually do this but I thought you’d find it really valuable.

We’ve just finished our eBook on (insert irrelevant topic here) and thought you may be interested in downloading a free copy:

(insert download link)

It’s full of great tips on (x,y,z).

Let me know how you go with it…

Regards

Jim

**************************************************************************

Now Jim’s probably a really nice guy but what are my first impressions of him? I’ll share them with you:

“He doesn’t know me but he’s trying to sell me something… he’s basically going round knocking on doors and hoping that he runs into the one person in 30 who will buy his encyclopaedias!”

The point here is that it is far too early in the relationship to be presenting next steps. We need first steps first! 

I have no idea who Jim is or what he does and I may not hang around to find out. I connected with him because he sent me a connection request and seemed OK. There’s been no attempt at relationship-building and only a frail attempt at personalising his message to me.

Put yourself in Jim’s shoes. What could you do differently?

Here’s a few ideas:

• Communicate with prospects with this in mind: be 80% interested and 20% interesting.
• Think pull marketing rather than push marketing; giving rather than taking.
• Be curious: ask about them, enquire about their business and what they’re working on: this will naturally uncover problems and challenges.
• Offer free help and advice wherever you are qualified to do so: remember, influencers become known for helping others.
• Endorse prospects for skills - and message them to tell them you have done so.
• Like and comment on their posts regularly.
• Engage prospects with your status updates (including video, articles etc.) - but only around 20% of your overall activity.

Use automation in the form of templates with intros and outros that will make life easier for you to contact many - but be careful not to over-automate the core of your message. That defeats the object of the exercise.

LinkedIn success: What does it look like to you?

If you are on LinkedIn just to build a network, ignore all of the above. I wish you the greatest of success.

But if you want to generate leads like most business owners, live and breathe the above. It’s not about having the most connections; it’s about having quality connections that convert into leads and opportunities.

I know this from personal experience. Although I have built over 20,000 connections in my network, it was not until I started connecting with prospects and actively engaging with them in a meaningful way over the long term that the opportunities started flowing.

Don’t get me wrong here: building a big network is vital but it’s just the first step in the process. Good luck!

P.s. Whenever you’re ready… here are 3 ways I can help you grow your business with LinkedIn

1. Join the Influencer Boardroom and connect with other advisors and consultants who are scaling too: It’s our new Facebook community where smart advisors and consultants learn to generate more purpose, profit and power. - Click Here

2. Join us inside our pitch-free private training. We’ll show you how we built our business (from scratch) using 2 LinkedIn profiles to hit $84,000 a month within 4 months using a simple 3 step strategy. Click Here: https://theinfluencerproject.com/linkedin-advantage/  

3. Work with me and my team privately: If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take you from 6 to 7 figures and level things up… just send me a message and put “Private” in the first line… tell me a little about your business and what you’d like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details.