I Don't Know What To Say Once I've Connected With Someone on LinkedIn?!

The most common blocker, I've discovered when working with sales teams and individuals, which prevents them from creating a consistent pipeline of new prospects using LinkedIn, is that often, they simply don't know what to say next, once they've connected with another Linkedn user. In this post, I'm going to provide you with a proven method to help you open up more conversations on LinkedIn with your ideal audience.

What Is Your Number 1 Objective When You Meet A Potential Client?

When you meet someone at a networking event, what's your Number 1 objective? No, it's not to ask them about the weather, nor thrust your business card into their bewildered hand. Your first goal is to engage them in a meaningful conversation.

It's no different on LinkedIn - a great conversation, focused on your prospect (it's not all about you) builds trust and in doing so you open the door to a more meaningful conversation down the line.

How To Start A Conversation On LinkedIn

To start a conversation, first someone has to ask a question. Whenever someone connects with me on LinkedIn, I almost always send the same response:

More than 65% of my new connections respond to this message and rarely do we not go on to exchange at least 3 to 4 further single message responses, as we enter into a conversation.

The example you see above is sent when someone invites me to connect and I send a virtually identical response message when someone accepts my invtation to connect. All I do is simply alter the last line of the message to read, " ..and what was it about my profile that inspired you to accept my invitation to connect with you?"

Asking the other person how useful they are finding LinkedIn, is a question you can ask, whether you're a LinkedIn speaker and trainer, like myself, or not. You are simply looking to engage in conversation, without resorting to selling at the very first point of contact.

But What Do I Say Then?

And this is the sticking point for many LinkedIn users. What you say next will be dependent on your reason for connecting with this person initially. Let's assume for this exercise that you would like this individual to become a client.

There are 2 possible scenarios to consider;

1) The conversation develops naturally, following your initial question and it is not difficult to direct it around to a discussion about how you can help them or their business - that's the easy scenario.

2) The conversation is not really developing so you a) decide to offer to send them some useful information, relating to your services that they would immediately find beneficial to their life or their business and you perhaps gain their agreement to keep in touch with similar information going forward, in the hope they will consider your company when the time is right.

Option 2 is a useful long-game to play. By providing relevant and beneficial information to your prospect, either via LinkedIn or by gaining approval to include them in your regular email marketing, means you can continue to market your brand in a non-salesy manner, building more know, like and trust over time.

What If You Don't Have Time?

Let's face it, sales is often a time-sensitive occupation, meaning that if you don't hit your sales targets for this month, then your boss is going to become over-sensitive and your time at the company might be up. If it's your own company, then the pressure to make more sales becomes arguably, even more important and time-sensitive.

Social selling however, is not about applying 'old school' direct selling tactics, it requires you to build trust with your prospect by adding real value to their business. Therefore, your follow up LinkedIn messages must add value at each step of the way.

It's important to recognise that unless you're going to add real value to your new LinkedIn connection's business, then taking such a direct route to promote your services could backfire on you and you will lose the trust of your new connection. However, an initial polite sales approach, could open the door to a potential new sale far more quickly than a long-term content nurturing strategy.

Let' break this message down into 3 simple steps:

1. Identify Benefit Statement (IBS) - be clear about the benefit you can add to your new connection's business.
2. Reason Benefit Statement (RBS) - explain how you have helped similar businesses achieve these same outcomes. Wherever possible, be specific and include measurable outcomes.
3. Request - they say fortune favours the brave. Be confident with your statement that you can achieve similar outcomes for your new connection and request a call to discuss. You will have noticed that I use 7 minutes as a very precise time period for the call. This is to reasure my prospect that the call will not drag on, whereas a '5-minute call' often appears to be used as an approximation and when it comes to the reality, 5 minutes suddenly becomes, 10 or 15.

And Finally, The 3 Rules Of Social Selling

Not everyone using LinkedIn is on this platform to sell but you may be. If you are looking to create more sales from your time on Linked then remember these 3 rules:

1. Always build trust.
2. Have more conversations.
3. Add real value with everyone you come into contact with.

NB: I'd like to thank my good friend and massively successful sales trainer Sally Roberts for introducing me to the 3 - step approach I mention above.

Many thanks for viewing my post and would you please share it with anyone you feel would benefit from the advice provided.

If you have any private questions on the subject matter you can connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message, or else you’ll find my contact details on my LinkedIn profile uk.linkedin.com/in/stevephillip.

You can also follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Linked2Steve