LinkedIn Wants To Grant You 3 Wishes - Here's How

Last week, I was 200+ miles away from home in Surrey, launching a new training pilot for a not so small automotive manufacturer. Sitting at their stunning Head Quarters, in a state of the art training room, waiting to present my hours of hard work to the company's business heads, I got to thinking about the journey I had been on to reach this day and I cast my mind back to the LinkedIn connection request I received on the 14th September 2015, which included the question, "Would you be interested in running a social media workshop for an automotive business in the UK?"

At some point during the course of today, sitting in the palm of your hand, will be a device that has the potential to unlock your business dreams and yet the reality is that this device, known as a Smartphone, will seem less like a dream maker and more like a nightmare, as you wade through a stream of must-do emails and images of fluffy kittens shared by well-meaning Facebook 'friends'.

You will undoubtedly be familiar with the story of Aladdin and his magic lamp? Aladdin comes across some treasure, hidden away in a cave and with the simple rub of his hand across the smooth surface of a dulled lamp he happens to stumble upon, a genie appears and grants Aladdin 3 wishes.

What would your 3 wishes be and where would you find your magic lamp?

I'd suggest that you already have your magic lamp and it's again sitting right now in the palm of your hand as you read this post. For your wishes to be granted all you need to do is rub this lamp (smartphone), although instead of a genie appearing to grant your wishes, you may have to discover what treasures lay in wait via a browser or an app instead!

Back In The Real World

Pantomimes and fairy stories are great fun and it's important to dream and every so often, detach ourselves from reality. However, winning new business is rather less Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and a little more Beauty and the Beast! But dreams do come true for those who are prepared to dig a little deeper than the rest and who will commit to doing the things that others are not willing to do.

How LinkedIn Will Grant Your Wishes

2017 has been the busiest start to a year that I have experienced since launching Linked2Success back in 2009. Every new business lead/enquiry I have received, since January 1st this year, has come either directly or indirectly from LinkedIn. A few days ago, I rubbed my smartphone and there was a post from someone looking for help with their social media content marketing plan. I might have stumbled across this plea for help via my LinkedIn updates feed but being fortunate enough to have built a network of people who know, like and trust me, a number of these connections either messaged me personally or mentioned my name in the post itself and alerted me to this prospect's need. As a result of this simple activity, the person in need viewed my profile and got in touch - one wish granted.

Recently, someone who attended one of my courses last year, responded to a message I'd sent, congratulating him on his move to a new job. We exchanged a couple of pleasantries by LinkedIn messenger and I signed off by saying that if he knew of anyone who could benefit, as he has done, from my work, to let me know. He immediately replied with the name of someone he thought would be interested and who is the CEO of a ￡60 million turnover PLC - another wish granted.

On January 3rd, I noticed that a connection of mine, with whom I'd discussed providing training to his sales team almost one year previously, had viewed my LinkedIn profile. I had a few moments spare and decided to message him, wishing him a Happy New Year and asked him if he'd like to meet up again to see if now was a better time for me to help him with his company's LinkedIn social selling strategy? Next week, we are meeting up to finalise details of a LinkedIn training programme for his business development team - I think that's 3 wishes granted so far?

The Art Of Lamp Rubbing

You see that art of LinkedIn is not about periodically looking at your smartphone's LinkedIn app, when there's nothing on TV or occasionally sending a LinkedIn request to someone you met at a lunchtime networking event. To truly succeed with LinkedIn, the world's largest online professional networking site, requires a commitment from you to implement a number of very simple actions, frequently and do these extraordinarily well.

Professional networking is about building relationships and being of value to those you meet, on or off-line. I'm often asked by participants on my training courses; "What do I say when I invite someone to connect or how do I respond when someone invites me, who's of interest?" OR "If I see a post and would like to comment and raise my profile with that person or group, what do I say?"

There are no magic one-liners, no clever openers and the reality is you shouldn't be looking to apply such tactics anyway. 3 things you can do though, if you truly want LinkedIn to grant you your business wishes are;

1. Ensure your LinkedIn profile is mapped to the pain points and needs of your ideal customer.
2. Aim to ask better questions and enter into more conversations - don't be posting about you as your sole strategy. It's not about me, me, me!
3. Take a genuine interest in those you can provide a solution to. Show them you understand and that you care and be bold in suggesting you discuss this further with them.

You don't need to stumble across a cave full of treasure to grow your business sales, you simply need to rub the lamp more often and demonstrate how you can help more people achieve their dreams.

Steve

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