Permission-Based Social Selling

Welcome to the 334th edition of LinkedInformed.

This article has also been recorded as a podcast;

Linkedinformed on Google podcasts?/?Linkedinformed on Apple podcasts

This week I chat with Brynne Tillman about Social Selling and her take on how to conduct a successful outbound strategy without being ‘icky’ or pushy. Those of you who listen to the podcast regularly will know that I favour a more inbound focussed approach to social sales on Linkedin but I have always admired the different approach adopted by Brynne and believed that having her on the show would provide a great balance to what you normally hear…she didn’t disappoint!

but before all that…

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

Following on from episode 325 about Cover Stories, I saw this excellent document post from Nick Raeburn (who was featured in episode 324) with some really valuable advice on creating your cover story.

Incidentally, Nick also posted that he had been contacted by his LinkedIn Creator Community Manager recently. This is the first time I have come across one of these community managers in action. I asked Nick about the contact and he replied: “Not much to report at the moment yet, just trying to schedule in monthly calls with them. Fed back a few improvements I'd like to see implemented on the platform and will try and feedback stuff from my audience”.

Has this happened to you? If so let me know, it would be interesting to find out more about what they do and how they can be of assistance.

LinkedIn has temporarily hidden connections of its users in Afghanistan. LinkedIn has taken this step to provide some level of protection from the Taliban for users in Afghanistan.

What Content Works – And What Doesn’t – For Executives on LinkedIn? Whilst there is nothing new in this article, it’s great to see some further evidence to support posting content that is personalised and adopts a storytelling approach as demonstrated by Stephanie Stuckey

LinkedIn Insider confirms that Dark mode is imminent in this post showing screenshots. Incidentally, this post has since been taken down...perhaps Felipe overstepped the mark announcing a new before we get it - rather than LinkedIn's normal method of announcing features well after we have discovered them ourselves!!

I personally can't get too excited about dark mode but I know it's important to many others as demonstrated by the engagement John Espirian generated on this post about it.

Outbound Social Selling with Brynne Tillman

I really enjoyed chatting with Brynne, she has a different perspective on social selling to me and I really respect the way she manages to explain a philosophy that many others find too salesy and direct, in a way that demonstrates that outbound sales - directly approaching potential customers, can be done in a highly professional and effective manner.

As always with interviews, you will get so much more by listening to the full podcast, what follows is a summary of what Brynne had to say.

• The aim should always be to convert connections into conversations
• It’s important to proactively identify the right people and deliver the right activities at the right time.
• It’s never about pitching. ‘Detach from what that connection is worth to you and attach to what value you can bring to them”
• You have to build credibility to earn the right for someone to want to have a conversation with you.
• Always do what is right for them (the prospect), even if that means that you personally lose out.
• Use highly relevant curated content (audio, video or written) and ask for their permission to send it to them. This shows them that you understand their needs and gives them the option to agree to or reject the content.
• Social listening is key to this - you must gain a thorough understanding of what topics are interesting to them.
• Automation is ALWAYS a bad idea. You might get away with it for a while but you can be sure that you will eventually get banned. In addition, correct outbound sales is highly targeted and requires a much more thoughtful, considered approach to each prospect.
• It’s important to only approach prospects once you have established credibility and influence in your sector/marketplace. To do this you need to be highly visible, engaging frequently, and posting great content.
• Invite the person you are approaching to vet you, confident in the knowledge that, if they don’t know you already, they will be impressed with what they see.
• Perform CPR on your connections, you should aim for them to be one of the following; Clients, Prospects or Referral partners
• Back off from the instinct to sell. Re-engage connections with curated content (permission-based)
• Slow down the outreach process…take your time to nurture your connections.
• Cold calling is wasting time that could be spent more productively performing social watching activities, engaging with content and researching content to share.
• Only ever share content you have fully consumed yourself first.
• Voice and video messaging are great ways to contact people on LinkedIn
• Quote the date you connected with someone when contacting them for the first time. This can be found under contact info

• The third type of connection is a referral partner and this is how they should be handled;

> Look for interesting (prospect) connections of that person.

> Aim to create a list of up to 25 interesting prospects

> Quickly run through this list with the connection and ask them who would be an appropriate person for an introduction. Aim for about 5 if possible

> Ask “Which of these would you be comfortable introducing me to”

> For the remaining ones, ask for their permission to mention their name when approaching them.

• InMail should only be used very rarely;

> After a failed invitation to connect

> Very specific circumstances such as asking highly relevant, no prospects to vote in a poll

> When you are alerted to positive company news (via Sales Navigator or elsewhere). Send them a link to the article with a note to congratulate them - they often won’t have seen it!

Post of the Week

A dramatic image, a heartfelt personal story and a powerful message on a very topical subject - clearly these are ingredients for a very successful post. Chris is by no means a novice LinkedIn users and he has built a decent following and posts on a regular basis with some degree of success - but nothing has ever compared to this with 12500+ reactions and 2130+ comments. One would hope we don’t need to get into such serious and dangerous circumstances to have similar success on LinkedIn!

This article has also been recorded as a podcast;

Linkedinformed on Google podcasts?/?Linkedinformed on Apple podcasts