Social Selling on Linkedin Mistakes ....
What Linkedin & the "Experts" are Not Teaching You
Everyone one has experienced the common linkedin annoyance of “hey are you interested in my product?” Often, these come immediately after you accepted someone who offered to connect. Your first thought is “did I make a mistake connecting?” At that point some people remove the connection. Some people report the person (Linkedin has good abuse reporting tools). Some people just ignore it. Rarely do people respond. Always, people get annoyed because “cold call selling” and “SPAM” is not why they use Linkedin.
Feel sorry for these people.
See, I’m lucky to be exposed to tools to help me understand better ways to leverage the Linkedin community. Way back in the ‘80s, there was this computer game “What they don’t teach you in Harvard Business School” based on Mark McCormack’s book. It was a role playing game where you were representing Arnold Palmer. Your client was about to go into a period of increased earnings. Your goal was to sign up other athletes to your portfolio. The question is how to break the ice moving from a social conversation to a exploratory business conversation to a sales conversation. The game offered choices along the way and scored you based on your ultimate success. The key to the game was to learn when to be social, when to back off, when to get into the sales conversation. If you offer your sales pitch too soon, the potential lead walks away, pushed back, or gets nasty. Sound familiar? This is exactly what is happening on tools like Linkedin today.
Today, when I get these “Linkedin sales mistakes,” I don’t delete anymore. Empathy is key. I make the assumption that there is a business entrepreneur on the other side trying to make a living. This person is trying, but their approach is pushing people away vs attracting people, building community, and fostering potential for their enterprise. What I do now is share with them materials that would help them be more effective in their Linkedin Social Selling. Here are several “Linkedin Guides” that I maintain to help enthusiastic entrepreneurs:
- Best Principles for Using Linkedin for Social Selling
- Building and Investing in a Community of “Contacts”
- Effective Linkedin Connections – Building Your Network
Today’s tragedy is that Linkedin does not have really effective tools to help people build effective communities. The “Experts” teach techniques which are more SPAM than building human sales relationships. At the same time, the people caught up are people trying to do the best in places all over the world.
Suggestion - the next time you get one of these “spam like” or “cold call” Linkedin connections, reach back with a pointer to your favorite “how to be more effective” guide. Be empathic and foster better skills vs slamming the door in people’s face.