Your LinkedIn Mission For 2016 Is To Focus On The 2%

I can hear what you're thinking - "here we go, yet another New Year's resolution post. Stroll on February when we can all get back to dreaming of things we were going to achieve this year and instead, accept the fact that what we're really going to do is precisely what we did last year, with just a little more enthusiasm during January!"

You know only around 8% of people ever follow through with their New Year resolutions for all kind of reasons.  An article in the Journal of Clinical Psychology suggests that approximately 50 percent of the population makes resolutions each New Year. Among the top resolutions are weight loss, exercise, stopping smoking, better money management and debt reduction.

But why do so many people fail to keep their resolutions? According to Timothy Pychyl, a professor of psychology at Carleton University in Canada,  resolutions are a form of "cultural procrastination," an effort to reinvent oneself. People make resolutions as a way of motivating themselves, he says. Pychyl argues that people aren't ready to change their habits, particularly bad habits, and that accounts for the high failure rate.

So clearly resolutions are about changing our habits and most of us can make small adjustments to our behaviours, we simply need to:

1. Identify those habits we want to change
2. Create a realistic plan to make the necessary changes in our behaviours 
3. Monitor our progress & reward ourselves when we are successful.

This all leads me nicely back to the title of my post 'Your LinkedIn Mission For 2016 Is To Focus On The 2%' . If I look back at my behaviours in 2015, particularly in relation to my LinkedIn and social media business relationship activities, then I know I need to make some adjustment to my approach - I need to be more realistic with my expectations and in particular, become less concerned about those who choose not to engage with me, despite my best efforts to engage with them, especially when they were the ones who initiated the original contact!  

You see, it's very easy to become absorbed on social media and waste time with people who have no real intention of ever engaging with you. In a world where time is often one of our most precious commodities, especially in business, you simply cannot afford to waste time, chasing people who just don't get you and probably never will.

In his recent blog post How To Do Business Without Ever Getting Rejected, business relationship expert Daniel Jordi, from Zurich, suggests that about 98% of people who you promote your services to won’t get it and that your goal is appeal to the 2% of people who understand what you do and who want to work with you because of what you do, but first and foremost because of who you are. The challenge is that if you try to appeal to the 98%, the 2% will never find you because they won’t recognize you.

My question to you is; who are the 2% of your customers who you should be spending time nurturing relationships with? Even if you apply Pareto's Principle and apply your focus to the 20% of customers who will provide you with the biggest return during 2016, you will likely achieve more than chasing everyone who enquires of your services. The reality is you and I simply do not have the time to try and convince people that they should be doing business with us. However, that is not to say that you shouldn't spend time nurturing relationships with those who fit your ideal customer profile but just aren't ready to buy from you yet. Let me explain:

Who are your ITM's?

You and I have customers or more to the point, types of customers, who are our ITM's (Ideal Target Market). ITM's are less trouble than any of your other customers, they repeat buy from you, pay you more money and most importantly, they get you and buy from you because of who you are and not just for what you do. Your job is be clear who these ITM's are, find them using LinkedIn (particularly if your ITM's are business-to-business professionals) and spend at least 90 minutes a week nurturing relationships with these contacts.

Whatever else you do, as far as marketing your products and services is concerned, the 90 minutes a week you spend nurturing relationships with your 2% of ITM's will reward you, in the long run, more handsomely than the 98% of customers, who demand the rest of your attention.

Prospecting is no longer, if it ever was, a numbers game, as one of my close 1st degree connections, Larry Levine discusses in his recent LinkedIn blog post 'Prospecting Doesn't Have To Be a Field Of Dreams'.  In the new age of marketing and let's face it, if you have realised it, we are in a new age when it comes to how we all engage with products and services today - we have to adapt.

The way we purchase products and services is changing

On-line retail spending is growing at a rate of 18% year on year. Just consider your own shopping habits this Christmas, compared with previous years, did you buy more gifts on-line or do you know someone who did? I know I did (for someone who hates battling with crowds in retail shops, this is the perfect solution to my Christmas shopping woes!).

If retail shopping habits are moving more on-line then it stands to reason that doing business, generally, will increasingly also head in this direction. I can't see a day when we will ever replace face-to-face meetings - they are an essential part of most professional business deals. However, social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook enable us to do better research and due diligence before a meeting takes place - they allow us to create and nurture relationships to a point where meetings are more amicable, less stressful and more successful. How well you come across on social media will often be enough to let your customers know whether you or your business are likeable, relevant and if you can be trusted.

If social media isn't an integral part of your marketing business mix yet, then it really should be - you simply cannot deny its existence any longer and if you're interested in how things will develop in this arena during 2016, then take a look at this article from Hootsuite's Ryan Holmes '5 Trends That Will Change How Companies Use Social Media In 2016'. Ryan explains some of the new up and coming platforms of interest and how engaging your employees in sharing your company news can significantly increase your brand's reach and visibility.

So, how do you turn your future 2% - ers into customers?

If you work in professional services or building and engaging with business professionals is important to your firm's growth this year, then start today. In summary, here are 3  things you could be easily fit into your 90 minutes social media activity each week:

1. Use LinkedIn's search options to locate relevant business professionals by industry sector, company, geographic location, job title, name and then invite them to connect. Consider using the approach I recommended in my recent blog post 'Increase Your Engagement On LinkedIn - Tell Them Your 'Why'.
2. Check LinkedIn daily and send a personal message to anyone who invites you to connect or engages with your posts or comments, who is of interest to you (you may not have time to respond to any person who wants to connect with you). Thank them for connecting and ask them (nicely) why they chose to do so?
3. Nurture relationships with the 2% who engage and the 20% who are your ITMs. Create some content, content that you believe would be of value to your new connections - it should be informative, include a practical application, if possible, which can be used in and make a difference to their business. 

Step 3, the nurturing process, is critical to your success. There's no point simply connecting with people and never having conversations with them - after all, you wouldn't run round a networking room, shake hands with everyone there and then do a runner...would you?!

Nurturing is about being warm, friendly and conversational, remember this is 'social' media. LinkedIn's new chat style messaging facility is indicative of the fact that traditional email messaging is on the wane, in favour of a lighter more personal communication style, which can help build all 3 elements of know, like and trust.

Some will, some won't, so what?

Now, you need to be prepared that despite your best approaches, some of those you connect with, even those who approach you, will simply not engage. Don't ask me why - people are weird or more to the point, they often have great intentions but then life gets in the way and they become distracted or they just have a change of heart but won't tell you this of course! Here's what you do:

1. Devote time to having conversations with your 2% ers
2. Still send content nurturing messages to your 20% ers - they may not respond but you will at least keep your brand and your expertise on their radar and then in time, you can pick up the phone and call them or they may call you when they're ready. 80% of sales are made on the 5th to 12th contact and in this article my good friend and LinkedIn connection Angus Grady provides some really helpful advice on how to enhance your professional networking results using LinkedIn.
3. Understand that people are weird, they're not all like you, some will engage with you, some won't, so what, just move on and don't lose any sleep over trying to resurrect the dead.

You know that you need to make 2016 the year when you determine your own business growth and not leave it to chance. To achieve this you need to be proactive and do something about it.

Many thanks for reading this.  If you liked it please click on Like and share it.  Constructive comments are always welcome and if you have 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.

 If you need help to get active doing business on social media, or to do more by improving your skills then please get in touch and check out our website  www.linked2success.co.uk.

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