Essential prospecting process steps for Public Relations

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50 of sales people are using linkedin to beat their sales quota social selling whether you like this or not is the new name of the game in fact 90 of sea level executives ignore cult outreach all together especially since 84 of these individuals are consulting social media before making b2b purchase decisions as a result of this i'll say it here i'll say it loud cold calling to fill your pipeline is on its last legs and on the flip side of all this three-quarters of all b2b sales representatives are not getting any none zero social selling training so you can see the importance and why i created this video for you so how do you create prospects on linkedin and what should you be doing to avoid having issues on the platform as well let's get into it in this video on linkedin prospecting [Music] hi my name is will baron founder of salesman.org where we make selling simple if you want to learn how to make selling simple if you want to take one of our training programs if you want to learn more about what we talk about in this video just click on one of the links below in the description box so what is linkedin prospecting it is the process of searching for identifying and connecting with linkedin users and then of course converting them into potential customers and time and time again we hear the maxim it's not about what you know it's about who you know and this is true for linkedin prospecting as well people choose to be on linkedin they're proactively choosing to be on linkedin to make professional connections and part of that hunt is that they've got to be open to being approached as well this makes the linkedin platform the perfect place as long as your customers are on there to find and nurture new potential customers but and before you do this this is a massive bot before you start approaching unsuspecting linkedin users and just bombarding them spamming them with the features and benefits of your product that doesn't work instead researching your prospects on linkedin and sending them a bespoke message that resonates with their needs is a far better way to get their attention and linkedin has over 770 million users as i record this video right now in 2021 and so it's no surprise that your customers are probably already on there and ready to be connected with so let's jump into some do's and don'ts when you're prospecting on the linkedin platform and let's start with the things that you should be doing first off before you reach out to anyone you need to optimize your headline because first impressions really do matter there's no two ways about it they are crucial for your success in prospecting on the platform and when you're prospering on linkedin your profile is usually your first impression so the most important thing on your profile is typically your headline this is what sells you this is what explains what you do the value that you can offer and maybe a little bit about you personally as well so we want to go from this to something more like this now if you ignore this headline field linkedin won't leave it blank instead the headline field will revert to your job title and the the company the corporation that you work for and whilst this isn't a total sin it's not going to help you stand out you need to generate new sales needs and this means hooking up with potential customers and a captivating headline can help you stand out versus everyone else that's reaching out to your customers on the platform as well next when we're talking about your headline you've got to pay attention to your audience who very specifically are you trying to reach this is one of the biggest issues that i see when people join our selling made simple academy program sales people are great at emailing they're great at calling but they don't know who they should be prospecting and so you need to understand who you're prospecting and make this clear in your headline as well and don't use any technical jargon your customer might not understand it and if they don't understand what your message is and what you can do for them then of course they're not going to click on your profile they're not going to respond to you either keep your headline straight forward and don't ruin the whole sales process before you've even reached out to the potential customer tip number two is that you've got to keep posting you gotta post constantly and regularly this is where people who are doing social selling fail all the time we talk about this all the time on the social selling show myself and daniel disney and posting content is gonna seem really daunting at first you're going to get very few likes and little to maybe even zero engagement and sometimes it's even going to feel pointless putting all this effort into content but we've all got to start somewhere at first when you're new on the linkedin platform it's more important to be consistent than it is to be good the more content that you post the more regular you are when you're posting content it establishes trust establishes more familiarity with you your face your tagline that's going to be underneath each of these posts in your buyers timelines and it's going to exponentially increase your chances of gaining followers gaining people who want a consumer content and obviously then it starts to spread all of this content all these posts allow you to start showing off your technical expertise which is way way more friendly and more compelling than what your profile allows you to put on that on your profile you've got bulleted lists hey i do this i do that versus in your content when you're posting regularly on your timeline you can be more nuanced you can dive into smaller detailed topics and your buyers are going to lap it up and again as i said at the top of this point you need to have a specific target audience defined before you start building content otherwise you're going to find that you've got tons of different followers tons of people commenting on your posts tons of prospects from adjacent markets that you're never going to be able to sell and close the next linkedin prospecting tip is to learn to use the search option smartly because linkedin search is actually capable of way more than what it's given credit for because in addition to searching just for names job descriptions regions role titles industries all of this obvious stuff you can integrate what's called boolean operators to specify or broaden your search results there's more information on boolean operators in the link that's below this post where we go into all this in more detail but using things like quotation marks not and or these words can help you refine your search results to get you where you want to go faster let me give you an example let's say you want to search for people who have manager in their profiles but you want to avoid people who are manager assistants or senior managers well you can accomplish this by searching manager and then not not executive senior assistant this will search the linkedin database for prospects that are managers but not assistants executives or senior managers alternative you might want to broaden your search results so you can use the or operator o r so you can search for person or company or product and it will come up with any of those keywords in one single search that's pretty cool right you can also set up search alerts for reoccurring searches that you want to make every week this is going to massively accelerate and speed up your linkedin prospecting efforts and it's going to catch people who have changed jobs got promotions or moved to a company that you want to prospect very specifically to do this just search for a specific word string boolean operator or your potential customer your prospect and then click the create search alert button and the final point in this tip is that when you search for prospects you're probably going to reach out to them right absolutely fine it's going to be a linkedin message it's going to be an in-mail message but before you do that outreach do a tiny bit of research make sure that you're building a relationship with that message before you just start shoving your getting your pitch and shoving it down people's throats and the final thing that you should definitely do when prospecting on linkedin is to invest in linkedin sales navigator and whilst it's not a small investment it can really help your linkedin prospecting efforts linkedin sales navigator is similar to linkedin search but linkedin sales navigator comes with far far more targeting power with search results for example sales navigator allows you to filter and refine your search until you find the very specific tiny sliver of potential customers that have a high level of specificity that you'll be able to do business with and once you have a result that you're interested in you can save the results as well this ability to save your linkedin searches acts similar to search alerts and you'll be notified of new results adhering to your requirements as and when they're updated in the linkedin database so there are four things that you should be doing on the linkedin platform when you're prospecting for new customers let's cover four things that you should definitely not be doing so first up you shouldn't be sending non-personalized linkedin messages and whilst cold calling has worked exceptionally well in the past well social anxiety has increased the fact that we don't have office desk phones anymore has decreased the effectiveness of it as well we can see this in the data the popularity of text messages on mobile phones and of course the success of people social selling on linkedin is testament to the lack of effectiveness of cold calling again as i record this in 2021 but you've got to make sure that you're not spamming people when prospecting in these new differentiated ways a well-drafted linkedin message is your most valuable weapon second only to having a fully established linkedin profile and having content being pumped out day in day out i'm not saying that you have to draft long laborious messages to your potential customer that you're you're referring to multiple issues and problems and how you can solve it but aim to have a clever yet pretty subtle message that piques the interest and makes the buyer want to know more you don't want to solve all of the buyers problems and burdens via one massive linkedin message you're trying to get them on the phone we're trying to get them off linkedin and into a warm prospecting call the next thing that you shouldn't do on the leading platform is forgetting all the sales that you've already made not adding or at least inviting your current customers to your linkedin network is a massive schoolboy error these good customers that hopefully you've served well and they enjoy working with you can add credibility by giving you recommendations testimonials and they can increase your reach exponentially if you're creating content and they're in the comments and they're liking and sharing those posts as well dead simple you've got to invite everyone that you've worked with who have had success with you onto linkedin and engage with them tip number three that you shouldn't be doing on linkedin is just overdoing everything that i'm talking about here keep it natural right plain and simple this is if you don't want to get your account restricted yep i said it linkedin has the authority and they do this regularly to put you in linkedin jail to suspend your account or even bad news is that they deem unfit to be on the platform and automated linkedin tools might seem to make your life easier when you're prospecting on the platform but linkedin of course it's owned by microsoft it's a multi-billion dollar company they're smart enough to realize when non-human actions are taking place on their platform so for example automating your profile to reach out to multiple connection requests every day in the order of magnitude of tens or hundreds it's just going to get you suspended or a step worse and that is going to get your account banned other examples of poor automation that people try to use before they get a kick and a punch from linkedin include visiting a vast number of profiles every day and generating this artificial engagement and the final thing that you should not do on linkedin is to misuse linkedin groups landing groups used to be super powerful for prospecting on the platform they're less useful now but you can still abuse them really easily and that's going to discredit and remove any trust you've built on your profile and your online persona and whilst there are thousands and thousands probably hundreds of thousands at this point of sales reps on linkedin you can showcase your expertise in your niche by joining not sales groups not prospecting groups none of that joining relevant industry groups where you can add a layer of authority to you can answer questions you can build a personal brand in there as well but but don't treat these linkedin groups as an opportunity to just again shove your pitch down the throat of anyone who will listen instead play it strategically narrow down the groups that you can be active in and slowly increase your influence as an authority within the group add value jump into conversations and within no time you can be seen as an expert in your space and it has tremendous value on linkedin and off it as well so there we go social selling on linkedin it's here to stay and while social selling might seem a little bit daunting at first knowing your way around building trust establishing authority and generating prospects is as simple as what we've discussed in this video so personalize each connection request leverage linkedin sales navigator and do boolean search to target your potential customers more effectively avoid any linkedin prospecting tools and automation and start generating some business from linkedin another prospecting video done if you enjoyed this one if you want to continue your sales education why not click the video it's right here on the screen right now