A month ago, we had the pleasure to travel to Plainville, CT (just outside Hartford) to work with Health Consultants Group on Social Selling. Every insurance broker at Health Consultants Group had traveled into the office to eagerly learn how to drive business with LinkedIn. The champion to our deal was Tony Chandler , whom I met from a discussion on LinkedIn using LinkedIn Signal.
Tony is like 10,000’s of business service reps, looking for an advantage to grow his book of business (see article – Top 3 Industries Social Selling on LinkedIn). Yet, Tony is one of the <5% of business service reps that have used Social Selling to expand their portfolio. Tony has worked for 20 years the traditional way – cold calls, direct mail, site visits. While these marketing tactics are not lost, Tony knows he can always fall back on them. Where he’s really exploded in the last 12 months has been developing initial relationship on LinkedIn.
Fast forward to one month ago, Sales for Life trained Health Consultants Group on all the top Social Selling strategies for business services. In every training, there are always new ideas and strategies presented that add a new spin to our training. Here are Tony’s 3 best tips for business services:
1. “This is your career, invest the time into Social Networking”
In the last 12 months, Tony has officially booked 39 new business meetings with LinkedIn. They are not all from the same LinkedIn strategy. Tony’s commitment is to being a thought-leader in the health insurance space. Tony knows he’ll be in this industry for the rest of his career, which means the environment around him has and will change. Tony knew he couldn’t avoid Social Selling, so he embraced it.
2. “Use any tool that will make your life easier – mine is TimeTrade”
Tony noticed our TimeTrade when we first started talking Social Selling. For $50/year, he knew this would help eliminate any barriers when scheduling new appointments. In the first week after our training, 5 of Tony’s meetings were booked with TimeTrade, syncing directly into his Outlook.
3. “Forget gatekeepers, you have a direct line into the CEO’s ear”
Like all business service reps, we all have our “whale accounts”. These are our dream accounts that will spit out cash like a bank machine. Tony’s were two major CPA firms. Calling these firms would have been a maze of switchboards, gatekeepers and dead-ends. Tony simply logged into LinkedIn, found the decision-makers, and started a conversation. Now Tony has a leg into a referral network that will help dramatically expand his portfolio – all with a few simple InMail’s.
If you are a business service sales rep, or a manager of sales reps, 2013 is going to be a game changing year in your arena. Get ready as your industry is turning Social Selling from a whisper to a best practice.
If you don’t want to be left behind the 8 ball – you need to start to take action. The following dozen blog posts on utilizing Social Selling strategies using LinkedIn can help you start. If you are really looking for some hidden gems on how you can attract a very specific prospect, I recommend you check out – How-to-Guide: Making $$$ with Social Selling.
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