LinkedIn Groups
I know, you’ve heard about LinkedIn Groups before, and this blog seems redundant. Trust me when I tell you, if you read this blog – you will have a new sales philosophy that works! When I say works, I mean book meeting-after-meeting of new opportunities, you didn’t realize was possible (or as easy).
Why Should I Join Them?
- You can expand your network and reach exponentially more prospects
- You can track hot prospects in your group just like a 1
What Groups Should I Join?
As a sales rep, you need to think in 3 categories that will help you gain access to 1,000’s of hot prospects. LinkedIn allows you access to 50 groups, use ALL 50! You can hide groups in your settings, to reduce the size of your profile. Here are the groups you must join.
- Competitive (your overall business groups) – If you are an IT Services company, you want to have your ears where your competitors/industry experts are hanging out.
- Vertical focus – What industry do you chase? Make sure you can find the C-Level influencers within your particular target market.
- Buyer Persona – you need to think like your buyer. In our business, we focus on VP/Directors of Sales. Find 10 of your best clients and track where the decision-makers of these companies hanging out in Groups. This is where your buyer is gathering market information, best practices (this is their trust resource).
TIP – go into your clients Corporate Profile and click INSIGHTS. Within Insights it will show you the most common skills their employees have. Outline these common SKILLS your Buyers all have, and it will show you the most populous Groups to join.
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Show me how to make $$$
Did you know that Linkedin allows you to follow 5,000 connects. Yes, that means you will have insight into 5,000 hot prospects no differently than your 1 degrees. You can see what your hot prospects are doing on Linkedin – IN REAL TIME.
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Here’s an Example of How Our Clients Are Making Money With Linkedin.
- Imagine if you were to cold call a prospect today, you would have no idea if that person was at his/her desk. Sure, you could use best practices like calling the last 15 minutes of every hour, but that might only get you a 5-10% connection rate.
- What about emailing a prospect? Your email would be amongst 100 other emails – You’d better hope your subject line is enticing.
- Ah but with Linkedin, you can see that you’re prospect is online updating/blogging/chatting right now! Isn’t that the best time to call your prospect, when they are sitting at their desk working in a social environment? Your probability of connecting using a social tool like Linkedin or a strategically timed phone call just increased dramatically.Use a time based trigger event to your advantage!
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This technique by itself gives sales reps a huge advantage over those not using Social Selling.
