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What are the best practices for using Linkedin for prospecting?
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Best Practices in Social Selling
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3 Answers
Mike,
Full answer is long. See my ebooks and other webinars on "Social Calling" for information.
Summary of it is Linkedin gives you the best tool out there right now to find ways to get referrals. Referrals change outcomes dramatically vs cold calls. Impact: "social calls" (including referrals) vs cold calls - 700% improvement.
Nigel
Fair question Mike. As a "focused" answer consider the following activities:
1) Make sure that YOUR profile is complete, current and reflects your experience and value to a prospective customer.
2) Use "Advanced Search" while in LinkedIn to provide a much deeper, more focused set of data that is relevant to your needs.
3) Take advantage of "Signal" under the NEWS tab, to sort through and identify the current activities of those that you are focused on. Build the search criteria as deep as you can so that you are tracking activities for the most desired prospects only or you run the risk of being overwhelmed with data.
4) Leverage the capability LinkedIn provides of creating RSS feeds of your most productive searches, allowing the updates to be fed directly into your email or favorite RSS reader.
5) I check out my prospective clients LinkedIn Profile and focus on:
a) Groups that they belong to
b) Reading List (shows books that they are reading)
c) Shared Connections that might be a good referral source or background info
d) Who else has viewed the same Profile recently
e) The usual Recommendations-both given and received, Contact preferences, etc.
6) Lastly, check out the Company listings as well. Rich source of info about the company in many areas. Remember to "follow" the company so you will be notified with changes that occur automatically.
These are just a few but hopefully can provide some early success and motivate you to integrate LinkedIn into your daily prospecting routine.
Mike above has given some great suggestions. I will add the following:
The most important concept to remember about LinkedIn is that it is a Relationship site vs. a sales channel. People go to LinkedIn because they either want information, connections or both. So the best way to approach LinkedIn is with a "pay it forward" attitude. Think about adding value to your network. You add value by facilitating connections, making introductions, sharing useful and relevant information, increasing other's credibility.
Direct prospecting will be done once you have identified your target audience and then proceed to get introduced to them. To use a metaphor, think about how the Cheetah and the Spider go about feeding themselves. The Cheetah hunts while the Spider attracts. You will be far more successful on LinkedIn if you operate like a Spider.
You attract people by having a complete profile that is fully optimized. You also build a ton of credibility by having many quality recommendations. You participate in the Questions and Groups sections of LinkedIn sharing valuable information. You build a network of relationships where you generate a lot of Goodwill and Social Capital that will eventually be repaid.
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