We just had our company kick-off meeting for the new year and one of the topics was to sell more with LinkedIn. I think as a team we are doing well with our LinkedIn efforts, but we could be doing better. The team does a good job of using LinkedIn and LinkedIn Sales Navigator as research tools. LinkedIn is our best social platform for both traffic and engagement. We are putting together a plan to allow us to sell more with LinkedIn.
Good Company Page
We have a great company page with regular updates. One of our team members posts formatted content for the week. It is a mix of our content, sales/marketing third party content, and our partners. We have found that posting native videos has helped with engagement. It is very easy for team members to share this content and add their own thoughts.. We continue to look at ways to tweak and improve the engagement for the company pages.
Regular Posts
With consistent company posts it is fairly easy for the team to share on their personal profiles. People are more likely to connect to a person, then a company. You can also mix in your own posts, not just share everything from the company page. As an example I am involved with a few regional innovation centres through Southern Ontario. I often post about events and programs that are going on in the tech community.
Connections
This is an area that we have done an okay job at, but will put more effort in the coming months. The plan is to connect more with people in the ecosystem, people met at events, and prospects. The prospect connection request is especially important. This should be happening as part of the sales process. Prospects may not be ready at the time of engagement or get busy. Being connected allows them to see regular posts and helps to keep us top of mind and reinforce subject matter expertise. Being a 1st connection also allows for free inMail messages. This gives us another method to communicate with them instead of just calling and emailing. Some people are often more responsive on LinkedIn messages as they get fewer of them. This past week I had two older prospects reach out through LinkedIn about setting up some time to talk. It was around a recent post on Fractional Sales.
Sharing, liking, and Being Helpful
LinkedIn is a social platform,byt with a business focus. There are lots of opportunities to be helpful. This could include making comments to a question, sharing, or liking a post. Your customers, prospects, and partners will see your engagement. This helps to strengthen the relationship with them. Recently I saw that one of my 1st connections was looking for work and I knew that one of my other 1st connections was looking for a new hire. An introduction led to them working together.
If you would like to learn more about how to sell more with LinkedIn please connect with me.
