Today's article is from Patrick O'Malley, a LinkedIn expert who's speaking at my my upcoming Sales Productivity Summit on March 24th.
Click now to Register for this FREE online Event. Discover how to get a whole lot more done in a lot less time.
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Get More Sales Referrals Efficiently Using LinkedIn
By Patrick O'Malley
Before the advent of social media, you'd go to the clients who loved you most and ask them if they knew anyone who might be interested in buying your product or service.
This has always been a great sales technique, but it took time and it was an inconvenience for your best clients. Worse yet, if all of those prospects called that client and ask for validation, your client would love you a little bit less after every call.
Here's a new approach, using LinkedIn, that is much faster for you and much less inconvenient for them:
- Pick a client who loves you.
- Look at their LinkedIn profile. A few inches below their name and picture, it says Connections, followed by their number of connections, like “311 connections.”
- Click where it says “311 connections.”
You are now looking at their online Rolodex in LinkedIn. They know each of these people, and for each one you will typically see a title and company name. If that person looks like a potential prospect, you can begin to research their profile and possibly contact them.
For example, let's assume that one client who loves me is Don Corleone. I have a dilemma. I want to call many of his friends, and use him as an honest referral, but I don't want all of them calling him and bothering him to repeat the same information. It's not a good idea to anger Don Corleone.
Therefore, I want to have him write a recommendation once, and then let everybody read it online. I could ask Mr. Corleone for a LinkedIn recommendation and ask him to make a very clear and honest assessment about my product or service.
Better yet, I could make a video of him giving the recommendation and point each of those prospects to the video.
Here are my net results:
- I get to contact some legitimate prospects.
- I can start by saying that I am a friend of Don Corleone and that he loves my product or service.
- I can prove that he loves my product or service with an online video.
- Don Corleone he doesn't waste his time answering the phone repetitively.
- I get to live.
Using this technique, you can probably get a lot more sales in a lot less time, and keep your best friends.
That's an offer you can't refuse.
Patrick O’Malley teaches sales organizations how to make more sales, more quickly and more efficiently using social media. He had over 50 speaking engagements on Social Media last year, and also does training and consulting.
His excitement can be seen in a video at 617-PATRICK Social Media Training. His phone number is actually (617)-PATRICK, i.e. (617)-728-7425, which he thinks is the coolest thing.
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