GETTING IN FRONT OF THE RIGHT PEOPLE QUICKLY AND

EFFECTIVELY WITH

By Dean Packham, Front Page Solutions Ltd

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Quick Summary You are reading this because you are looking for a way to connect with potential customers or business partners quickly and effectively. These ideas have within my own business and within the businesses of my clients. Results will vary depending on:

How well you define what you do

How well you define what you can offer

How well you initiate contact with your prospects. This will put you in front of many potential customers if you are willing to TAKE ACTION. If you think it will work but don’t have the time available/don’t want to take action, find out about our consultancy service. Why LinkedIn?

Over 200M members worldwide.

Ability to target your market quickly and easily.

Provides a forum to interact with your target market.

It’s about business, so unlike Facebook and most other social media, people actually want to talk about business!

LinkedIn can yield quicker, cheaper and more effective results than other forms of social media or even search engine optimisation.

Your story, why your story is important and how to use it to set up your LinkedIn profile Let’s start with your story! Your LinkedIn profile should be “your story” and not your CV/resume. People buy from people, so it is important for your LinkedIn profile to be set up in a way that shows you as a person, with a unique and interesting story! Important questions to ask before you set up your LinkedIn profile

What does your target client look like?

If you were in front of a potential client, what would you say and what words would you use?

What benefits do you offer to a potential client?

Why would anybody want to do business with you?

What is your unique selling proposition/makes you different or better?

Exercise 1 Think about some answers to the questions above and write them down on a piece of paper or Word document. Ask colleagues or existing customers for their feedback as well. What does your target client look like? What industry are they in, what demographic, age group, position within the company, etc. What would you say? What words would you use to attract them? Most people fall into the trap of telling their potential clients what they do rather than how they can help. For example, if you are a mortgage broker, telling them you can help them buy a house is more important than quoting interest rates and lenders!

What benefits do you offer? How can you help them? For example, if you are an accountant and they have searched for accountants and the other LinkedIn profiles say “I can do your accounts” and you say “I can save you money”, who do you think they would be more likely to choose? Why would anybody do business with you? Do you have recommendations from others, professional qualifications, etc? What is your unique selling proposition? What can you offer that nobody else can? So now you should have some answers to the questions above and can move on to Exercise 2:

Each of the points below MUST be addressed if you want your LinkedIn profile to stand out and be properly optimised to attract potential clients:

Your LinkedIn profile is your shop front and needs to tell your potential clients what you can do for them (treat it like your own personal website).

Your LinkedIn profile needs to be optimised properly with keywords so that people searching for your skills find you (and not somebody else).

Your LinkedIn profile needs to be 100% complete – this is because the LinkedIn/Google search engines like 100% profiles.

Go into LinkedIn and click on Home. Take a look at:

Who Viewed Your Profile?

YOUR LINKEDIN NETWORK This shows the level of exposure you currently have on LinkedIn:

LinkedIn Profile Checklist – make sure you address each of these!

Professional headline: what benefits you can deliver, not your job title.

Photo – make sure you have one to personalise your profile.

LinkedIn URL: personalise it and make your profile visible to everyone.

Summary (Professional Experience and Goals): Personalise this with a focus on the benefits you deliver. DON’T JUST COPY YOUR CV!

Recommendations – ask for them. People look for proof that you can deliver before they want to do business with you.

Experience – tell a story rather than just copying your CV. Think about the benefits you delivered in previous roles.

Current position: o Make your contact details clear and offer to network with

anybody. o Write a couple of paragraphs “About Me”.

o Write a couple of paragraphs “What I Can Do For You”.

Certifications

Skills and Expertise – use all 50, these act as keywords.

Education

Additional Information – as much information as possible. You want people to find you.

Personal information – you want people to be able to contact you.

We are looking for a 100% complete profile. Although this is by no means perfect, my profile gives you an idea of how to make your profile read more likes sales copy than a CV/resume

Exercise 3 – Now for some keywords

1. Go to Google Keyword Tool and enter keywords that relate to your business.

This will provide a list of keywords for your business. Make a note of these keywords and think of others that may be relevant.

2. Insert these keywords into your LinkedIn profile, ensuring that they are used only in context.

Exposure + conversion = success

Make sure you have a call to action.

Make sure your LinkedIn profile reflects your personal brand (how you are different and/or better than your competition).

By now you should have a decent LinkedIn profile, so the next step is to get some traffic to it!

Getting LinkedIn Connections Quality and Quantity are important. You need quality connections in the industries you are targeting. You also need quantity connections, who may not relate to the industries you are trying to target! Let me explain – when you connect with somebody on LinkedIn, their contacts and their contacts contacts can see you on LinkedIn. An example may help – let’s say you have 10 connections and each of them have 10 connections. These connections then have 10 connections each. So at this point your total “reach” is: 10 x 10 x 10 = 1,000 people. This means that you can see the profile of 1,000 people and 1,000 people can see you! Sounds good so far, but the problem is that LinkedIn has over 200,000,000 members, so at the moment only 0.0005% of the entire LinkedIn population can see you! So what would happen if you connected with 100 connections, each of these had 100 connections and they were each connected to 100 people. At this point, your total reach would be: 100 x 100 x100 = 1,000,000 people. Hooray, you are now connected to 1,000,000 people – but this is still only 0.5% of the entire LinkedIn population! So we need to increase your connections quickly! You can’t just contact anybody because they could accuse you of spamming and get you banned from LinkedIn.

Fortunately there is a solution! Imagine if there was a website full of “open networkers” – LinkedIn users who are happy to connect with anybody? Well fortunately there is, and it’s free to join! Go to www.toplinked.com and register as a new user.

Go into Build Your Networks and Click here to go to the download page for the Invite Me List for LinkedIn Select a spreadsheet and open the file. Highlight the names and click copy. Then go into LinkedIn and:

Select Connections

Add Connections

Any Email

Invite by individual email

Then paste the email addresses from the spreadsheet and click on Send Invitations. Simple! You now have 200 invitation requests on their way to “open networkers”. When each one accepts, you will get access to their connections and their connections, and more importantly, these people will start to see you on LinkedIn. The main objective here is to reach connections of connections! This will boost the number of times you get searched for on LinkedIn How often should you repeat this exercise? It’s up to you but I would suggest a couple of times a week. You will then be sending out 400 invitation emails a week, grow your list of connections and get more LinkedIn traffic. How To Get “Quality” Connections on LinkedIn Start to grow your quality connections after you add “quantity” connections. Why? Because you will then be able to search for more potential customers as they get added to your visible network.

Start by making a list of:

Who do you want to connect with as a potential customer?

Who do you want to connect with as a potential business partner/referrer?

Brainstorm this for a few minutes. Are you interested in CEOs, MDs, directors, business owners, etc? Once you have a list you can start to find these people on LinkedIn and invite them to connect. Go to “People” and “Advanced” at the top of your screen:

You can be as specific or general as you like, but probably a good idea to filter by keyword or location as a starting point. If you are looking for company directors only, enter: “company director” into the keywords box.

If you are interested in “company directors” or “MDs” then enter: “company director” OR “MD” into the keywords box If you are interested in “company directors” who are also “MDs” then enter: “company director” AND “MD” into the keywords box Play around with the advanced people searches and see what kind of results come up. If you have entered the right filters, you should start seeing some interesting people!! Warning and disclaimer!! If you do what is detailed in this document you will have a properly optimised LinkedIn profile and will start to generate traffic on LinkedIn. Depending on the follow-up conversations you have with new connections, you should start to get some business from these relationships. The purpose of this document is to give you a good foundation – a shop window that is worth looking in. My next report will provide strategies to reach your customers quickly through LinkedIn. Taking what you have learned in this document and applying it in the right way, you will learn how to generate leads for your business, quickly and consistently.

The strategies I teach are repeatable, scalable and transferable to almost any B2B business. If you would like to find out more about our “Done for You” LinkedIn profile makeover service then email me here. From time to time I run webinars and face to face courses, so if you are interested in seeing what is coming up, then click the link below: Webinars and courses to walk you through getting business on LinkedIn