Shannon Eckroth — March 1, 2018 How hard is your personal LinkedIn profile working for you? Does it keep your phone ringing off the hook? Are prospects trying to bust down your door to do business with you?
No? …then you’re doing it all wrong.
You sell managed services and need as many tools in your selling toolbox as possible. Whether you’re tapped out on the amount of new clients you can take on at this very moment or desperate for the phone to ring, a proper LinkedIn profile is mandatory (and free!). Here are 7 quick tips to get you going in the right direction.
#1 Your personal LinkedIn profile should be a REFLECTION OF WHERE YOU ARE GOING and not a chronological history of where you’ve been. Save your resume for the history lesson and leave it at home. When selling yourself, the only thing that is important is what you bring to your client’s table.
#2 BE AUTHENTIC! Who are you? Does your profile reflect your personality? The theory that your personal LinkedIn profile needs to be all business is a major misconception millions of people have and their sales funnel reflects that mistake. In a world where most of us meet online before we’re ever face to face, it’s vital we have the courage to stand out. Its ok to shy away from the corporate headshot and loosen up in your profile picture. It’s ok to put up a background image of something you love as opposed to the generic blue default background. I will elaborate on this topic in my next post.
#3 Grow your network!! Yes, CONNECT WITH PEOPLE YOU DON’T KNOW! I never understood why people created a personal profile on LinkedIn then shy’d away from accepting invitations from people they didn’t know. Why are you using LinkedIn if your intentions are to keep your circle as small as it already is? LinkedIn allows you to connect with 30,000 people before capping your network. That ceiling was not created for you to stubbornly keep your circle small. If you have a defined “target buyer” for your managed services, reach out to those people and invite them to connect. No clever introduction message required. Simply invite them to connect and you will be surprised how easy it is to grow a very targeted network and audience.
#4 Thank those that connect with you. DO NOT PITCH your services to them but send a very simple “thank you”. I’ll warn you ahead of time that most people will not respond but it doesn’t matter. It’s polite and gives them a second chance to remember your name. As you would in your emails, create a standard/simple signature to use at the bottom of these minimal messages. Include your name, title, company and website.
#5 Export your network connections and send them a warm email. DO NOT SPAM your connections but instead use this opportunity to invite them to a lunch and learn or webinar. If you don’t host local events, you should but we can leave that for a future conversation. If neither of those ideas work for you, think of some other valuable call-to-action (CTA) to include in your message. Even though we teach PAS and not SPA at CharTec ACADEMY, that doesn’t mean you can’t send a meaningful and generally useful email to your network. Its ok if the CTA doesn’t directly relate to their needs. Stay tuned for email templates and scripts to better execute this step.
#6 SHARE CONTENT THAT IS RELEVANT to your business and begin to build brand and industry authority with your network. The more you share about your industry the better off you will be especially if you’re sharing content with your two cents added in the post. Not only will you be top of mind to those that see your post, you will be educating your audience. There’s nothing sexy about selling managed services so eager impulse purchases other products or services enjoy probably don’t happen a lot in your world. You must educate your prospects and lead them to understanding your value. Content marketing is vital.
#7 ADD YOUR LINKEDIN URL in all of your digital correspondence. Some examples include but are not limited to your email signature, your personal Facebook profile, as part of your author profile on your blog and as you guest blog… on all digital media that references you and your business!
There’s still so much to cover but those are a few solid starting points. Stay tuned for step-by-step instructions for creating the perfect LinkedIn profile. I love LinkedIn and soon, you will too!
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