She closed a $120,000 deal with a big home shopping network from LinkedIn.
He books 90% of his speaking gigs and 70% of his business there. She posted an article in a group and got a phone call from someone she had never met before. He liked the article. 24 hours later, she had a $40,000 signed contract in her hands. He doubled the contract not too long after that . . .
She posted an announcement for a webinar and asked if anyone would like her to deliver the same talk to their organization. Someone did. She made $45,000 from the backend business. The list goes on and on . . . real LinkedIn users getting loads of new clients and big money opportunities.
And guess what? It’s all in here! How they did it. What they did specifically. The details. The juice.
JenningsWire online magazine is happy to present another blockbuster roundup article that queried real life LinkedIn users to discover how they used LinkedIn to land new clients and exactly how they did it. The contributors to this article HOLD NOTHING BACK.
One thing is certain. LinkedIn is a gold mine.
Let’s start with the $120,000 deal.
Business strategist and lifestyle expert, Niki Pfeiffer, founder of Niki Pfeiffer Designs, shares how she made this $120,000 deal happen:
For starters. Make a list of people (or companies) that you want to connect with and then use LinkedIn to search for those people (companies) and identify the contacts you have in common. Send an email or call that contact to ask for help in connecting you to the person. . . many people are very willing to help make the connection, you just have to ask!
She made a list. While working at a former company as VP of Business Development I made a list of the “Top 20 companies” that I wanted to work with and that would benefit from our User Centered Design Services. From that list I would go through my LinkedIn network and search by those companies names and then identify potential people at those companies that would potentially be interested in our services and find those where we had a connection in common.
She reached out to people. I would then reach out via email to that 1st level connection and request to schedule a quick phone call with them. Since I knew them they were usually very willing to talk to me. Once on the call with them I would talk to them about what I was doing and like any regular conversation (I wasn’t pitching them anything) find out about what they were up to. I would then just ask if they could make an introduction to that specific person I wanted to connect with. In the case of this home shopping network I was talking to a contact to find out that her niece worked at the network. She made the introduction and it was a perfect case of right message to the right person at the right time. After talking to her niece at the network, I found out that they would be embarking on a project in the next few months and they did not initially have our company on the list as possible solution providers, but after telling her about our services it got us in the game and we won the business:).
Contributed by Niki Pfeiffer, CEO & Inventor of the Wine Gabby™. Please connect with Niki via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
He books 90% of his speaking gigs and 70% of his business consulting services on LinkedIn.
That’s what J.A. Rodriguez does. He is active on LinkedIn. He is helpful to others. He lands speaking events and gets new clients. Here are J.A.’s strategies for attracting opportunities:
Size matters. The larger your network, the greater your exposure, the better positioned you are to help members of your network achieve their goals. What does this have to do with attracting new clients? One word, everything! Clients want to do business with providers that are connected, well-known in their area of expertise and worldly. In other words, with providers that are well-informed about their business and the latest trends. Clients look for high value, low risk solutions.
Connect with the connected. Focus on hooking up with those who are well-connected on LinkedIn and leverage their networks to super charge your own.
Bring something to the table. Information sharing is everything on LinkedIn. Ask yourself this question everyday: “How have I helped my network today?” View their profiles and determine what information you can post to help them be more successful. Offer value, and before posting, sanity check your contribution with this question: “What is in it for my network?”. Focus on this and clients will want more and more.
Share industry leading articles and information from around the world. This demonstrates you are on top of your game. We no longer live in a financial world confined by physical borders. Be an avid reader and promote the knowledge gained through sharing. Your connections will in turn share your post and leverage their network with yours. Click on the “News Tab” on your LinkedIn page and see what others are sharing and introduce these posts to your connections if you feel they add value.
Shine through association. Endorse those who you know are experts in the field. You will in turn be endorsed as well. Endorsements mean that someone is willing to place their reputation on the line for you. Prove them right. Potential clients will take notice and make you the selection of choice.
Be active. No news from you is not good news if you are seeking to receive contacts (news) from clients. Remaining active on LinkedIn demonstrates that you are committed to helping your network succeed. Statistical probability absolutely applies. The probability is higher that you will secure additional clients every time you post quality material. You are simply more visible and the visible is seen.
Is this work? I do not think of it as such because it then becomes something less than meaningful. Think of it as an incredible opportunity to supercharge the network with your energy and a highly likely chance that the network will respond in kind. Grow your network, expand your exposure, seek to improve others through your knowledge and the rest will fall nicely into place.
Contributed by J. A. Rodriguez Jr., CEO & Founder, Make My Day Strategies LLC, author of Not Intuitively Obvious: Transition to the Professional Work Environment. Connect with J.A at Not Intuitively Obvious, Authors Den, Youtube and SpeakerMatch.com. J.A. Rodriguez is recognized as dynamic and motivational speaker and a foremost expert in the areas of occupational safety, health regulations and compliance and health and safety legislation analysis.
JACKPOT!
Six Figures Of New Business. Business Growth Expert, Yoon Cannon, Founder of Paramount Business Coach LLC., helps entrepreneurs and small business owners achieve dramatic results in sales and marketing. She started 4 successful companies over the past 20 years and sold 3 of them. Yoon says her marketing on LinkedIn alone generates 6 figures in new business for her solo business coaching practice. Yoon says that the best client attraction tactics that continue to reap results for her in generating 6 figures in new business from LinkedIn come rather from maximizing the basic core features of LinkedIn.
REAL STORIES! Yoon Cannon shares these real stories of getting new clients using LinkedIn:
Phone rings, next day $40,000 deal. This past Fall my phone rang at 4pm on a Tuesday. It was the president of a 3 million dollar company who was not in my network, but was a fellow member in one of the LinkedIn groups I belonged to. He read the article I shared that week where I gave tips on growing your sales organization. He loved it so much that he asked for a face to face meeting for the following day. We met at 9am the following morning to discuss his challenges of not being able to grow his company past that 3 million level. Twenty four hours later I received his signed agreement and retainer to hire me as his business growth coach. The program he chose with me was $40,000. After our first 6 months he decided to put in a change order to add sales training and premium support which doubled our agreement.
Video lands $17,000 in sales. After sharing some free tips I offered via video and the previous week shard in written format to people in my network and to select LinkedIn groups I received a number of responses from small business owners scattered throughout the US and even a gentleman in Nigeria, Africa. They were interested in the business marketing training — which by the way, was only 2 sentences after a 7 minute video and an 800 word article full of free marketing tips. Enrollment was only $229 a month, but with multiple clients who enrolled because of those 2 posts on I did on LinkedIn turned out to add $17,000 in sales.
Landed speaking event. $45,000 in backend sales. Bingo. After posting an announcement for a webinar I was doing on Strategic Planning to Double Your Business I offered an invitation at the end if anyone could not make the webinar date they could invite me to deliver this same talk live to their association group. I was contacted by a meeting planner who took me up on that offer and she booked me to speak at their upcoming conference. I gave one talk for 60 minutes at her event for a rather small audience of only about 50 small business owners. But, the backend business I received from that one speaking event totaled $45,000. I credit those additional clients to the root source of it all — LinkedIn!
How exactly does Yoon bring in these amazing results?
Post high quality content. I post high quality content in the discussion groups of targeted LinkedIn groups that I belong to. My clients and prospects often tell me that in comparing the articles that I share on LinkedIn with those shared by other people, they find that my articles go much deeper and offer them high content, useful tips that they can apply in their businesses right away. I share these articles as a link that takes readers straight to my blog which lives on my website. Naturally, many readers will stay to browse my website which allows them to get to know who I am, who I help and what challenges I help solve.
Reach out personally. I reach out to follow up with each new connection in my network. Most people simply stop when they click “accept connection request” or they stop once the connection request they sent accepts their invitation. I believe you need to do this basic step to begin to get any name recognition with your connections. That way when I do post articles and my connections receive those in their home feed they are more likely to click and read since I personally reached out to them prior. When I do reach out I always start a new relationship with asking them who are the types of people who would make valuable introductions for their business? I make it a point not to charge into a new relationship doing a commercial for my own business.
Shares a video introducing herself. I share a short video with them in a personal, individual LinkedIn message that allows them to get to know me. And if they are local I invite them to visit my Letip chapter I belong to which would help them attract more clients. In fact, my chapter passes on average 90-150 referrals among the group every week. So, this brings online networking and combines it with offline, live networking for double the punch. This is also another way that grabs their interest because I’m really trying to help them first.
No stone unturned. I play the numbers game. Every week I send a steady flow of invitation requests to people in my target market. I noticed that generating new clients from LinkedIn was a lot easier to do once I passed the 500 connection mark. There definitely was a noticeable shift in my LinkedIn success when I built my network to that number. This falls in line with what happens in any type of marketing or advertising. You are only going to attract a small percentage of those in the receiving end of your message. You could send your message to 100 targeted prospects and you might get a response from 2. You could also send that same message to 1,000 targeted people and get a response from 20 people. Right now, I have over 1,200 targeted prospects and referral partners in my LinkedIn network and the number continues to grow every week.
Contributed by Yoon Cannon, Business Growth Expert, Author, Keynote Speaker and Founder of Paramount Business Coach, LLC. Please connect with Yoon on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Yoon speaks frequently as a keynote speaker and guest expert for radio programs. Yoon’s articles have been published in major media like Philadelphia Business Journal, JP Morgan Chase Ink magazine, ASI Counselor magazine and more.
LinkedIn is her primary sources of new business.
“I’ve been on LinkedIn for about 5 years” says Jerrilynn B. Thomas who Founded WomenPartner.org, a firm that helps business and professional women cross-pollinate their knowledge and contacts so they can grow their female client base. Jerrilynn says. “When they added groups, my membership finally started to pay off. LinkedIn is now my primary source of new clients. Using groups, I’ve been able to prospect for new clients by personally introducing myself to individual group members, sharing resourceful articles about myself as well as others, and posting promotional messages that follow the group guidelines.”
Profile headline: The headline that you place in your LinkedIn profile is very important. You can actually promote your launches, sales, crowdfunding projects and more without posting promotional messages using your headline. Every time you post to a group or share an update, your headline is included with your name. You have 160 characters at your disposal. Use them wisely.
Ask for connections. The smartest way to get new clients using LinkedIn groups is to ask people to invite you connect if your business interests them. Tell them about your business and the projects you are working on. Browse the posts on the groups to find people whose business problems you can solve. Introduce yourself using the private reply option. Keep the message casual and avoid the hard sell.
Use this feature: I send an update on my collaborative business projects every two months to niche connections and invite them to get involved. I give away complimentary advertising to them for referrals. You can contact up to 50 people per message. Just make sure to click the box at the end of the compose area that prevents your connections from seeing each others’ address. If you don’t and someone responds to you, it will go to everyone who received the original message. Being that I have close to 6,000 connections, it’s a long process but worth it.
Provide updates. I’ve discovered that asking for referrals in the “Share an Update” box is a quick way to jump start my business day. You have to provide updates throughout the day worded differently and mix in sharing resourceful information to keep all eyes on you.
“Liking” someone’s post is huge. Browse the updates to see what your connections are up to and “like” them. Share their updates so you can capture their attention. LinkedIn lets them know that you “liked” or shared their update. Interact as much as possible on a daily basis. When they reach out to say thank you, engage them in a conversation to find out more about them.
Be patient. LinkedIn can provide you with instant clients but it is more of a source of residual clients. There are tons of lurkers who read your posts and file them away for when they need you. You have to be patient and work the site to your advantage. I’ve had people who said they’ve been following my activities for years before they reached out to purchase one of my services because the timing was finally right for them.
Contributed by Jerrilynn B. Thomas, Business Growth Strategist, who helps women collaborate to increase their female client base. Please connect with Jerrilynn on Women’s News Bureau, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
The big winner for this LinkedIn user is the groups.
Michael Raanan, MBA, EA, President, LandmarkTaxGroup.com, a professional tax firm in Southern California says he “uses LinkedIn on a daily basis to network and develop leads and referrals for the company. He says, “one way I do this is by joining LinkedIn Groups (I’m in 49 groups) and actively engage in discussions with other group members and professionals. This helps develop relationships with other professionals (some that are business owners) and build credibility for me and the business”. Michael shares more of his tips for LinkedIn success:
Create a group. I also created and currently manage a LinkedIn group called “California Business Owners” in an effort to stay connected with prospective clients and as a means of providing free tax tips and information to my target market. Additionally, I take advantage of the profile links, the ability to send messages to connections, the like button to show support, commenting on postings of others, status updates, and most recently, the question & answer section of LinkedIn. We also have an official company page on LinkedIn complete with company profile and an explanation of our services.
Ask for meetings. More importantly, LinkedIn has helped me generate over $10,000 in revenue for the company. Through LinkedIn, I’ve met approximately 20 business professionals in person, including business owners, managing partners of large law firms, and executives of well-known companies. Many of those meetings have led to referrals to Landmark Tax Group and the opportunity to serve clients that we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to reach. Being actively engaged on LinkedIn has been extremely rewarding and the best thing about it from small business perspective is, it’s free.
Contributed by Michael Raanan, MBA, EA, President, LandmarkTaxGroup.com. Please connect with Michael on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
He retired and started to build a whole new consulting career using LinkedIn.
Thomas E. Ackerman, CLU, ChFC, of the Pinnacle Path Consulting Group, is an author, speaker, consultant, and coach primarily in the financial services industry. His career spans 41 years and he retired 8 years ago and is now building a consulting organization.
He turned to LinkedIn: Thomas says that “before retiring, I travelled 45 weeks out of the year for some 20 years. During that time I have given 3000+ presentations, talks, and seminars and traveled internationally. Since starting my own firm, my travel has diminished greatly and as well as opportunities to speak. Knowing that visibility was an issue, I turned to LinkedIn.
Let’s grab a cup of coffee: Currently have approximately 600 contacts and growing rapidly. LinkedIn has been a great source of meeting business people locally. I conduct searches to find people in financial services in my area and reach out to them. Everyone responding receives a personal note from me thanking them for accepting my invitation. If their profile looks interesting, I suggest a brief coffee meeting to establish a more personal connection. This approach has helped immensely and I have several new client groups, as a result.
Contributed by Thomas Ackerman, Value Creator of Pinnacle Path Consulting Group. Thomas is the author of The ZFactor Business Accelerator for Financial Professionals and The ZFactor Sales Accelerator for Life Insurance Professionals. Please connect with Thomas on LinkedIn, Twitter or at ZFactorSales.com
Another win for being active in the groups.
Team Performance Expert, Lawrence Polsky, says a listing in a group led to opportunity for him. He says that “one day there was a listing in a LinkedIn group – ‘urgently need someone to teach change management in French’. I responded as my business partner is fluent in French as well as 4 other languages. We made one phone call and got the assignment to fly to Cameroon, Africa to work with the top 100 leaders of this Fortune 200 firm. We stayed in touch and we are now their preferred resource for working with leaders of teams going through change. We have 3 projects going on today concurrently with different executive teams in the US”.
Contributed by Lawrence Polsky, Managing Partner, PeopleNRG, a Princeton-based consulting firm that maximizes the performance of multinational teams facing rapid change. Lawrence is the author of the new book Rapid Retooling. Please connect with Lawrence Polsky on Twitter and LinkedIn.
He shares helpful & relevant information and he gets leads.
Jeff Zelaya uses LinkedIn as a way of sharing relevant information and status updates with his connections. Many of them who happen to be potential clients. Jeff reports that he has received leads that turned into new clients because of someone who has Liked or Commented on his status. Jeff says that asking questions, sharing unique and interesting updates gets people to engage by LIKING or COMMENTING both which show up that individuals timeline, getting you increased visibility and exposure. Here are more of Jeff’s strategies:
Share a white paper. One time I shared a white paper on email marketing and my connection commented thanks for the share, I followed up with her via email to see if she reviewed it and what she thought. I then asked for an appointment to discuss what she was doing and to see if I could provide her some ideas on how to improve her email marketing efforts. She was very impressed by my proactive approach and unique follow up that she decided to sign an agreement to use my company’s marketing software.
Share 3 times a day. Sharing updates at least 3 times a day keeps you top of mind and makes you easily accessible to the prospects.
Check out who views your profile. Once someone checks out your profile, if there might be some type of fit I will follow up with a quick note just introducing myself and thanking them for checking out my profile and then asking a question relevant to them. This typically leads to a deeper conversation and a connection invite being sent.
Use your network. LinkedIn also helped me in reaching a prospect that I was not able to reach via regular email. I researched the prospect’s LinkedIn page and saw that she was very well-connected in a Sorority that my close friend belongs too. I asked my friend to help me reach her through a LinkedIn intro, and that worked. Immediately, she apologized for not reaching out to me sooner and proceeded to make an appointment with me to discuss my companies services and software.
Contributed by Marketing Consultant, Jeff Zelaya, who teaches clients how to use LinkedIn effectively. Jeff is one of LinkedIn’s most recommended young professionals under 30 and he has conducted LinkedIn workshops for Fortune 500 companies, Universities and Non-Profits. Please connect with Jeff on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
He gets new leads with his optimized profile.
Bryan Shearer of the marketing company, Buhba Knows Marketing, says that he finds at least one new client a month when he actively prospects. Bryan says that many times he is contacted by people looking to do business together.
Bryan tells his story here: Let me real quick tell you my first success and then I can give you a few hints as to how I do it. My first client was a lawyer who just moved to the Pennsylvania area from California and was a bit lost to the whole digital world. He specialized in corporate law and taxation, as well as financial planning for expatriates. He contacted me via a search in LinkedIn and contacted me because I was less than an hour away from him. I run an online marketing agency and he needed to get his entire online profile set up and take care of a couple negative search engine results that came up under his name. He not only became a long time customer, but he has turned into a friend that I can consult with at any time.
Optimizing your profile is the trick. The majority of my leads come from people searching for me because of my optimized profile. LinkedIn operates similar to the search engines in that you need your profile to be optimized for keywords if you want people to find you for that reason. I make sure my main services are in the title heading and my other services are mentioned a few times in my profile.
Contributed by, Bryan Shearer, Founder & CEO of Buhba Knows Marketing.
Target his clients using their member groups.
Arif A. Mahmood is a an international technology lawyer and social media adviser who has worked with businesses on social media business development. Here is Arif’s strategy:
Identify groups where your target clients are members. One of the strategies I used to build networks when I was doing complex technology litigation was to monitor the field of clients I wanted to meet and then identify what LinkedIn groups that they are active in. I would monitor breaking news and post articles or reports into that group as soon as they were released. Often the target person might post a response or instead update their own status with the news. This is a perfect time to reach out and start a conversation based on this indirect development. It is also a great time to followup with an article you previously wrote on the topic or even better invite them to an upcoming even where you are speaking. This lead me to connect with a software developer who had his own business consulting firm and often needed legal advice.
Contributed by Arif A. Mahmood, B.Sc., LL.B., JD of Precedent New Media, a firm that uses social media cognetics that deals exclusively with the psychological user experience. Arif speaks and publishes in the area of International Technology Law and Social Media Marketing.
Relationship building is the key.
Eric Bandholz, founder of Beardbrand, an online retail store that provides products to the urban beardsmen, says that LinkedIn is about building relationships, so to successfully gain clients using LinkedIn you must be looking to build relationships. The beauty of LinkedIn is that the members are very open to networking and connecting – that’s why they are on LinkedIn in the first place. That being said, if you send out generic messages to your connections you won’t find success. You must take a genuine interest in your prospect and figure out how you personally can help them.
Starting a group. One thing that has helped me significantly has been LinkedIn Groups. I created a group for a specific industry and watched it grow to several thousand members. Being a moderator or an owner of a large group gives you abilities you normally wouldn’t have. For instance, messaging group members or encouraging new members to connect with you directly. By doing this, I have been able to get 4 to 10 connections on LinkedIn per day without any effort.
Use travel to your advantage. Finally, whenever I travel to a new city I will look up my 1st degree LinkedIn connections in that city and extend an offer to meetup over coffee. This purpose is simply to build relationships as one never know what will happen in the future or you never know who someone knows.
Contributed by Eric Bandholz, founder of Beardbrand, an online retail store which sells grooming products to the urban beardsman. Please connect with Eric on LinkedIn, Twitter and on his largest LinkedIn Group.
She uses LinkedIn for business-to-business success.
Brittany Berger, Content Coordinator at eZanga.com uses LinkedIn for business-to-business success. Brittany offer this strategy:
B to b. This advice is especially helpful for business-to-business companies but I can imagine it working for business-to-consumer as well. Finding new clients on LinkedIn can be done either through personal profiles or company pages. A company’s page will always be the hub of their presence on LinkedIn. Companies should fill out their page as completely as possible and use keywords that potential clients would search for, so they can find the company’s page easily. The most important things to fill out are the “About” and “Specialties” fields. They’ll appear on the main section of the company page and should summarize everything the company is about. Companies should also post occasional updates. Not only will it add content to the page, but it’s one way to reach out to followers and appear in their Updates feed.
Love this feature. The best feature of LinkedIn is the company pages for generating leads is probably the products and services section. Here, companies can create pages or mini-profiles for each of their offerings. Along with a description of the product, you can also upload a list of key features, a picture for the product’s icon, and a video. You can also link to the LinkedIn profiles of employees to contact for each product or service. Most importantly, current or former clients and customers can write recommendations for products and services, showing social proof that your company can deliver on its promises. When users search for companies on LinkedIn, keywords used in the profile and product/service description as well as recommendations impact the results. With a complete LinkedIn company page, your business will gain more visibility on the network and contain the necessary information to convert page visitors into leads.
Contributed by Brittany Berger, Content Coordinator at eZanga.com, an online marketing company. Please connect with Brittany on BrittanyBerger.com, Twitter and LinkedIn.
They use targeted LinkedIn ads.
My name is Shreyans Parekh and I’m the Director of Koyal Wholesale, the world’s largest wedding and event supplies company, with over 50,000 products shipping to 100+ countries worldwide. Koyal has been utilizing LinkedIn for client acquisition over the past two years utilizing targeted LinkedIn ads for event and wedding planning professional groups on the professional network. We have had tremendous success in generating interest from new clients through our LinkedIn visual ads.
Contributed by Shreyans Parekh, Co-Founder of Koyal Wholesale, Wedding & Special Event Supplies Company. Please connect with Shreyans on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram.
He finds the decision makers who are active in the groups.
Bryan Colligan of SeQRPay.com, a firm that helps merchants and brands get more sales and new customers through mobile, says that his company has signed up multiple clients via LinkedIn, specifically in the Gluten free market. The key is to find individual decision makers who are active on the site in Groups. These individuals are much more likely in my experience to respond either through a posting in the LinkedIn group or Direct Message.
Through LinkedIn we have signed up 5 different Gluten Free clients to date. I have also purchased services from vendors from experts in LinkedIn groups. It feels more personal than searching for a website because you are connecting to the individual.
Contributed by Bryan Colligan of SeQRPay.com. Please connect with Bryan on Twitter and Linkedin. SeQRPay offers mobile commerce solutions for small businesses by providing each business with their own branded iphone app and aggregating products from niche industry verticals into a common iPad and iPhone app, specifically a Gluten Free Ipad app that is soon to launch.
He says preparation and targeting is the key to success.
Peter Brown is a mortgage banker in New York and uses LinkedIn on a daily basis to find new clients. Here is Peter’s strategy:
Identify and connect. In my business my number one source of business is a Real Estate Broker or Agent. My method is this: I go to real estate websites like Trulia and Realtor.com and do research by Zip Code. I identify the people I would like to meet and I request to be connected through LinkedIn. Once my invitation is accepted I immediately send one of a handful of preformatted emails that are specific to the type of business the individual Real Estate Broker/Agent is proficient at. I have for accountants, financial planners as well. I constantly post useful information and share articles on LinkedIn for my connections to read and become more educated about mortgages and financing, but do not limit it to just that, I post interesting articles and links so people know what I do, what I like and who I am. It works.
Contributed by Peter Brown, Licensed Mortgage Professional, Private Client Division, Franklin First Financial, Ltd, a nationwide mortgage banker that provides mortgage financing to residential homeowners, real estate investors and developers.
Let yourself be found via searches with an optimized profile.
Shalom Klein of Moshe Klein & Associates, a firm that provides small businesses with bookkeeping, accounting and tax services, shares a few tips on how he used LinkedIn to bring in several new clients:
Create an optimized profile. Make sure your keywords and title accurately represent you to LinkedIn users. I’ve had many inquiries from people who were intrigued by my profile and wanted to schedule coffee to learn more about what I do.
Import and connect with all your contacts. This will guarantee that you will have access to all the second (and beyond) degree connections of your real relationships.
Identify your skills. Make sure your skills are highlighted so people are able to fully appreciate who you are.
Send messages. Send messages to your new connections so you can appropriately follow-up with them. Link to your website for more information.
Contributed by Shalom Klein of Moshe Klein & Associates, a firm that provides small business bookkeeping, accounting and tax services.
Her job is to bring in new business and she uses the free version of LinkedIn.
Molly Reynolds is the Director of Business Development for LUCID Public Relations and says that “the majority of my job is to bring in new business. And to do that – I use LinkedIn! Our firm deals with a variety of clients, but mostly those in the beauty industry. I use LinkedIn to find beauty-based owners or their marketing directors. It’s a handy tool, because I find businesses that I wouldn’t normally be able to find who are the most in need of our services.”
Learn about your prospect first. Before I approach the potential client, I read their profile, learn all about their business, and figure out how we could publicize them. Since I use the free version, I guess what their email might be, based on their website and name and google it. (I believe you can send mail in the paid version.) For example if someone were trying to find Molly Reynolds at Lucid Public Relations, they might try googling mreynolds @ lucidpublicrelations.com or molly @ lucidpublicrelations.com. Even an email that might not be on their website might be listed in a small corner on some unrelated site.
Do your research. So now I have their email, I’ve read all about them and I’m ready to go. So I email a casual, but extremely targeted email asking if they currently have representation – giving examples of their competition and similar clients. This usually generates a conversation, which leads to a meeting.
Contributed by Molly Reynolds, Director of Business Development, LUCID Public Relations, a public relations firm with offices in Los Angeles and New York. Please connect with Molly on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
He posts discussion topics and offer valuable freebies.
David Tang targets business professionals particularly those who work in management consulting, corporate strategy and marketing/branding. As such, LinkedIn is the ideal social network for us to find users–both customers and sellers. We’ve had success just by joining targeted LinkedIn groups and posting discussion topics. Our topics range from business articles published to our blog, to product links, to free giveaways. One of our most successful social media campaigns involves offering a free PowerPoint plugin called Flevy Tools, contingent upon the person sharing the page on LinkedIn. We’ve promoted this to various LinkedIn groups and it has been very well received.
Contributed by David Tang Founder of Flevy, an online marketplace for premium, corporate business documents (e.g. business frameworks, financial models, presentation templates). Please connect with David on his blog, LinkedIn, Company LinkedIn and Twitter.
She showcases her talents by contributing value in her area of expertise first.
Erica Duran has been a Productivity Expert and Certified Professional Organizer® for over 21 years and says she loves using LinkedIn to connect and find new clients! Here is her strategy. Erica says she is very strategic when it comes to LinkedIn. She posts about 6-8 posts a day in my feed, requests connections to about 3 or 4 people per day and picks which niche of client types she will focus on “hunting” for the month.
Offers to help. I am a business coach, but since I’ve been a Professional Organizer for so long I have a soft spot for ladies starting an organizing business. I often troll the groups on LinkedIn for women who want to start a Professional Organizing business and don’t know where to start. Or, people who have started an organizing business and are floundering. I simply email them and introduce myself and let them know I am here if there are any questions and they can learn more on www.ericaduran.co. By being very specific on my niche I have acquired clients that pay weekly for coaching resulting in a six-figure income for myself.
Identifies clients, contributes value first. Recently, I also started designing websites for my clients to get their business up and running. Traditional “web guys” were not getting the job done fast enough or professionally enough so I took the job into my own hands. If someone intrigues me on LinkedIn, and I don’t feel their website is doing them justice, I send them a 10-20 point critique on their web presence. They are usually pretty impressed that I took the time to write it out for them and that I know what I am talking about. This is a new revenue stream for me, but it has resulted in about 12 clients already since Jan 2013.
Contributed by Erica Duran of EricaDuran.co. Erica provides both virtual and in-person coaching around the globe through her programs, courses, workshops and products. Please visit Erica on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
She got a partnership with one of the largest companies in her industry.
Christina Daves founder of CastMedic Designs, a firm that provide fashionable accessories for medical boots, says that when she was seeking to gain product awareness and potential distribution channels for my new line of fashion accessories for walking medical boots, she started contacting possible partners on LinkedIn.
How she did it. With a product in a highly specialized space, I knew that it wouldn’t be the right fit for just any rep group or distributor. I needed a strategic partner with experience in the medical device space, specifically orthopedics, and contacts that could help secure distribution. I used the advanced search functions in LinkedIn, and was able to connect with exactly the kind of industry experience I needed. Within just two months of reaching out to this potential distribution channel, I ended up partnering with one of the largest medical supply companies who represents the largest orthopedic bracing company in the world. We are now starting to distribute throughout the U.S.
Contributed by Christina Daves, Founder, CastMedic Designs. Please connect with Christina at HealInStyle.com, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and her Blog.
First, he had to address the stigma surrounding his industry.
Yehuda Cagen, Xvand Technology Corporation, a firm that provides businesses of all sizes with IT Consulting and Remote PC Support, says that one of the key motivators for using LinkedIn is the stigma surrounding our industry – namely, cloud computing. Since cloud became an industry buzzword, more consultancies are including “cloud services” into their offerings without the requisite testing and development, literally testing their processes on the client’s time – at the expense of the clients. This has left many in the business community quite jaded.
Addressed the issues. To dispel the negative feelings, we’ve created eBooks, white papers, guidebooks and other tools to help the “lay” businesspeople understand cloud computing, the related risks and how to safely transition to the cloud. We’ve used LinkedIn Groups to disseminate the message. We will typically write a short blog article on related topics. If visitors want to learn more about the subject, they can download one of the aforementioned resources.
Provided resources. As a result, we’ve had thousands of visitors and hundreds of people download our materials, many of which actively engage with us and introduce us to others in their networks. The same issues have occurred on a local level (Houston, TX). I’ve heard many people tell me how turned off they’ve become due to unsatisfactory “cloud” experiences. So I’ve used LinkedIn to connect with people to speak at local events on Houston cloud computing topics.
Contributed by Yehuda Cagen, Xvand Technology Corporation, a firm that provides IT Consulting and Remote PC Support. Connect with Yehuda on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
They encourage employees to use LinkedIn to find leads.
Donper America, the North American division of Donper, is a globally recognized name in the commercial refrigeration industry and shares this Q & A about how the company uses LinkedIn:
What strategies did you use to land new business using LinkedIn? We’ve found that keeping conversation casual is a great way to meet new potential customers. Our employees take the time to get to know leads on a personal level before ever bringing business into it. This allows you to establish the connection without making it seem like it’s all about you and your needs.
Did you make any mistakes, at first? One of the most important lessons we learned was to get all of our employees using LinkedIn correctly. In the beginning the messages about our company were different based on the profile you looked at. To correct this, our marketing team took a step back and created a unified message that was then distributed that out to the entire team. This allowed us to strengthen our brand and our overall message.
What mistakes have you seen others making? We’ve found that many LinkedIn users don’t understand quite how the platform works or what it stands for. Many will join, create a group and talk solely about themselves. Those who do this will find little interaction and most likely no new business leads. On the other hand, some users are afraid of being too forward, and are unwilling to make connections with those they do not know. As long as you have some sort of connection (without it being solely business-focused), it’s ok to connect and introduce yourself to people you may not know.
What results have you seen? We’ve been able to use LinkedIn in conjunction with our tradeshow calendar. Two months before our tradeshows we start to build the relationships and when the show comes, those relationships are ready to bear fruit. This continues to build our lead counts month after month.
How would you recommend a “newbie” get started with a “get new business” strategy on LinkedIn? Join the conversation. Find relevant groups that are in your market, or are talking about your market and join their conversations, provide input and share relevant information/articles. If there isn’t a group directly related to what you do, start one. Just don’t make it solely about you and your company.
What are the pros of using LinkedIn to get new business? LinkedIn allows you to connect with other businesses and people who you otherwise would have never had contact with. Because of LinkedIn’s features, like skills and fields, you can easily find those who would be interested in your product and/or service.
Contributed by Donper America. Please connect with Donper on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Compiled by Annie Jennings, National Publicity Expert and Creator of JenningsWire online magazine.
Note from Annie Jennings: I LOVE this article! It’s filled with actionable strategy and promise — the promise of more success for all. As I was putting this article together, my eyes started popping out of my head. I was amazed at the stories from real LinkedIn users on how they were using LinkedIn to get new clients, new speaking gigs and BIG MONEY opportunities. Who knew LinkedIn was this good? Now we do. A special thanks to all of the contributors to this article for sharing your strategies with us. You guys did a great job for our JenningsWire readers and those wishing to be more successful marketing through LinkedIn. I am sure everyone is very thankful for your ideas and strategies. What I like best about this article is that it’s not just telling you to go out and hunt for new opportunities using LinkedIn, it’s telling you EXACTLY HOW THE POWER USERS are using LinkedIn to hunt! Tremendous and life-changing info shared. Again, nice job everyone!
Readers: If you liked this article, please share it with your social network, especially with your LinkedIn groups.
Get your pot of gold! The big money strategies revealed in this article take time, dedication and consistency. But according to our contributors, there is a pot of gold waiting for you at the end of your marketing rainbow. They say to be a good LinkedIn member, help others first, build personal connections, create optimized profiles, stay active with high quality posts and whenever you can, meet for coffee!
Related RoundUp articles on JenningsWire:
RoundUp: How Speakers & Bureaus Use LinkedIn To Get Gigs
RoundUp: How To Break Into The Speaking Business, Part 1
RoundUp: How To Break Into The Speaking Business, Part 2
To read similar RoundUp style articles by Annie Jennings please click here.
