Using LinkedIn For Sales – Rhonda Sher
using linkedin for sales
SUMMARY
Many entrepreneurs have already started using LinkedIn for sales because they understood how powerful the platform is.
On this episode, we’re here with Rhonda Sher. She is a published author, a keynote speaker, and a business development consultant specializing in LinkedIn training.
Rhonda talks about the importance of having a LinkedIn personal profile. Also, she gives away valuable tips on how we can utilize LinkedIn to generate leads and attract more clients in an organic way.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Make sure your profile is completely done and optimized. Have a banner that tells people how to reach you and what you do and a headline that describes the products or services you offer.
In the first three lines of your summary, let people know who you serve and what you do.
You can use Canva to create LinkedIn banners for free.
A business page is where you establish your credibility.
Have a personal LinkedIn profile because that’s where people can see your experience, contact information, third-party validation, endorsements, and recommendations.
Make it easy for people to contact you.
Let people know exactly the problem you solve.
Tell people something that allows them to relate to you.
Write your summary from the standpoint of your ideal client.
Post three times a day. Either share somebody else’s information or put a positive quote.
According to Forbes, 64% of all traffic to websites from social media is from LinkedIn.
Send a personalized connection request.
Stay top of mind with your connections and pick up the phone with the mindset of being of service.
TRANSCRIPTION: USING LINKEDIN FOR SALES – RHONDA SHER
Kamala Chambers
We’re here talking about using LinkedIn for sales and to get more clients.
We’re here with Rhonda Sher. She is a published author, a keynote speaker, and a business development consultant specializing in LinkedIn training.
Rhonda, we’re so happy to have you here talking about LinkedIn, which can be such a powerful platform. We’re really excited to dive in and talk about using LinkedIn for sales.
How do we use LinkedIn to attract clients? What is the very first step that we need to do when using LinkedIn for sales?
First Step When Using LinkedIn For Sales – Have A Complete And Optimized Profile
Rhonda Sher
The first step that you need to do when using Linked for sales is to make sure that your profile is completely done and optimized.
What I mean by that is do you have a banner that tells people how to reach you and what you do. Do you have a headline that doesn’t default to your current title but is clearly optimized? That if somebody were to search for you, you would come up pretty high. It actually describes the products or services that you offer.
An example might be I have a client that’s a real estate agent in Houston and you wouldn’t think that a real estate agent would do well with LinkedIn but it says Houston buyers real estate agent helping buyers and sellers in the Houston area has her phone number as opposed to just having her company name or real estate agent and that’s it, which would be her position.
Importance Of A Clearly Optimized Headline When Using LinkedIn For Sales
Rhonda Sher
Having that headline is critical when using LinkedIn for sales. In fact, she got a connection from a CEO in another city that was moving to Houston and reached out to her because of her headline and her profile and asked if he could help her buy a home in Houston because he was relocating there. That headline is pretty important.
I was going to just add that the next most important part is your summary.
Using LinkedIn For Sales – Things To Include In Your Summary
Rhonda Sher
That’s where you, in the first three lines, want to get somebody to know exactly who you serve and what you do so they’ll click see more and read your full summary, which should tell people what you do, who you serve, why you are unique, how to reach you, what’s your specialties are, and also have some third party validation of why people work with you. Does that make sense?
Kamala Chambers
It does. That would be in the About Us section, right?
Using LinkedIn For Sales – Understand That People Are Doing Business With People
Rhonda Sher
That would be in the Summary section where you include the information because we do business with people that we know, like, and trust so it isn’t just about what the product is that they offer or the service. You also want to know a little bit about them so that you can find an area of commonality to connect on.
Kamala Chambers
Yeah.
With the banner, any ninja tricks that you’ve found have worked the best?
Using LinkedIn For Sales – Create Free Banners Using Canva
Rhonda Sher
Yeah, actually it’s free too and it’s basically a website called canva.com and they have a template for LinkedIn banners and you can create amazing banners for free using Canva and that’s what I recommend my clients. If they want to do it themselves, just go to Canva and you don’t even have to figure out the dimensions. They’ve done all the work for you. You just have to import the text and the photos.
Luis Congdon
So now, if you have a LinkedIn business page, why do you think is important to go there or should we even have one? Is that something that’s important and if we do have one, what should we use it for?
Rhonda Sher
Great question.
A business page is where you establish your credibility but the reality is that people do business with people, not the business.
The business page is great and I think it’s an important thing to have so that people know a little bit about your business, how many employees you have and what you do.
Using LinkedIn For Sales – Have A Personal Profile
Rhonda Sher
However, you want to make sure that you also have that personal LinkedIn profile because that’s where people can see your experience, your contact information, your third-party validation, your endorsements, your recommendations. It’s a place to showcase case studies and videos. It’s where you post.
They both work together but business is typically done in the profile, not the business page.
The business page is more of the credibility factor just so that people know it’s a legitimate business.
Luis Congdon
Well, that makes complete sense and I agree with that on so many different levels when we’re talking about social media and the importance of a business page or somewhat like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Those are fairly different than LinkedIn.
Using LinkedIn For Sales And For Generating Leads
Luis Congdon
Going back to LinkedIn, when you create your profile, what do you think are some really important elements to have on your personal profile that can help dial you in and maybe generate some leads through LinkedIn organically?
Rhonda Sher
The most important things that interestingly enough are most often left off when using LinkedIn for sales is putting a way for people to contact you in your profile. It’s not in your contact information necessarily because often times, people have to be connected with you to get that information.
Using LinkedIn For Sales – Make It Easy For People To Contact You
Rhonda Sher
You want to make it really simple. Put either a link to your appointment if people book an appointment with you or if you don’t want to put your cell phone number there and you have a business phone, that’s great or get a Google phone but make it really easy for people to contact you.
The other thing that I think is really important to have in your profile when using LinkedIn for sales is letting people know exactly the problem that you solve.
We know that people take action for one to three reasons; take out the pain, to seek pleasure or fear of the future.
Rhonda Sher
So what is it that you solve for your potential clients or referral partners? Also, why are you different than everybody else that does what you do?
When using LinkedIn For Sales, putting that third-party validation is really important.
And I also think it’s important to put a little bit about who you are in a personal way whether that’s about causes that you care about or the fact that you may be a world traveler, just something that allows people to relate to you other than on a business level because we all do business with people we know, like, and trust.
Find Something People That Can Relate To You When Using LinkedIn For Sales
Rhonda Sher
In that summary section, I recommend that you take advantage of every single character that LinkedIn gives you to let people know what problem do you solve, why are your different, what do others say about you, how did they reach you, what are your specialties?
You even give them a list of clients that you worked with in the past, that’s a way that they can relate and see themselves as somebody like those clients and they would say “Well, if this person is working with this particular person on the profile, then it might be a good match for me.”
Using LinkedIn For Sales – Write Your Summary From The Standpoint Of Your Ideal Client
Rhonda Sher
You want to really write that summary from the standpoint of the person who is your ideal client or referral partner that’s reading it. If you were that person who was your potential client reading the profile, would you want it no more? Would you pick up the phone to say “I love to learn more,” or send a message or connect?
Luis Congdon
That makes complete sense and I think that’s something that a lot of times when people create profiles, they’re thinking about “What do I like about me? What’s cool about me?” They’re not really thinking in the shoes of somebody’s who’s reading their profiles and potentially thinking about hiring them.
What kind of information should you get across to them so they’ll be enticed to reach out to you?
Using LinkedIn For Sales And Not Getting Overwhelmed
Luis Congdon
Here’s the other thing that I know a lot of people struggle with is there are so many different platforms now with blogging, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, SnapChat that it gets kind of overwhelming and we don’t know what to do on each platform.
For example, something that I’ve been advised to do on numerous occasions is to post, do the post, do the updates on LinkedIn but I really do most of that through Facebook and somewhat through Twitter and after that, I don’t really feel enticed to do that.
LinkedIn doesn’t have that same kind of organic, fun social engagement, at least for me in the way that I like that Facebook offers.
How often should we be posting? Can you say just a little bit about posting content and how it might help you?
Rhonda Sher
Sure.
Luis Congdon
How do you optimize that so you don’t get overwhelmed when using LinkedIn for sales?
Rhonda Sher
That’s a great question.
The one difference between LinkedIn and all the other platforms that you mentioned is that people spend time on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and all of that but they invest time on LinkedIn.
Using LinkedIn For Sales – Invest Time On It
Rhonda Sher
I actually recommend that you post, and when I say post, I mean that’s not putting an article because that’s actually using Pulse which is the publishing platform.
You post three times a day either by sharing somebody else’s information or putting a positive quote or putting something up there.
How Powerful Posting Is In Using LinkedIn For Sales
Rhonda Sher
The reason for that is that you’re getting a following of people by posting and I’ll just share a quick story of about how powerful posting really is.
I’ve been connected to somebody since 2012 and every day I would see his posts and it was always something positive that made me smile. It was a motivation or a story or something that just brought a smile to my face and it was in my feed.
One day, I sent this gentleman a message and I said “Richard, I just want to thank you for making me smile every morning. I love what you posts and I share it with my network. I really appreciate that you take the time to find such great stuff to post.”
He wrote back and he said in a message “Nobody’s ever thanked me before. You have no idea what this means to me.” Little did I know that he has something called Global Goodwill Ambassadors which are basically people that just go out and do good in the world. He said, “I’d love to make you part of that.”
Using LinkedIn For Sales And For Getting A Lot Of Business
Rhonda Sher
To make the long story short, he nominated me to be a Global Goodwill Ambassador and posted it out to his entire network which is like 150,000 followers.
I got so much business from just that one little post that he wrote about me and I said: “Is there anything I can do for you?” He said “No, not at all. I’ve looked at what you do. I think it’s great. I just want to share it with my followers.” I said, “Well, can I tweak your profile for you?” He said “Why? Does it need tweaking?”
Using LinkedIn For Sales – Check If Your LinkedIn Profile Needs To Be Tweaked
Rhonda Sher
He is one of those people that doesn’t need LinkedIn to generate business. His job is one where his company tells him “This is the city you’re going to be in this week.” He goes out with the sales reps and helps them close. He’s out there for visibility but he’s not out there to get clients.
I said, “Well, I could use a little tweaking.” He said, “Let me pay you.” I said “No, no, no. Your money doesn’t work at my bank.”
I tweaked his profile for him and it was amazing the feedback that he got on it but what I got, which was so unexpected was this influx of business because all I did was say “Hey, I love your posts. Thank you so much for making my day.”
Using LinkedIn For Sales And To Drive Traffic To Websites
Rhonda Sher
Posting on LinkedIn is a really powerful thing to do and knowing that according to Forbes, 64% of all traffic to websites from social media is from LinkedIn, you realized what a truly powerful platform it is.
Kamala Chambers
Let’s talk about some of those advanced ways that we can start to get clients through LinkedIn. We’ve talked about posting, your banner, and personal information. What are some other ways that we can be using LinkedIn for sales?
Rhonda Sher
When after your profile is completely done and optimized, you could show it to somebody and say “Based on this profile, if you were looking for somebody that did what I do, would you connect with me or would you reach out?” And you get a yes.
Using LinkedIn For Sales – Send A Personalized Connection Request
Rhonda Sher
The next step in order to generate clients and this is truly something that works is you send a personalized connection request. You don’t just hit “connect.”
It might be something like “Luis, we met at the New Media Summit. We share common connections. It would be great to connect and learn how we can network for our mutual benefit.”
Well, you’re going to get that and look at my profile and say “Oh, okay.” I’ve done a very complete profile and most likely you’ll connect and accept and then, the way that the conversation turns into a client is I then send you a message that thanks you for connecting with me.
Using LinkedIn For Sales – Turn A Conversation Into A Client
Rhonda Sher
Then, I will endorse you for a couple of skills because I want you to get higher in the search engines with the endorsements and basically say something like “Just to let you know a little bit more about me and I’ll just tell you a couple of sentences about myself. I’d like to learn more about you and give you a link if you’re open to booking a 30-minute get acquainted call.” That’s how that DM starts.
How you really get business is you literally pick up the phone and this is the script that I use.
Script To Use When Using LinkedIn For Sales
Rhonda Sher
I have a practice that I teach and I use called 10 before 10 and that is I reach out to 10 people before 10 am and I would say “Luis, we’re connected on LinkedIn. I’m not selling anything. The reason I’m calling is I wanted to learn a little bit more about you and your business and see who in my network I might be able to introduce you to or if there’s somebody that might be a good referral for you.” You would be amazed at how much business happens when you just do that on a consistent basis and actually call people from LinkedIn.
Kamala Chambers
That is really fantastic to hear.
Before we close out, is there any last tip that will really supercharge your ability on using LinkedIn for sales?
Stay Top Of Mind When Using LinkedIn For Sales
Rhonda Sher
The tip that I would give when using LinkedIn for sales is to stay top of mind and what I mean by that is LinkedIn tells you when somebody has a birthday. They tell you when somebody changes jobs or they’re having a work anniversary.
Make it a point to stay top of mind with your connections and pick up the phone. That’s one of the most ignored things that people do and that’s what leads to the most business. It’s literally pick up the phone with a mindset of being of service not selling.
Using LinkedIn For Sales – Pick Up The Phone
Rhonda Sher
Truly, magic happens if you spend 30 minutes a day nurturing your network on LinkedIn.
Kamala Chambers
Rhonda Sher, everyone, we’ve been talking about using LinkedIn for sales and how to get clients through it.
I just encourage you all to go out today. Take some of what you’ve learned even if it’s just three things, and apply them to your own LinkedIn profile today. Keep thriving everyone.
