Can LinkedIn Really Help You Win More Customers?

linked-in
A very successful stationery salesman once taught me his secret ‘selling is like fishing’ principle.
He explained that a successful sales pitch starts by locating the right prospect first – Someone who you know for certain will ‘need’ your service. That means they are already buying from someone else or managing the situation themselves. They don’t necessarily ‘want’ you but they do ‘need’ the service. This is like checking that a pond has fish in it before trying to catch any.
In this scenario, you just need to identify the one thing that will open the door for you. You do this by asking questions…
So grab your rod and bait and let’s go fishing.
He told me to imagine that this person is in a small pond full of fish. The problem is that there is a long wall separating you so that you can’t see where the pond is – but you know it is behind the wall somewhere. So all you need to do is walk along the wall throwing small pebbles over until you hear a splash. Then you bait up (with the right bait of course) and throw your line over in the certain knowledge that you will get a bite.
linkedin blob

How is fishing over a wall like LinkedIn?

Every 2 seconds someone new joins LinkedIn.
It is also estimated that a third of all business professionals are now on LinkedIn. Even if you apply the 80/20 rule (which I think is quite reasonable) and only 20% of those people are actively using the network that is still a huge amount of business opportunity in one place.
It’s like fishing in a full pond! If you sell ‘business to business’ and you have a product or service that is of any use to anyone whatsoever, it is absolutely certain that some of the people on LinkedIn will want what you have got. It is a pond full of hungry fish just waiting to be found and fed. All you need to do is learn how to ask the right questions, find the right area of the pond and throw your line into the middle of it (with skill and accuracy).
It is that simple!

Fishing on LinkedIn comes down to three simple principles:

1. Identify and locate: You need to know exactly who you are looking for. This is the fundamental starting point (or, at least, it should be) for all marketing. Know your market before doing anything else. Once you have created your ideal customer avatar, you will be able to harness the enormous search power of LinkedIn to locate them. If you ask the right questions, you will find it is a full pond indeed.
2. Craft your profile: When you introduce yourself, ask for a connection, get found by others searching for you, or to promote your profile to your ideal prospects they must like what they see. Most people launch into talking all about themselves and their products with unsubstantiated claims about how great they are. The right way is to let your profile, your recommendations, your expertise and your track record speak for itself.
3. Casting your net: LinkedIn is an interactive, proactive and reactive social networking site for business professionals. The key idea that makes it such an opportunity-filled environment for doing business is ‘engagement’. Whether you are throwing a single line into the pond, having identified the perfect customer or spreading your net wide to catch the attention of a larger shoal, it is all a matter of sharing content that will attract their attention.
There is no doubt that LinkedIn contains an abundance of opportunity for businesses, large and small, both locally and globally. It is a place where genuine value can be shared, testimonials and evidence can be presented, and relationships can be built through engagement, response and experience.
All you need to do is learn how to fish in it like an expert.