F.A.C.E.S. - A Step-By-Step Approach to Social Sales

Our last two articles have discussed the two most important disciplines in social sales as being prospecting and relationship-building. Drilling down a little deeper, there are important steps involved in each and we call these steps F.A.C.E.S. and today we will focus on the most popular social business platform, LinkedIn.

Before we get started, what is your elevator pitch? You will want to consider using a variation of this when connecting to others on LinkedIn. For example, if you are in the recruiting field, you might say …“Hi Jim, my name is Fred and we help people who are struggling to find quality candidates for their open positions. I already help companies like (similar companies) and I would like to add you to my connections on LinkedIn”. Having a good elevator pitch(s) is critical for just about every aspect of social sales. Here’s a link to a great eBook on this topic!

Onto F.A.C.E.S. …

Find – People and Opportunities

Upload your contact lists to LinkedIn. The service will allow you to send bulk invitations to people you know who are already on LinkedIn but, please do not do this! Nothing says “I don’t really care” quite as well as a template invitation. For that matter, do you really want to connect on LinkedIn with everybody on your email list? I doubt it. Instead, make notes of those you wish to connect with and do this on an individual basis. By uploading your contact lists, LinkedIn will also alert you when one of your contacts joins the network.
You should also be sure to add your work and education history to LinkedIn as the service sees folks who you work with, used to work with, or went to the same schools, as natural connections.
Go to your target company’s websites and find “connect to follow” links for social networks. Follow those and then bookmark them for now as you will want to return to these networks at a future time.
At the company website, find a staff listing if that is available. Quite often these will include title, department, phone, and email addresses.
Learn to love LinkedIn Advanced Search! Remember that advanced search can also be set to look beyond that of your established network. It can search all of LinkedIn!
Use people searches on LinkedIn to find people at specific accounts based on keyword searches pertaining to your target market. You can use “AND” and “OR” syntax as a part of your search when multiple keywords are involved. If you are looking for specific companies, do multiples at one time and then save the search. You can save up to three searches and you will be email notified of new people matching your search.
Use “update” searches on LinkedIn to find people and opportunities based on keywords and/or companies. Updates can include changes to profiles as well as specific posts mentioning these words. Save these searches. You are not limited to three but you will also not be notified by email as you would be in people searches.
Find what groups your potential connections belong to and join those if applicable and allowable. This will allow you to engage prior to connecting, if desired, and will make connecting in the future easier. Remember too that LinkedIn groups are “connection agnostic”. In other words, you can be in the same group, and engage with anyone within that group, regardless of whether or not they are even in your extended network. This means, anybody on LinkedIn!
Leverage your network!

Attract – Help them to find, and want to connect to, you. This would be considered a subset of FIND.

Provide value – This gives folks reasons to connect with you in the first place and then encourages them to engage with you and you have to ask yourself this exact question and apply the answers in everything you do … “Why would people want to connect with me, stay connected to me, and allow a relationship to build between us?” If you don’t have answers to this, and can’t demonstrate same to others, you might as well go home because you are already screwed.
Optimize your profiles for search by ensuring that keywords that others would look for when trying to find somebody like yourself to fill a service or a need, can be found throughout your profile.
Establish and share your expertise.

Connect – To those who are in your targeted accounts, or you would consider to be key allies and influencers, and then expand your network from there.

Go back to your LinkedIn searches and evaluate people for potential connections.
When connecting, be sure to personalize your invitation. Look at common connections that you can reference. If they are within an existing account … you have “done business with them”. Here comes your elevator pitch. Why would people want to connect to you? “Please connect with me so that I can spam you with offers” is probably not your best approach.
Use tags to organize your contacts by company or however else you may wish to sort these.
Set recurring contact reminders to stay in touch. This would be different from a scheduled appointment or call-back. This is a feature of the new LinkedIn Contacts interface (on your contact’s profile page) and this feature may or may not have rolled out to your account yet.
Follow target company pages on LinkedIn.
Encourage people to connect with you. Your email signature should have links allowing people to do so. LinkedIn does have tools to assist you with this if you are using Outlook. For other services like Gmail, I like WiseStamp but you might also look at BrandMyMail.
Monitor those who you contacts talk to, what they are talking about, and then evaluate both as possible connections and potential opportunities. If, and only if, you can provide value to the conversation … jump in and do so!
Add Xobni and LinkedIn Outlook Connector to your Outlook and Rapportive to other email clients. All of these services make it easy to send invitations to connect right from within your inbox.
Ensure that you have three or more contacts in each department/division/company who you can count on to be your inside salespeople who will look out for you. At the same time, you are CYA should your key contact move on to another position or to a different company.
Be sure to ask your contacts if they use LinkedIn.

Engage – This is the continuing process of relationship-building and it combines discovery, listening, and conversation.

What do you know about their likes and interests? Do you have something in common that is not work related? Or, maybe you can direct them to sources that they might find to be of value.
Post valuable updates that demonstrate your interests and expertise within your market.
Like, share, and comment on articles by others.
Endorse and recommend others where appropriate. I have mixed feelings about endorsements but, recommendations rock!
Email articles that you think that they will find to interesting/of value and ask if they know anybody else in their organization that would benefit from these. A good RSS Reader like Feedly will help you with this.
Use direct messaging to get past the noise.
Connect them to others.
Separate yourself from your competitors. Remember that you do not want to be seen as a vendor. You want to be seen as a team member, a trusted advisor, and as a connector.
What is their preferred way to communicate? Use that
Their preferred network? Monitor that and pay close attention to it

Seduce – Sell, Secure, and Support. This is the easy part providing you have done the other four steps well! The sale is always the natural culmination to any well planned and executed process! Be honest about this. When have you ever been able to blame the loss of a sale on your inability to close? As for support, this is an on-going effort. Sales has always been to a large part seduction and being effective at all levels of this activity requires a long-term commitment to the process.

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Bio
Twitter
YouTube
Latest Posts

Craig M. Jamieson

Managing Member at Adaptive Business Services

Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. Adaptive Business Services provides solutions related to the sales professional. We are a Nimble CRM Solution Partner. Craig also conducts training and workshops primarily in social selling and communication skills. Craig is also the author of "The Small Business' Guide to Social CRM", now available on Amazon!