Focused Social Selling - Optimizing Contact Records

Before we get started, you will have to make a decision. If you have not already made your choice, will you be deploying a CRM in support of your selling efforts or will you be relying on LinkedIn to serve in that function? Of course, this is assuming that LinkedIn will be your basis for identifying your select contact list. If not LinkedIn, you really do not have much choice other than a CRM as LinkedIn is the only network that can even approach the necessary CRM-like qualities that you will require.

You should have also defined your A, B, C classifications (based on your buyer persona and point system) along with the recurring touch schedule that you will assign to each. If you have not yet decided on the LinkedIn and/or CRM question, or you are not prepared to classify your contacts, you are not yet ready to move to this next step. We will assume that you are and that you have a working list of 300 or so select contacts at the ready. Awesome! As I am strongly recommending a CRM for this system, I will approach this and future articles with that being the assumption.[Tweet “Optimize your contacts in order to increase the effectiveness of the #LeonidasSelling System!”]

Due to some of the limitations that are found with LinkedIn, you may find yourself duplicating some efforts between the network and your CRM. As you will need to be in LinkedIn to review their profiles and their activity, this is unavoidable. Since you are already there, it only makes sense to assign tags and document your notes in their profiles which you will then replicate to your CRM.

These repetitive actions will not be necessary if you are going to use LinkedIn as your CRM. If not, I would probably suggest that you suck it up but, for tagging and initial profile review notes only. Confine your future notes and reminders to your CRM only. If this becomes a part of your clearly defined and consistent process, you will be much more effective at managing your contacts moving forward. Once your initial contact list optimization has been completed, it will be very quick and simple to follow this procedure for any new contacts as they occur.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a Solution Partner for Nimble Social CRM and will be using features that you may not find in your choice for a CRM solution. If you would like to learn more about Nimble, please feel free to contact me.

Away we go!

This is going to be tedious but, this is also not a race. You only have to do this one time so please take the time to do it right! You have your 300 contacts that you gleaned from search and other methodologies so maybe you do 20 a day and take 5 minutes on each. Now we will take this group and apply each one’s qualifications against your buyer persona in order to determine their A, B, C classification. You might look for 15% to be A, 30% B, and the balance C. This is something that you will need to determine.

Prior to digging in with LinkedIn you should have also imported your email contact lists (or a selected subset) to LinkedIn. LinkedIn will allow you to manage these contacts from within your connections list and this includes your contacts even if you are not connected to them and even if they are not on LinkedIn. You can also manage saved contacts that you have not connected to (you can save someone as a contact as an option on their profile page).

While in LinkedIn, review their profiles and take notes and create Nimble records using the Smart Contacts App (if there is not a record already in Nimble otherwise, edit the existing record). You will need to be subscribed to Nimble in order to use this app. Copy these notes to Nimble. As you are doing this, you will be assigning tags. Tag each as customer, suspect, prospect, or colleague (or influencer, whatever you like) and then assign an additional tag for their A, B, C classification. Finally, set their recurring reminders based on their classification. In order to optimize this process, you will need their name and an email address (which you can highlight and copy from their profile) however, using the Contacts App and will automatically flush out their social profiles.

Make sure that each person is manually added to your CRM (if not Nimble) with their appropriate tags, initial notes, and recurring reminders. What if they are not on LinkedIn or if you are not even sure if they are accessible on social? You can look at the Falcon.io or Discoverly chrome extensions which, incidentally, you can also run in line with LinkedIn’s own Rapportive (note that Rapportive is now basically a LinkedIn only tool although it does include Twitter). These are primarily Gmail apps. If you are thinking that you can export your LinkedIn records and then import those to your CRM, be aware that when you export LinkedIn contacts, you don’t get to export tags, notes, or reminders on those records and you will be exporting all of your first degree connections and only your first degree connections.

Watch the video below to see the Nimble Smart Contacts App in action with Linkedin. I should also tell you that the app also works with Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Gmail, and web based Outlook. For that matter, you can take it with you anywhere on the web and can activate it by highlighting a person’s name.

https://youtu.be/pSzaOkxCAhg

Optimizing your news feed

One of the most important things that we will be doing with this selling system is monitoring the social updates from our 300. With Twitter, we can do this with lists. Same for Facebook and Google+ has circles. LinkedIn has … nothing. There is simply no easy way to filter updates in your LinkedIn news feed by tags. So … we are presented with one or three choices …

Disconnect from everybody who is not on your list or you can …
You can visit each applicable person’s profile regularly in order to review their recent updates (I would suggest weekly) or you can …
Hide all updates from those people who are not a part of your list

Only #2 or #3 are practical and I am choosing to hide all LinkedIn connection updates from people who are not on one of these lists. Not my first choice but, we are looking to filter out the noise and if you are honest with yourself … there is probably a lot of noise on your LinkedIn news feed. The bummer is that you have to do these one at a time to hide and then, if you wish, to unhide these connections. You can do this from your news feed or from your connections list. Here is an example of the latter …

Initiate connections when appropriate (people how you have engaged with previously, who know you, and will accept a connection request at this early time). Connection requests and private messages should be personalized, identify commonalities, and/or cite something specific that you admire about them or their work. Remember WIFM (What’s In It For Me?). If I want something from you, what’s in it for them? Be sure to thank them after they accept. Other connection requests will be made following suitable progressive engagements.

Stay tuned for more fun to come!

Please note – All posts in this series will be tagged FocusedSelling. You will be able to click on that tag at the bottom of any post in the series and all posts in the series, most recent first, will be listed for you. So, if jump in the middle and you want to get started, work from the bottom up. Cutting in line and skipping steps would definitely be ill-advised. #FocusedSelling

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!