You've Connected on LinkedIn ... Now What?

How many of us can honestly say that we even know, let alone have a relationship with, any more than a small fraction of our connections on LinkedIn? I’m ashamed to admit that I do not.

I accept your invitation and … that’s it. We’re connected. What a waste. Based on my experience that few others will take any further steps to build our new relationship, that would make both of us losers. If you are in sales, you’re also losing commissions.

There is quite literally a ton of great information (perhaps an overwhelming amount), much of it actionable social intelligence, that can be found on someone’s LinkedIn profile alone. We need to put this to work for us so I am going to approach this task in exactly the same manner that I was brought up in selling.[Tweet “What should follow a connection on LinkedIn?”]

Selling door-to-door, intelligence gathering started in the parking lot and ended up in the client’s office. Every little clue could potentially provide insight into their buying patterns, hot buttons, or interests that we had in common. Let’s apply these same info-gathering goals to social sales.

Take a look at my buddy, Stephen Lahey …

Where do we start? Let’s review his profile (section by section) and, as we talk about this, I am going to assume that either you do not have a CRM and/or that you are open to using LinkedIn as a quasi, or target market focused, CRM. What do I mean by that? I do think that a case can be made for using LinkedIn as a CRM, or for using LinkedIn in addition to a CRM, in order to add an additional social layer for your most important contacts.

We would like to do this overall review only once. Certainly, we will want to add to these notes as a person’s profile changes. For example, when they have posted an update to their status. We will take notes on the most important things that we find and we will then take these notes and transfer them to that person’s record. By doing this, every time we go to their profile page we will have one notation area to review that will contain a summary of everything that is important (based on your own needs and definitions) about this person. Here are my suggested steps and it starts with the invitation to connect … continue reading at Maximize Social Business.

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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!