How to Convert Clients Using LinkedIn
As of this writing, LinkedIn membership stands at 562 million professionals in over 200 countries and territories worldwide. This membership represents a massive opportunity for anyone involved in sales. For a real estate agent, LinkedIn is especially attractive because the focus on professionals means most LinkedIn members have a career, and so make prime homebuying candidates. One mistake agents make, however, is to treat LinkedIn like a resume platform. They post their resume and leave it at that. Smart agents, however, know LinkedIn is a massive prospecting goldmine. To help you get smart about LinkedIn prospecting, here are three things you can do.
Client-focused Profile
Visit most real estate agents’ LinkedIn profiles and what you will find is a resume written in the third person. What you will not find is how any one of these agents can help you buy or sell your home. In other words, there is nothing that differentiates one agent from the next. To stand out, craft your profile like a landing/lead generation page. Ask yourself what a prospective client will be looking for and what information will help convince them to work with you. Ditch the third-person writing for first-person writing that refers to how you assist clients and what makes you different from the rest.
Finding Prospects
562 million is an enormous number. Thankfully, LinkedIn provides filtering options that can bring that number down to a few hundred. You may need to upgrade to a premium LinkedIn account to take full advantage of these filters. When filtering, focus on niching your targets. For example, you could decide to focus exclusively on doctors in your city, or business owners with businesses ranging from 10-50 employees. Whatever the filters you use, niching will help you craft your sales messages to fit this audience. Now that you have a list of prospects, how do you go about capturing them and turning them into leads?
Composing Messages Prospects Will Read
Cold messaging prospects is probably the most delicate part of any sales process. If you do it wrong, you risk either being blacklisted or worse yet, reported for spam. On LinkedIn, you do not want to sully your reputation by spamming people. To get your messaging right, first craft a series of messages you will send. Fine-tune them for neutrality, clarity, and purpose. Avoid long messages and complex calls to action. A rule of thumb you can use is to introduce yourself then ask for permission. Seth Godin calls this permission marketing and could be to send a follow-up email or to send a link to your website. The important thing to remember when messaging prospects is that many will not reply. A reply rate of about 10-15% is considered a success.
Cultivating Leads
Now that you have a stellar profile, know who your target audience is and are a messaging ninja, it is time to cultivate those leads. One fantastic way is to figure out how to move them from LinkedIn to your CRM system. You can do this through an email request or an exchange of contacts. Once there, add them to your sales pipeline. For those who have not yet made the transition, LinkedIn has provided some excellent tools, like their recently added IM chat functionality that allows members to chat each other up like on Facebook Messenger. Keeping your prospects engaged and interested will help your LinkedIn marketing efforts bear fruit over time.
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