Linkedin for MSP Sales Teams
Linkedin for MSP Sales Teams
LinkedIn needs to be part of every MSP’ssales professional’s toolkit. You are targeting prospects in the Business toBusiness (B2B) arena, and LinkedIn is the largest and oldest social medianetwork used by business minded professionals.
By investing just a bit of time getting toknow LinkedIn, you will find that you will quickly get started expanding yourbusiness network, positioning yourself as an expert in your field, and makingcontact with the right kinds of people on the LinkedIn network.
Starting at the beginning: 10 tips to sharpen up your LinkedIn profile
I know it seems obvious, but you do need tosit down and create a complete, comprehensive an persuasive profile. Your profile establishes your personal brand.
Remember your profile is all about sellingyourself and your company values, keeping your customer in mind. I suspect youare looking to demonstrate you are trustworthy, and experienced, and have theattention to detail required by companies offering MSP services.
A quick checklist of the easy ones get you started
1. A professional headshot. No pubpictures, no wedding shots, please.
2. A high quality cover photo.Chances are your company has a library of suitable images that showcases whatyour company does.
3. Your job title, and correctlinks to your company’s LinkedIn page
4. Your education orqualifications and memberships
5. Your contact information which includes your email, your phone, and your company web address
Now, let’s move on the more sophisticated fields:
6. Your Headline. You have 40 precious characters to describe yourself. Make itclear what you do and what your company offers. Your headline is searchable inLinkedIn. And don’t forget if I do a Google search it could well be yourLinkedIn headline that appears in the search results.
7. Your About section. This is where you can let people know yourexpertise and knowledge and how you can help them. Your prospective customersare busy people, so craft that very first sentence to be perfect and assumethat is all they’re going to read. Don’t forget to use nice clean space betweenparagraphs to make it easy to read, and also use bullet points so yourconnections can scan through it quickly.
8. Your Custom URL. At the top right of your profile is a link called Edit publicprofile and URL. Here is where youcan change your LinkedIn URL to something friendly like linked.com/marlondavidsrather than linkedin.com/9045_yourname
9. Turn on Creator Mode. LinkedIn offers a “creator mode” that helps you to grow your reachand influence on LinkedIn. LinkedIn willthen offer the ability to add up to 5 talked about topics that you areexpert in. These are going to be keywords for your industry, like #ITSupport,#ManagedIT, #DataBackup or #NetworkSecurity. Your LinkedIn content will be eligible in suggested content for a widerrange of users, and LinkedIn users will be given the option to Followyou rather than Connect to you
10. Turn off “Viewers ofthis profile also viewed” LinkedIn automatically displays people similar toyou on LinkedIn, as well as the other people looked at if they viewed yourprofile. In others, LinkedIn will show you who your competitors are! Make sure to turn this off! To turn the “People also viewed” feature off, go toyour Privacy Settings and toggle the “Viewers of this profile alsoviewed” option to No
3 tips for making connectionrequests
1. Profile views. You are able to see who has viewed your profile, and this is theperfect time to make a connection request. Make the connection request, and besure to add a message and explain why you are making the request with areminder that they looked at you. Here is a standard phrase you could try:
· Thanks for taking a look atmy LinkedIn profile. I was thinking it might be useful for us to set a call toreconnect, and explore ways in which we might be able to benefit each other.Get in touch if you want to find a mutually convenient time for a chat. Best wishes, Marlon.
2. Premeeting connectionrequests.
3. Meeting followups.. We all meet lots of people during the course of the day, so asquickly as you can extend an invitation to connect.
· It was a pleasure meetingyou today and I hope you found our session to be a worthwhile investment ofyour time. Feel free to get in touch if you have any queries or would like acopy of our white paper Avoiding IT Meltdown.
4. Connection requests. You have just received a connection request; now is the time toreach back out.
Thanks for connecting with me on LinkedIn. I’vetaken a quick look at your profile3l and I thought you would be interested in our free Network Security Health Check service. I also wanted to mention our MSP Growth Strategy service designed for businesses like yours
2 Tips for creating LinkedIn updates
One of the biggest complaints I get is sales people saying they arejust to busy to use LinkedIn.
Are you kidding me?
LinkedIn is one of the most effective tools you have to keep intouch with your existing customers, sell them more, as well as prospecting andkeeping in touch with new custoemrs.
So here are 2 quick ways to find great content to share.
1. Tactic 1: Share the Love
Go to the LinkedIn search box and put in your keyword. You’re looking for great articles that somebody else has written that you think your prospective clients will be interested in. Be sure to go overand click on the Posts button. Right first on the list is an article by TechCrunch, a great source of information, highly regarded.
If you are feeling rushed, just press the Like button and it will automically get added to your feed and shared with your network. Better yet, Repost With your own thoughts. This will add this article to your ownfeed, adding your own personal comment or observation, something like “Investigations are underway following the Western Digital Breach. Let me know if you would like to know more"
Tactic 2: Company Updates
Your company is doing great things, so be sure to share the news.New case studies? Share it. New colleagues? Welcome them. New company 5 asideteam? Take a picture and make us laugh. Had visitors to your offices? Name themand thank them.
There is no shortage of company news you can share, even if it meansmaking a list of events, stories,
Bonus Tip: What is your social selling score?
LinkedIn has a fantastic feature that isn’t promoted enough. The LinkedIn Social Selling Index.
This free resource let’s you know where you rank in your industryfor your social selling skills using LinkedIn, how well you are connecting andengaging and building relationships.
Most importantly, it gives you clear scores on the components usedby LinkedIn to know if you are using the platform effectively.
