Use social selling to get more referrals

In its most current reporting, LinkedIn boasted 414 million members around the world. Many professionals are on LinkedIn because “you’re supposed to be,” but may not be harnessing all of the power that LinkedIn offers.

In our work with small businesses all the way up to Fortune 500 organizations, most professional salespeople tell us they use LinkedIn to research people they’re calling on, to reach out to prospects via Inmail (LinkedIn’s internal messaging system) and, much to the dismay of their managers, to look for a new job. While LinkedIn is a handy tool for all of those tasks, it also is a useful tool to generate proactive referrals and put appointments on your calendar with brand new prospective clients and customers.

Before the digital revolution, many professionals kept a paper file-card directory of their customers called a Rolodex. If you lost your job, you’d scurry back to your desk to retrieve the one most valuable tool in business, your Rolodex.

Most professional salespeople are committed in their weekly/daily behavioral plan to asking customers for referrals. Sometimes they get a referral, however, often the customer says “I can’t think of anyone right now, but let me give it some thought.” Now, in the era of social selling, LinkedIn essentially is a published digital Rolodex of potential prospect referrals for you.

Let’s share how it works. First, you must decide if you would like to make your LinkedIn connections visible to others. Our recommendation is to make them visible to people you are connected to. There is a courtesy known as reciprocity that suggests that if we are connected and we know each other, I’ll let you see my connections and you’ll let me see yours.

At this point in the conversation, a professional might say, “But I don’t know everyone I’m connected to and I might not want to share my connections with a stranger.” Here’s a suggestion. Unless you are a professional recruiter or celebrity, be judicious about whom you connect with.

Our rule is this: We will connect with someone if we’ve met them or spoken with them and there is potential at some point of us being able to help them or them being able to help us. Now might be a good time to “weed your LinkedIn garden to delete the strangers,” and no, they won’t know you unfriended them.

Here’s where it gets interesting. If you’re not already connected to all of your customers/clients who are LinkedIn members, do that this week. Next, add to your prospecting behavioral plan to do X number of LinkedIn referral reach-outs per week or month. Now, ask your clients when you speak to them, “Sarah, how have I and my company been doing for you?” Assuming the answer is “very good,” then your follow-up might be, “Thank you for your business. I’m guessing one of the ways you build your business is through referrals. We build our business that way too. Since we’re connected on LinkedIn, would it be OK if I took a look at your connections to see if there’s anyone in there that would make a good connection for me/us?” You’ll be surprised at how often your customer says, “Sure, go ahead.”

Your next step is to search through your client’s connections and make a list of the ones that would be interesting for you to have a conversation with. Armed with that list, circle back around to your client on the phone, in-person or via email, and ask them about the people on the list. A true professional will be sure to let his or her client know it’s fine if they don’t know the identified referrals well enough to make an introduction of if they’re just not comfortable making the introduction. More often than not, your client will want to help make the introductions that he or she can and then you’re on your way to generating more prospect conversations and more new prospect appointments on your calendar.

So take advantage of the digital age with social selling and put your proactive referral-prospecting strategy on steroids.

Bob Bolak is president of Sandler Training. Contact him at 303-579-1939 or bbolak@sandler.com.

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