Turning Acquaintances into Satisfied Clients
Social Selling is the practice of leveraging your professional online brand to fill your pipeline with the right prospects, insights & relationships. It also offers you the ability to add context to a conversation by tapping into the information social media encompasses, then use that newfound intelligence to engage with prospects in a way that piques their interest.
Professional Networking is further enhanced by social media channels such as LinkedIn. To see how the power of social selling works, it requires you to understand how your “network” functions. Sometimes the person you connect with is not as important as the person they can introduce you to. To further understand this, the following breaks down your connections on LinkedIn:
If an advisor wants to acquire new affluent clients they must build up a strong network of connections and engage in a process to effectively manage it. Social selling helps facilitate this management process by giving you another medium for frequent communication. This improves the perceived value of the services you offer while simultaneously building stronger relationships.
Triggering Approach – We recommend that the advisor contact each prospect once a month. In addition to this contact, there are also ways an advisor can stay top of mind for their prospects. Social selling provides opportunities for passive engagement (i.e. Liking a prospect’s new status update) that helps to keep the advisor top of mind between their contacts & conversations. Our strategy is to increase the frequency of proactive contact that affluent clients prefer while simultaneously staying relevant in between those contacts. A few action items for Passive Engagement in between contacts:
The development of personal relationships with wealthy individuals and turning those relationships into clients is one of the most successful marketing approaches that Top Advisors in our industry use. An effective strategy is to send the prospect an idea, white paper, or recommendation and follow up with a call. These activities can all be conducted through LinkedIn which is a less intrusive & easier medium for many prospects. With content becoming the Currency of the Modern Salesman, LinkedIn provides you a platform to continuously share your expertise & personality with your connections on an on-going basis. A few action items to put in place today to help you stay top of mind with prospects:
- Post a relevant article/whitepaper once a week on LinkedIn
- Post a Quote/Tip/Insight on LinkedIn Once a week
- Share an article/whitepaper directly with a prospect once a week through LinkedIn messaging
Before Speaking with a Prospect, make it a habit to check out a prospect’s LinkedIn Profile before meeting or speaking with them. Learn about their experience, background, connections, & activity to make the most of your meeting. This insight can not only help inform your conversations but also provides rich insight that can support your event marketing. Here is a checklist of helpful items that can take your sales discussions & event marketing to the next level:
Checklist to ensure your team’s Social Selling Opportunities Continue to Grow
