It seems that in today’s increasingly digital world, you have anyone on the planet within a click’s reach. So many social media platforms are designed to make communicating and engaging with others as easy and fast as possible. So, with all this immediate contact at our disposal, why not use it to our advantage?

As a Business Influencer (and yes, you are in fact an influencer), your impact on others is limitless— if you implement your influence correctly. LinkedIn, the leading professional networking and job search app, is a necessary tool for taking social media by the reigns and using it to build business. Yes, connecting with professionals in your industry, whether you know them or not, is great for building your network. But what’s the point of your large network if you are not taking the extra steps to convert these connections into clients? With each accepted invitation to connect comes a whole wave of opportunity. Watch this Social Jack Flash Class!

What is Social Selling?

Social selling is the process of developing relationships as part of the sales process. Today, this often takes place via social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, but can take place either online or offline. Examples of social selling techniques include sharing relevant content, interacting directly with potential buyers and customers, personal branding, and social listening. Social selling is gaining popularity in a variety of industries, though it is used primarily for B2B (business-to-business) selling or highly considered consumer purchases (e.g. financial advisory services, automotive, realty).

Social selling has become more popular since companies have looked to increase their return on investment of social media interaction. Sales teams within organizations frequently mine data from social media that may help them connect to customers in order to create a more genuine sales lead. The technique frequently focuses on approaching potential clients in a less direct way, meaning they don’t interrupt their daily lives with cold calls and hard sells. Koka Sexton stated that the art of social selling is said to speed up many sales processes, while also improving relationships.

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Let’s take a look at some statistics from the International Data Corporation:

75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-level/vice president (VP) executives surveyed use social media to make purchasing decisions.

Online professional networks are the number one information preference of buyers in the final stage of the purchase process.

Social buying correlates with buying influence. The average B2B buyer who uses social media for buying support is more senior, has a bigger budget, makes more frequent purchases, and has a greater span of buying control than a buyer who does not use social media. B2B buyers find the greatest benefit of social media is gaining greater confidence in and comfort with their decisions.

How Many Contacts Do You Have That You Cannot See?

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When we think about our social reach, you may be connected to someone directly, through another person or through many different people. What happens is, information gets passed down a line. One person may see what you’re doing online, believe that it may be of value to someone else they know, then connect you to their connection. This opens up an array of networking opportunities

The LinkedIn Network

Even with 500, 400, even 300 industry-related connections, this puts us within degrees of millions of possible connections. When you look at someone’s profile on LinkedIn, you can see how many shared connections there are between you and them. This is the beginning of the formation of “clusters”. It is essential to know how to talk with the people within these clusters, more specifically, find the ones that matter.

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Goal: Prevent Clicking Roulette!

What we want to prevent is “clicking roulette”. It’s normal to go onto social media and begin clicking on every possible prospective client you see, but it’s not efficient or beneficial to us. We may log onto LinkedIn with one goal, but soon find ourselves buying gadgets from the Amazon trending list, or making trades on Draft Kings. This lack of focus is not going to generate appointments.

Personal Challenge: Make it a goal for yourself to set five minutes (and only five) to go on LinkedIn, and make your sole intent to leave with one appointment. Whether it’s a phone appointment, a Zoom call, or just a coffee date, make that your one goal for five minutes on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Power Moves- Let’s Get Those Appointments!

1) Your Profile = Your Professional Brand

Think about your ideal target and whom you want to start conversations with. Take the time to identify your target audience, then make sure your LinkedIn profile speaks specifically to that group.

Your profile photo should represent who you truly are. It should be current, welcoming, and you want it to portray how you would look if a client were to be seeing you at a meeting or an event. If you put a tie on for professional headshot photo day at work, but you don’t usually wear a tie, that is not a good representation of your personal brand.

Ensure that your profile headline is clear and communicates to people what you do and how you can help them. Putting where you work is unnecessary because it is already located at the top of your profile. You want to answer the clients’ question: “What is your solution that you are bringing to me?”. Your headline is what the potential client will see first when they land on your profile, meaning it should be packed full of keywords (within LinkedIn's limit of 120 characters, of course) relating to your specialties and services. If they were to search for a combination of keywords pertaining to the service you provide, you want to be first on the list of profiles after they press enter.

Joseph has a clear & concise headline of exactly what he can provide to his potential clients. His profile photo represents him well, for if we were to meet him at an event, this is how he would appear. You can see he included speaker and author in his headline-- While this may not be his primary job, he included this service in order to be found via keyword search.

2) Home Page Scan (UNE)

Remember that personal challenge from earlier? When you log onto LinkedIn, use part of those five minutes to scan your homepage. This step is where you literally scroll through your LinkedIn feed. If you’re noticing a lot of content and profiles that don’t apply to you and your goals, you have the wrong network. You can hide this unwanted content, or even unfollow/disconnect to these people that don’t belong in your circle.

Example: If you are hosting an event and have 500 people you know, but 50 of those are the decision makers, those 50 people are the ones you want at your event. LinkedIn, and social media in general, is one huge event. Invite the people who belong, and drop the ones who aren’t benefiting you or your business.

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Above is what your LinkedIn home page looks like. Time to scroll and see who is helping you reach your goals— and who isn't. Remember: Social Media is like an event. Invite those who should be apart of it.

Within two minutes of your homepage scan, you should be able to spot somebody worth starting a conversation with.

3) Network Diving – Level One

Find someone within your network whom you believe is reputable, is always making referrals, or who is just a good friend. Then, “dive” into their LinkedIn network.

Example: Tony is a good friend of mine who I KNOW would always be willing to introduce me to people in his network. Find a connection like Tony and try diving into their connections!

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Don’t be afraid to get in touch with your established network and ask them to introduce you to people in their network. Take the “social” part of social media literally, and dive right in to new opportunities.

LinkedIn has a feature where you can search specifically for a certain industry, seniority, or job title of that connection pool to ensure you’re reaching out to your preferred target audience.

Here's an example of a filtered search within Tony's network:

Customize the search on your friend or colleague's network to hone in on a target that meets your needs.

4) Conversation

Now that you took that leap of faith diving into a new network, it’s time to start a conversation. Think back to those first five minutes on LinkedIn, we’re at the point where times halfway up.

You have identified that new person whom you want to start a conversation with, now it’s time to engage. Isn’t engaging what social media is all about? Select a recent post that your prospective appointment has shared and start a genuine conversation with them in the comments. Something as simple as making an authentic comment is a guaranteed way to opening up new doors for you and this potential client. Put the sales aside for a second and really focus and touch on what matters to them. Start that dialogue, and be sure that you are all in on investing in them. This will establish a feeling of authenticity and trust before the actual conversation even begins.

Example: You found a potential appointment, Spencer in this case, from that nose dive into Tony's network. Now that it's time to start a conversation, head over to Spencer's activity to find something you can either comment on or include in your future messaging.

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5) Set the Hook – Convert

Now that you've done all that work (about 3.5 minutes into your 5 minute limit!), you're ready to get that appointment. Here are a few example strategically formulated messages you can send to your future client for your best chances of landing that conversion.

The “Catch Up”

This introductory message shows a genuine, authentic approach to breaking the ice with your target appointment. Writing this message needs to be done in a targeted fashion. Confirm that this person has a reason to utilize you and your services and that you as well are targeted in this initiative.

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The “Fresh Connect”

It is important to thank people for connecting. If you’re lost on ways to initiate that conversation, thanking someone for simply connecting with you is a great place to start. It’s personal, simple, and gets straight to business.

We want to include a specifics with formulating this message. Specify how you want to meet and let them know you’re interested in working with them. Don’t leave this potential client wondering why you reached out.

Always provide two times and dates you are available to meet! If their response is delayed, at least you ignited a dialogue that can get picked back up in the future. Don’t forget to insert forms of contact information so you are easily reachable. While LinkedIn does not allow for automated signatures on messaging, it is always helpful to keep a document handy with a custom signature you can quickly copy and paste.

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The “Continued Call”

One of the most important things about the continued call message is that you started the conversation. Remember that initial chat you had in the comments of the potential client’s post? It should be referenced here in this direct message. You can lead with language like “As promised…” or “Like I mentioned…” as an extension of that previous conversation. Make your intentions clear.

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The “Transition”

This message can be technically viewed as an email validation. Make sure you have that intent to go from this conversation, to the next.
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The “Referral Call”

Adding something relevant and specific to this potential client will allow them to feel like you truly care about them as a person, rather than just another possible conversion. Now, you are actually offering them referrals, letting them know that this connection will be mutually beneficial.

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All of these steps to creating appointments on LinkedIn are meant to be completed within just FIVE minutes after logging on. Ditch the phone, turn off the TV, and focus on using your time on social media to gain new business. Every message you’ve seen thus far has included a personalized touch, clear intent, specific times and dates, and contact information. Who knew that five short minutes could be amplified into creating appointments? It is essential that we utilize the ever-growing digital world to our advantage.

What did you take away from these 5 LinkedIn power moves?

About the Author

For over 30 years, Dean DeLisle, has demonstrated his ability to accelerate bank, financial, and insurance institutions to stimulate business development while in a compliant environment. As Founder of Forward Progress, Dean and his team have helped over 2,000 clients assess and improve their online marketing and social networking results and trained over 120,000 professionals in over 35 countries with their online programs on their Social Jack™ Academy.

Dean has recently launched his new book, FIRST, The Street Guide to Digital Business Influence, which also tell stories of leaders within banking who have changed their culture and brand impact online.

Watch this Social Jack Flash Class

 


Are you looking to get more sales accomplished in your field? With the power of Influencer Marketing, people have the ability to build their brand and sway others, but most do not know how to effectively use it. Influencer Marketing, when leveraged properly, has the power to bring in more sales and generate leads. Our Influencer Guest, Jimmy Z, talks about the best way to fill your sales funnels with tons of great tips and tools on this episode.

Learn to Influence with Integrity

During this podcast, Jimmy mentioned that the main difference between proper Influencing and manipulation is intent. A great Influencer is an individual who looks to create a win-win situation for all people involved. Another important aspect of “Influence with Integrity” is that good Influencers look to add meaning to what they sell to people. Many people will ask you why they should bother buying your services. You want to provide more value to your service than what they originally thought. When you are deeply invested in what you want to sell, you can add more personal value to a product which WILL entice people. Bottom line here – personality and passion will add more value to anything!

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: You can use this information and apply it to the Digital Marketing world of sales. Social media is unique in that it allows us to connect to people and show off a brand. For any product you sell, you want to create content that shows how important it can be for customers. This kind of content is what we call “value-based content.” With this, you should be giving the customers as much as you can about a product by adding that personal value to your messages. If you just try a quick joke or description on social media and then wait, people will ignore what you have to say. Give them as much as you can right from the start. When you do that right, customers can refer you to others and those others will continue referring you!

Determine Your Free Line

While personal value is important to sales, you are not going to get paid because people see the personal value you are adding to the product. That is mainly to help them generate interest in what you want to sell. However, that interest can be used to convert a lead into a customer when they get some free content from you. To effectively get customers on board or invested in your product, you need to offer free things that get them thinking about you. Maybe your company publishes reports that anyone can access. Or, maybe your company uses a blog or webcast (similar to what we do at Social Jack). When you use this free material, you can get very personal with prospects and get them into your funnel. Your line of how much “free” material you give away can depend on what company you work for, but it is effective nonetheless. Think of this content as your fish hook (or net, so you can grab more fish). By hooking potential leads at the start, it is easier to get them to come on as customers!

Create Credibility

Now, without value, your customer will not be interested in your product which can be bad. However, another thing that can hurt you is not having the proper credentials to sell your product. As an Influencer, you are the expert on your career field. However, if customers do not see what gives you the right to speak to something, that will lose interest the moment you talk to them. In order to fix this, you need to build credibility. Make sure your information on social media is up to date and that people know why you are trustworthy. You can’t generate interest if the trust isn’t there.

“The two keys to selling are interest and credibility.”            – Jimmy Zawiski

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: The easiest way to build credibility is by writing a book. Did you know that Amazon Kindle can do this, not to mention, make it EXTREMELY easy? Kindle has a self-publishing feature that educates you on everything you need to know about publishing a book and putting it on Kindle for FREE. Make use of this and build your credibility!

Bonus Influencer Tip: Amazon has an additional sister site called Createspace. This site not only gives you formats you can use to publish a book, but can also provide quotas on much it would take to print it. You can also connect it to a phone number so people can order a printed copy for a cheap amount ($3-5 at most). This is a GREAT way to spread your Influence at a low cost!

Create a Sequence Map

Do you know what you want to say about product but not sure exactly how to say it? Jimmy recommends using a sequence map, which is a map filled with empty bubbles. In this map, you write down a different thought about your product in one bubble. Once you’ve written down everything you want to say, you can then develop a flow by connect one thought to another which will connect to another. By writing down what you want to say, you can better practice and effectively sell the product by knowing when to bring in that personal value.

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: If you are not one for writing stuff down, you can do it electronically too! Pages and Microsoft word can have you use bubble shapes in a document as well. You can type in the bubbles and then draw lines to connect everything!

Find A Way to Teach a Course

Another way that you as an Influencer can bring in more people is by taking your expertise and turning it into a course for people. This can establish credibility as people can see you break down material and demonstrate why you are an expert in this field. Doing this will generate interest in your product and turn those people into customers who want to learn from you. When you have a quality course and quality marketing, you will generate A LOT of customers!

“The greatest thing you can do is take your thoughts and turn it into a course.”                                                          – Jimmy Zawiski

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: Jimmy recommends Kajabi if you want to teach an online course. It gives users a good set up to explain things and when mixed with awesome marketing, can bring in serious revenue for you!

In Summary

Social media has a massive Influence on sales in this age, and following these tips make it simple! Remember, adding personal value to a product will generate interest, but just be aware of how much free content you give people to egg them on. You also need to establish trust with them by having proper credentials to speak to a product’s value. Luckily, there are endless resources that can help you grow your credentials and, by extension, your Influence. When you market yourself right, your sales fishing net will bring in a lot of brand new customers!

Influence Factory live episodes air Wednesdays at 12pm CST; Register here.

You can also subscribe to previous and upcoming shows on the Social Jack website.

We hope to see you in our next Influence Factory!

 


Last week’s edition of the Influence Factory brings you the latest industry news and lets you hear from Industry Experts! Last week’s Influencer Guest, Michael Angelo Caruso, talks about how he has built his Influence through the use of Events.

When speaking at events, there are certain connections that you make at them. As speakers, we tend to just come in to an event and then leave. There are thousands of opportunities to network with other attendees when you present. You want to find ways to make your material connect to them. We will go through the key points Michael discussed during the webcast here so you can present like an Event Influencing pro!

The Power of Cognitive Speaking

The way we affect our audience during a presentation can be boiled down to a simple science. Cognitive speaking sounds like a new scientific term, but it has always been in the art of presenting. In our webcast, Michael spoke about how Brian Tracey utilized this psychology to understand how leaders and presenters influence others. Cognitive speaking usually involves having a bias. This can be an optimism, pessimism or even confirmation bias. When leaders talk, they can use this to sway an opinion and even sell someone on an idea. You also want to use what you say to show people that you are passionate about your area of knowledge, something that further enhances engagement. Cognitive speaking requires a human approach so make sure you do it!

“When you can show us what you care about, it makes you seem more human.”

 – Michael Angelo Caruso

It’s All in The Details

One way to gain influence when speaking at events is to pay attention to the details (AKA your audience). This seems like an obvious point, but so many people rarely utilize it to its fullest extent. In these days, we are more invested in ourselves than we are with other people. If you want to see how your audience is reacting to your material, Michael said you “should look up at your audience once in a while.” In doing this, you are able to see what they are doing, AND you make your lesson more personalized. This is simple math: Eye contact plus addressing the audience = engagement.

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: A “ride along” can be helpful when you are doing a presentation. This means that someone watches your presentation and can tell you things that you miss or do not realize that you are doing. We can become too invested in a presentation that we fail to change the way we address things to people. When we are told what we miss, we can be more aware of it so we can adjust the flow of a presentation for our viewers.

Watching your language

There are half a million words in our language and it can be a challenge to find the right words for a response. We may be able to anticipate some things our audience might say but we really need to think on our feet about the words that will create an impactful response. We do this by using word substitution. When you practice, you may find yourself using words that don’t give the presentation impact. By subbing out those words, you can find other words that give your speech a boost.

“While complete perfection is not possible, you can get very close to it when crafting a presentation.”                    

 – Michael Angelo Caruso

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: You can make speeches more effective during preparation by having a deep vocabulary. There are websites that often do a “Word of The Day.” If you want to deepen your word bank effectively, finding websites that do this can be a HUGE help. Michael recommends Wordsmith.org as a personal favorite.

Build a Good PowerPoint

Unfortunately, PowerPoint has become a bit of a crutch that many people are overusing in presentations. The best presentations will have certain restrictions for PowerPoints. If you are to use one, use it in the middle third of a presentation. The first third should be used to develop a relationship with the audience and the final third should be your “call to action.” A presentation should also use oversized text (limiting how many words are in a slide) and no more than one photo. Remember, people will turn their back to the audience if all their points are in the presentation. You want to make sure your audience is engaged and that cannot happen when you have your back to them.

“The fastest way for leaders and salespeople to excel is to master the art of the presentation.”                                                                                                                        – Michael Angelo Caruso

Knowing The Colors of Personality

While it’s important to dress your best for an event (and try to highlight the colors of your brand in your outfit), you should be MORE aware of the different personalities in the audience. There are four personalities – the thinker, relator, socializer and director. You should get an idea of which of these personality types are in the audience during a presentation.  Once you learn WHO is in the audience, you can then tailor your word choice and presentation to them. This will maximize impact and keep people engaged in what you have to say. You’re using color, but just in an unconventional sense.

Get Feedback and Stay Relevant

This is the most important part of any presentation. The biggest metric of success is seeing what people say about your presentation. You should be asking people about your presentation to see what they got out of it. By learning this feedback, you know what you need to cut out or even add.

“When you want to find out what people think about your presentation, ask them what they took away from your speech.”                             

– Michael Angelo Caruso

On your social media channels, relevance is EXTREMELY important. You want to show your audience that you are up to date on current happenings in the world and your area of expertise. When you post relevant information, it keeps your audience interested in what you have to say.

In Summary

While it seems like a lot to give a successful presentation, these tips are very easy to apply. Remember that using cognitive bias will help you sway your target audience and get them interested in what you have to say.  Once you have done that, you need to be aware of your audience and pay attention to reactions and their personality types. Don’t be too reliant on a PowerPoint as you want to keep eye contact with the audience, NOT give them your back during a presentation.

Influence Factory live episodes air Wednesdays at noon central . Register here.

You can also subscribe to previous and upcoming shows on the Social Jack website.

We hope to see you on our next Influence Factory!

 

 

 

 

 


Influence Factory Brings Influencers Topical Industry News in an Exciting Way.

CHICAGO, February 12, 2018—Social Jack jump-started 2018 with a bang launching their new, free online webinar to podcast offering called The Influence Factory. The show airs live every Wednesday at noon CST as a webinar, but unavailable viewers can catch the episodes at a later time on YouTubeiTunesGoogle PlayStitcherSoundCloud and other channels.

Influence Factory, Where Leaders Assemble, features a wide variety of up-to-date segments compacted into a concise hour. Segments include an Influencer lesson of the week, a Special Guest interview with an Industry Business Influencer, updates on the latest industry news, and “Ask the Experts”. “Listeners” are encouraged to participate through polls, questions, and a Q&A segment and at the end of each episode the viewer with the most engagement receives a special prize. The goal of the webcast is for aspiring Influencers to engage and share new business ideas and learn from industry experts.

Each week Influence Factory features a different guest influencer to answer viewers’ questions pertaining to their area of expertise. Past guests include Google SEO Expert Joe Karns, Social Media Speaker Spencer X. Smith, Microsoft Storyteller Miri Rodriguez, “The Video Jedi” George B. Thomas, and Nimble CRM founder Jon Ferrara. Interested viewers can watch past episodes on Social Jack’s app, or on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOySYhhhgqoAtKpLXPWmxhQ

Viewers can also listen to past episodes on the go in podcast form on iTunesSoundCloud, and Google Play. The best way to catch The Social Jack Influence Factory is by subscribing to their weekly Webcast, and ensuring you don’t miss an episode, at www.myinfluencefactory.com

About Social Jack:

The Social Jack System is an Influencer Development platform that combines the power of people, social teaming and today’s social networks to create Business Influencers and develop a targeted loyal following and achieve influence in your world. Social Jack serves organizations, executives, professionals, top producers, speakers, and they even have Influencer Event offerings.

About Dean DeLisle:

As Founder and CEO of Forward Progress, Dean leads his core team to provide digital marketing solutions serving over 2,000 corporate clients for the past 15 years. In 2015 Dean created and released a Business Influencer Development Platform known as Social Jack™, and they have successfully trained over 100,000 professionals on Social Selling and B2B Influencer Marketing. Their curriculum and programs are used globally by Fortune 500 companies, Associations, Conferences and Universities to instill best practices related to the effective use of social networks.


Who is Your Social Competition? You Might Be Surprised!

By Dean DeLisle

 

Social Selling

 

When we are looking at organizations we get called into three primary areas with our Social Jack™ Training Programs, Relationship Marketing, Social Selling or Career Advancement. One common theme is that all areas are not only looking to excel in their area and hit their goals, but they have a strong desire to know their social competition, once they know they have social competition!

The first competitor is probably the most obvious, it’s them. They many times are in their own way, they either are holding back from two primary reasons, fear or they hold on to the wrong social network (of people). What we see is that they have fear. They fear of knowing their true identity, what to do or say and who should they connect with among others. So they simply play small or hold back, which means they are in their own way! The second part of this is that they have the wrong network of people, this at the core can be fatal. Even organization construct very unproductive social networks and forget the target customers and partners, so we often have to reorganize out of the gate more than not.

Social Selling

Relationship Marketing Competitors

Your competition here are all the prospect and customers out there on your social network platforms, and in your databases. Are you holding their attention over the competition? We also see the competition look like content and platforms such as websites, landing pages and micro sites.

Social Selling Competitors

This one might be the most obvious depending on the organization. These are also prospects and customers, however they might be in control of your accounts execs, relationship managers, customer service or no one. As an organization it’s your duty to provide structure and training to your sales force, set guidelines, boundaries and a solid attack plan to form an intentional social network so the competition can’t penetrate.

Career Advancement Competitors

Flat out this is where you are in competition with your peers and can be tricky depending on the culture. We see this from two angles the inside out and the outside in. So if you are on the inside, its best to network with your peers and really work together for each other. Unfortunately many cultures don’t allow this so they tend to breed a protective environment and dictate survival of the fittest wins and this can be unproductive and harmful to growth in most cases. It is so much better to approach this from a position of authenticity and relationship. From the outside, it’s great to be in this mode to penetrate the walls of a corporation and take out someone who is in competition for a position you desire. Then remember to shift once you get on the inside, be the thought leader here!

In my next blog on this I will get into how to really take out the competition and what we see as our best techniques used by our Social Jack™ students. Social Jack™ was developed by Dean DeLisle and his team at Forward Progress in response to an overwhelming demand for their social media training and development workshops, which are delivered both in person and online. With SocialJack.com, clients can select their professional destination, map out a plan, and access the coaching and training needed to support them to that destination. They will develop the skills they need to build and manage the social networks required on their journey.

Want to take your strategy to the next level? Join us  on Feb 10th – 11am CST: Social Jack™ hosts “LinkedIn – How to Knock Out Your Social Competition”

Are you wondering why some people are generating new business from LinkedIn and you're not? Or, maybe why your competition is getting in front of your current clients? Join our webinar and learn how to use 5 steps to take out your competition and create new business. Register Here

Social Selling Step Two – Use Valued Reach to Ignite Your Social Reach by Dean R. DeLisle

Before we can ignite our Social Reach with Valued Reach (VR) we need to understand what Social Reach is. Through our friends at Hootsuite (they have a great glossary by the way) we have a pretty good definition:

http://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-managers-definitive-glossary-2014/

Reach
Reach is a data metric that determines the potential size of audience any given message could reach. It does not mean that that entire audience will see your social media post, but rather tells you the maximum amount of people your post could potentially reach. Reach is determined by a fairly complex calculation that includes number of followers, shares and impressions as well as net follower increase over time. Reach should not be confused with Impressions or Engagement.

Social Reach

 

Now for Social Sales, LinkedIn Social Reach is pretty easy to see and understand. On your home page about half way down on the right you can see what your current reach is, as shown below.

Social Reach

So what does this mean? Well this means that I have 4,169 connections, people that I have either sent or accepted invites and are now my level one connections. Then those people have connections which are your second level connections. That with the next level of connections and groups you belong to make up that number. In fact, LinkedIn used to resolve this, now they just show you a few levels (shown below), which is ok, because I cannot even fathom thinking about a million let along 18 million!

Social Reach

So hopefully you are getting the definition of your social reach. Now in social selling, from our definition, Valued Reach is what we care about and teach in our curriculum. This is where we first define a destination or outcome to your sales goals, how much do you want to make by when. Then we determine how many appointments, proposals, closes you need to achieve that goal. Next we define the target, and determine who will get us there or help us achieve those goals. Next we build a structured, tactical team of TARGETED connections, clusters and hubs (defined in in Network Sciences (http://www.arl.army.mil/www/default.cfm?page=391) by the US Army). The ones that will help you get to the connections you are trying to achieve. Not the thousands that you accept without knowing who they are and what they are about. We would prefer you just connect to those you know or people that you see potential relationship. Then we score the relationship in our SocialJack.com system to arrive at your Valued Reach. Now you don’t have to have our system to get the juice we are talking about here, although we would like you to join us, you can still gain a valued reach for yourself by following these simple rules below.

Social Reach

In summary

  1. Own your destination, your outcome
  2. Be clear about the target that will take you there
  3. Build a team of connections with the intent for relationship
  4. Engage in relationship with your new team
  5. Keep scouting for more targeted connections (#3)
  6. Keep engaging and driving to your destination (goal)

Now – Your “Valued Reach” keeps going up – your “Social Reach” is now ignited!

About Dean DeLisle

For over 30 years, Dean has demonstrated his ability to accelerate companies, stimulate business development, and make operations more efficient. He has harnessed the ever-evolving power of technology, paired with his consulting, coaching, and training skills, to implement sound business practices. Using the power of online social networks, as well as traditional media, he has helped numerous clients pack the room for events, establish their online and social media presence, and develop countless company, brand, product, and service launches. Dean uses every tool available, weaving aspects of every medium to achieve the end goal and accelerate his clients’ business growth.

 

 


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Okay, this first move is both easy and hard. At Forward Progress, when we engage in what we call a Rapid Launch Plan, we figure out where to help an organization structure their relationship and community marketing efforts. We often find that there is one critical thing that everyone finally has to deal with and we all need work on this, even us!

This is your first move with the relationship. We are not sure why we see so many people who have great landing pages, registration forms, website capture forms and often see people overlook that next step conversion. Remember, you started a conversation with your audience, don’t misguide them or leave them hanging. Think of your own experience’s online. What turns you on and what turns you off? Then think of what you are offering out on the net.

“What turns you on, what turns you off?”

 

 

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For example, you get a person to fill out your form, make a request or give their email, and what is your first impression? Follow these simple steps to test yourself.

 

  1. Ask people who enter your world how did we do, what do you think?
  1. Test it yourself, do you feel welcomed and tended to, do you feel a relationship forming?
  1. Track your success or failure rate to convert leads into customers

 

Remember once you do these, you can then adjust the experience of that first move accordingly. Your next customer could be closer that you think, like in your CRM or lead database, you just misfired, dropped off or forgot about them. Look and let us know what you find!

See you online – Dean