When people ask me if they should be on LinkedIn I always ask, “Is anyone you do business with or want to do business with on LinkedIn?”  If the answer is yes, then you need to be on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a very powerful tool when used correctly.  But just “being” on LinkedIn is not enough. Having a profile on LinkedIn will get you about the same thing as going to a party and standing in the corner. Someone might come up to you but you can’t expect any results. If you want to get results you have to learn to utilize the tool and interact.

Having a complete profile is the bare minimum. Review your profile. Be sure it is complete and represents you well. I find so many people without a photo. To be effective you need a current headshot. A photo that looks like you so that someone who has met you in person would recognize you.

Next you need connections. A big mistake many people make is connecting with people they don’t know. What good is a long list of people you don’t know? What can you do with it? The idea is to build a strong useful network. One that you can reach out to for help. That means you need to know them and they need to know you, like you and trust you. Only then will the network be useful to you.

Here are my recommendations for building a strong network.

1. Connect with people you know. Start with friends, family and co-workers, then add clients and past clients. Add people you meet networking and people in your professional organizations. Don’t try to connect with people you don’t know. That comes later and it will be much easier and more effective once you have connected with everyone you do know.

2. Make it personal. Always send a personalized note, even if you know the person well. The idea is to connect and build the relationship. Example:

Hi John,
It was great to see you at the business networking event last night.  I’d like to talk to you further about the technology group you mentioned.  Let’s get connected on LinkedIn so we can share our networks. I look forward to talking again soon.
Best Regards,
Alice

3.Interact just like you would in real life. Login to LinkedIn daily. Answer emails, post your activity, and check out what people in your network are sharing and click “Like” or make a comment. Find more people you know and get connected.

4. Get involved with some groups. Notice I didn’t say join. Joining is not enough. You won’t get results. You have to get involved in the discussions and share valuable information. When people you don’t know from that group interact with you it gives you a reason to ask them to connect which widens your network. Find professional organizations that you belong to and join their groups on LinkedIn. Join your alumni association. Then search for other groups that would be interesting for you to belong to. This is one of the best ways to connect with people you don’t know.

5. Ask for introductions. If there is someone you don’t know that you want to be connected with find someone who knows you, likes you and trusts you to introduce you. This is much more effective than sending a connection request to someone who doesn’t know you. To increase the likelihood of being connected to people you don’t know by someone you do, you have to spend time getting connected and strengthening relationships with people you know. So go back to point 1 and 2 above.

Once you have done these things, LinkedIn will be a powerful way to stay connected with people you know, develop stronger relationships and get connected with people you want to know.

Read more to learn how to get people to follow your company on LinkedIn.

If your company needs sales training on how to use LinkedIn to get connected and build relationships we offer training webinars  or onsite training tailored to your industry.  Please call 775-852-5020 for more information.

“Social media takes so much time and I don’t see it generating business.”

I have heard this from many small business owners. It’s true that you can spend lots of time and not get any result unless you are doing things properly. It is also true that some businesses are generating a lot of sales using facebook and other social media sites. 

Here are a few tips on how to make the best use of Facebook for business owners so you can generate leads.

1. Make a plan. Any social media activity should be part of your businesses larger sales and marketing plan. Sit down and plan your posts and how they relate to the other sales and marketing you are doing.

2. Find fans. This starts with having friends on your personal page and driving traffic from your website or email signature to your business page. You have to engage fans so you may want to run a contest or have a giveaway to acquire fans but most importantly give them a reason to be your fan. Deliver great content, ideas, conversations.

3. Connect. You can only sell to people who know you, like you and trust you. Even if they don’t know you personally, they need to know your brand. Spend time connecting with people online just as you would in person. Get to know them, let them get to know you. Don’t just friend them and then never talk to them again. Figure out how to engage them and add value.

4. Be patient. Using social media as a form of marketing is a great idea, but it isn’t fast. You need to be online and be consistent. It could take months to start getting some traction, especially if you are doing it yourself and don’t know much about how social media marketing works.

If you would like to learn more please join me August 9th for an online sale training webinar. Find out more…

Facebook for business owners, a waste of time? Not if you ask me.

Some of you might know that I use to be a reading specialist and that I have a rather large collection of children’s books. So what might you ask does that have to do with sales. Well, often times it gives me a chuckle because as I am working on all things sales, children’s book titles pop into my mind and while preparing for my Facebook training this one popped up, Do You Want to Be My Friend?

I get so many friend requests on facebook but very often I have no idea who the person is, sound familiar? It reminds me of the little mouse, in the book by Eric Carle, running around asking people if they want to be his friend. Everyone is on a quest to gain more “friends” on Facebook, but what is the definition of a “friend”? It’s like running up to people at a networking event that you don’t know and handing them your card. Does this make them your friend? How useful is having a list of people you don’t know anything about? What can you do with it? It’s not even a qualified leads list.

If you want me to be your friend then connect with me, tell me who you are, tell me what we have in common, don’t just send me a friend request. I won’t accept it anyway. When someone takes the time to send a friend request with a message, I feel they are genuinely interested in connecting with me personally and not just ‘accumulating’ friends. I wonder if most of the people on Facebook even know you can send a message with your request?  If they do, they don’t use it. I get about 40 friend requests a month and maybe 2 of them have a message that helps me know who they are. Since I don’t know who 38 out of 40 of them are, I take the time to look up each one of them on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google to decide if I want to accept their friend request. Once I have decided I send them a personal message that goes something like this:

“Thanks for connecting, I see you are a speaker. Are you a member of NSA? Since we don’t know each other I am curious how you found me and what inspired you to connect. I live in Reno, NV near the mountains and love all of the outdoor activities. I enjoy sailing, skiing and hiking. My business is helping companies increase sales. Let me know more about you.”

It’s like writing to a penpal when I was a kid. Some of you are thinking, why tell them all of that if it is on your facebook page? Well, remember, depending on your settings you may not be able to see anything about a person except their name. If they don’t answer my message I don’t friend them. Why would I? I want to connect with people, get to know them and determine ways I can be of service to them. And for business purposes, people only buy from you if they know you, like you and trust you, so how would having a bunch of “friends” that don’t know you help you increase your sales? For many of you the urge may be to just click ignore on people you don’t know and if I wasn’t a public figure I probably would too. There are several each day I do just ignore, but the most amazing things have happened from my willingness to try and connect, even though they didn’t.  Since something inspired them to send me a friend request they were open and willing to answer my questions and now some of them are doing business with me.  It was well worth the extra 2 minutes it tool me to send them a note.

If you have a business and would like to learn more about getting connected and generating leads with Facebook, join me on August 9th at 11:30am (Pacific) for my online training webinar, where you’ll learn:

• Why it’s important to have a business page

• How to interact & get connected

• How to build a fan base

• How to generate leads

Register Now and save with early bird pricing

Discover why some companies continue to increase sales & profitablity even in a down economy.

This is the recording of my 60 minute Strategy Huddle with Erica Olsen of M3Planning.

How often do you lower the price of your product or service to close a deal?

Many times objections come up during the sales process and we are too quick to appease with a price reduction.  Price can be a smoke screen and if we rush too quickly to solve for that we may not find out the real objection. Price is only one type of objection. Prospects will have objections about timing, features, service, shipping and a myriad of other things.

Objections are a natural part of the sales process.  When you and the customer are taking the steps to move forward in the sales process it is natural that objections will arise.  You have to be prepared to handle them.

Sometimes people are just not interested but don’t know how to say no or they really can’t afford it and don’t want you to know that.   Learning to handle objections is important so that you don’t spend time with prospects who are not going to buy and you insure that those who are going to buy have all the information they need to make a good decision.

What are objections?

When you have a qualified lead they are a signal that the customer is interested but not ready to buy.   Objections usually arise because either you or the prospect don’t have a full understanding of something important.  People want to feel good about their purchases, business or personal.  They want to be sure they made the right decision.  So sometimes an objection is really the prospect saying, “Tell me why your product is so great so I can feel good about my purchase.”

Most objections are legitimate and should be treated that way.  Many salespeople talk about having to overcome objections.  I always use the term “handle” instead.  If I have an objection I don’t want to be “overcome”.  I want to know how you will handle that objection and make sure the purchase is a good fit for me or my company.  As a prospect, this will tell me a lot about how you will respond in the future if I become a customer.

Objections usually fall into one of 4 categories, price, timing, product or something the prospect will not disclose to you.  An example of the 4^th is something like, “my brother sells the same product and I need three quotes but I am going to buy from him” or, “I don’t like you, but I am not going to tell you that so I will throw out some other objections.”

You are familiar with all of the common objections for your sale so I suggest doing the following exercise with them.

1. Make a list of the objections you commonly hear.
2. Write several solutions that are appropriate for those objections.  These must be things that the company approves.
3. Craft questions to ask the prospect that will help you understand the objections.

Example:

Objection: The price is too high.

Possible solutions: discuss the value – perhaps they don’t understand what they are getting for the price, provide financing, develop at payment plan, explain the return on investment, help them work it into the next budget.

Possible questions:  What have you discovered in comparing our product to the competition?  How much were you planning on spending?  What is your budget for this purchase?  Would financing make the purchase possible?  What features and benefits would make the price work for you?

Once you understand the objection better by hearing the answers to the questions it will be easier to handle.

Handling objections is something you need to review frequently.  New objections come up, but typically you hear the same objections and can work on good solutions to handle those.  It is good to do the above workshop several times a year and review the process for handling objections below.

Process for Handling Objections

0  Listen – listen carefully to the objection.  Listen with your eyes and ears.  What words are they using?  What is the tone of voice?  What body language do you see?

0  Ask – ask questions to confirm your understanding of the objection.  Ask questions to clarify the objection.

0  Solve – answer with the appropriate solution.  What is it that your company can offer to handle this objection or is it a situation where you don’t have a solution and should point the prospect elsewhere.

0  Confirm –confirm that your solution covers their objection.  Once you have provided a solution be sure that it is acceptable to the prospect by asking.

0  Move on – to the next steps.  Don’t over sell the solution, if you have handled the objection take the next step to move the sale forward.

Handling objections is something that should be easy to do.  Objections are a natural part of the sales process. In fact, if I don’t get any objections when I am selling I get a bit worried.  I would rather handle objections before I close a sale than after because I want my buyers to be satisfied and become a long term customer with repeat business and referrals.

Businesses need to develop a social media strategy as part of their overall sales and marketing plan.  In my previous post, I mentioned 3 keys to developing a successful Facebook strategy that will help you increase sales:

1.   Connection
2.   Content
3.   Consistency

In that post, I discussed how to make connections on Facebook. This post will focus on content and consistency.

 2. Content

Once you have connected with people and asked them to “like” your business page, you’ll want to keep your audience engaged.  And the way to keep your audience engaged is by providing valuable content.  You can post on your blog and then automatically have it send to Facebook.  Your fans can click the link which takes them directly to your blog and get information that is useful to them.  Another way to engage them is to ask questions that are pertinent to their business and respond when they answer.  It’s also great to post links to other businesses they might be interested in and you can even promote their businesses on your page.  You need to think about the frequency of your posts and how they relate to the rest of your sales and marketing.  So if you are promoting an event you can post it on Facebook using the event feature and invite people or if you are running a special you can post that.  However, if you only post events and specials and never offer valuable content you risk losing the attention of your audience.  The idea is to have people checking your Facebook page because they don’t want to miss anything.  You can also run contests and give away free products.

None of this will work however,  if you are not genuine and do not truly care about your audience.  Insincerity comes across loud and clear on the internet.  If you are just promoting your products and services your audience will tire quickly.  Think about what you have to offer and give it freely.

3. Consistency

Just like with any other part of your sales and marketing you need to be consistent.  People show up once at a networking event and then tell me they didn’t get any results.  You have to attend several months in a row and get to know people before you will build relationships that can lead to sales.  It’s the same online.  You have to show up and be present. You need to interact personally and on a regular basis.  In order to do this I recommend having a sales and marketing calendar planned for several months in advance if not the whole year and make the social media part of that.  I have an editorial calendar that prescribes what we will post,  where and when we will post it, and we coordinate this with our other marketing efforts. In between I interact personally on Facebook by clicking “like”, commenting on posts and sharing info about myself.

Many people want to know how often to post on their business page and the answer is, it depends.  You have to get to know your audience and what they respond to, so you may have to try some things to see what works.  For Facebook once a week would be a minimum but you could post several times a day if you have something valuable to share and you will want to repeat some posts if they are important because not everyone is watching your page at all times.  But again remember that interacting with people is something that should be done on a regular basis.

For most businesses Facebook can’t be your entire sales and marketing program but it can be an important part and can give you great results.  You need a plan to get results and you need someone who can execute the plan and be consistent.  Facebook works best when it is integrated with other social media like Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, a blog, and with your traditional marketing and networking as well.

If you would like to learn more about how to use a Facebook business page to generate leads join us on Tuesday, 6/14 for my  webinar, I’m on Facebook, Now What?

Recently I got a response to my promotional email advertising my LinkedIn webinar, I’m on LinkedIn…Now What?? 

Here’s the email I received:

Subject: I’m on LinkedIn…Now What??

Alice– To tell you the truth, I’ve been asking myself the same question for over a year. It does give you a presence online, and thus some credibility. Aside from that, I see more negative sides than positive ones. I’d be very interested in hearing your views.

I thought I’d share my response with you:

Social media isn’t for everyone, but it can be very useful in business. I generate leads on both LinkedIn and on Facebook.  Here’s how I look at it.  Everyone has networks.  Your baseball team, the parents of kids your kids hang out with, professional organizations, friends, family, colleagues.  Networks are important for fun, personal and professional growth, lead generation and finding a job to name a few reasons. The stronger your network is the more useful it is.  I use social media to strengthen relationships and find new relationships with people I have things in common with.  For example, I am now focusing a portion of my business on national speaking engagements to increase the size of my audience.  I have done plenty of public speaking at small venues and large but I am not nationally known for this.  I would like to be and instead of reinventing the wheel I am finding nationally known keynote speakers that have appeal to me and following them.  I look at their website and social media and then connect with them.  I find many are very interested in sharing ideas and willing to answer my questions.  Another way I use social media is before and after live networking at a trade show, conference or professional organization.  If I know who is attending, I try to hook up with them in advance via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

I let them know that I will be attending and would like to meet them.  It makes it much easier to meet those I want to meet, rather than randomly meeting whomever I come across. After the event, I hook up on the same media with the people I connected with and feel I can either do business with, collaborate with or develop into a referral source. We may be far apart but we can continue our dialog and build our relationship online.  I could do that through email, but my email is already too full and it doesn’t allow for me to know more about the person the way Facebook and LinkedIn do.  I have several outstanding affiliations that I would not have had if not for social media. I also find that (for now anyway) people are not as bombarded on their social media channels as they are with email and will respond more quickly and more generously.  An example of that is my current search for sponsors for a social media conference I am helping with that UNR is putting on.  I contacted the CEOs of two companies through email and got no response.  I contacted them through Facebook and got an immediate response. I believe it is because they can see you are a live person and know something about you, so they are more inclined to reply on top of the fact that there is less clutter than in their email box.

I have had amazing results getting connected with the right people on LinkedIn and have taught my clients to do the same.  A specialty bakery I consult for is trying to expand in the marketplace. They have salespeople cold calling on specialty markets and large coffee chains like Tully’s and Caribou Coffee. They are calling on all of the franchisees for these companies trying to sell their products one store at a time.  They do call corporate but it is tough to get an executive to call them back.  Using LinkedIn they easily get in touch with the CEOs and other senior executives of these companies and get directed to the right people.

I believe that one of the reasons social media has taken off is because now more than ever people want to know the people they do business with.  They want to know if a business is locally owned and operated or if the salespeople live locally and know the area. They want to know if you are nice and if you are a real person just like them.  Social media helps you get to know people more quickly and the cool thing about it is that you get to regulate what and how much about you they can know.  The settings on all the media allow you to control that and of course you can control what you post and who can see it.  LinkedIn is strictly for business, so if you are not a person who likes to share tidbits about your personal life then LinkedIn is better for you.  Twitter is also a great business tool and if you build a following of the right kind of people, you can push out good information that will impress them and want to do business with you.  You can point them to your blog or website for articles and tips or to other’s information that is valuable.  It helps them see you as a resource.  You can also keep up with your industry and your clients’ industries using twitter by selecting who you follow.

Social media also helps people find you.  It can help you elevate your status as an expert.   It improves your rankings on search engines and gives you more listings.  It gives me a much broader reach and I need that to grow my business in the direction I want it to grow. I also, being and extrovert, enjoy it.

So there are a few of my reasons for using social media.

P.S.

Facebook helps me stay connected to my friends and family all over the country in a way I never could before.

For some reason I often find myself on the bleeding edge of things,  the cutting edge is good for me, the leading edge is too late but the bleeding edge hurts sometimes.  Selling through Social Networking is and interesting topic to me.  Lots of people are putting on webinars about how to use Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn, but few are putting on webinars about why in the world you would want to.  Many people are jumping on the band wagon because they feel they should but they don’t know why other than they don’t want to be left behind.  You may be on Twitter, but should you be?  What is your strategy for integrating social networking with your live networking?  How are you using Facebook and LinkedIn to develop relationships?  How do you prevent online networking from becoming a time sink!  I find that I am a head of the pack on these things and I would love to help you come into your own way of using these great new platforms.

Let Alice Heiman Help You Sell with Social Networking

Selling With Social Networking Webinar

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We are currently accepting sponsors for the next BizTalk Blender which will be held March 18, 2009 at Digiprint.  We only allow 5 sponsors at each event.  We currently have sponsorship availability for 3 more sponsors.  If you are interested please comment below or use our Contact form and we will provide you with the details of sponsoring.

Thanks everyone for your support.