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As we move towards the last quarter of the year and have that goal of ending the year strong, our minds turn to lead generation.
We all want to end one year and start the next with a string pipeline.
I was looking at some data from Neil Carberry at Rec the other day about how jobs and clients have gone up and down phenomenally over the last two or three years. We bounced out of COVID, and then the last few months, and I think particularly in 2023, it’s been more of a challenge for people to bring on board clients.
That’s why ensuring you have a committed and regular outreach strategy on LinkedIn for your clients is always good.
Let’s talk about your daily practice on LinkedIn and what will work for you. I’m not going to talk about sourcing and reaching out to candidates, though this is the same process you can use.
Our focus today is client acquisition.
We have developed our process for this, called the three R process.
The first part of the process is responding, the second is reaching out, and the third is resharing value. I’m going to go into each of these in turn.
We have our KPIs, Sharon and I, for what we do on LinkedIn because we know when we first started in business, we’d forgotten that you need to do a bit more lead generation than you ever thought you would need. We implement several strategies consistently now, and it helps to fill our pipeline.
LinkedIn Lead Generation: Responding
Let’s talk about the first R, which is responding. Now, there’s a clue as to why we’re called Superfast, and it’s been the bane of my life.
I’m just one of these people that I love to respond to people, not necessarily immediately, but as soon as possible thereafter.
It frustrates some of my friends that, “Why is it you are always the first one to respond?” I don’t know what it is, and I have this thing that I love to respond fast.
I think it’s the same for a lot of people. One of the first things I do when I go onto LinkedIn is responding to any messages that I have had in my inbox, even if it’s saying, “No, we’re not interested,” I will always make a response because as business leaders we are all salespeople at heart. I have respect for all salespeople out there.
Then, I comment, like, and reshare posts of the ideal clients we want to work with. We use Sales Navigator, so we know when some of our prospective leads and clients have shared posts, it’s very easy to go in, comment, like, and get on their radar.
I like to always respond to people and keep the conversation going. If I’ve been in a conversation with somebody, so say I’ve reached out to somebody I’m going to talk about next, then I like to ensure that I’m nudging people along because we can all get busy.
If I’ve sent a note to say, “Hey, do you fancy jumping on a call? Can I show you how we’ve helped this particular client of ours or this particular client?” Then, I like to nudge people to have people interested. Are they not interested, or if they’re not, maybe we can schedule a call later in the year.
That’s the big thing about responding and not responding because some people avoid responding, and you lose so much. Now, when I talked about responding, comments, likes, and shares, we have target companies we would love to work with in the recruitment sector.
We have our ideal avatars: companies that are independents, solos, small micro-businesses, or smaller SMEs. That’s where we know what we do can add the most value, so we target those people. Those are the people we have in our line of fire in the nicest possible way. If we’re connected to people, then I’m going to go and like their content, I’m going to share it, I’m going to do all of the things so that I am front of mind. That’s the first thing that I do.
LinkedIn Lead Generation: Reaching Out
The second thing is we reach out.
Fact: You cannot keep fishing in the same pond if you want more clients. You need to continually build your connections so your connections get to know, like, and trust you. Then, when they know, like, and trust you, you stand a sporting chance at some point of money changing hands.
What we do is we have a reach-out process, and we send invitations.
We have a target of how many invites we will send out each day/week and keep within LinkedIn’s remit on that, and we do pretty well in hitting our target.
It’s part of our process. What we also do is reconnect. If you went through your LinkedIn connection, and I know some people have 10,000 connections on LinkedIn, some of whom they haven’t connected with in ages, we reach back out and start a conversation again with that individual.
Maybe we’ve gone off their radar, perhaps they’ve gone off our radar, maybe they’re in a different position now, and they are ready to work with us, and we won’t know that unless we reconnect with them.
We’re reaching out, reconnecting, looking for new clients, and making offers about who we are, what we do, and how we might help them.
This doesn’t take much time; I allocate 60-minute time slots daily.
LinkedIn Lead Generation: Resharing Value
The next thing we do is reshare value. For potential new clients to have a relationship with you, they need to know, like, and trust you; this is where and why content marketing works.
Now, earlier in September, we ran a webinar for the NPAWorldwide Recruitment Network, and the topic was becoming unstoppable on social media, and we shared some of these concepts.
We shared multiple things that you can do when resharing value. There are three content themes to focus on, but let me give you some ideas about it anyway.
It’s about sharing value to demonstrate your expertise and that you are the recruiter of choice that can help them.
The types of things you can share, blog posts, podcasts, personal branding posts, company branding posts, personal quotes, blog posts, and newsletters, can help position you as a recruiter of choice; you don’t have to overcomplicate things.
When you do this, as you start reaching out to people, you’re going to get back on somebody’s radar. When you’re back on somebody’s radar, they will be searching for you.
Then, if they start searching for you and see that you’re sharing great content on LinkedIn, you’re resharing their content, which will elevate you in their eyes, and you’ll start being front of mind.
These strategies are critical when you’re thinking about BD.
You are responding to people, reaching out to people, and then, of course, resharing content. You’re demonstrating who you are and how you can help them.
It is a straightforward, practical process that you can do every day that works.
Thanks
Denise
How We Can Help You With Your LinkedIn Marketing?
As part of your Superfast Circle Membership, we even provide you with messages and content you can use as part of your LinkedIn outreach process. If you want to have a quick demo call on how this can work for you, book a call here.
