Tom Abott has lived in Singapore for more than 10 years. Originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, his career is flourishing as a motivational speaker and sales trainer for multinationals around the world. He is also the founder of a sales optimization company he founded in 1999. Tom’s company is all about giving salespeople the tools and the inspiration they need to sell. Through the company’s efforts, salespeople are equipped to hit their targets and flourish in the industry.
Tom’s company has won the Best Training Provider category and Best E-learning and Mobile Learning category at the HR Vendor of the Year Awards for three years in a row in Singapore, Malaysia, and HongKong.
Getting right into LinkedIn
The mission of Tom’s company is to help sales reps get better in their craft. They don’t want salespeople to lose a deal just because they don’t know how to sell. Tom dives into all platforms that allow him to share how sales reps can build rapport with customers and differentiate themselves from other people. LinkedIn is the best social media platform to do just that. It’s a great platform to spread awareness and share inspiration.
For Tom, LinkedIn is Facebook for business. Unlike Facebook, however, LinkedIn is where salespeople can target an audience that is specific to their industry. People go to LinkedIn to find professional influencers and thought-leaders from Harvard Business Review or Forbes. LinkedIn is the go-to platform when we want to learn about people we want to work with and their brands. LinkedIn isn’t just a platform to look for jobs, it’s a platform for like-minded people to build a relationship and where you can look for prospective customers.
Failure to use LinkedIn to your advantage
People typically don’t use LinkedIn because they don’t know how and it can affect whether or not you believe it will work.
When you don’t think LinkedIn is effective
Tom has written two books on sales, the first one is The Soho Solution where he talks about having a large number of target customers when it comes to lead generation. It’s also about consistency.
Where can you get a large number of ideal target customers? It’s LinkedIn. The sales rep’s challenge is to find out where they congregate in the LinkedIn space and how they can be reached consistently. Some sales reps rather pick up the phone than reach out on LinkedIn but people have to adapt to omnichannel approaches. This means it’s advantageous to be savvy on LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Facebook, WeChat, Telegram, email, and phone call. More platforms give you more opportunity to be noticed, true, but salespeople don’t usually invest the bulk of their time on LinkedIn because they don’t know how effective it can be.
When you believe it’s effective, but you don’t know how to use it
The second reason why salespeople don’t use LinkedIn is they don’t know how to take advantage of it. Tom’s second book is called Social Selling: 10 Essential Strategies to Prospect, Position and Present Using Social Media. At the time the book originally came out, social selling was only a concept and most people didn’t get it. Now, social selling has become the norm. Salespeople need to have a growth mindset and believe that anything is knowable. Learning is growth.
Start social selling today
Social selling is about building a relationship, rapport, and establishing credibility before you make an offer. You can’t send them a PDF the moment they accept your connect request.
Even before you connect, do an audit on your own profile. Is your headshot professional looking? Pick a photo that’s ready to represent your business. Next, take a look at your description and update it if necessary. Write a description of who you are and what you do. Make sure people can quickly see who you are and how you help people by just glancing at your description. You can also include a short description of your company and who you’ve helped. Also, take advantage of your caption so people have another immediate snapshot of who you are.
Start lead generation
Lastly, create a list of target accounts or people you want to connect with. LinkedIn is perfect for this as it allows you to do advanced searches by geography, company, title or role, and more. Set yourself up for success by making it your goal to reach 20 to 30 people within a couple of weeks. Just make sure it’s manageable.
When making your list you also want to choose accounts that consistently post on LinkedIn. This way you know they’re engaged and you can start studying what prospects find relevant. Once you see posts, distinguish yourself from other people with an actual comment, maybe even an alternative point of view. Write a comment with the goal to get the most likes. That’s how you position yourself as an expert or thought leader in your space. This isn’t the time to share your website, PDF, or call to action. You are just starting to build a relationship.
Drop a connection invitation
Continue engaging with the prospects for a week then drop a connection invitation. Keep it simple:
“Hey Donald, I’ve been following you for a little while. I’ve really liked some of the things you’re saying and like what you’re doing. Keep up the good work. Let’s take this offline some time. I’d love to chat more!”
Be brief and friendly. Start incrementally nurturing the connection and offer value. Try sending a link that may be relevant to them and their team. This is also another way to establish credibility.
Keeping track
Even if you don’t have a lot of experience on LinkedIn currently, you can still use it to complement the work you do in managing and growing your current accounts. Mainly focus on delivering value and be deliberate about who you connect with. Remember that like attracts like. When you know your audience, the content you create will resonate with them. A good exercise is to think of your top 5 customers and have them in mind when you create content, whether it be a post, blog, or video that offers tips.
“LinkedIn Posts That Generate Sales Leads” episode resources
Connect with Tom Abott via LinkedIn and see what he’s up to. You can also visit https://www.socoselling.com/why-you-need-to-be-competitive-to-compete-in-sales-with-donald-kelly/ to watch the conversation between Donald and Tom.
If you are interested in more sales stories, you can talk to Donald directly. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook about any sales concerns.
This episode is brought to you in part by Crmble, the easy-peasy CRM for Trello that helps you manage your contacts and leads without investing in complicated solutions, sync all your data, manage custom fields, and get powerful reporting on your sales. Try Crmble now for free at www.crmble.com/tse. This course is also brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. It will help them elevate their sales game. Sign up now and get the first two modules for free! You can go and visit www.donaldk4.sg-host.com/closemoredeals also call us at (561) 570-5077.
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Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.
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