Today I want to rant on about LinkedIn messages. LinkedIn is a great website to connect with individuals and share valuable content. I’m not a huge fan of the website’s User Experience and I believe it can be massively improved but in terms of connections, it’s a great tool to increase our influence and sell our services (or products). I don’t know about you but I receive tons of messages that start with Hello Alexander, I have this great service that you will benefit and it will change your life forever. Really? Who told you I was waiting for your service to change my life forever? Sales changed, the game has changed.
To sell something in today’s noisy world we need to start caring and start listening to what our potential clients actually want and do. It’s funny how some people try to sell me digital marketing services without realizing that I sell digital marketing. I run a digital agency and at some point I started thinking that I didn’t write on my profile that I’m a digital marketing director at IQDigital Agency. Please, please do your research and stop mass-emailing people because you are simply making their user experience worse.
There was a guy that sent me multiple messages on LinkedIn (as you can see below) and I never responded to him. After the third message I responded with his NAME and shared with him a video that I did on not stealing people’s time. You can watch it here if you want. His response was ridiculous and unacceptable. You are trying to sell me something that is not real (for me at least).
Of course I removed him as my connection because I didn’t find any value at all. The funny thing he just added me back to be his connection. Why on earth would somebody want to have as their connection a person who cares only about himself. Not to mention the landing page that was included didn’t have a great user experience, but I will not go into this on this article.
Now, what can we all do to improve ourselves and sell our products? Here’s the best strategy; have a look at the other person’s profile, what they do, their achievements, their articles (if they have any on LinkedIn), what they post about, what they care about and what kind of person your potential client is. After you analyse it, you can engage on their posts, comment on their articles (read them first obviously), share if you like them. We are human beings not machines so you need to get know the other person. After you engage with them you can send them a message asking them how their day is, how is business or something relevant. Then you can say that you found an article that you believe will help them or share your own piece of content if you believe it will help them. If they like your article they will message you back with their comments and you can ask them for a meeting offline or a Skype meeting to get to meet them, have a chat with them and see if you can help them. This is the best strategy to use.
Remember we are human beings, not machines. I know you want to sell and so do I but there is a way to sell. What used to work in 1997 doesn’t work anymore. You can send 100 messages and get 1 response but why not send 10 messages and get 8 responses?
Simply put, rather than being a 20 year old boy running around the night club asking every single girl to date you be the guy that goes to a girl and starts an interesting conversation.
What are your thoughts on this? Comment Below
