So you want to make more sales, do ya? You’ve selected a market to focus on – wise move. So how in the world do you get in front of the people you want to meet?
Referrals are great and should be your first source. Think who you know that knows someone else and so on.
There’s another method however that not enough people take advantage of – LinkedIn.
To most LinkedIn is a site where you signup, add and connect with others that you know and then rarely come back to again – if ever.
But LinkedIn can help you get meetings with your target clients. Here’s how:
Search
Start searching for the industry you’re going after, or keywords in the titles of the people you want to meet with … and do it by location.
That should narrow down some results.
Who Knows Who
Next, go through the profile of each person and see if they are connected, even by two or three degrees from someone you’re already connected to. Here’s where it helps to have many connections.
Go For It
With this list in hand you can then send a little note and invitation to each of these people letting them know how you found them, mention to them who they know that you know, and why you’re getting in touch.
Another Tip
The other way to go about this is to manually go through every connection of your own connections. This is time consuming but it works. Once you’ve found the people you want to meet, simply get in touch with your connection and ask them to make the introduction.
You’ll be surprised how many people accept your request and if you continue to follow up and build that relationship, you can lead things toward a meeting and then have your chance to “sell” what you’ve got to offer.
Note: Don’t come across as being too salesy. No one likes that, especially not right off the bat.
Have you used LinkedIn or other such site to successfully land new clients? If so, let us know how you did it in the comments below…
