Ryan Dohrn walks through building a LinkedIn network for sales. Tone down your title so you don't sound salesy, then follow prospects and companies. When you request a connection, add a note offering something specific like marketing advice. Dohrn says this approach hits a 90% acceptance rate and beats automation, which kills the human side of selling.
What's going on, friends and fans? And this week we're focusing in on your LinkedIn connections. Now you might be saying to yourself, you know, Ryan, I use LinkedIn, I think I'm effective on LinkedIn, and I wanna share with you one of the, one of the tools that I use to be able to get further faster with people on LinkedIn. Now what I like to do is connect with current clients, connect with past clients, and make sure I'm connected and following companies either of interest companies I want to engage with. But when you reach out with a connection request, there's the ability for you, at least for sure when you're on the desktop version, to make sure you're including some type of note with your connection request. The reason this is important is because if you want to grow your network effectively, you need to make sure that the right people are in your network. And if you want them to actually accept your connection request, They need to feel like there's some value they're going to get from that connection. So let's back up just real briefly. Let's talk about your profile. So if you're like me in the sales business and your profile is dripping with sales— sales mention, sales in your title, all those types of things— everything says sales. If you're reaching out to a prospect or new client or even past client and they see a salesperson pop up as a connection request, Most people aren't gonna accept it, decline it, or whatever, because most people don't mind buying stuff, they just hate being sold. And we as salespeople definitely have a sales process that we like to work people through. So it might start with, to increase your connection request, uh, request, your connection request status, what you might consider doing is changing your title and updating your profile so you don't come across as quite being so salesy. Okay, that's the first step. Second step would be find the client you want to connect with, follow them for sure to make sure you're not missing updates and things like that. Then when you connect with them, you want to create a little note that you include as that connection request that talks about the value that they will receive from accepting your connection request. So the reason that I would say 90-some percent of the time people accept my connection requests is because it— the note says something like this. It might say, for example, hi Bonnie, Love to connect to share marketing advice, research and strategies, and other information helpful in growing your business. Something along those lines. So you notice that little note is very value-based and value-driven. So when the request comes in and they see that note, they'll say to themselves, oh, okay, well, it sounds like this might be interesting, and they'll click accept. Now what I don't do, and I know some of you do and you just— I wouldn't do this. What I don't use is LinkedIn's automation tools that as soon as somebody accepts it, immediately sends them a LinkedIn message. I don't do that because to me that just screams of sales. Now, does it work? I suppose it does for some people. Not for me because I'm all about the humanity in the sales business. Sales humanity is putting the human element back into it. See, the problem is a lot of you are looking to work smarter and not harder. And I tell people all the time, good luck with that because In the sales and marketing business today, you need to be ridiculously smart, and then you've also got to work ridiculously hard. So a lot of you are looking for tips and tricks and shortcuts, and I'm just telling you right now, as your friendly neighborhood sales coach, hey, you're gonna have to be really smart about it and work really, really hard as well. There's not a lot of shortcuts to being successful in the sales business, but there is the option and the ability to be able to follow some pretty good sales advice. I try to give it to the best of my ability to be able to grow your business, to be able to grow yourself as a person, and also help your network grow as well. And that's why I'm such a huge fan of LinkedIn. I feel like it's one of the best sales tools that is out there. Hey friends, love to work with you. Love to work with your team. Love to speak at your national sales meeting. Reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com. And wherever you listen to the podcast or videos, be sure to subscribe down below, click the bell button, and we'll alert you every time a new episode is updated. Never forget, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. Friends, this is a great career. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. All right, more sales tips straight ahead.
