Linkedin Sales-Prospecting NextWaveMarketingStrategies.com

If you have any marketing experience at all, you’ve probably heard that social media is king. You may have created a page for your business on Facebook and started sending out regular tweets about your company on Twitter. There is one social media venue that you may be overlooking: LinkedIn.

This is a site where professionals connect with each other to exchange information and opportunities, and when you’re sales prospecting, it’s not a site you want to overlook. There are several ways you can use LinkedIn to generate prospects and leads.

1. Follow Up with Live Networking Contacts

Whenever you go to a networking event, you probably come away with a ton of business cards. By the next week, you may have forgotten which card belonged to which prospect. The cards get filed away in a deep corner of your drawer, never to be heard from again. When you use social media as part of your sales strategy, it doesn’t need to be that way. The day after the networking event, check to see if any of the prospects you met have a LinkedIn account. Invite the ones who do to “connect” with you. This will allow you to follow developments in their careers and to offer assistance as needed.

2. Maintain a Comprehensive Profile

While you’re looking at the profiles of others, make sure to take a look at your own profile as well. The profile pages allow you to add images, skills, and information about your recent employers. Just mentioning that you work for an insurance company can be a powerful sales tool, as many businesses and individuals hop from one insurance company to another, hoping to find the best deal.

3. Join a Group or Start a Group

There are groups to suit every profession on this site. Joining the ones dealing with insurance can help you keep abreast of breaking news in your industry, but you can also use groups for sales prospecting. If you join a group for work from home professionals or small business owners, for instance, your expertise in insurance will probably be greatly appreciated. Just remember to educate, not advertise.

4. Pay Attention to Who Looks at Your Profile

The site has a feature that allows you to see people who recently looked at your profile. If someone with whom you are unfamiliar has visited your profile page, send them a brief message thanking them for their visit and emphasizing that you are available to help them with any insurance leads.

5. Be an Active Member

Active members–those who regularly post helpful information–quickly become respected and trusted within the community. That doesn’t mean you have to spend hours online every day. A few minutes to post a message and to answer any questions that fall within your area of expertise is all the time it takes to build a stellar reputation and increase your likelihood of making sales.

Twitter is a swiftly growing phenomenon. It is full of people chattering back and forth about their daily lives and nuance. Many think it is another growing distraction and waste of time on the Internet.

I tend to agree, but those characteristics also give it some interesting possibilities for generating Internet debt leads. And here are some simple tools that allow you to give it a try.

1. Twitter.com - At the most basic level you need to have a Twitter account. I recommend this simply be a personal account, ideally with some simple version of your name as the user name. This will enable you to use the rest of the tools and engage potential prospects on Twitter.

2. TweetGrid - The primary way you will be looking for debt leads is to search for triggering terms and conversations that may indicate a customer looking for help. You can simply create multiple queries in TweetGrid to monitor for these specific keywords. TweetGrid also makes it easy to engage if someone asks for help or more information about debt settlement or relief.

3. HootSuite.com - This is a great little tool that allows for you to schedule future Tweets. The smart Twitter user understands that people in trouble with debt and on Twitter will go looking for experts. This is where this tool comes into play. Make sure you are loading up and regularly scheduling helpful Tweets about debt relief. This will help draw in a good audience of prospective customers.

4. Seesmic Desktop or TweetDeck - Keeping all of this organized requires a good command center. Try one of these. They will let you manage multiple conversations, searches, and even Twitter accounts. These tools make it easy for you to directly engage prospects on Twitter and keep track of the various conversations.

Twitter is still emerging and evolving as a real-time Internet channel. And there is definite promise for significant lead generation opportunity in the future. Learning to harvest this marketing channel now will certainly pay off in the future.

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This almost seems a silly topic, but I think it is often overlooked and regularly kills deals. Your customers come to you or buy from you because of your knowledge. After all if they could do it themselves they probably would. The question is-are you staying competent enough to do them a service?

Most of you have been in the business for a long time. You know that mortgages and debt solutions as a big concept don’t change all that much. However, this market has created an avalanche of new products, qualifications, and ways to “skin the cat” so to speak. That means if you want to maximize your business and your service to customers you need to bone-up on your product knowledge.

How do you do this?

1. Regulators - I always suggest starting here because these are the guys that can instantly shut down or change your business. You need to be constantly monitoring government legislation, as well as key regulators (depending on your business), like the FTC, FDIC, OTS, OCC, and others.

2. Lenders and Creditors - Again, depending on whether you are in the mortgage or debt business you should consider what your lenders or creditors that you work with or against are doing and how this affects your products. For mortgage, this is pretty straightforward as you get new rate sheets. However, in the debt business you are constantly negotiating with creditors-knowing their goals and objectives are great for your business.

3. Industry Groups and Associations - I have been blogging a lot more about these lately. They can add significant value to you business. Good ones are doing most of this monitoring for your-watching out for you best interests, battling for positive change, and blocking bad. Getting involved can put you closer to having direct impact.

4. Social Networks - Much like industry groups and associations these are networks of like-minded individuals. Add to that the growing power of social media for industry impact. It also gives you a great chance to learn more about your products, industry, and opportunities. LinkedIn groups are where I have been spending a lot of my time learning and participating.

5. Competitors - Don’t discount competitors as a resource for enhancing your own product knowledge. Learning what your competitors are doing and offering can spark ideas and make you more competitive for your own customers.

6. Customers - It is amazing what your customers can tell you about your own products and services. Listening is a great way to learn what your customers want. As you explain your offerings their responses and questions can improve your knowledge and presentation.

Staying competitive in the mortgage and debt business is all about tweaking your sales presentation. So, becoming more knowledgeable about your products, services, and the market that drives them will make your pitch better and higher converting.

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It seems like everyone is selling with social media or social networking these days, or at least making that claim. But, how successful are these rainmakers?

I have shared several tips on this blog. And I think it all comes back to one fundamental principle: social selling is for building relationships. Social networks are like cocktail parties. You might get a sale from them, but you are not selling at them.

This is a nice little summary of this point I found over the weekend:

Manners, please! Social networking isn’t for hard sell.

Here are Jon Lasner’s common sense tips:

• Don’t lead with a sales pitch (though an “elevator pitch” may still be appropriate with proper context),
• Don’t come with the sole intent of seeing how many business cards you can pass.
• Be interested in others.
• Be engaging without making it all about you.
• See whom else you can connect with those new people you meet.
• Find opportunities to help someone.

What are your rules for social networking and selling online?

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Sales 2.0, social media, social networking, and other like terms are literally sucking the air out of the room. But, will it really work on it’s own? Will it work without “real” contact, real connections?

Here are a few really good lessons to review before you begin believing sales happen without phone and “belly-to-belly” interactions.

Funnelholic on the “Pounce Controversy”

This all started with a simple post/survey by Mike Damphousse on his blog asking, “Webleads: Pounce, pause, nurture, or wait?”

Funnelholic gave his initial answer, which then evolved into this essential conclusion: Phones still matter!

Please remember:

1. The phone still works.
2. For it to work, we need to get our phone resources connected with the right people (NOTE: if you sent an email to someone, I hope you sent it to a targeted list).
3. New technologies should increase our connect rates, NOT keep us from talking to people.
4. The phone is your best weapon in the lead-conversion rate war.

Need some more convincing? How about from the master marketer himself…

Seth Godin on Social Networking

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Chances are that you have a lot of customers in your CRM that you could be engaging directly with social media or in your existing social networks. But, how do you connect them?

Here is a quick way to connect your CRM and your social profiles.

Segment Your Consumers

The first step is to segment a group of prospects you want to target on social media. These could be new prospects, aged leads, or maybe some demographic that you think will be more responsive to social media marketing.

Export this list to a spreadsheet, vCard, or other format that Gmail accepts.

Use Gmail

I suggest setting up a new Google Mail account just for this process, but you can use your existing Google Contacts. When you are ready import your prospects list into Gmail.

Now you are ready to select your favorite social network.

Connect in the Social Profiles

I suggest you start with Twitter. Twitter tends to be a bit more open environment. Connections are more open and people are expecting to be connected to by people that have like interest, but are not necessarily closely connected.

This means you will certainly be able to follow what makes them tick and you may pick up several new followers.

Listen for Opportunity

Now you have a great listening post for prospects in your current sales database. Listen closely for opportunity. Learn a little more about them.

If they follow you, then you have a double bonus. You are also going to get the opportunity for them to see you in action-helping and providing advice on mortgages to debt settlement. It is like getting a highly qualified opt-in email list.

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“You have a new follower.” That is becoming more and more a part of our daily lives. Online networking and socializing is as common as having a telephone to communicate with friends and family-even businesses. Don’t forget that in your marketing and sales strategy.

As Twitter becomes more and more popular you need to be using it to communicate with your customers. What’s even better is you can connect simply with your leads and get keen insight into what may make your first call more effective.

Loading Aged Leads into Gmail

The first step in connecting to your aged leads via Twitter or other social networks is to get those leads (contact information) into your Gmail account.

Gmail has a simple importing feature to get them in your Google contacts. Then, most of these social networks allow for simple importing of Google contacts and searching for them on the network.

Getting Connected

Once a service like Twitter finds all your aged leads, you simply need to hit the follow button. There is an increasingly low barrier to reciprocating follows and connections, so the chances are the customer will follow back.

Listening for Opportunity

Once they are in your network you can quickly get to know the person and what may help your sale. In addition, you will be able to observe requests for help or assistance.

Now you will be able to help your customers when they are ready, not just when they pop in your call queue.

Ongoing Nurturing

Adding your aged leads to your Twitter, or other social network will aid in your lead nurturing efforts. Use Twitter or Facebook to announce changes in the market or your products. Simple messages regarding news and information are great for provoking new inquiries.

Connecting your leads to your social network could be as profitable as your direct mail or email marketing efforts. Try it today!

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I really enjoy reading and listening to Chris Brogan. He has quickly become one of the rockstars of social media. Following him is sure to get you smarter and producing more sales with social media.

Lately, he has been talking a lot about Presence Management.  This is a critical concept in improving your credibility, trust, and reputation online. One step in building those online relationships that converts.

This is a great article on the “19 Presence Management Chores You COULD Do Every Day.”

Are there other techniques and “chores” you do everyday to enhance your online presence?

What social media and networking sites do you use?

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• ActiveRain
• BrokerOutpost

I would love to hear of more examples and the best way to use them.

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Social media marketing is all the Internet marketing rage. As a result, many companies are charging in trying to find a way to take advantage of it. However, there are numerous pitfalls that you will want to avoid if you go down the social media marketing path.

Let’s focus on three very popular social media marketing methods, including Twitter, Facebook and Blogs.

Twitter

Twitter is a social messaging service that allows you to gather followers and to also follow people that have similar interests. The basic purpose of the service was to keep “friends” apprised of your daily activities, but it has quickly evolved into a very powerful marketing opportunity. By seeking to target followers based on demographics, interests, and connection–then sending them periodic messages, you can build a brand and even effective market products and services.

However, before jumping in with both feet, it is a good idea to watch and listen to how other companies are utilizing Twitter. While it is tempting to rush in with your own message, it is best to follow a simple rule of thumb – for every one Tweet you make marketing your stuff, you should make 3-5 that are non-related or even promote things your followers are marketing.

This helps build trust with your followers, giving them confidence you are not merely spamming them and legitimately add value to their network. There are a lot of people promoting things on Twitter, but being aggressive and singly focused on that objective will quickly get you blocked.

Facebook

Facebook operates on a similar concept with Twitter. However, there are some extra features and opportunities. This is a great place for social networking and you allows you to build a very large and targeted audience if you patiently and smartly work on your Facebook profile and connections. Thousands of companies are using Facebook, helping to strengthen their brands and engagement with consumers, notwithstanding the excellent opportunity for very effective for product promotion.

Again, you should avoid the aggressive sell when you are using social media marketing. Subtlety is the key and taking the time to focus on actual relationships instead of trying to broadcast your message is the smartest way to use this channel.

Blogs

Weblogs have gone mainstream and nearly every large company or corporation is in the blogging business. Sun Microsystems is an excellent example, encouraging their employees to blog. You will also find large corporate heads dipping their toes into the blogosphere. This is a different and slightly more evolved form of social media marketing, but it is no less powerful.

The key to blogging is the creation of an audience of targeted readers, by providing them with valuable resources and insight into a niche, community, company, or topic. Whether it’s the latest product news, happenings and events in a local community, or simply free information or pointers to other related Web resources, blogs are a great way to get in touch and stay in touch with your customers and prospective customers.

Again, hard selling is discouraged in blogging, but you do have a little more leeway here with the ability to place graphics that promote your items, as well as occasional posts about an upcoming launch.

Putting Together a Social Media Marketing Plan

All three of these new media marketing methods offer a powerful way to reach out to your customer base, growing your company and increasing sales. By taking the time to utilize these new marketing methods, you will keep your company on the cutting edge and your sales figures going up.

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Chances are if you are visiting this blog you buy Internet leads. Starting with that assumption, I have a very important question for you. Do you have a mortgage or debt website?

Why is this so important? Think about your lead (your customer). They are Internet savvy consumers that went online to research and inquire about a mortgage or debt solution. Therefore, it is very likely that the first question out of their mouth will be: “What is your website?”

So, let’s take a few moments to discuss why having a website is so critical to being successful with Internet leads.

Internet Leads are Web Users

The customers that are your Internet leads are by definition Web users. They landed in your sales queue because of a website. They will expect to continue using a website to aid their mortgage or debt process. So, if you want to hold the attention of this consumer you need a website.

A website also gives you a built-in sales assistant. You can refer your leads to your website for answers and compelling information to do business with you. Even after you engage that lead, this customer will return to the Web to research and verify your sales process and products. Make sure you have somewhere for them to go. Otherwise, they will be using your competitors’ sites.

Building Credibility and Trust

Again, leads are Web users–they will instinctively go to the Web to validate you. Make sure that you have a professional website. One that quickly shows your prospects that you are experienced, credible, licensed, and legitimate.

Your website should provide detail information on your mortgage and debt products, testimonials, licensing details, and contact information. This will make your customer immediately more confident in working with you.

Increasing Referrals

A website also gives you great additional opportunity with that mortgage or debt lead. Having a website gives that happy customer a really easy way to refer their friends and family to you. Social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter make this increasingly important. These tools are used to quickly and easily push around links and recommendations.

Your website also encourages this social referral. Simple tools can make it easy to Tweet or Facebook an interesting article from your mortgage or debt site. This is free marketing with the added punch of a trusted endorsement.

Enhancing Partnerships

A website also gives you the ability to enhance your partnerships with real estate, legal, and accounting professionals. Making it simple to recommend and refer clients to these partners will quickly increase your own referral business.

Also, for the Internet lead (customer) checking you out for the very first time–these partners add value and credibility to working with you on their mortgage or debt solution.

Regardless of your lead buying strategy, you need to have a website component to improve the performance (conversion) of your leads.

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