livestream.2024.01.19.LIsalesconversions
===
[00:00:00] Celina: Hello everyone. It's Celina. And I am here today to talk about how to use LinkedIn to improve sales call conversions. I hope you're well today. It's a good day, I feel, and I'm ready to dive in. This topic kind of came about because someone had shared with me this week, I should say that they had three sales calls recently and they all didn't convert and they were really, really frustrated.
[00:00:28] And I you know, sales calls take a tremendous amount of energy, a tremendous amount. Of time. And, I am excited to talk about this with you today. Now, before I get started, I just wanted to remind you that if you haven't already accessed my new free guide called LinkedIn Unleashed.
[00:00:52] it's a guide to attracting high quality leads that convert into clients. Check that out. Unleash [00:01:00] leads. co. Check it out. It's a, really comprehensive guides. Kind of give you a sense of what does it really take to generate leads that convert into clients using LinkedIn, which is partly our topic today.
[00:01:12] Let's just talk about the sales conversation, right? It's kind of like a cake. You know, when you have a cake and it didn't turn out well, like it didn't taste good. The question is why, right? Why did it not taste good? Well, chances are whatever came before the cake was pulled out of the oven didn't produce the result that you wanted. So all we're going to do when we look at how do we create a process and include the ingredients, if you will, to actually have
[00:01:48] sales calls with people who become clients. I know that sales calls are very stressful, emotional. There's a so much anticipation. [00:02:00] And I just want to say, it's really not about the call itself. It's about what you've done that led up to that call itself. so what I want to quickly cover with you because I feel like when we talk about sales It's always seems to me to be really tactical. It's like do this or you know, try this new hack on LinkedIn and those are all great. But I want you the listener here to understand the foundational process by which somebody has to go through In order to make a decision to become your client.
[00:02:37] I call this The connect method, and there are five opportunities in that decision making process of your potential client that they have to go through in order to actually be able to make a decision to hire you. Okay, so. When we look at the cake, right? We're looking at the ingredients. When we look at the sales call, [00:03:00] we're looking at these five steps that are going to lead to somebody becoming a client.
[00:03:04] And it's called the connect method. And I'm going to walk you through them now. And then I'm going to get into specifics about how to use LinkedIn to enable these five steps. Okay. So, but again, I want, you're smart. You need to understand foundationally what you need in place. to generate clients. And so it really starts with somebody knowing you exist, right?
[00:03:23] Like they have to know you exist. I know that might seem obvious. But a lot of times people mark it and then they think, why, you know, how come I'm not increasing my audience? It's because, you know, you're not really reaching new audiences. So this is really important. Now, second thing that second step, if you will or stage is that they're going to learn about you, right?
[00:03:42] They're going to need to know something about you. I know a lot of service providers, consultants that exist, but I need to learn. I might need to learn something about them before I really remember who they are. And then typically, our prospective clients get to a point where they're sort of curious, they're kind of like, [00:04:00] there's something about your messaging in that learn phase and that marketing phase, where they're like, Oh, this seems like really like somebody who might be able to help me, or they really seem to understand my problem, or I really like the way they communicate, or, wow, I didn't realize that they also address that problem.
[00:04:18] And that seems like something that Is important to me and that curious stage can be an ebook that they download. It could be binging your podcast. It could be watching all your posts and it could be perhaps a webinar that you're hosting.
[00:04:34] Okay, and typically people need a little bit more information before they're really ready to commit to a sales call. And then the stage for step four is really. Some type of online conversation. Now in today's online business world, this online conversation piece is so important. And I think a lot of people really think, Oh, okay, well, I'm going to post something on LinkedIn and it's going to say, book on appointment.[00:05:00]
[00:05:00] And what happens is if they book an appointment, they're going to go directly to the call. And if you don't have some kind of online conversation, the chances of your sales call conversion is going to be reduced. I'm going to talk about that, but online conversation can be DMs.
[00:05:15] It can be email, it can be texting, but there should be some type of one to one conversation, online conversation. And I'm not talking about Calendly, you know, automated email saying this is when your call is with Celina. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the warmup to having a sales conversation.
[00:05:36] And this is a really, really, really important piece that I think a lot of people miss. And I think if you're missing it, that's good news for you, because if you employ it, you're really going to have an advantage and improve your outcomes.
[00:05:49] And then of course, stage five is the off offline conversation.
[00:05:53] That's the sales call that we're talking about here. Okay. So this is the connect method and you really want to connect. With your [00:06:00] ideal client at every single stage, and the more you connect with them, the more you become really attracted to the right client, and the more you, if you will, kind of don't allow people who are not going to be your ideal client to self select out.
[00:06:14] Okay. So, the five steps that I'm talking about here are part of the connect method. And I cover those in my latest guide called LinkedIn Unleashed, and it's a guide to attracting high quality leads that convert into clients. And if you go to unleashleads. co. You can get your copy there.
[00:06:37] It is free and you're going to have something in writing in front of you that's going to back up what I'm saying here today.
[00:06:42] Now,
[00:06:43] I just want to give you an anecdotal story that reinforces these five stages that your perspective client must go through in order to be somebody who is going to have a high chance of becoming a client after sales call. Okay.[00:07:00] this is not a real example, but our backyard would, I would love to hire a landscaper for our backyard cause it's kind of a mess.
[00:07:06] It's not a mess, but it's like, Ooh, what could it actually look like? So let's say I go into Yelp
[00:07:11] I'm going to type in landscaper. I'm going to learn a little bit about them. Maybe it's like, do they do residential? Do they doyards, near where I live. Right. And then at some point, there's going to be this level of curiosity where I might say, you know, I live in Southern California, and I really would love a drought tolerant garden.
[00:07:30] And so maybe I found three or four landscapers, but then I kind of scour their profile to see, oh, they really specialize in drought tolerant or like native California plants, or I could go to their Instagram account and just like binge all their photos of the work that they've done.
[00:07:46] Right. There's at that point, the amount of time and effort I'm spending is that curiosity level. It's not just a passive kind of taking in of information and learning. It is very active. Okay, this is [00:08:00] very active learning. And so at that point, I'm going to drill down to somebody who is local, who actually does drought tolerant who has images of client work.
[00:08:09] And then we're going to get to the online conversation part. I'm going to maybe go through Yelp or I'm going to text them or whatever. And I'm going to say, Hey, do you do this kind of thing? You know, this is where I live. And then they're going to either come to the house or we're going to end up on a sales call.
[00:08:23] So that's going to be the art. Offline conversation. Okay. So just to say that in your own work, this will apply to you.
[00:08:31] Here is the most important thing to know. Okay. If you skip one of those. It's going to be problematic. Let me explain. So in this example, let's just say I find these landscapers. I'm like, Oh, this one's really close by, but I don't go through that curious stage of really looking deeper and I find out they don't know anything about drought tolerant.
[00:08:55] And I go directly from like, Oh, this, this, this landscaping company looks really [00:09:00] nearby and then go directly to them showing up in my backyard to assess my art only to find out. That they don't do drought tolerant plants, right?
[00:09:09] That is when you're going to not be able to have a higher level of conversion on your calls, right?
[00:09:15] I mean, there's no way I'm going to hire that person. And that's partly because I didn't go through the five stages. They, and I will, let me explain something about that. It's not that it's my responsibility as the prospective client. It's the landscaper's job to do that, right? And so what they can do is they can basically say, Hey, like.
[00:09:36] They can text me and just say like, hey, what kind of, you know, Yard, are you looking for? And then I might say like, well, I really want drought tolerant and they might say, well, we don't do that. Do you see what I'm saying? Do you see what I'm saying? Okay. So I'm just going to say like for everyone listening here, if you want to improve your sales call conversions, it's about leading the process about laying the stepping [00:10:00] stones.
[00:10:00] This is the connect method to connect, with with your prospective client at every single stage. And it must be all five.
[00:10:08] Okay. In some way to make sure that you're actually on that call, which takes a lot of time, a lot of energy. Both for you and the other person, and to make sure that that's going to convert, but just thinking about the opposite as well, in the case in this example of the landscaper, if they say, well, hey, we don't do drought tolerant.
[00:10:31] And I don't take a meeting with them. It's good for them because they haven't wasted their time.
[00:10:36] So for all of us here, we have to remember we need to be disciplined. We need to be disciplined about making sure that we are not taking calls with people who we haven't qualified, or we haven't given them the information to unqualify themselves.
[00:10:54] And that's the hard part. I think there's a lot of, you know, messaging out there that's like, Get the [00:11:00] call, get the 15 minute call and it's like, Hmm, that's probably not going to work for you, right?
[00:11:06] Your time is valuable. So I would say spend more time with the people that are qualified and, and then making sure that you're spending less time with those that are not.
[00:11:17] Now, the topic of this, of this conversation is how to use LinkedIn to improve your sales calls. So I just want to get a little specific here. So number one, I would say, first of all, you can have more sales call conversions if you have higher quality leads in your pipeline. And one of the ways to do that is to,
[00:11:40] use the search in LinkedIn to identify high quality people, in terms of search, then I would say you're going to end up with a better chance of converting those people because you've already qualified them, right?
[00:11:52] More pipeline of quality people. Number one.
[00:11:55] Okay, because you're saying, oh, well, I'm getting all these calls and they're not converting. It's like, well, [00:12:00] you're basically taking calls because you're trying to increase the number of clients. But the fact of the matter is, is that the ingredients by which you maybe have kind of gotten there,
[00:12:07] Like if you weren't dealing with quality ingredients, so regularly connect on LinkedIn. Okay, LinkedIn is an incredible tool, not only to be able to identify people through search, but through people's communities, second connections, connect with people that you've met elsewhere to continue the relationship.
[00:12:26] So connecting, connecting, connecting, okay. Okay.
[00:12:28] The second thing is when somebody sets a call with you, I would absolutely a hundred percent check their profile because you might be able to identify that they are an industry that you don't serve or you might find that they don't have the level of experience that would make sense for you to work with them, right?
[00:12:49] It could be their region. It could be maybe like you only serve certain states and that you realize they're from a different state. Now we want to be careful about over, assessing and making assumptions about [00:13:00] disqualifying people. But it does give you an opportunity to say, to write them and say like, hey, I just wanted to check XYZ, right?
[00:13:08] Super, super important. The other reason that looking at someone's profile is so important is you really just get a sense of who they are. What we're really going for here is that once you have the call, you want to be in a position where they already have a lot of information about you. You already have a lot of information about them.
[00:13:23] So that everybody's kind of said, yes, we're in agreement with each other, that this is something that might work. And again, I think people tend to want to skip. Steps three and four and then you end up in a call that doesn't convert that it's really simple my friend It is I promise you it is that simple.
[00:13:39] Okay, we need to be disciplined about be willing to let go of calls if you will that are not going to be with the right people.
[00:13:46] All right So checking their profile getting a sense of their you know, who they are what they're about. Even if you don't like go on the call and say like, Hey, I see you used to work at whatever, or I see you used to live in Minnesota, or I see you used to, play softball in college or whatever.
[00:13:59] Even [00:14:00] if you don't personally bring that up, which sometimes can feel a little like stocky, you have some context for who this person is. And you can kind of integrate that into your understanding of that person that you're speaking with. Even if you serve large companies, you're still dealing with individuals.
[00:14:17] Okay. Okay. So connecting more checking profiles you could actually check to see who else you're connected with. This is just kind of some, some helpful information as well, just to kind of keep it build some rapport and have a sense of what they're, what they're about.
[00:14:36] Okay. So then I would also say with regard to, This curious stage where it's like, okay, you know, we want them to know something about us. You could actually Make sure that you're connected with them already and you can ask them say like hey have you read my guide right or have you like getting a sense of how much they know about you?[00:15:00]
[00:15:00] Before you get on the call. Again, it's so easy to be like, yes, I want to take the call recently, I had a bunch of referrals come to me and I was like Oh, they were a referral from this person. Like I took the calls right away and guess what happened I am not kidding you
[00:15:15] they like literally did not even know what I did I was just like, Oh my gosh. And that was on me. That was on me, my friends.
[00:15:23] It was my responsibility. Instead of saying, here's my booking link, set it up, which seemed the easy route, right? It seemed like the route that I would want instead, what I quote end quote should have done is say like, Hey, what are you looking for?
[00:15:38] Right, because they're writing me. They're saying, Hey, so and so referred me to you. I would love to set up a call. And I'm like, sure, when instead what I could have done is said, like, what are you looking for? And then when they tell me, like, X, Y, Z, I said, like, well, I don't really do that. As hard as it is, right?
[00:15:53] Like just saying no. And that maybe that's not a good fit. I'm saving us both [00:16:00] the time and the energy, right? I'm not saying you shouldn't have some sales calls just to get to know people. Sometimes people are want to work with you, but they're not ready. Like there's all those other things. But again, if we're talking about increasing your overall sales call conversions, if you're getting a lot of calls that do not convert into clients on a percentage basis, then you should be looking at what you're doing beforehand.
[00:16:21] And you probably can very easily change some things to increase the number of conversions. Okay. So.
[00:16:28] Let's see what else.
[00:16:29] So that online conversation piece, What I would like to do is even though I love my Calendly, that is a booking tool, you know, meeting booking tool, and it's like probably the top two, three softwares I could not live without, I do not rely on that before I have a sales call.
[00:16:50] So for example, if somebody sets up a call with me, Calendly is. It's going to send out that, that email reminder, you know, the text reminder that [00:17:00] we have a call, and I will also say I do have a few questions in there sort of like to vet this person so that they know why they're taking a call with me.
[00:17:09] But separately from that, I always go into LinkedIn and I DM this person, I direct messages versus that, Hey, I'm really looking forward to our call on Friday, or I saw you book a call on Friday. I'm really looking forward to it. If you have any questions, let me know. That's also an opportunity to say like, Hey, what are you looking for?
[00:17:26] If I haven't already asked that in the questions in Calendly. do you know what I'm saying? Like there's gotta be some line back and forth online. Not only do I do the DMS, I do do email, but just to say when we actually looking at how do we use LinkedIn. We're going to number one at the front end of your entire business, making sure you're connecting more with people that could be quality clients you're going to, when you, somebody sets up a call, you're going to make sure that you're connected with them.
[00:17:49] You're going to look at what they do. You're going to give them some information so that they're clear you, what you actually do so that you don't end up on a call and it doesn't turn into anything. [00:18:00] And, you know, having some expectation in that online conversation before the call is really important because you might find
[00:18:07] that all they want is free advice. Okay. Let's be honest.
[00:18:12] And if you're like, you know what? I'm really not the person that can help you or Why don't you go read this ebook that I wrote, right? so for example, right, in my situation, if somebody kind of wants sales coaching, but I don't necessarily think they're ready for it, or they're not in a situation where they would really benefit from that.
[00:18:30] I could say, you know what, here's this, here's this guide, unleash leads, you know, go, download this, take a look at it. You know, I'm going to have a webinar in a couple of weeks, or look at my post and when you're ready, let's have that call. But all to say that if you do that, you're going to have less sales calls, which means.
[00:18:50] You're going to have this feeling like, Oh, my gosh, I don't have enough sales call, which is why my friends, you need to connect with more people. Okay.
[00:18:58] All right. I mean, I could talk for [00:19:00] hours on this, but just in summary, You want to make sure that you are laying the stepping stones for these five steps so that they know more about you through your blogs, through your podcasts, your posts, your eBooks, your webinar, something To make sure that they understand you enough so that, they're know they need you and you can help them have an online conversation.
[00:19:26] I guarantee you that will that that will help you qualify people in or out before committing to a very time intensive and high energy sales call. And just making sure that you're using LinkedIn to get more leads. At the end of the day, a lot of these problems are solved by just having more pipeline, more lead opportunity.
[00:19:46] Okay. All right. So I hope that was helpful. Just one more time. LinkedIn unleashed. Guide you to attract and convert high quality leads, UnleashLeads. co. Download it today. It's free. And it really kind of walks you through [00:20:00] the concepts I talked today. Again, just, I guess, final words here, your sales call conversions, are probably not converting because of what you're doing on the call.
[00:20:13] It's true that sometimes that is the case. But I think people tend to overestimate the amount of influence that they can have in a live discovery call sales call. Chances are if, and I would say if the symptom is that you're having a lot of calls that aren't converting. And it's probably not you on the call, even if it's a percentage of those, let's say you have three calls that don't convert in one week
[00:20:46] maybe one was because you didn't handle the call, right? But most of the time it's because of what happened before or what didn't happen before.
[00:20:56] All right, my friends, I hope you have a wonderful day. I hope this [00:21:00] is helpful. If you have topics that you want me to cover, I would love you to find me on LinkedIn, send me a DM, let me know what challenges you're facing.
[00:21:10] You can email me, you can find, you can find me everywhere. So please let me know. Cause I love to cover specific problems that are coming up for you. I don't want you to have any problems, but I am happy to give you some guidance if you do. All right. See you later. I'll see you next week.
[00:21:28] Bye.
