10x-ing Your Lead Gen Thru LinkedIn Outreach
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[00:00:00] I see you out there using LinkedIn sharing content and commenting on posts. These activities are key elements of generating leads. But is it enough? Because unless you are a big influencer more often than not, it's not giving you enough inquiries and the DMS And that is where outreach comes in.
[00:00:23] In this episode, I'm going to explain step-by-step what outreach actually is, how it helps. And why it's often the missing ingredient to your lead gen, despite the fact that it can 10 X your results.
[00:00:38] Welcome to the sales by you podcast, where I talk about all things sales, tips, tools, strategy, and mindset, all the things that help you build a lead to client sales process that works for you. I'm your host Celina Guerrero sales and LinkedIn coach. Founder of the CONNECT membership, Celina's Sales School and LinkedIn 5x, where I help consultants and service providers attract high quality leads that become their best clients. If you're responsible for signing clients in your business and are ready to feel more confident and knowledgeable, so you can reach your biggest revenue goals,
[00:01:18] then this is the show for you. Welcome.
[00:01:21] On the surface outreach on LinkedIn is very simple. There are three steps. You number one, identify people who you think could make a good client, at least from the information available on LinkedIn or elsewhere. Number two, you send them an invitation to connect. And number three, you like and comment on their content
[00:01:44] if they post and you follow up with a direct message. Okay. That's literally it. That is outreach in three steps.
[00:01:54] And just to contextualize this for you, it's not on like throwing a birthday party. What do you do when you throw a birthday party? You number one. Identify people you want to invite.
[00:02:05] Now, this isn't everyone, right? These are people who make sense to attend. Who's ever party. This is number two. You send invitations, right? Totally normal. And then number three, you follow up with them depending on their response. For example, if they say I can come, you're probably going to say great.
[00:02:26] Can't wait to see you. Now, what does this do for your lead generation on LinkedIn? What is this outreach and invitation and follow-up do? Okay? And how does it really compliment your posts and commenting? Cause that's a big part of this. When you do outreach, what you really doing? Just like that birthday party is deciding essentially who you want in the room. Who you want in your network? You're not connecting with random people that want to connect with you or people that maybe seem cool, but like don't fit your ideal client at all.
[00:03:05] Right. It's you saying based on information I can see on this person's profile. And or their website, this person seems like they would be a good fit client. And I would like to send them an invitation to be in my network. Okay. So the benefit here is quality handpicked connections in the room in your imagined your conference room,
[00:03:29] As if. Now if you're sharing content. Okay. And then you're building your network through outreach. What you're doing is you're going to have new quality prospects who see that content.
[00:03:45] If you're not adding new connections, new quality connections that you basically hand pick to your LinkedIn network. The number of people who see or take action in your content is simply limited. Right. More connections. I mean more eyeballs on your content, which means more responses to your content. Right.
[00:04:09] And in that content, you are hopefully putting in call to actions, like book, a consult call, download a free resource so that they are on your email list, et cetera.
[00:04:20] When you do outreach and connect, there really are two main benefits you're going for. Number one is you can now see content in each other's feed, which means they can learn about you, but you can also learn about them. And number two, you can direct message one another. Okay. So while I mentioned that your new connections will see your content.
[00:04:44] Okay. That is limited at some point to a certain extent, and this is what I mean. When you connect with someone on LinkedIn, for the first two weeks after you connect, they will see your content in their feed. Okay. But after that, if they're not engaging in your content to show LinkedIn, your content is very important to them. You can't guarantee that they will see your posts, right?
[00:05:14] Because what the algorithm is doing is saying, okay, well, this person has 2000 connections. Is your content, for example, a priority, And so just keeping in mind that. At first, they're going to see your content and hopefully they will continue to see your content if it's really good content. But this is why step three and the process, the follow-up is so important in your outreach process.
[00:05:40] And to be clear when, I mean follow up, I mean, follow up in the DMS, send them a message about your free workshop. I send them a message about a free guide. Maybe you thought of them when you, uh, heard a podcast episode, maybe it's yours, maybe it's someone else's, maybe you wrote a recent blog that addresses some of the things you think that they're dealing with or, you know, they're dealing with.
[00:06:02] Okay. So we're going to first connect to be able to see each other's content and message each other. You're going to share that content to educate them about, you know, who you are and what you offer. And then you're also going to do that. Follow-up to guarantee if you will, that they're going to see that content of value that gets them to the next step with you.
[00:06:23] I E. free webinar resource, et cetera. Okay. Now that's a lot of benefits. That is a lot of, bit of it. That's like basically everything, right? Like that's transformative if you're sharing content and you're commenting, but you're not adding new connections, you're really missing the opportunity to add new leads into your funnel.
[00:06:45] And you're essentially going to be talking to the same people again and again and again, which is why it's critical. And here again, I want to reemphasize the bonus here. You're actually get to handpick who you're connecting with. Okay. So huge. All right.
[00:06:59] Now. Because that's a lot of benefits, then let's get into why people don't do it. Why are you maybe not doing outreach? That's what I'm going to talk about now.
[00:07:10] This episode is sponsored by the CONNECT membership. The mission of CONNECT is to give growth ready consultants, executive coaches and service providers who use LinkedIn, a place to get the skills, strategies, mindset and community support they need to increase their revenue. If you're responsible for signing new clients in your business CONNECT is for you. For more information, go to joinconnect.co.
[00:07:44] All right after doing outreach for a very long time, I can tell you there's three main reasons people don't do outreach.
[00:07:52] Okay. Number one. Time. Number two. Fear. And number three organization. All right, I'm going to break that down for you now. Now you can, as you listen, you can see if maybe any of this is resonating with you. All right. Time time keeps people from doing outreach because. Let's be completely honest about it. It takes time to find people that meet your ideal crate criteria. Right. You're not sending autobody invitations to random people.
[00:08:29] Right. You will need to take time to identify those people. And it just takes time. You have to send a connection request and especially if it's personalized. It takes time. Right. It takes time to stop and think, okay. Based on this profile, what is something I can personally, uh, something I can say that's specific about them, so they know I've read their profile and that I really want to connect. Also, you need to follow up via DM to thank them for connecting, right.
[00:09:01] As well as if they're posting commenting, liking their content, because you're building trust. You're building a relationship. You're building familiarity and you're staying top of mind. But I will tell you that it is. Absolutely worth the time. Because again, you're investing with quality prospects.
[00:09:22] It's not just busy work to connect with people to hit some, you know, goal that you have about connections. Um, you know, just so you feel like you're making progress, right? This is actually so key because imagine, you know, three, six months from now, if you connect with quality, uh, prospects, every single day, Think about who that is.
[00:09:45] Think about who's in your network now. Now you have a pool full of people that you can really, uh, target to, um, bring them into your world and, uh, end up hopefully in a sales call and become a client. All right. Number two fear. All right. Look, if we compare writing a post. Like right. I'm gonna ride my social media post. I'm going to talk about this.
[00:10:07] When I talk about that, whatever that is, if you compare that to outreach, writing does not feel as confrontational. Okay. When I write a post, I don't feel confrontational. Even if I'm doing something kind of provocative, whereas outreach requires you to essentially confront someone face to face. It's you saying hi to another human being and in most cases, A stranger.
[00:10:34] And inherent is that, of course is just the fear of appearing desperate. Spammy pushy. And of course there's always that good old fashioned fear of rejection.
[00:10:48] So to overcome these fears, just remember that you eventually are going to work with these people face to face as clients. Right? So if you can start thinking. About outreach just as the beginning of a long conversation. That results in them becoming your client. It will be easier for you in terms of those fears, right?
[00:11:10] It's just the beginning of a relationship. And it's happens to be before they decide to work with you. All right. Number three reasons. People don't do outreach organization. Depending on the volume of people, you're sending connection requests to. It can get really confusing to manage all those contacts.
[00:11:32] No doubt. Uh, just a little side note, you can send about 20 mutations per day. A hundred per week with LinkedIn premium. Okay. That five days a week, right? 20 times five is a hundred. Something like that. Um, that is the maximum without getting, um, you know, pinged by LinkedIn. So, but just to say, right, you have connected with these people, linkedin.com.
[00:11:56] Doesn't allow you to organize your contacts in any way. That's a free or premium version. So if you want to be able to organize your contact, sort of within the platform, you can get sales navigator, which actually is a kind of a secondary platform. But it's running on the same information. Um, Of the connections that you have and that's, that does allow you to organize those contexts in some ways to be able to do that.
[00:12:20] Follow-up all right. So. Look. I'll walk you through the challenges because I really want you to know. You know, I know why it feels difficult or strange. Okay. But as I said, the benefits far, far, far outweigh those. Challenges. All right. So I really hope that you've taken to heart. The benefits. I want you to hear me when I say I hear you and I feel you, when you're basing these challenge and you might even not even realize you're like, you think maybe it's your fault, or you're not good at this, or they it's totally universal these three things, these three main challenges of time, fear and organization.
[00:13:02] All right. So this is an opportunity for you to think. Okay, well, there are benefits and yeah, I'm not crazy. You know, I'm not just bad at this. It's just the way it's just the nature of the activity itself. All right. Recap, big benefits. Number one, better quality prospects. Number two. More eyeballs on the content that you're working so hard to create.
[00:13:24] And number three, direct access, regardless if they see your content or not to be able to share value with them. Challenges time, fear organization. But despite these challenges, you will never, ever, ever regret doing outreach because you will quickly see that it brings opportunity to your business.
[00:13:46] do it consistently and it will absolutely transform your business because you're going to have more leads. You're going to have more clients. which as a result, you're going to have more impact. And more revenue. So hope this helpful. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
[00:14:04] If this is something that you take action on, send me a message in the DMS on LinkedIn. Uh, and, uh, I look forward to hearing from you.
[00:14:14] Thank you for listening to this episode of the Sales by You podcast. If you heard something in this episode that made you think, I know someone who would find that really useful. Send them the link to this podcast. If you want to learn another aspect of improving your sales, follow the podcast so you can catch the next episode. And lastly, thank you for giving this podcast a review. See you next time.
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