How To Nurture Sales Leads & Build Relationships With LinkedIn

What is LinkedIn for? We often hear of it referred to as an online CV but in reality it’s far more than that. It’s an effective sales tool that allows us to build and nurture leads.

Are you wasting all the connections you are making? LinkedIn can help us to forge powerful business relationships but most of us are letting these opportunities slip.

LinkedIn offers us lots of ways to stay in touch with our connections and nurture our business relationships. In this post I will show you just a few.

Before you start make a list of the LinkedIn connections you’d really like to get to know more. Perhaps they need your product or services, are powerful influencers or they sell something you need.

Once you have compiled that list it’s time to start reminding them about you.

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For new connections

When someone connects with you and they fit into the ‘valuable connection’ category the first step is to send them a message.

Thank them for the connection and pick something from their profile as a discussion point. This is the very start of your relationship don’t go in all guns blazing with a sales pitch straight away.

Now you have made the connection you can start nurturing it.

View Profiles

People on LinkedIn can see you have viewed their profile (depending on privacy settings). You might think this is a bit creepy but it can be a really useful way to remind someone about you.

Get into the habit of occasionally visiting the profiles of the people that matter to you. It’s a small nudge that will keep your name in the minds of your connections.

This is also a good tactic for getting people to connect with you. Sometimes just a profile visit will encourage them to invite you to connect. People who invite you to connect are more likely to remember you than those you invite.

Endorsements

I know you hate endorsements, most people do but take a look at them again. When someone endorses you it’s an opportunity for you to open a conversation with them. Send them a message thanking them. Ask them how they are, how business is or something else that will prompt a reply.

Avoid getting too endorsement happy. Only endorse people for skills you know they have. This way your endorsement will be welcome and will serve as a reminder of who you are.

Liking commenting and sharing

Set aside time every day to look through your LinkedIn feed. You will find amazing content and by commenting, liking and sharing you will be buying the good will of your connections.

Also in your feed is content your connections have liked or commented on. Interacting with these posts means you are reaching people outside your immediate connections. It’s a great way to broaden your audience.

Tagging

When you share a piece of content on LinkedIn you can tag people in the update. Maybe they wrote the post, are featured in it or you think they will find it useful.

Tagging on LinkedIn is easy. Type @, start typing the name of a connection and they will pop up in a dropdown menu.

How To Nurture Sales Leads & Build Relationships With LinkedIn — Tag your connections when you share their content or want to alert them to content.

Congratulations

LinkedIn sends us information about our connections. It will tell us when it is someone’s Birthday, when they are having a work anniversary or when they get a new job. This is the perfect opportunity to re-connect. Congratulate them publicly or send them a private message of congratulation with an invitation to meet up.

Relationships function

If you use these techniques too frequently it could be interpreted as stalking. Instead of a gentle reminder to your connection, you could be freaking them out. You can avoid this by keeping track of your interactions using the relationship function. This feature lets you set reminders for yourself to make contact with your prospect. You can also remind yourself of key conversations and information about your connections here.

Here’s a short video showing you how it works:

These tools all offer you excellent ways to stay fresh in the minds of your prospects. When you have built a solid connection you should aim to take the relationship further. Suggest meeting for coffee or a chat. This could be the beginning of a long and profitable business relationship.

In conclusion

LinkedIn works best when we use it to build relationships. It offers us a range of tools that can help foster and build relationships that could result in sales, referrals and more.