I have quite a bit of connections on LinkedIn and I often get messages like this whereby people from around the globe feel the need to reach out to me, that is, send me a message in LinkedIn, telling me how great they are, how they want to do business with me and the list goes on.

It reached a point now, where i feel I need to cover this as I cover some of this in my training which Im reviving…

The jist goes like this…you reaching out too many people that you have never met, never spoken too, but you are connected on LinkedIn, you want to do business with and you hoping that somewhere, someone will bite, that is, take an action from one of your many messages
that you sending via LinkedIn. So you reaching out to decision makers, and selling your product/service.

You are basically cold calling on LinkedIn, it used to be done on the phone, however cold calling on the phone still exists, but now with the access of Social Media at our finger tips, we feel the need to sell hard via this medium. You have to realise that the same cold calling principles of back in the day still applies in this day and age, you only using a different medium ie LinkedIn.

So here’s ‘how not’ to message someone that you want to do business with and how to probably get the decision maker to block you or delete you:

• Nobody cares about your product or service.
• Nobody wants to listen or here your creds.
• Dont give someone a deadline or a ultimatum that they must tick a box as to when they free for a call or meeting.
• Dont sell your product/service in a long LinkedIn message.
• Dont mention that this is the last time that you are messaging, again nobody cares.
• And the list goes on but I think you get the message.
• If you had to cold call someone, ie via the phone, would you use the above approach??

Heres what you can consider when reaching out to a decision maker that you have never met and you are selling a product/service:

• Do your flipping homework on the person that you want to sell to.
• Look at their profile and decide if this is the right person with the right skill.
• Fine tune your LinkedIn message based on this persons role.
• Think about what this persons problems are, then send a message saying how you could possibly solve it.
• Mention how you have solved similar problems before.
• Keep the message very short and to the point.
• Talk facts. Dont waffle.
• Now if you had to cold call someone using the above pointers, would you use this approach??

So if im a Marketing Consultant wanting to reach decision makers that are Small Business Owners, the LinkedIn message is along these lines as an example:

• I noticed that you sell securtiy cameras. I have a similar client and increased their leads by 30% in 3 days.
• I know you are a leads driven, so i can generate qualified leads. Happy to show you how i did it, also have a short cheat sheet on how this can be done that i can share with you. Let me know when you wanna chat, send me your email addy in the interim and i’ll send the cheat sheet as well.

The above is an example of how to reach out and what you should be saying…but instead people feel they need to sell their entire creds and portfolio in the LinkedIn message and for some reason, is not saying how the hell you gonna solve a problem.

Hope this helps in some way, as theres many people selling their services on LinkedIn but i think very few are telling the story on how you can solve a problem in a very quick,succent and short message.

I follow my own pilars: RPE

Research, Plan, Execute

Im always open for criticsm.

Munier Kearns