✨ Start Here
Building Credibility
Outbound Prospecting
Building Your Lifeline on Inbound
Breaking into Strategic Accounts
Daily Workflow
Additional Resources
1. The Vampire Sales Rule
For every play we recommend, except one, you should be obeying the Vampire Sales Rule.
In folklore, vampires are not allowed into your home unless they are invited in.
The same applies to your pitch.
🧛🏻 You are not allowed to pitch unless you are invited to.
If you keep to this rule, your engagement strategy will transform. It changes the game. It will automatically distinguish you from every spam artist on LinkedIn. It also will change the way you’re engaging with prospects.
We’ve built this guide around the Vampire Sales Rule because it works. People do not log-in to LinkedIn to be pitched. They log-in to connect, engage, and be inspired. If you can stick to the Vampire Sales Rule, you will be focusing on the right things: the things buyers want.
2. Build Credibility Before Pipeline
This is where every seller gets tripped up. Because buyers don’t come on to social to be pitched, it is going to take more time to get them into a meeting. They have a strong mental spam filter and only look to people who have –– guess what! –– credibility.
Remember: credibility is made up of four parts.
- Can I trust you? (Integrity)
- Are you a good person? (Intent)
- Can you actually solve my problem? (Capabilities)
- Are you as good as you say you are? (Results)
Whether you’re doing traditional outbound on phones/email or you’re using social to sell, you have to have credibility in the buyer’s eyes.
What happens is you’re building credibility pre-pipeline.
If you’re using email or phone (traditional sales), it’s pretty quick to get a buyer into pipeline. They’re one email or phone call away. The credibility challenge becomes apparent once the buyer is in pipeline. This is why account executives are trained on discovery & demos so much, because they need to build credibility.
In social selling, most of that credibility is built before the buyer is in your pipeline. This means the “time to pipeline” is a lot longer from first-touch to qualified deal. The trade-off is that the deals move much quicker because you’ve already solved for many of the credibility challenges.
What does this all mean?
- You’ll spend more time “warming up” leads on social through consistent engagement
- You’ll spend more time per lead trying to book the meeting than you would on traditional sales (on outbound)
- You’ll spend less time per lead trying to close the deal (on both outbound & inbound)
3. LinkedIn is a Swiss Army Knife. Use It.
If you have a LinkedIn profile without Sales Navigator, here’s what you have at your disposal:
- Connection requests
- Commenting
- Posting content
- Sending DMs
- Creating or joining groups
- Hosting events
- Attending events
And honestly so much more. You have so many tools at your disposal not called “InMails” that if you’re only using InMails, you’re really limiting your efficacy on outbound. LinkedIn provides you so many tools to engage with your prospects. Use them.