Sales Referrals Part 4 – Is LinkedIn the best tool for managing referrals?

LinkedIn is now one of the most popular mediums used for asking for B2B referrals. It is clear to see why, you can see who your network is connected to and instead of asking for a suitable referral you can ask to be referred to a specific person. You take the work out of the process for the referral source who, if your relationship is strong enough, can refer you to the person you have identified at a click.

LinkedIn’s effectiveness as a tool for contacting potential sales prospects will depend on your ability to write a compelling message that expresses clear benefit for the person you want to reach. If the end recipient is two or three links away, your message also has to convince each intermediary. This is no easy task.

In my view, LinkedIn provides an exciting method for contacting sales prospects who are difficult to reach. It makes networking a viable alternative to making a cold telephone call however; it is no magic short cut. If you are serious about using LinkedIn for referrals invest in training to help you get the most from it.

 There are lots of companies who offer LinkedIn training one company I highly regard is Linked2Success.

As someone with a good level of LinkedIn experience here is a checklist of things I believe you need to have in place before even considering asking for referrals:

 
1 – Get your profile right. If someone refers you through LinkedIn your profile is the first place they will look. If they are not impressed, they are likely not to respond.

2 – Build your network. Seek to connect with the people you know, like and trust. People who would be happy to refer you and whom you would be happy to refer. Family and friends included.

3 – Get endorsed. An objective view of you is immensely powerful when trying to persuade people to buy from you. Don’t just trade testimonials from your networking buddies! Ask for genuine referrals from people whose business or life you have had a positive impact on and who have a story to share.

4 – Ask for connections. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Based on Six Degrees of Separation, LinkedIn allows you to find out how you are connected to your prospects and then ask for the introduction.

LinkedIn is great for opening doors however nothing beats a personal call and a face to face meeting over a coffee. Even if the trust bond (see Sales Referrals Part 1) exists between the referral source and the prospect the onus is on you to make a great first impression.

LinkedIn is a tool in the process and not the whole process! Referrals are all about relationships and trust between people, the key is to use LinkedIn as a way of getting yourself in front of people. Don’t hide behind e-mail and social media, pick up the phone!

Sales Referrals Part 2 – Where to look for referrals

So where can we find the best referrals?

Here are a few places to look:

1. Clients – This is obvious in the sense that most referrals come from delighted clients. We often fail to ask long-standing clients or customers on a regular basis, such as monthly. When they love us enough to continue doing business with us, it’s very likely that they can and will continue to send us new referrals for additional business. When these clients mention to the referral how beneficial we’ve been to them, the referral is much more strongly predisposed to do business with us as well.
2. Friends – Our circle of friends can be a tremendous source of referral business. Because of this, it’s important that our close friends know what we do and how we add value to our existing customers. When our friends also understand our ideal customer or client profile, they’re better able to look around for prospective referrals for us.
3. Suppliers – Strong relationships with suppliers can result in great referral business. This is particularly true when a supplier offers unrelated services to the same types of organizations as we do. For example, you would want to ask your accountant, web designer, executive coach, business advisor for referrals when especially when looking for B2B referrals.
4. Family members – This is a red flag for many of us who have sworn not to mix business with family. Nonetheless, those of us who have benefited from referrals through family know the value of asking politely and following up promptly.
5. Competitors – Bare with me on this, if you know who your competitors are and what niches they specialise in then a conversation about how you can support one another with appropriate business referrals is worth having. This may not work for all organisation however for many SMEs and consultants a partnership / associate model can provide a rich source of new opportunities. One way to start this dialogue is to develop an industry group, where you and your competitors can start a dialogue, e.g. Finanical Leeds. Or set up a LinkedIn Group.

How to ask for the referral

As mentioned above, people we already know, both inside and outside of our business relationships, can provide us valuable referrals. These people aren’t likely, however, to be seeking us out daily to give us the names and phone numbers of qualified prospects. So how do we get them?

We need to ask for them! Oversimplified?……….Yes, and yet there are certain approaches proven to be very effective in asking for the referral.

How we ask for referrals is a key point in the process. Consider this approach:

“Do you know anyone who can benefit from…….?”

In this situation, we give the referral source a choice between yes and no. This gives us approximately a 50/50 chance that the answer will be no.

Let’s increase the odds in our favor.

First, we need to help our referral source by starting the thought process on his/her behalf. Next, we need to move from the yes/no choice to a choice between yeses. Compare this more specific approach:

 ”Which businesses in your organisation would benefit from…..?”  Or,

 ”Who among your friends might benefit from…..?”

By being more specific, we’ve both helped the referral source focus on a single area and increased our chances of getting a name or two.

In working with delighted clients, try this approach:

“Much of our new business comes from people such as you who are already in [insert as appropriate]. Who among your friends elsewhere in the industry could benefit from the results you are seeing?”

This reinforces the value we add to our current customer and opens the door for referral opportunities with non-competing organizations. This can be particularly valuable when our customer or client views our work with him/her as a competitive advantage

Keep an eye out for part 3 where the focus is on how to contact referrals and a process for managing them.

Salesforce.com Goes Social

There is a lot of talk about how social media will transform the way businesses sell however I have seen few examples of sales-department or organisation wide adoption and even fewer that can point to measurable results. Saleforce.com is my preferred online sales and CRM System and is leading the march with a chatter function which, as quoted by Salesforce.com is reducing internal e-mail by 40%. There is also a FREE I Phone app which customers can use to access their online CRM system and engage in chatter remotely, view contacts / tasks / opportunities / leads and update on the go.What is this new Chatter function? If you are a Facebook or Twitter user, you already know how to use chat and update features. As with Facebook, in Chatter you get started by uploading your photo and writing something interesting about yourself. Then you post updates, ask questions, or write on other people’s “walls.” Like in Twitter, you “follow” other Chatter users or groups, which gives you access to their updates. You can also “unfollow” if someone repeatedly posts drivel. What’s different about Chatter is that this so-called social behavior happens within the application where Sales 2.0* reps and managers live: CRM. Because of this, the product could transform the way sales and other teams work. How chatter transforms the way sales teams work Sales: Collaboration and References It’s a central place to post a presentation for an important customer meeting, if its cross-functional selling with a team of technical sales engineers, product specialists and sales professionals this can be reviewed with instant feedback and discussion. Chatter can be used to quickly find customer references and ask customer questions. Historically this required mass e-mails or tracking down a sales engineer who had worked with a client. Events: Linking Attendees Salesforce attendees can communicate with each other before and during the conference via the the Chatter application (including mobile versions for iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry). Surveys: Feedback and Crowd Sourcing Teams can easily weigh in with their opinions on logos, marketing programs, website changes, etc. Marketing: Competitive Analysis Use Chatter to gather information when someone joins the company from a competitive company. You can use the application to disseminate content to sales and marketing and the executive team. Followers, organized in groups according to competitor, can add to the information to make it even more complete. Better than having an online content library hoping someone will download the competitor file which is likely to be out of date. With Chatter, a whole group of experts can provide answers, from competitors to products and potential markets. What Salesforce.com say Salesforce says they have reduced e-mail by 40% with Chatter and have driven productivity and sales growth. I imagine this is because conversations are easier to follow and find, which makes volumes of e-mail follow-ups less necessary. Communications are consolidated and typically personalized to the interests of a pre-defined group. I wonder what measures have been used to create this figure and whether we are just moving traffic from one media to another. In this Sales 2.0* age when the speed of communications and process matters, salesforce.coms adoption of social media features may genuinely improve the speed of the sales process and turnaround time of information to clients as well as improve the quality of information provided. If used fully across teams – This is the real challenge. * Sales 2.0? Sales 2.0 is the use of innovative sales practices, focused on creating value for both buyer and seller and enabled by Web 2.0 and next-generation technology. Sales 2.0 practices combine the science of process-driven operations with the art of collaborative relationships, using the most profitable and most expedient sales resources required to meet customers’ needs. This approach produces superior, predictable, repeatable business results, including increased revenue, decreased sales costs, and sustained competitive advantage. (Anneke Seley and Brent Holloway) Thank you to Anneke Seley for her inspiration for this post, structure and some content.