Business growth secret number one. It’s who you know. When more potential customers know about you. Then you can close more sales. If only a handful of people have heard of you. Your sales will also be only a handful.
Laura Saillard from Virtual Drafting Assistant used LinkedIn to grow her potential customer base. She went from 20 to 500+ connections. She spoke with me about how she did it
Where You Start Doesn’t Matter
Laura says you don’t need a lot of connections to get started. While the average LinkedIn user has 50 - 60 connections, Laura had only 20 connections. They were her old colleagues and friends. By following this simple procedure - Laura now has 500+ connections and 10 - 12 new connections are added every day.
Clean Up Your Profile
Her first step was to clean up her profile. She removed anything that looked negative in a professional sense and added much more information. Her job experience and background section now read more like a real business sales pitch than a plain old resume.
Connect With Your Boss’ Mates
Laura checked out her old boss’ connections and saw that many of them were leaders in the industry. Plucking up the courage, she sent her first connection request. The people she connected with? Owners, Directors and Associates - people with an ability to make decisions about outsourcing in their company.
Here is a tip from Laura. Try to personalise your request if you can. You’ll have a better chance of being accepted if you put some of your own personality into the request message.
Slowly Your Connections Will Grow
Once you’ve added a few connections, you will be able to use the Suggested Connections section to begin connecting with your 2nd degree connections. Pace yourself. Don’t add more than about 10 connections per day. Laura says there was a time where she was restricted because too many people said they didn’t know her. If this happens to you there is light at the end of the tunnel. Laura says that after a period of time your restrictions will be lifted.
When your connections grow - so does traffic to your profile. Laura says to check who viewed your profile and send a connection request to them too. As your number of connections grows there is a snowball effect, and adding new connections becomes easier.
Email Your New Connections
Every new connection gets a personalised email from Laura. In it she thanks them for becoming a connection, explains the reasoning behind Virtual Drafting Assistant and how she can help. If you want to see exactly how the welcome email is worded, you can add Laura to your connections here au.linkedin.com/in/virtualdraftingassistant
This is What Success Looks Like
Laura has found paid clients through her new LinkedIn connections - and those clients are so pleased with her work they refer her to other new clients in the “real world”. All of these potential customers without paying a cent for LinkedIn.
Have you found success on LinkedIn? Tell your story in the comments - and say Hi to Laura at Virtual Drafting Assistant the service for architects, interior designers, developers and builders who want drafting done without hiring additional staff.