Do you want the best headset? 
98% of sales reps with more than 5,000 LinkedIn connections meet or surpass quotas, according to the Sales Benchmark Index.
Whether you're a Telecom Consultant, IT Consultant, or VoIP Reseller, LinkedIn can help you hit or exceed quota and build trust.
Keep in mind these are only suggestions from what we've experienced using LinkedIn. We're not LinkedIn experts or claim to be. That being said, we do use LinkedIn daily and have generated many sales because of it.
Talking with many of our VoIP, UCaaS and CCaaS partners, they've said they want to be more active on LinkedIn but don't know the best way to go about it or find it hard to post daily with helpful content.
Also, your customers will be buying headsets and by partnering together with Headset Advisor, you'll be able to make extra income on headsets, without the work. Connect with our Channel Manager, Cooper Johnson.
Identify your target audience and connect
Rather than connecting with people in your related industry, think of who you can best help.
It seems like an obvious statement but I know early on we had a hard time on exactly who to target.
Being that we provide headsets to businesses we would say "every business is our target audience".
One day it would be connecting with Call Center Managers, the next day it would be IT directors.
It made creating content a nightmare, because it wasn't consistent with the audience we were targeting.
When you go to connect, I've found these two ways to be most successful for me.
1. See if the person you're looking to connect with has posted anything. If so, like the post and leave a thoughtful comment and connect after. No need to even say anything in the connection request.
2. Some of you are going to hate me for this one, BUT it does work for me. If you know the exact title of your target, create a short and personalized message that you can copy and paste to many other people with a similar title.
It's personalized in a sense that you're not sending a connection request to a random target. You know these are people that best resonate with your message.
For example, one template I use a lot that many of you may have read when I first connected is ...
"Hi (name), we work in a similar industry without directly competing and I see opportunity to partner. Let's connect!"
Update your headline and summary
If you're on LinkedIn for business, I don't know many people who care about titles.
Instead setup your headline to quickly and clearly identify who it is that you help in words a 5 year old can say.
"I help IT Directors save time and money on their VoIP service"
"I help Contact Centers build better customer experiences and ensure you're ready for the future"
Once your headline is updated, update your summary to make it all about them and what's in it for them when they work with you.
Use posts to stay top of mind and show you're the expert in your area
It can be extremely hard to not create posts like this...
"Right now you're overpaying for your VoIP system. We will cut your phone bill by 50%, increase productivity and increase revenue! Reach out to me and lets setup a discovery call!!!!"
Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience.
Can you smell the commission breath from a mile away? Can you smell that it's all about you and not about them?
This was my strategy not to long ago and I generated 0 results because of it.
Instead use posts as a strategy to stay top of mind and only provide helpful information for them.
For example, maybe something like this
"Have you been experiencing (XYZ problem)? Last week I was working with a customer dealing with XYZ problem and here's what we came up with.
- Problem and the solution
- Problem and the solution
- Problem and the solution
They cut their costs in half, it was easy for them to train their employees and they were extremely happy"
Another example...
"Avoid these 5 mistakes before you consider a new VoIP service" Then label out 5 mistakes to avoid and hit post!
There's no call me, lets setup a meeting etc... this is 100% free knowledge and information you're providing. This is why connecting with the right audience, having the right headline and summary is extremely important.
If that's setup properly, your audience will know exactly what you do. DM and reaching out to them off LinkedIn is where the deals start happening.
Use Hashtags
Consistently use the same 3-5 hashtags for your target audience. This further helps get more visibility.
If your target is lawyers you want to sell more VoIP to, then you can use hashtags like #lawyers #law #lawtech
Don't focus on likes and comments
This can be one of the hardest things to follow. You go through the effort on creating content you feel is helpful only to get 2 likes and 1 comment.
Don't get discouraged! Many of our most successful posts that have generated business are the ones that have say 400-500 views but little to no engagement.
As long as you're connected to the right audience you know you can best help who resonates with your message, as long as your posts are being seen, that's what counts!
Oftentimes people are browsing on LinkedIn and will read your posts but won't engage. When it comes time for you to email, DM or call them, it makes it that much easier to get their time.
When your name keeps showing up with genuine content and no strings attached, you will be remembered, I promise you that.
Post daily with relevant content
The VoIP and Contact Center space is competitive enough already, so posting daily will help you stay top of mind. AS LONG AS you're connected to the right audience.
You need to post often. One mistake is thinking you're bothering people by posting to much. We've seen posting 1-3 times a day to keep top of mind.
People do business with people they like, know and trust.
It's great to post relevant content on how you help your target audience, but it's also a great idea to sprinkle in posts that show you're a human too.
Posting 1-3 times a day is no easy task, so here's tips on how to come up with post ideas.
- Look back on past customers you've helped and tailor content towards problems you've solved. One topic can spark many different post ideas.
- Check with your marketing or support team to see if they can provide you with questions coming up from potential customers.
- Look online to forums where your ideal customers are hanging out asking questions.
- Reference your company or competitors blogs for topic ideas you can post around.
- Rather than sharing your blog, use the blog to get ideas from, then write your own content geared towards them.
- Create your post or posts the day before so you're ready to post first thing the next day.
Trust the process
Keep perspective on what LinkedIn is. It's another tool to help you build trust and ultimately get more business that your competitors aren't putting in the work to do.
Whether people are liking your content or not, stay consistent! This isn't a short term strategy. Ideally give it a good 6 months to year and reevaluate.
On the days you don't feel like getting on LinkedIn or don't feel like posting, it's not the end of the world if you skip a week.
You'll get out what you put in though.
Don't share your company blog
Hear me out here! Simply sharing your company blog on LinkedIn isn't good enough. LinkedIn wants native content to their platform.
Also, sharing your company blog in hopes someone clicks that doesn't help build your authority or personal brand.
Instead, I think it would be more powerful and helpful to summarize the content from the blog in your own words and create your own post.
Use DM!
Example of the wrong way to DM people in my opinion
"Thanks for connecting, lets see if we can add value to each other. I provide VoIP service and our company can save you 50% off your voip bill, give 99% uptime and reliability......"
I can't even continue on. If that doesn't make you want to puke being a person on the other end, I don't know what will.
INSTEAD, maybe this would be better. Like I mentioned, we are not LinkedIn experts but If I was betting man, I would put my money on this to start off.
"Hi (name), thanks for connecting with me on LinkedIn. I post regularly with information around VoIP and how IT Directors can save time and money when evaluating new phone service. In the meantime here's a helpful link to my latest post talking about XYZ (maybe send to blog or past post revolved around how XYZ problem that your target would relate with and the solution".
GIVE without expecting anything in return.
Reach out off LinkedIn
Don't get stuck only using LinkedIn. Setup meetings through DM when it makes sense or contact people you're looking to do business with outside of LinkedIn via the phone or email.
We've seen a cadence of LinkedIn, video messages, calls and email to be most effective.
Have fun, stand out and don't be vanilla!
Be you and experiment ideas you come up with. Most importantly, have some fun in the process.
The posts or videos I create thinking they will get a lot of engagement usually don't and the ones I think that won't get engagement do... funny how that happens right? But you have to be willing to put yourself out there.
Matthew Wells (Basic Dad Stuff) and James Thornburg (Cold Call King) are two guys on LinkedIn that have stood out to me. If you haven't seen them on LinkedIn check them out for yourself.
You can't not like these guys! If I was their ideal customer and their target audience and one of them reached out, I would listen.That's why it's so, so, so, so, so, so IMPORTANT who you're connecting with.
VoIP content topic ideas
- What 5 problems does VoIP solve?
- 3 under used VoIP features IT doesn't know about that will help them
- What makes VoIP more cost effective
- How else does VoIP benefit businesses other than calls?
- What makes VoIP secure?
- Are all VoIP providers secure or is one more secure than another?
- If the internet goes down, what can a business do to ensure their phone system stays on?
- Is there any downsides to VoIP in the modern era?
Sales leaders to follow
Josh Braun- CEO at Josh Braun Sales Training
Keenan- CEO at Sales Guy Consulting
Jeb Blount- CEO at SalesGravy
