It is no secret by now that I am a major fan of LinkedIn and use it daily to connect with my ideal clients and alliance partners. Over the past twelve months, I have been building a network of super stars that I now collaborate and work closely with on many projects.
These people are spread all over the world in locations such as India, Panama, Ukraine, Russia, Canada, USA, Bali, United Kingdom and of course here in Australia. They are all the best of the best in their chosen fields, and whilst we all have different skills on offer. We all share one common business talent, LinkedIn and the knowledge to leverage it extremely well.
Today I am going to share with you the exact process I used to build this powerful network, and how I still use LinkedIn to automatically find and deliver to my in box, a list of potential clients every day.
There are 3 simple steps:
1) Create a profile that attracts your ideal clients
This is also one of the biggest mistakes I see many people making with their profiles. LinkedIn is more than a resume, your profile should speak to your clients, to add value and solve the problems they experience in their business. Before implementing the next 2 steps, take a look at your profile and give it a refresh. If you need some assistance with this get my FREE LinkedIn Optimisation Tutorial Here
2) Find your ideal Alliance Partners
Start by making a list of the “type” of people with the skills you need to compliment yours. Building a business with every skill set in-house can be expensive and can often leave you vulnerable when they move on to new challenges, need time off due to illness or when they take that much needed holiday. They also cost you that monthly salary regardless of how much work you have for them each month. Having the right Alliance Partners allows you to scale up (or down) as your work flows require. Of course having more than 1 partner for each skill set you require, negates those sick day, holidays etc too.
LinkedIn is just bursting with these people in every industry in every country. If you live in countries with very high labour rates such as Australia, there can be massive advantages to having your team located in countries with lower labour costs. Here is how I found these people in all of the countries above.
Boolean Searches
Take a look at this recent article I wrote for The Rouse on Boolean searches for LinkedIn
Once you have found your short list, check out their profiles. Reach out and connect with them and have that conversation on how you can assist each other grow your businesses together.
3) Saved Searches
Once you have your profile optimised perfectly and have a World Class offer through the combined skills sets of yourself and your new Alliance Partners. It is time to find all of those people in need of your services.
LinkedIn allows you to perform highly targeted searches, as you now know Boolean searches can take this to a whole new level. Depending on what account type you have you can also save some of these searches, ranging from 3 for free accounts and higher for the paid levels. I use the Executive account and can save up to 10.
Setting up your saved searches is very simple. Start by being as specific as you need to be. If you need your clients to come from specific locations or Industries use these parameters to narrow in on these people. Here is an example of one of my searches, I love working with Business Coaches as they get massive value from the services I offer. I also know the best locations for these people are Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada and The United Kingdom. From past experience sports coaches are an exception so I filter these people out. My Boolean search is:
(“Business Coach” OR “Life Coach” OR “Executive Coach”) AND (“Australia” OR “New Zealand” OR “USA” OR “Canada” OR “United Kingdom”) NOT (“Sports Coach”)
Of course you can perform as many searches as you like, however the value in having saved searches is activating the saved search function to receive daily, weekly or monthly notifications of any new people fitting your search criteria. I set this to daily.
To save your search and set the activation just perform your Boolean search, then exclude first degree connections. Click the Save Search tab in the top right corner, then set how regularly you want to receive your notifications.
This negates the need to constantly perform new searches, you simply view the profiles of the new entrants each day or week etc, connect with them, and add value to their needs. When the time is right commence your sales process and convert your new connections into clients or customers.
So there you have the exact blue print I used and still use today, of course you need to have an exceptional multi stepped Ascending Transaction Model to compliment your search efforts. That is a blog post for another day.