How you can increase your clients and turnover using LinkedIn

If you would like to find new clients on LinkedIn then you need a plan!

Part of that plan will be based on your successes to date.

To do this effectively you need to know the results you are getting at the moment from your sales activity.

It will allow you to spot what you need to do more of, where your weak points are in the process and exactly what action you need to take to achieve your goals.

Monitoring what you do is important because it gives you the data you need to be able to scale up your business.

So, what do you need to measure?

Take a time period, say, the last 6 months then look at:-

The number of new clients
The total turnover
Then work out the average sale value
How many sales calls did you have in that same period?
Then work out how many calls you need to have to make a sale – number of sales calls divided by the number of clients
How many people did you reach out to over the same period?
The likelihood is that you have not monitored your activity to this extent in the past. Have a look back and see what you can cobble together. It will at least give you some idea on which to base assumptions. But putting this into action is easily done moving forward. Start today!

Here is an example of how that data might look over one month

Reached out to 100 people (5 a day)
Had 12 sales calls
Got 6 new clients
Total revenue $24,000
Average revenue per new client $4000
Using this example, if you want to double your income then you need to reach out to 10 people a day – 200 a month. Or charge more per client. Or get better at sales.

Make sense?

Most people underestimate the number of people they need to ‘touch’ each month to get the desired number of calls. Without the calls you are going to miss your target on the revenue.

What is a touchpoint and how do you reach out?

By reach out or touch point I mean to start a conversation with someone.

You can make a connection and send a connection message on LinkedIn.
You can start a conversation in the InBox once someone has connected with you
You can respond to a comment someone has made on your post or article and message them afterwards
You can comment on one of their pieces of content and message then afterwards
You could email them
Give them something they would perceive of value
You could even pick up the phone!
I also monitor the following:

The number of profile views I get on LinkedIn
The number of connection requests I send
The number of connection requests accepted
There is a direct correlation between the numbers of new connections and the number of sales I get.

Where might this process break down?

As I mentioned earlier you need to be able to spot the weak links.

I remember a few years back talking to someone who had his calendar booked solid with sales calls. He was selling a $97 software product but was getting no sales. He diagnosed the problem as the price being too high. Obviously this wasn’t the case.

His issues were that he had not targeted properly and had poor sales skills.

If you are having 100 sales calls a month but few sales you have to be able to spot what needs to change. And then change it.

Most people’s problem is that they have too few sales calls booked on the calendar. And that is generally because of six things.

Audience is too general – not enough focus for your outward communication
Marketing message is not resonating with your audience – probably because it is too general
Not enough visibility amongst your audience
Not enough credibility established
Not enough action being taken to connect, nurture and invite
In need of a better LinkedIn marketing strategy