This is the third question I was asked during a recent interview with Mo.com.
What ever made you decide to start your own company during a recession?
Necessity. I am a partner in another business offering personal growth seminars and trainings. The downturn in the economy had a huge impact on our company. As a result, the company couldn’t afford both my partner and I to draw salaries from the company. So I starting my own company was pretty much my only choice – since being an employee is something that I no longer view as an option because it is too restrictive for my personality. I’m an entrepreneur at heart. And as an Entrepreneur, you start a business at any time not when the time is right.
This is the second question I was asked during a recent interview for MO.com
You only started your consulting firm earlier this year. How have you managed to attract clients and build a base so quickly?
Mostly by getting out in the community and doing presentations where I educate people about the opportunities available for them on LinkedIn. In addition, I share a lot of free and very useful information that has many people subscribing to my funnel. I can then convert a percentage of them to paying customers. Lastly, is that I have accumulated a significant amount of the two currencies I mentioned: Credibility and Goodwill. If you see my LinkedIn profile you will note that there are over 175 recommendations. This makes it much easier for them to trust that I have value for them.
I was recently interviewed by Cathy Pritchett from MO.com. Here’s one of the questions I was asked:
Why do you think that LinkedIn is so important for a company’s marketing plan? Are there any other sites you think are equally as important?
The reason LinkedIn is so important for a company’s marketing plan is because we live in a hyper connected world. With this means is people have access to products and information instantly. In addition there is also an overabundance of information. This means that people are often overwhelmed by having too many choices. Therefore more and more people are relying on recommendations from people they know and trust to purchase products and engage with new vendors.
The two currencies that individuals and companies need to build on LinkedIn are credibility and trust. When they amass these two currencies, it makes it much easier for people who are looking for them to trust them and one engage with them.
LinkedIn is a relationship site. The old saying: “is not what you know but who you know has taken a new twist in our hyper connected world. It is neither what you know nor who you know, but rather, who knows you. LinkedIn makes it easy for others to get to know you and your company.
In addition, the power of LinkedIn is that: “You don’t know who the people you know, know.” LinkedIn makes those relationships visible. And once they are visible, you can tap them to get introductions to the right people you want to meet.
For the company’s salesforce, learning how to effectively use LinkedIn will eliminate the need to making calls. They will instead rely on personal introductions.
As far as other sites LinkedIn is THE business site. LinkedIn is to business networking sites what Google is to search. If you’re a professional today, people expect to find you on LinkedIn. A company that adds its employees on the site will humanize the company. Also recommendations from customers on LinkedIn are far more credible than recommendations on their website. The reason for this is because you cannot manufacture a recommendation on LinkedIn. Recommendations can only come from others and can’t be altered. They can also be traced to the person giving them. There is no other site that offers this level of trust.
If you would like to read the entire interview, please click here.
This is one of the questions I often get asked in my LinkedIn presentations. I believe I qualify to answer your question since I’m making a six figure income from using LinkedIn. The first thing that people need to understand is that LinkedIn is a relationship channel vs. a sales channel. One of the questions I get asked during my presentations is: How can I get my information to all my LinkedIn connections? These people still are seeing LinkedIn as a sales channel. They must have a new perspective if they will ever make money using LinkedIn.
To make money on LinkedIn you first must accumulate two currencies:
1- Trust/Credibility
2- Goodwill
It is similar to a checking account. You first must make deposits before you can write checks against those deposits.
Once you have accumulated sufficient quantities of those two currencies, you’ll be able to capitalize on the main benefit that LinkedIn offers: Access to the people you want to meet. This access is granted together with the credibility of the person(s) facilitating the introduction. This replaces the cold call and turns it into a personal introduction. If you get a personal introduction from a credible source to the right person, a sale will take place.
Of course accumulating credibility and goodwill takes time. And many people want instant gratification.
To use a metaphor for how to make LinkedIn work, think of of the Bamboo plant. It is the fastest growing plant in the world – growing up to 3 fee in one day! However that same plant takes 2-3 years before it comes out from underneath the soil. It takes 2-3 years of setting up and building a root system that will support such rapid growth when it finally happens.
So on LinkedIn you must build your infrastructure (roots) before you can capitalize on what it offers.
To do this you must have three elements in place:
1- An effective profile
2- A wide,deep and diverse network
3- Participate in the LinkedIn community – Groups, Q&A and status updates.
As you have probably found out by now, LinkedIn is not the most user-friendly site. You can certainly waste a lot of time trying to learn how to navigate the site. In this video I show you how to contact LinkedIn’s customer service. By the way, if you are on the basic (free) account, sometimes it takes up to 72 hours for them to respond.
“Is there any way to do an advanced search while you are looking at a connection’s connections. I am trying to target my connection’s connections who are CEO’s, Partners, Owners, etc. A lot of my connections have 500+ connections, so I’m just trying to expedite the process and don’t know if that is even possible?”
There are several reasons why you may want to withdraw a LinkedIn invitation. It may be that you sent one out by mistake. Or perhaps you changed your mind about connecting with someone. The following video shows you how to easily withdrawing an invitation that has yet to be accepted.
In this video I show you how to move around the different sections in your profile. For example if you add a video to your profile, you may have that prominently featured near the top of the profile.
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