LinkedIn is a huge platform that’s great for prospecting. The question is, once you’ve connected with a prospect, what should you do next? Join Donald Kelly and Ahmad Munawar as they talk about what you should do next once you’ve connected with the prospects. 

What to do next after connecting?

• Keep pitching until they say yes. 
• Even if the prospects don’t say yes, send them a contract or a payment link. 
• The challenge in LinkedIn or in any other platform is to game the system. This means wanting to get everything from the platform by doing the least amount of work possible. This method, however, rarely results in any positive outcome. 
• This is true for email outreach, for LinkedIn, and for advertising. 
• Many salespeople and entrepreneurs see LinkedIn as an automated lead generation tool but this isn’t how LinkedIn works. 
• What works in any business and in sales is relationship building. It’s not even about getting the prospects to like you, rather, it’s about getting the prospects to trust you. 

Building Relationships 

• Relationship building is about conveying to the marketplace your expertise and why you’re worthy of the conversation. 
• In Ahmad’s coaching program, they call it the Medicaid Pipeline. It means that clients don’t talk to strangers unless there’s a good reason to do so. That LinkedIn connection request does not qualify as a good enough reason to guarantee a conversation. 
• Our job as sellers and salespeople is to make the prospects believe that there’s something here for them to look at. 
• Follow the 80-20 rule. Talk about the script, the closing pattern, and the strategies 20% of the time and spend the rest talking about the prospects’ beliefs and how they feel about the offer. 
• In Ahmad’s team, they talk about the client during their sales meeting. They don’t talk about the tactics, they talk about client success. It helps their sales reps to have bulletproof confidence when they talk to prospects the next time around. 

Believe in what you’re selling

• Sales reps need to believe in what they’re selling. You need to be the vehicle in which that belief can be communicated to the marketplace. 
• Gone were the days where you can just be good at sales and building relationships. Today, you also need to be very strong in product knowledge. 
• If you want to make money in today’s economy, you need to become the expert that your clients want to engage with. 
• If the customer has a leg up on you in terms of their knowledge and understanding of the problem then they don’t need you for anything. Be the expert in the conversation. 
• As a sales rep, your goal is to publish. You have a treasure trove of knowledge from all that outreach and prospecting. Use that knowledge as lead indicators. Publish your expertise and evangelize your offering into the marketplace. 

“LinkedIn: Once You've Connected With a Prospect, Here's What You Should Do Next” episode resources

Connect with Ahmad Munawar via LinkedIn. 

Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, about any sales concerns. 

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. 

Are you sick of crickets? The pain of sales reps continually reaching out with phone calls and emails and not receiving a response is real. 

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