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Power Tips

How to get more introductions and referrals and meet more useful people via Linkedin

The Referral ChallengeAsk pretty much anyone in business what the very best source of new clients and contacts is and the answer is almost always “referrals” or “word of mouth”.

Yet there’s a huge gap between that belief and the real world experience of most coaches.

Yes, we know that referrals are the best source of new business. But it can often be incredibly difficult to get good referrals.

That’s the Referral Challenge.

What most people experience when they ask for referrals is an embarrassing silence, or maybe an “oh sure, I’ll get back to you if I think of anyone”.

The problem is that when we ask our contacts or clients for referrals we’re asking them to work too hard to figure out who to introduce us to.

We ask for them to refer us to “any senior executive” but they know too many to know who would be right. We go specific and ask for “senior executives in large retail organisations in New York” but they don’t know any.

What would be ideal would be if we could look into their “little black book” of their best contacts to see who they actually know and then ask for introductions specifically to the right people for us.

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Linkedin: The Business NetworkNow very few people are going to let you open up and skim their “little black book”. But online with Linkedin, that’s exactly what you can do.

Linkedin is the social network for business. It’s got over 259 million users, and over 84% of corporate executives say they use it regularly.

In fact, it’s pretty much unavoidable. Whether you like it or not, these days corporate buyers will check you out on Linkedin.

Especially if you’re a small firm or a sole practitioner, Linkedin is a great way for an potential client or contact to quickly check out

your background and credibility to pre-screen whether it’s worth talking to you.

If your profile isn’t effective, or if you don’t have one at all, the chances are you’re going to get screened out.

I’ve even seen buyers quickly check the Linkedin profile of people they don’t know who’ve just called them as they’re taking the call. If the profile doesn’t look credible the conversation doesn’t last long.

But Linkedin can be used so much more effectively than just as an online profile or résumé.

In particular, it allows you to get much more proactive with your business development.



Why Linkedin?The one feature that Linkedin has that no other social network has is “network visibility”. While most social networks focus on chatting, sharing and interacting with your current contacts; Linkedin gives you visibility into your contacts’ network to see who they’re connected to. so you can make new contacts.

That means you can use Linkedin to find the right people in client organisations who may be a potential client or buyer. Or a champion for your services, or someone who’s approval you need.

Most senior executives have armies of people protecting them and their time. So trying to break in to a corporate organisation and reach these

executives can be a huge challenge if you don’t have a pre-existing relationship.

What Linkedin allows you to do is reveal the hidden relationships and networks in your contact base to get a warm introduction to the executives you want to meet. Giving you a much better chance of getting through.

But none of this happens if you do what so many people do: just join Linkedin, put in the basics of a profile, then leave it.

Little wonder that they don’t get any results from Linkedin or say that “it didn’t work for me”.

Like any marketing strategy, you have to actively work Linkedin to get results.



Step 1: A Client Focused ProfileLuckily, if you know what you’re doing and you focus on the essentials, it doesn’t take a lot of time and effort. And that’s what you’re about to learn.

Ultimately, our goal is to use Linkedin to make connections for referrals. But our first step is to make sure our profile is effective so that when we do connect, we make the right impact.

Step 1: Create a Client Focused Profile

The first step to using Linkedin to find and win clients is to have an effective profile.

Your profile is the thing most people will focus on when they find or connect with you via Linkedin. It’s like your website homepage.

Unfortunately, most people approach it completely wrongly.

When you first create a Linkedin account it asks you about all your previous jobs. That leads many people to think of Linkedin like an online résumé.

That’s a big mistake.

Making your Linkedin profile look like a résumé isn’t going to help you win clients or attract new business partners - they’re not looking to hire you as an employee.

An executive client isn’t interested in how big a budget you used to manage, your achievements in the job you had 10 years ago or how many people you were in charge of.



Creating a Client Focused ProfileThey’re interested in how you can help them right now. And whether you’re credible at what you claim. So the key to an effective profile is to make it client focused.

Put yourself in your potential client or partner’sshoes. If you’re checking out a potential supplier, what is it you’d be looking for?

Chances are, the first thing you’d want to know was “is what this person does relevant to me?”. No point in reading any further if not.

So begin your profile summary with a short section on who you work with and what you do for them. Not the technical details - but the end results - the the sort of things that clients have achieved by working with you.

Next, they’re probably going to want to be sure you really can deliver on what you say. So include a section “proving” that. Perhaps some testimonials, a mini case study, or a little bit of your “backstory” - some of your history showing how it is you’ve come to be an expert in what you do.

If you can share some of your clients’ results too then so much the better.

Executives are human beings too - so have something on your profile that allows them to connect with you on a personal level - that shows them the person behind the profile.

Finally, have a “call to action”. Rather than just reading your profile and moving on, give your potential buyer a reason to take action.



Creating a Client Focused ProfileThis could be to connect with you, call you, or visit your website. For example, if you work with new executives in their first leadership role, you want to offer a free video on “Your first 30 days as a Leader - how to get off to a flying start”. Or if you specialise in coaching to executives in the pharmaceutical sector, develop a “Top 5 Leadership Trends in Big Pharma” report.

Those are the sorts of thing an executive in those situations would be motivated to visit your website to get hold of - and hence initiate a relationship with you (while indicating that they may be in the market soon).

You’ll also want to put something client focused in your “headline”. That’s the couple of lines of text

which appear at the top of your profile and also show up next to your picture if people find you in a search. So it’s critical to get something crisp and compelling.

By default, your headline is simply taken from your last job title. So it’ll be “Director of XXX” or “HR Manager at XXX” or whatever your previous role was.

But you want it to be something more interesting. Something that will get a potential client to click through to your full profile.

So put in something which shows who you work with and what you do for them. A coach focused on the pharmaceutical sector could say “Coach to Successful Pharmaceutical Executives” or one



Step 2: Get Foundfocused on newly appointed execs could say “Helping New Executives Make a Big Impact”.

Your profile should also include a professional headshot photo. Many people won’t connect unless you have a photo. And one taken at a wedding 10 years ago is probably also not the best way to introduce yourself.

Recommendations (the detailed, personally entered ones rather than the push-button-bingo endorsements) can also be big credibility boosters.

Step 2: Get Found

Once you have an effective profile, you can tweak it to ensure you appear high up in Linkedin searches.

Now in truth, most executives or high level partners don’t often go searching on Linkedin for potential service providers or business partners. You’re more likely to connect with them with the referral strategy in steps 4 and 5.

But occasionally, they do use the search function. And rather like with Google, if you appear on the first page of the results, you’re much more likely to get them visiting your profile.

It can also give you a bit of credibility and sometimes people will do searches in order to find people to connect to. So it can help to extend your network.



Optimising Your ProfileSo it’s worth optimising your profile for those occasions. Especially since it doesn’t take a lot of effort.

Linkedin’s search algorithm is much simpler than Google’s - and any changes you make impact the results instantly.

The first thing you need to know though is what keywords to optimise your profile for to get found. In other words what are the words that people might type into the search box that you would want to be found for?

The normal Linkedin search results are based on the presence of your keywords in certain critical spots in your profile, plus how closely you’re connected to the searcher. On the advanced

search you can choose to base them purely on keywords, or on relationships and recommendations.

Before you make changes do a search yourself for your keywords and see where your profile ranks so you can track any improvements. Obviously your results won’t be the same as other peoples - but any improvements will be mirrored for them.

The most important places where having your keywords counts are:

1. Your Professional Headline. In Step 1 we discussed having a compelling headline. if you include your keywords in it, it also helps you get found.



Optimising Your Profile2. Your Summary. In step 1 we talked about

making your summary all about who your clients are and what they get from working with you. Make sure the search phrases you want to be found for appear in the summary too.

3. Your Current and Past Work Experience.

Including your keywords in the job titles you held (Linkedin doesn’t check that those were exactly the job titles you really had!) can improve your search rankings. It’s also possible to create multiple current roles. For example, I include one role for my position running my business, and one role as an author on my blog. This gives me extra keywords.

4. Your Publications. Anything you’ve written - even short reports - can appear here and if your keywords appear in the titles it helps your rankings.

5. Your Education. Again, Linkedin doesn’t check whether the titles of the courses you’ve taken exactly matches the historical record. So you may want to tweak some of them slightly.

6. Other Factors. If your keywords also appear in the titles of Awards you’ve won, Additional Organisations you’re a member of, or anything in the Interests section; then you’re just a little bit more likely to be found by a search.



Optimising Your ProfileThe one thing to bear in mind though is that if you overuse the keywords in these sections it can look very spammy.

You’ll see that for many searches the top positions are occupied by people who stuff multiple keywords in their headlines. And when you look at their profiles, you’ll find the keywords repeatedly included in multiple job descriptions and in their summary in a very formulaic way.

In my experience, this can do more harm than good. Although you may get seen in the search results more often, executive buyers are likely to be put off by how this looks - for example:

!

So try to balance the use of keywords in the critical places with making your profile look professional and attractive to potential executive clients.



Step 3: Get ConnectedStep 3: Get Connected

Once you have a decent profile and you’ve optimised it so that people can find you, it’s time to harness the real power of Linkedin by getting connected to others.

The more people you’re connected to, the more people you’ll be able to see when you do searches. And the more people who’ll see you when they’ll do searches.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to getting connections.

“Open Networkers” or LIONs (Linkedin Open Networkers) as they sometimes show on their profiles will accept connection requests from

anyone and will try to connect to as many people as possible.

Their philosophy is to use Linkedin as a means of extending their network and getting as much visibility as possible.

“Trusted Partner Networkers” only connect on Linkedin with people they already know. They don’t accept connection requests if they don’t know you - and they only make active requests to people they’ve already met face to face.

Their philosophy is to use Linkedin primarily as a follow-up mechanism with their existing network. They want to be confident they can recommend anyone they’re connected to and they worry that if they connect to people they don’t know, that



Making the Right Connectionsconnection could be abused (by cold calling or spamming their connections somehow).

Personally, I’ve tried both methods and for me what works best is a kind of “happy medium”.

For me, the pure Trusted Partner strategy is a bit like going to a face to face networking event but only talking to the people you already know. You’re missing out on the opportunity to meet and get to know people who could become useful contacts or friends.

However, I don’t connect to just anyone. If someone asks to connect with me, I’ll check out their profile - if there’s not much there or I can’t see anything in common, I’ll ignore the request.

I don’t make active connection requests to many people (because I run a high profile blog I usually don’t need to - I have plenty of people wanting to connect with me) but occasionally I’ll see someone in a group or recommended by Linkedin who looks interesting and I’ll ask them to connect.

More connections means more opportunities to find someone in my extended network who could become a client or referrer.

And it means I’m more likely to be found in searches too.

The key is to think strategically about who to connect with.



Connecting with Great ContactsWhen it comes to using Linkedin to achieve our primary goal of getting more referrals and introductions, the key is to make sure you’re connected to all the people you believe would refer you with confidence.

That way when you spot people you’d like to be referred or introduced to, you have a core set of connections who you know would be very happy to do so.

Feel free to connect to others on top to start forming relationships for the future. But make sure at a minimum that you’re connected to everyone you’re confident would refer you.

How To Make A Connection Request That Gets Accepted

The key to getting your connection requests accepted is to personalise them. Look at the person’s profile and search for something you have in common, or something to remark upon.

Or state why you’re interested in connecting - or which connections you have in common.

But whatever you do - don’t just use the standard “I’d like to add you to my professional network” request. It just sounds like you haven’t been bothered to think of them personally and are just blasting out tons of requests.

When you do connect with someone - either because you’ve asked for the connection or they have - don’t just stop there.



Step 4: Search for Clients & PartnersSend them a message. Ask them a question. Make a remark about something on their profile or even just ask them how things are going.

There’s little point in connecting if you’re not going to attempt to engage with them. And if you start later when you need something from them then you’ve no history or goodwill to build on.

So start interacting as soon as you connect. It makes communicating later much easier.

Step 4: Search for Clients and Partners

Here’s where you really start to get value from Linkedin.

One of the keys to successfully winning clients is to focus. For most of us, we just need to win a handful of big clients or establish a few great partners to have a successful business.

Rather than approaching hundreds of people and spreading your efforts thinly, you’re much better off focusing on getting a strong entry into a small number of high priority ideal clients and partners.

Without doubt, the best way to get straight to a potential executive that you’d like to meet is to get a referral. An introduction or recommendation from someone that person already knows and trusts.



Start With Your Existing ContactsSenior executives tend to be short on time, and often risk averse. As a result, they ignore most cold attempts to connect with them.

But an introduction from someone they already know - especially if it comes with a strong endorsement - will get their attention.

So how do you find out who knows the people you want to know?

Well, there are two approaches.

The first is to start with the people you already know well - the ones highly likely to recommend you strongly - and look up who they’re connected to on Linkedin.

Look through your contacts for clients and ex-clients, ex-colleagues or business partners. People who’ve “seen you in action” and can provide a strong endorsement for you.

Then look at their Linkedin profiles to see who they know.



Advanced SearchScroll down on their profiles to the Connections section and page through to see who they’re connected with on Linkedin.

More often that not you’ll be surprised at just who some of your best contacts know that you weren’t aware of at all.

A friend of mine was shocked recently when he was asked to connect on Linkedin by a senior client and looked at his connections after doing so. The client was connected to exactly the person he’d been trying to hook up with in a similar organisation.

It turns out the two guys were good friends, and with a little bit of guidance from his client, my friend was able to call his target, strike up a

communication based on their common connection, and start getting down to business.

I’ll be saying more on the best ways of connecting with the target contacts you discover this way in the next step.

The second way to find out who knows the people you want to know is to use the Linkedin Advanced Search function.

You’re going to use this to get a list of target clients who meet certain criteria - and then find out which of your contacts knows them.

To get to Advanced Search, click the Advanced Search option just to the right of the search box at the top right of any Linkedin page.



Advanced SearchYou’ll then be presented with a whole series of options which will let you narrow down your search to find the right person.

You can search for keywords generally in the profile, or specifically in the First Name, Last Name, Title, Company or School fields.

Obviously, the Title and Company fields will be the most valuable if you’re searching for Executives. If you’re looking for a contact in a specific company - use the Company field to search. If you want a specific job title like Vice President or Marketing Director - use the Title field. or, of course, combine both.

You can also specify a postcode/zip code and narrow your search to people based within a certain distance of this area.

And you can further refine your search with a variety of checkbox options.

With standard Linkedin membership you can filter by checking various industry groups (e.g. Accounting, Biotechnology, etc.) and whether the



Advanced Searchperson is a member of specific groups (you can choose any of the groups you’re a member of.

This means that you should try to join the larger groups that your potential clients are members of - that way you’ll get visibility of them in your searches.

If you’re a premium Linkedin member you can also filter by things like seniority level and company size.

Personally, I’ve never found these things to be necessary - but they may be useful for you and if so you should consider Linkedin premium membership.

One checkbox you should definitely use for these searches for potential clients is the Relationship section.

By default this is set to All Linkedin Members - but you want to set it to 2nd Order Connections. This means the results will only show people directly connected to people you are also connected to.

Why use this setting?

Firstly, there’s no need to see people you’re already connected with - you already know them.

Secondly, if people are more distant connections than second order you’ll have to get to them via a friend of a friend. That connection is just too weak



Advanced Searchto pass on a real recommendation/referral of any value.

You might occasionally want to check the groups box as you may be able to strike up a conversation via group discussions and you can directly message anyone in the same group as you.

However your most likely option for making a good new contact is with 2nd order connections.

When you then press the Search button, you’ll get a list of Linkedin profiles matching your criteria.

Here’s an example of a search I performed for the keyword CEO in the Title field.

! I can get more details of each person by clicking on their name. For any I decide I’d like to get in



Advanced Searchcontact with I can see who our shared connections are by clicking the Shared Connections link.

This tells me who our common contact is, for example:

In this case I have the opportunity to make contact with Roy via Michael, Stephen, Tom or three further common contacts.

Some of these contacts i may know well, others less so. So obviously I focus on making connections through the contacts I know well.

This then leads us to our next step - making contact with potential clients.

!!!!!



Step 5: Making ContactStep 5: Make Contact with Potential Clients

I’ve now used either the search function or a scan of my contacts’ connections to find potential clients I’d like to get in touch with.

The easiest way to make this contact would be to use the “Connect” button on the search results.

This will send a Linkedin message to our common contact asking them to pass on my request for an introduction - perhaps with some words of their own.

But I recommend you don’t do this.

It may be easy, but it’s not the best way if you want to have a high success rate in your contact request being accepted.

It’s too impersonal and too easy to ignore. And you have less control over what’s said (or indeed, over whether the introduction is actually passed on).

My recommendation is to revert back to good old face to face or telephone methods. Or at a pinch, email.

Instead of pressing a Linkedin button - actually phone up your common contact.

!!



Making ContactThis allows you to make a personal request and to judge their response based on what you hear from them.

You can have a conversation and get their advice too.

If you know them very well, you can be quite forward in your request for an introduction:

“Hey Jim, I just spotted on Linkedin that you’re

connected to Bill Smith. How well do you know him?

I’d love to get in touch with Bill. I don’t know if he’s on

the lookout for a coach right now but he’s just the

sort of person I work well with. Could you make an

introduction?”

If you don’t know your common contact so well, you need to be a bit gentler in what you ask for - I recommend asking their advice:

“Hi Jim, it’s Ian Brodie here...

...I was just looking around on Linkedin and noticed

you’re connected to Bill Smith of Smith & Co.

Bill fits the perfect profile of the sort of Executive I’ve

had great results working with.

If you were me, how would you go about getting in

touch with Bill?”

With this version, you’re not putting your relationship under too much strain by asking for a recommendation too forcefully. You’re flattering Jim by asking for his advice and 9 times out of 10 if



Making Contactyou know him well enough and he knows Bill well enough he’ll offer to introduce you anyway.

And make sure you put the emphasis on how you could help Bill, rather than coming across as only being motivated by wanting to sell to Bill. Remember, your common contact knows your target client personally - maybe even better than they know you.

Once you have an offer of an introduction, test to see if you can get a stronger referral.

“Would you be able to give Bill a call to tell him about me?”. Or “would it be OK to mention your name when I contact Bill?”

In fact, use all the normal strategies you’d use to get a strong referral in the face to face world.

And that’s it.

You’ve gone from not knowing who to ask for a referral to, or asking generically and getting nowhere; to being able to pinpoint exactly who you’d like introductions to, knowing who can introduce you, and knowing how to ask for that introduction.

Now it’s over to you.

Get onto Linkedin to find those connections.

Get on the phone and start getting referrals.

It will pay off incredibly quickly.



Your Next StepsYou’ve got in your hands (or more likely, on your computer) a simple, step by step approach to getting more referrals by using Linkedin.

Now you need to put it into practice.

Follow the steps one-by-one. Fixing your profile in steps 1 and 2 should take you less than an hour.

Connecting with your best contacts who you’re confident will recommend you will take a little longer depending on how many you’re already connected to already.

So set aside a few minutes each day for the next week or so to send personal connection requests.

Even before you’re “fully connected” you can start looking at the contacts of the connections you

already have. then when other connect with you you can check them out too and start using Advanced Search.

That will generate a shortlist of people you’d love to be introduced to along with who you know who can make that introduction.

The you just have to ask (in the right way).

If you have any questions at all about this or another marketing strategies, just drop me an email at [email protected] or check out the tips on my site at www.ianbrodie.com.

To your success!

Ian Brodie


mailto:[email protected]


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