Good Evening,
“Hi Chris, I viewed your profile and impressed by what you currently do at Superstar SEO, it would be an honor for me to invite you to my network for knowledge sharing and networking.”
” Hi Chris, I hope you don’t mind me reaching out to connect with you on LinkedIn. I noticed we have a few mutual connections and you seem like a great contact to have.”
” Hi Chris, I’m Mike, a Growth Marketing Consultant. I saw your profile on a few discussions and searches and decided to connect. It seems we have similar interests in marketing and growth and I hope we can engage in posts, share knowledge and maybe help each other with projects.”
Those are 3 real and recent examples of unsolicited private messages I have gotten on Facebook and LinkedIn today, I am sure many of you get them too.
Its probably clear what’s wrong with them.
- They don’t work
- People don’t actually talk like that and it is clearly scripted/fake/automated
- They have made no attempt to get to know us and just went right for the sale
- So many people do this crap that even if it did work we become banner blind.
That said, organic social media selling can and DOES work.
I have made 3 sales of varying sizes from it this week alone. The trick is this.
Find a question or conversation that you can contribute to. “Provide value” by answering the question and being otherwise helpful. Tell them that if they need anymore help to let you know (be careful of the group rules, some groups don’t like asking for a PM). More times than not they will reach out to you. Then you can soft sell them into whatever you offer. Even if you don’t make a sale right then you may in the future, and they will know like and trust you and send you more business form other people as well. For whatever reason amateur sales people just forget how to act like a person when it comes to making sales, particularly online and they then end up being convinced that organic outreach doesn’t work. It does you just have to be strategic and human about it.
I can talk about this some more if there is interest, let me know.
Best,
CMW