CHAPTER 11
THE SEVEN-FIGURE LINKEDIN MESSAGE

Here is the whole story of how a single individual LinkedIn message opened the door to one of the biggest sales in my career.

I will go into as much detail as I can as the processes completed before and after the message are equally as important as the message itself.

Setting the scene

Whilst working for a large IT company in the UK, my team mainly sold IT training packages to SMEs (small to medium-sized employers). When selling to SMEs, it's often very easy to reach decision-makers via cold calling-well, it certainly used to be back then-as there aren't as many people or layers in the business.

We would go in and present a variety of training packages valued between £3,000 and £18,000. The sales process often took around 1-2 months from prospecting through to closing.

Most of the time, we would first cold-call to find the decision-maker and aim to either email information over or book a meeting straight off the call.

During the meeting, we would then run through needs, listen and learn about the prospect. After that, we would go back, put together a proposal and call or meet them again to run through it.

It was a highly competitive market; we had a lot of competitors, some bigger and some cheaper than us. A lot of our success came down to either being the first to contact the prospect or our ability to build stronger relationships.

Following some really rapid growth, and as the top-performing person in sales, I was tasked with bringing new, large corporate clients to our portfolio. I very quickly found that cold calling was not as effective as it was with smaller companies!

Complex organisational structures and good gatekeepers made it difficult to get in front of the decision-maker. I learned how to do it effectively, but some companies were extremely challenging.

I was working on a few companies-global companies with multi-billion pound turnover. After, once again, getting stuck at the gatekeeper on a cold call, I decided to look for other ways in. One thing popped into my head: I wonder if the decision-maker is on LinkedIn?

I didn't have the name of the decision-maker, only a few job titles that I was currently working with. I was looking for HR Managers, L&D Managers and IT Managers (and above).

After a quick search, there they were! I popped onto their profile, had a read and soon qualified that this was the person I needed and wanted to speak to.

Let me just pause this story for a minute whilst I talk you through this stage:

The first step is to connect with your prospect.

LinkedIn InMails are okay, but they're no different (in some ways worse) than a cold call. When you connect with someone, you are able to send them a LinkedIn message directly, which is far more effective compared to an InMail, which is sent to someone you aren't connected with.

Similar to most of the messages I get, most InMails are even MORE sales-y.

To be able to send a direct message, you need to connect with them first.

When you go on their profile, if they're a 2nd-degree connection, you'll see the option to "Connect." It's a nice blue button just under their LinkedIn banner.

NOTE: If they're a 3rd-degree connection, you won't see the "Connect" button but instead will see a "Message" button with a little lock image next to it. This means you can only message them via InMails if you have LinkedIn Premium or LinkedIn Sales Navigator. In the past, there was no way that you could send this person a connection request; however, LinkedIn has changed that now.

If you click the "More." button next to the "Message" button, it will open a section with four options: Share Profile, Save to PDF, Connect and Report/Block.

If you click the "Connect" option, it will be the same as clicking the connect button with a 2nd-degree connection.

When you click on the "Connect" button, it will prompt a little pop-up that will say:

"You can customise this invitation.

LinkedIn members are more likely to accept invitations that include a personal note.

Add note - Send now"

Would you like to customise this request? YES! It can be very helpful, depending on the prospect, to personalise your connection request.

However, personalising can work against you! Not only are there a huge number of people out there that will be more than happy to connect to you without a personalised request, but sometimes personalising it can discourage people from connecting.

I get tonnes of requests daily, and a large percentage of the personalised ones are personalised with a sales pitch! This does not help increase your chances of getting accepted.

From my own experience connecting and messaging hundreds of decision-makers, the higher up or more senior the prospect, the more beneficial personalising will be. The key is NOT to personalise it with a sales message. There are several templates you can use for this. Most of the time, I go with something simple like:

"Hi Sally,

I'd love to connect,

Kind Regards,

Dan"

Simple, personal and in no way presents me as someone who is going to try and sell to them. This isn't a sure-fire, guaranteed way to get them to accept; some people need more than this.

Some will need you to engage with their content a bit first. I judge it by how active THEY are on LinkedIn. If they are quite active and have a large network (over 1,000), that tells me they are going to be quite likely to accept my request.

If they're not very active and have a smaller network, it's more likely that I'll need to build some rapport first.

Back to the story.

In this case, the prospect is active, so I went with the small, simple personalisation. Within 30 minutes, they accepted my request-a great start to the process!

Sometimes, it can be smarter after connecting to engage with their content a bit first or share your own content for them to see. You can do this over a few days or 1-2 weeks+ to build some foundations before you go in to start a conversation. Again, make a judgement on the prospect and also the proposition you are offering.

In this case, I was very confident that this company would need and want the product I was selling (from qualifications I had already gained). The prospect was active on LinkedIn, which showed me that sending a message straight away might work well.

What I have found from experience is that the higher up the chain you're pitching, the more direct you should be. If you're selling to Directors or C-Level positions, it can often work better to just go straight in with a message.

BUT!

Obviously, it needs to be a well-crafted message.

And this is where the £1,000,000 LinkedIn message was born.

Remember, this is NOT a sales pitch.

This is not about you listing loads of features and benefits or telling them how amazing your product and company are.

It's not about you trying to jump into bed with them straight away.

It is NOT some spammy message.

It is NOT a copy-and-paste job.

It is a simple message with one simple goal.

To start a conversation with a potential customer.

Here it is.

"Hi Sally,

Thank you for connecting! I work for a company called X, who is one of the UK's leading providers of IT Training. I would love to learn a bit more about what you're currently using for that?

Kind Regards,

Dan"

It was that simple.

Before you start to feel underwhelmed by this message, this is the message that opened the door to a sale valued at over £1,000,000. It was this single simple message that did it. Not a cold call, not an email, not a letter, not a text, not a video, not the type of LinkedIn messages I get in my inbox, but this simple message.

In sales, we know simple works best. It's when we overcomplicate things that they often go wrong.

This was a small conversational prospecting message that thanked them for connecting, explained who we are and what we do, and asked them a question about what they may already have in place for that product or service.

As a decision-maker reading this, I'm not overwhelmed by some sort of huge message or something that comes across in an aggressive way.

It makes me think of that particular product or service and whether or not I'm happy with what I've currently got, whether I need it or whether I may want to change it.

Of course, this doesn't work for everyone.

As I mentioned earlier, this isn't something you can just copy and paste a thousand times. However, with the right prospects, this can and does work. For me, on this occasion and for this particular prospect, I received a reply within an hour.

I can actually remember the exact moment; I was having lunch with a colleague (fish and chips with a cold can of lemonade) and decided to check my phone. Logging into LinkedIn, I saw the little notification on the messages, opened it up and was met with...