According to Harvard Business Review 90% of decision makers say they never respond to cold outreach. Does this surprise you?
In today’s buying environment, where mountains of information is available via the Internet, prospects often do a majority of their research long before they ever speak to a sales professional. They don’t need a sales person to tell them about product features but they do need to understand how a product really solves their business needs. This modern buying environment makes developing strong relationships more important than ever.
At the end of the day, no one really enjoys cold calling - the person dialing or the person on the receiving end. However, as sales professionals, we still need to get in touch with our prospects, so what’s the alternative?
This is where warm introductions come into play. You can leverage your existing LinkedIn network to determine your best path for an introduction, or maybe even a referral, to a particular prospect, resulting in a better first impression. By looking at how a particular prospect is connected to your network, you can turn a cold outreach into something a bit warmer.
Finding the Connection
The first step is to identify the prospect, or prospects you want to reach. You can do this via LinkedIn search, or if you have already identified them via another means, you can plug them into LinkedIn and check how you are connected.
Once you identify the connection and are ready to reach out, you can use the introduction link provided in LinkedIn, or just send an email. I prefer to do this in a written format, which gives your connection the option to forward your note, along with their comments, directly to the prospect. Include details on why you want to meet this person and always provide an “out” in case your connection is not comfortable making the introduction. For example:
Hi Jeff -
How are you? I hope things are going well in your new role at Eyewitness. I noticed that you are connected to Noah Gold at SolarSlash. Based on my research I think SolarSlash would really benefit from Sales Navigator and I’m interested in connecting with Noah to discuss in more detail. Would you be willing to make an introduction or share any insights?
Getting this type of warm introduction to a prospect turns a cold lead into a potential “hot” prospect very quickly!
Why it Matters
You might ask, do warm introductions really work? The graph below shows the sources of LinkedIn’s business in 2015. You’ll notice that warm introductions make-up our largest source of leads.
By building a high quality network, you and your team are able to leverage these connections to build new business relationships and drive more qualified leads.
To learn more about adopting new social selling techniques and capitalizing on the trend, check out our eBook "Crossing the Chasm: How to Capitalize on the Social Selling Trend."
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