LinkedIn® provides professional services marketing and sales people with a wonderful tool for building and expanding relationships and growing business. Consider the following tips for maximizing the use – and profitability – of one the top business building tools on the Internet.

This daily game plan has 8 steps and takes 15 – 20 minutes.

1. Comment on Comments – Show your connections you are paying attention.
2. Make recommendations – If you have not made a recommendation for a connection, DO SO if at all possible. Please make sincere recommendations; remember, your name is on the line. If you cannot recommend someone in good faith, don’t do it.
3. Make your profile publicly available – While you can set the information which is publicly available to non-members/contacts, be careful with blocking too much information as this will also be unavailable to the search engines. As a minimum, consider providing enough information for the search engines to index your profile and cache the external links you have listed! In terms of optimizing your profile, the main goals are normally to rank for your own name, company name and possibly industry keywords related to this.
4. Comment on Profile Updates – Congratulate others on promotions and awards, inquire about other changes, and always offer assistance.
5. Check your Inbox – Respond to requests and messages in a timely manner.
6. Look in the “People You May Know Section” – Find new connections and leads.
7. Check Your Groups – Look for new discussions, answer questions, and look for other items of interest. Ask questions to gather information and open new relationships.
8. Use LinkedIn® Answers – This can help to build up your reputation within a field. For SEO it also builds the number of internal links pointing to your profile from within LinkedIn, therefore helping to strengthen your profile in the search engines!

A word of warning: LinkedIn® is a tool, not a religion. Relationships are still made person-to-person, not digitally. You can receive an introduction or introduce yourself on the web, but true relationship building comes from personal interaction. LinkedIn® and other social media sites help maintain and grow relationships. In a busy world, that is truly priceless!

As a professional speaker, marketing consultant, business coach, and high level-sales trainer, I meet with a wide variety of salespeople and consultative advisors. This week one of my engagements was to the mutual clients of a retirement plan distributor and a third-party retirement plan administrator, or TPA. One of the points that was discussed of the flaw of SBS© or “Selling By Spreadsheet©.

Too many so-called advisors feel they are providing value by selling cheapest as best.  Advising is really telling a client what is the best solution to their problem. Sometimes price comes into play, but if you are selling a service, usually the main selling point is the quality of service, not price. When you sell price your biggest risk is someone else can do it even cheaper, and if you look hard you can always find it cheaper!

A recent commercial by Office Depot says it well. The commercial depicts a barber shop best by a cheaper competitor, and how they address the challenge. When faced with a shop across the street offering $6 haircuts, they counter with a sign that says, “We Fix $6 Haircuts.”

So what’s your story? Build a defining statement that truly demonstrates your value as an advisor, and quit positioning yourself as the cheapest alternative. Position yourself as the best alternative.

Good selling!

To see the Office Depot Commercial, click HERE.

Budgets are tight and getting tighter. Every facet of the meeting planner’s day involves facing an onslaught of details preparing for an event. Selecting sites that fit the bill, building menus, choosing premium items, and coordinating agendas with the input of multiple constituencies and coordinating an endless flood of details are just a few of your challenges. Selecting outside speakers from the oratory multitudes present unique challenges. In about one-third of a second, googling “Professional Speaker” offers almost 9.8 million choices, and you don’t have time to listen to all of their demos, so you pick one and hope for the best.

The location and property are perfect. Catering over-delivers on their service promise. The schedules work, collateral materials exceed expectations, and everyone loves the room gifts. Then it happens – your speaker bombs! Consider the following six ways to effectively use the web to help you find qualified speakers that meet your needs.

Search Terms: Be as specific as possible using search terms, but keep it simple. Include terms that identify exactly what you want, including the type of presentation, (keynote, training, motivational, breakout, etc.), location, and industry. Be descriptive.

Speaker Websites: When looking at speaker or bureau websites, look for testimonials, experience, and demo videos. If finding content is difficult, then you might question the speaker’s ability to communicate from the platform. If the speaker blogs, you also see the type of content they deliver.

LinkedIn: This social media site offers a huge amount in a standardized form. General information about the speaker, as well as testimonials, links, and group affiliations all provide insight into a speaker. Testimonials become easier to expand and verify. You can even do market research that provides information from other meeting planners, as well as groups devoted to meeting planners. Networking with other meeting planners develops a massive amount of intellectual experience capital.

Facebook: Another social media networking service, Facebook is traditionally thought of as a “personal” site. However, more businesses are building a presence on Facebook. “Fan Pages” give you an idea of others who may have used the speaker’s services – or a sampling of their friends and family. This site also offers the potential to see professional speakers away from their businesses.

Twitter: Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as “tweets.” Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length – just enough – and it is free. Twitter is searchable, and offers a glimpse into the world of value creation of speakers. Tweets often include links to other resources that may be helpful in your search.

Professional Associations: The National Speakers Association (www.nsaspeaker.org) and their numerous state chapters (for example, the Minnesota Chapter’s site is www.nsa-mn.org) offer directories of professional speakers that provide a buffet of talent from which to choose.  The fact that speakers hold membership in a professional organization does not mean they are a great speaker or will meet your needs, but it does mean they have met membership criteria and subscribe to a code of conduct that provides some accountability. The ability to find and search speakers in one place makes associations an invaluable resource.

The web becomes a valuable tool to help your make finding a professional speaker easier, and with better results.