In today’s video, I’ll share with you 4 simple changes you can make to your LinkedIn profile to generate consulting leads.

TRANSCRIPT:

Do you wanna generate more leads from your LinkedIn profile? Well, if you do, you’re gonna find what I’m gonna share with you in this video to be very helpful in this regard.

Hey, it’s Michael Zipursky from ConsultingSuccess.com. Hope you’re having a wonderful day. I’m here right now in Melbourne, Australia, and I thought I’d take a few minutes and share a few thoughts on some topics that I get quite a few questions from our coaching clients and others in the community.

LinkedIn is without a doubt a great place to generate business, right? This is where a lot of business people are. It’s the number one social network when it comes to business in most places and in most industries. But I still see a lot of people who aren’t using it as effectively as they can.

And what I’m going to talk about today is not so much in terms of tactic strategies, outreach through LinkedIn, but rather the low-hanging fruit, probably the lowest hanging fruit that there is, which is where it all begins, and that is your LinkedIn profile. What can you do to make your LinkedIn profile more compelling to create it and really develop it into a marketing asset for you, for your business? So let’s get into that.

The first thing that is really important for you to do is to be very, very specific. I see far too many people still using LinkedIn or their LinkedIn profile almost like a resume. It’s here’s where I’ve worked in the past, and I’m a transformational, visionary, so on, so on, and so on, and it’s just a whole bunch of generalities. The more general you are, the less your message will hook and connect with your ideal client. So the opposite of that, what you should be doing is making your message very, very specific. Talk about your specific achievements, results that you’ve accomplished.

If you’ve been a part of a sales team or you’ve been a part of, let’s say, a fundraising team, you’ve deployed, implemented software successfully, you’ve gone in and been part of big negotiations, you’ve improved the performance or the efficiency of a manufacturing line, like whatever it is that is your area of expertise, think about what achievements have you had. Where have you had success? What results have you achieved?

It doesn’t have to be necessarily as a consultant if you’re new to consulting, although it certainly can be if you have a track record. It can be also as an employee, your time in the corporate world. What did you do? Make a big list of everything that you achieved that would be meaningful to your ideal clients, that really demonstrates your experience and expertise, and make sure that you communicate it, right? Make sure that you include it on your profile. That will really help to hook your ideal client, because it demonstrates that you truly are an expert. You’re not just sharing thoughts and ideas, you are actually someone who has done it before.

Now, the other thing, and this is big low-hanging fruit, recommendations. LinkedIn allows you to send a request for recommendations to essentially anyone that you’re connected with on LinkedIn. So send that request, you can personalize, and you should personalize, a little note, send it to clients, past clients, current clients. Send it to past employers, colleagues, really anyone that knows you that you think could intelligently and ideally in a detailed way describe the kind of person that you are, and even better, the work that you’ve done, where you’ve added value for them, and therefore, how you may be able to add value for others.

The more recommendations you have, the more social proof that provides, the greater credibility will come with everything connected to your profile. So the more recommendations that you can have on your profile, the better. Feel free to go through some of the recommendations on my profile on LinkedIn and see really what I’m referring to. But the more specific the recommendation you can have from someone, the better.

Then the other thing that I would really include here is treat your LinkedIn profile the same way that you would treat any marketing material, or the way that you should, I should say, which is think about it through the lens and the eyes of your ideal client. So don’t use just language that you understand, talk about and include language that your ideal clients would understand. Think about what is the problem they’re having right now? What goals do they have in mind? What desires are top of mind for them? And really hit on those things.

Don’t just use your language. Don’t talk about what you know or you think is important for them, even though you might be right, even though you have that outside expertise. You might know what they need to be focused on, but if that’s not the conversation that is currently going through their mind, then don’t talk about that.

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