Mining your Network
Key concept:
Buyers are attracted to solutions that have helped their immediate network or
environment. Take advantage of this simple concept as a means of driving new
business.
How will I benefit:
More revenue – this module is responsible for >50% of all the Social Selling
opportunities.
Key Learning Objectives:
1. Map past success stories and relationships for new opportunities
2. Uncover corporate & competitor insights
3. Socially Surround buyers by developing deeper relationships in your target
accounts
Using your “Sphere of Influence
There are a number of opportunities that are hidden within your network and you
need to mine your connections for these opportunities.

How to leverage your decision maker

The power of one good story that can be shared with targeted personas

Use your influence to get more introductions
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Sphere of Influence
The concept of the sphere of influence is to share a success story that you have had
with a client and share it with people who would be interested in that brand.

Leveraging the Decision Maker

Search for References

Find key prospects from their connections

Leverage past employment

University Alumni

Introductions from your connections

The power of One compelling story
Take a customer that you have a success story with and plot your best prospect areas
by researching using the appropriate searches.

Current employees from Company Page

Past employees from Advanced search

Competitors from company page - view who
viewed other profiles

Emulators - similar target personas - company
followers

Vendors, Partner & clients from company
followers
Follow your client’s LinkedIn Company page.
Scroll through followers to find the above
people.
Review Company profile for competitor sites visited
We are mapping our past clients successes for
opportunities that could be timely.
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Exercise: The power on one good story
Think of a “Good News” story you have had with one of your customers. Write it down
here.
See the transformation and the shift in mentality and action towards the decision
making process of their business. Our client is now more focused, organized and you
could even tell that their offices were better organized and cleaned up! Just the idea
of having to put their ideas in order to execute a strong digital campign to boost their
sales, enabled a change in their day to day activities.
Your story needs to be published on your blog so that you can refer to it when
messaging prospects to determine if they would be interested in your solution.
Map out one of your Named accounts' "Sphere of Influence". Review their LinkedIn
company page for competitors, employees, former employees, similar market
providers, partners, vendors and clients.
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Client Success Story
So once you have a good story and published on your blog, follow this process to see
if you can get an appointment with your ideal prospect.
Step 1: Write and publish your good news story
Step 2: Identify your ideal prospect in at the competitor
Step 3: Review their profile to see if they have publishes anything or have participated
in group discussions.
Step 4: Message them, referring to the good news story (link to your blog) and request
if they would like a quick meeting to discuss your solutions.
> Hi Nigel,
I noticed you had a question about LinkedIn’s recent changes to the way company
pages are laid out and whether it’s possible to promote posts via LinkedIn’s
advertising platform?
In your world (PRV Engineering Ltd based in the
UK) is a client we helped with Social Selling. We
train teams to drive business via LinkedIn and
Twitter using many of these techniques.
Here is their reference: wsiuk.so/PRV-Eng
It would make sense for us to have a quick call on
LinkedIn Company page success, are you free
Tuesday, Nov 18th at 11am for a quick call?
Otherwise, here is my calendar for alternative
times: https://www.timetrade.com/book/NSP9Q
I look forward to talking to you.
Rob Thomas
MD @ WSI-eMarketing <
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Corporate Insights “Competitors”
LinkedIn’s algorithm can provide some incorporate insights as LinkedIn calculates
where a person comes from when they visit a corporate page and where they
subsequently leave.
This leaves us a trail of breadcrumbs as to which
companies would be most interested in “Your Client’s”
success. In this case FNB.
Scroll down and look at the companies that were also
visited. Many of these companies are similar to your
client so they could be interested in the same solutions.
So if I were selling to FNB, I would start to map all the
companies that could be competitors who would be interested in the success that I
had at FNB.
Just think about the number of success stories that your company has had.
Exercise: Look at your client’s company page and list the competitors you could be
researching.
My client does not have a company page. In fact many companies in Ecuador lack a
company page, which is why there is so much opportunity in this market.
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Competitor Insight Search
By scrolling through your client’s competitors you can find decision makers in similar
positions that you could contact to present what you offer and how it had helped
your client – FNB.
The concept here is to reveal the buyer
personas we want to go after - then we find
a way to connect with them in our 1st
degree connection, as we follow this
process.
Search through their
employees to find
suitable prospects.
Exercise: Find the ideal buyer/prospect in your competitor’s LinkedIn profile: Note
them here.
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Leverage the decision maker
Get in touch with individuals from your past. People you have done business with and
had success with. Use them to get you past the gatekeepers in the prospect
organisation.
You can quickly identify other people like “your connection” as they normally hang
out with people who are in similar positions. Scroll through your connection's profile to
see who they have recently connected with – look under “New” and see in real time if
they are making connections that you may want to meet as well
Exercise: Go to one of your connections that you know quite well. Scroll to the
<connections> sections and look at new connections just made. Look through these
to see if you would like to met one of those people and request an introduction from
your connection.
Who would you like to be introduced to?
Manuel Malo, owner of Foto 1.
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Search for References
We also want to leverage the individuals that
we’ve worked with in the past and go into their
networks of influence. Because they can get you
past the gatekeeper and break down the barriers
that exist when you want to have an interaction with a new individual.
So we want to look at leveraging our decision makers, the people we’ve done
business with in the past and have had success with. Making them a 1st degree
connection and diving into their connections on LinkedIn and trolling their
connections for net new prospects.
Search for References
Mouse over >send
a message down
arrow & click on
>search for
references
Exercise: Go to one of your connections that you know quite well. Click on >down
arrow (next to send a message) and click >references to view this feature
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Isolate key prospects within their connections
Scroll down to the connections section of your 1st connection.
View their connections and search for prospects with specific titles.
Exercise: Find someone you would like to connect with by using your connection to
make an introduction or by mentioning their name when messaging the prospect.
Write you message here mentioning your 1st connections name and
the reason you want to connect.
Hi Santiago, it is great to greet you, it has been a long time. Congratulations on your
work anniversary!! I wanted to ask you if you could introduce me Manuel Malo, who is
your first connection, as I am very interested in delivering a proposal for his business.
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Looking forward to your response and wishing you much success in all your endeavors.
Best regards, Pili
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Leverage past employment
You can also conduct advanced searches to look for prospects past work history.
The idea here is to break down barriers and bring in some relevance to your request.
As a past employee, people have been emotionally involved with the company
brand in their past. The trend is to break down barriers and look for relevance and see
if they will be interested in your specific solution.
The idea is to reveal to the person that you also worked at the same company. And
you want to share the success stories that you have had.
Exercise: Do an <Advanced Search my connections and use the search on the
screen to identify prospects.
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Leverage University Alumni
Search university alumni as it can provide a great way to find good opportunities
based on you both being “Alma Mata” (being educating at the same university)
Look at your university alumni by going
into your network and finding other
individuals that are connected to
companies, industries or the title you want
to target.
Exercise: Find someone in a specific location – company - or work title that you
went to university with and make a connection.
Write you connection message here mentioning you went to the
same university.
Hello Ana, I would like to connect with you on Linkedin. We went together to USFQ and
it has been a long time since we have seen each other. I am currently incursioning in
the Digital world and would like to re-connect with you to discuss some business
opportunities. Please let me know if you are available for a meeting this week.
Best regards, PILI
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Allocate Company Point Person
LinkedIn works by letting you view people who are two levels deep–meaning you can
connect to a person through a series of two other people starting with the one you
know.
To keep LinkedIn costs in check, let your “Point Person” subscribe to a premium
business account that will get them access to deeper information.
Best Practice
Have at least one person in the company who reaches out to a lot of connections. If
the rest of the company is connected to the point person, they act like a “doorway”
with great connections for everyone else.
Exercise: Who would be the best person/persons to be “Point People” in your
company? Choose the networkers.
Paul Chavez and Carlos Molina should be the point people for WSI del Ecuador.
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