Engaging With The C-Suite Decision Maker Online

With the rise of social media and more and more Internet-based resources working their way into the business world, the question on every professional’s lips is how do I actually use these platforms to prospect and engage with c-suite decision makers?

A fantastic place to start is on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great professional platform designed specifically to aid business professionals with networking, engaging, and building their personal brand online.

Personally, the way I view LinkedIn is as the biggest and best DECISION MAKER SEARCH ENGINE the world has ever seen!

LinkedIn is 100 percent searchable and hundreds of thousands of potential leads are waiting at your fingertips — you just need to know how to find and connect with them.

So how exactly do you prospect on LinkedIn?

Do Your Research

Through a quick search of keywords you can find the key decision makers in those big companies you’re interested in, find out where they are spending their time and what they are interested in. All you have to do is reach out to them and make that initial contact.

You can search by job title, company, industry, or location and find the prospects you really want to connect with. Then use the platform to research more about them. By searching their profile you can find out all about their past employment, their achievements and projects they’re currently responsible for.

You can also read recommendations about their work and sometimes even have a snoop around their contacts if they have them visible. You can literally find out loads of valuable information about them just by reading through their profile.

So, now you’ve discovered this whole network of key decision makers on LinkedIn, how do you go in and engage with them on a one-to-one level?

Engage With Key Decision Makers Through LinkedIn Groups

A great way to gain direct contact with your connections is to strike up a conversation with them in one of the many LinkedIn groups which the platform has to offer.

You can research which groups your contacts are members of simply by visiting their profile. The likelihood is that they will be members of quite a few so it’s wise to go in to each of their groups and see which ones they are the most active in, and then join these groups yourself.

You can then enter the discussion and strike up conversation with them by commenting on their recent posts or starting a relevant discussion or distributing content of your own to help you get on their radar.

The key to being successful when prospecting and networking via the LinkedIn groups is to be genuine with your interactions and contribute useful content — without turning everything you say into a sales pitch. By all means share your blog posts and link to your webpages in your responses, but only if this adds real value to the discussion.

Once you have gained a decent level of interaction with these key decision makers, and offered plenty of friendly and free advice (without trying to sell them anything straight away) you can then send them an invitation to connect with your personally.

Better still, you could contact them directly by e-mail or on the phone to see if they would like you to send over your latest whitepaper or pop into their office for a chat about how you could help them in their business.

Prospecting Further Through Your Connections

Once you’ve built up a good network on LinkedIn and started to interact with these contacts via their groups, you can also prospect further by seeking out your second degree connections.

The people in your network are known as your first-degree connections, but you are also connected to all of your connections’ connections, and these are known as you’re second degree connections.

LinkedIn even shows you how you are connected to your second degree connections so that you can ask for an introduction from your shared connection in order to make that first contact.

If you have a good relationship with your first degree connection you should have no problem getting them to recommend you to one of their connections — and you can start to build your network further through these new connections.

Once you have gained some new contacts through your second degree connections you then simply start the process all over again, by researching their background, engaging with them in their groups and then prospecting further through their connections. The possibilities are endless!

Sean McPheat is the managing director of MTD Sales Training, and is regarded as a thought leader on modern-day selling. He has been featured on CNN, ITV, the BBC, and SKY, as well as in Forbes and Arena Magazine. His latest book “eselling® – How to use the internet & social media for prospecting, personal branding, networking and for engaging the c-suite decision maker” is an Amazon bestseller. For further information please visit www.e-selling.com.