You Need To "Stock The Lake"
What you need to do with your LinkedIn Account.
LinkedIN – since it was bought by MicroSoft in 2016 has morphed into something of an ever advanced surgical tool – it looks familiar to you, yet the newest versions hold surprises – and huge benefits for those trained on the tool. So let’s cover one element of the new LinkedIN that is consistently paying off for our customers (we helped experienced medical -healthcare industry sales professionals land the role they love).
You already know you need an inside contact these days to land the role you love. No way around that. So who exactly are these “inside contacts” – some are obvious, some are not. Here’s the master list:
a.) College alum – 1st level
b.) College alum – 2nd level
c.) Obvious Suspects – folks you’ve known for years and trust.
d.) Military alum – for those who served our country.
e.) Employer alum – folks you used to work with and trust.
f.) Honor Society alum – hey, at least my cats honor me…
g.) (Here at MSM we have over 350 previous customers we leverage as trust agents)
Without writing War & Peace, here’s the big surprise for our customers: it’s those college alum 2nd levels. Total strangers. They just happened to go to your college – you often have nothing else in common with them. Yet we consistently get them on the phone and take them from “total stranger” to “trust agent” – here’s just one of several ways we pull off this small miracle.
It’s called “Stocking the lake”. It was game and fisheries agencies do each year – they populate lakes with small fish which grow into something later fished. In LinkedIN we’ve found the same tactic works – here’s how:
a.) Go into your “Network”
b.) Take an audit of how many college alum (1st levels) are in your network that are also in your targeted industries: medical devices, biotech, pharmaceuticals. . .” Chances are it’s a low number – don’t be discouraged.
c.) In your Network settings, click “Search with Filters”, then click “All Filters” You will see a new page – on that page put in name of your college, list targeted industries and (key step), deactivate “1st” level connections and activate “2nd” level connections”. Voila – you should have 200+ 2nd level college alum pop up – that’s 10 per page – over 20 pages.
d.) Look for those folks roughly your age as near to you geographically as you can find and in a sales role. Remember – these are all college alum within the industries you are targeting.
e.) On each page you will see a box “Connect” – according to the criteria above, click that box. Don’t send a personal note at this point unless you have a lot of time on your hands (we’ll explain why later) and expect to see a 50% success rate – this is for real, prove it to yourself.
What will happen next? A lot. But the above is your first step. This is where job searching gets fun and you see all kinds of folks visiting your LinkedIN profile (make sure your LinkedIN profile is professional before you start this process).
Since the above needs to be done first – let’s have you tackle it and we’ll pick up next steps in our next newsletter. Be prepared to be very encouraged – which is a wonderful and rare things in the world of job searching.
NEXT: You know all those award-winning sales folks – the elite ones? You’ll find they consistently do several “little” things differently than other to garner their success. We’ll pick up on the 2nd part of this article in our next newsletter: OK – now I’ve got a ton of new college alum connections – what’s next? Hint: it’s all about doing “little” things differently than others.