What to do if your prospects don’t post
Just because your prospects aren’t posting doesn’t mean they’re unreachable
Out of the millions of accounts on LinkedIn, only around 1% of them share posts. From a content strategy perspective, that’s an encouraging figure. It’s less accounts for your content to fight through on its journey to your audience. However, it’s not the best statistic for your LinkedIn sales strategy.
A key element of Social Selling on LinkedIn is engaging with your prospect's content to build genuine, organic relationships.
How are you meant to do this if your prospects aren’t posting?
Well, there is a way, but you need to know a couple of things first.
The Difference Between LinkedIn Lurkers and Zombies
Your LinkedIn prospects can be split into three categories; Zombies, Lurkers and Champions.
Prospects that fall into the Champion category are the easiest to work into your Social Selling strategy. These are the accounts that post regularly and have plenty of content for you to interact with/use to get a conversation going in the DMs. However, with only 1% of LinkedIn users actually posting, you can’t rely on this being the default for your prospects.
On the opposite end of this scale are the LinkedIn Zombies. Much like the name suggests, these are “undead” accounts. There’s a real person attached to the profile but the account has been dormant for some time. They don’t post, they don’t like or comment on other users’ content and they’ve probably not even logged onto the platform for a while. Ideally, you want to avoid these accounts in favour of…
LinkedIn Lurkers are the middle ground between Champions and Zombies. These prospects might not post regularly (or at all) but they frequently engage with content and log on to scroll through their feed. LinkedIn Zombies are a dead zone when it comes to Social Selling, LinkedIn Lurkers, on the other hand, are prime prospects to build successful sales relationships with.
Here’s how you do it…
How to engage with LinkedIn Lurkers
Unlike Zombies, LinkedIn Lurkers will have content of some description for you to engage with - you just have to dig a little deeper to find it.
Take a look at their profile to find out:
- What content have they been engaging with?
- Have they had a recent career change/milestone?
- Do you have any common connections?
- Has anything changed in their company recently?
- What has their company been posting about?
Having the answer to even just one of these questions will provide you with the tools you need to start engaging with them.
How to DM LinkedIn Lurkers
LinkedIn is a digital platform, but that still doesn’t mean you can send out mass messages in the hopes that you catch a few interested prospects. It’s just going to waste your time. You wouldn’t walk up to someone at an in-person event and just pitch them, don’t do it on LinkedIn either.
Start your DMs the same way you would any conversation. Say ‘hello,’ ask how they are doing, be friendly. Ask questions that relate to the content you’ve seen them engage with, the things they are interested in. The key thing to remember is that people will always be interested in talking about themselves.
The aim of your DMs is to prove that you’ve done your research and are conveying genuine interest in this prospect. Doing this builds trust from the first DM you send and will make them much more likely to respond. From here, you will be able to develop a relationship with them that will lead to an organic sale - without any direct pitches needing to be made!
Once you realise that you can build successful Social Selling relationships with prospects who don’t post, it opens up the number of opportunities available on LinkedIn.
It’s not just your prospects' content you need to be worried about. Even if your prospects don’t post, it doesn’t mean they’re not checking out your content. Gain access to ContentLab 2.0 to learn the strategy, structure and creation tactics to post compelling content without losing all your time.