You can’t have an open conversation without trust. You will also find it hard to take your leads on any kind of sales journey if they won’t hold your hand through the process. Without trust calls to action get ignored so your marketing and sales will suffer as a result. Here are a few ways you can develop trust with your leads using LinkedIn.
Engaging with Content
Most of the time the winners are those who turn up. So, you need to be there. Show your face on their content. Engage with conversations they are a part of. They will appreciate your likes and comments as it helps build and grow their own reach. You don’t have to be an annoying yes man to everything they post. But a simple piece of input can go a long way with establishing you know what you’re talking about and want to engage with them. This is crucial for developing trust with leads.
There should be no caveat to your comments or likes unless they are specifically relevant. Have they really asked a question you can answer with your service or are they just asking a general question to the room? Your answer will be the difference between building a relationship and getting ignored as a pushy salesman.
Sharing Value
One of the best ways to establish trust is through being an asset. Sharing valuable information and advice will achieve this. As long as you’re credible you will develop trust. How do you become credible in the eyes of your audience? You prove you know know what you’re talking about through valuable information only you and your business have. Have you run a survey with key information that would interest people? Don’t keep it to yourself, share it with the room. Sharing such value is essential for developing trust with leads.
But, what if my competitors steal my content?
It doesn’t matter. You did it first, and your audience will know you did it first. If you’re afraid of putting too much value in your content you’ll end up posting content that is irrelevant.
Long-lasting PDF content
Creating guides, checklists and templates are a great way to showcase you’re useful to work with. When you’re useful for a long period of time you’ll be trusted. Creating longer-lasting content may take longer to generate, but those pieces of content will last your business for years if you do it right. I wrote a blog that was a cheat-sheet guide to social media headers and it has been one of the most popular blog pieces for over 2 years now. Bringing in the right attention and value to our audience. This is another method for developing trust with leads.
You can do the same with guides, checklists, and templates of your own. Keeping this on the platform you’ll be developing trust with leads you connect with if you’re giving them a piece of content they can use for a long length of time.
Value Through Messages
Communication is key for building trust. Knowing someone, or even thinking you know all about someone will help you establish trust with them. Familiarity is important for building a trusted relationship. People will forget about you in a couple of days of meeting you for the first time. It’s not your fault or theirs, it just happens. We meet and communicate with so many different people online you’d need an extensive checklist to remember them all. This is why frequent communication is key to developing trust. They start to know you, understand what you are all about, and then trust your input on topics that relate to your field. Developing trust with leads through consistent and meaningful communication is pivotal.
If you want to develop trust with leads you both need to get to know each other. The only way to do this effectively is through communication. Through content, messaging, and value.
