How Crossnet Got Into 3k Retail Stores Using LinkedIn

LinkedIn isn’t just a place for enviously looking at all your high-school friends’ recent promotions. It’s also a gold-mine of retail contacts. Contacts you can leverage to quickly sell your newest and hottest products.

Chris Meade is a co-founder of CrossNet, a four-way volleyball sport. By strategically connecting with high-value contacts on LinkedIn, he was able to get his product into 3k+ stores across the states. As of last year, his company pockets $500k per month in revenue.

In this playbook, we’ll share his definite tips for getting into the hands of retailers.

It all starts with building your profile.

Who are you and why should anyone care? The best way to answer this is by building your LinkedIn profile. Some things to work on are:

• Add a high-quality profile picture, along with your bio.
• Update your job descriptions, detail past experiences and showcase your skills/qualifications.
• Link to press articles, reviews, and posts about your brand (if you have any).

And don’t just stop there. Reach out to people in your network and ask them to give you endorsements as well. Keep on doing this, and you’ll build a noteworthy LinkedIn profile in no time.

Now connect, connect, and connect.

Stop for a minute and think: what’s your ideal retail store where you want to showcase your products?

Ready?

Now here’s what you want to do:

1. Type the name of that store in the LinkedIn search bar and add ‘buyer’ at its end. For example, ‘XYZ Store buyer’.
2. You’ll see a whole list of results appear, containing contacts who work at that particular store, and are responsible for merchandising and procurement. Hit connect.Connect with those who appear as 2nd especially.
3. Don’t immediately send a message. Start by liking their posts, and the posts of their colleagues. Do light interactions, such as congratulations and thanks. Warm up to them gradually.

This 3rd step is very important.

Build goodwill with a new connect over time. Know their business.

… and then send them a message.

Make sure your message is:

1. Personalized.
2. Has to-the-point information about your business.
3. Explain clearly what opportunity you have to offer, and the action you want them to take.

Send this message to 10-15x contacts whom you connected earlier.

Get Set. Ready. Go!

Once you send messages to multiple connects, you might get some replies immediately, and some after a week or more. You want your customer team at the ready, and able to respond quickly to any queries you get.

Ideally, you can use a customer support system like Gorgias or Klaviyo so your team can be immediately notified of any new queries, and reply fast.

In your responses, you want to ensure:

• Not to send long-winded information. Only send the specific and important info you’ve been asked for.
• Send a high-quality catalog of your products, along with crystal-clear pricing.
• Quickly finalize the finer details i.e. shipping, inventory, net pricing etc.

Don’t get disheartened if you don’t get a lot of queries at the start. Keep honing your selling skills, and repeat the steps above. Soon you’ll start seeing an improved response rate and will start closing deals like other retailers out there!

View the original newsletter here.

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