Social Selling as an end-of-FY (and year-round) tactic

Social selling: the process of getting and staying on the radar of potential partners and prospects in a positive way via social networks; positioning your company in a manner that makes it stand apart from and above the competition; solidify and expand relationships with existing customers.

Social selling is not a hard-sell tool; it is a soft-sell, stay on the radar tool. And it works.

It should be a year round process, but it could be especially useful at the end of an FY when your customers and prospects just got their budget approval. 

Nothing like getting your full budget in the last third of the FY!

LinkedIn is ideal for end-of-FY as there are at least 1.6 million Feds on LinkedIn (from my 2016 research), with a significant percentage in management positions. You can find key people by searching for their agencies (listed just like company profiles) and scrolling through the employees.

All federal agencies, including the IC, are represented on LinkedIn.

Having reviewed all federal agencies on LinkedIn, and having scrolled through thousands of profiles, my empirical research shows that at least 15% of federal employees on LinkedIn have IT-related job titles. About 35% have program, project or general management functions, and between 5-10% have executive level job titles.

For any government contractor, this is a gene pool worth looking into.

Looking for more business at CMS? Try scrolling through the 3,125 employees on LinkedIn until you see a job title that gets your attention. 

How about DISA? There are 4,320 employees on LinkedIn.

Looking for current or former SEWP employees or contractors? I can find 1,399 LinkedIn members who have SEWP in their description. I found a proposal expert with SEWP experience for a client bidding on SEWP V. 

Looking for contacts in the systems integration community? GDIT has 14,616 LinkedIn members. CACI taps in at 12,775, and Raytheon at 39,967.

The GovCon community, Feds and contractors, are on LinkedIn.

However, the vast majority of contractors have a "drive by" mentality when it comes to LinkedIn, using it only when they have a specific inquiry (who is the person that wants to connect, or who is the PM for SEWP at Red River).

We all use LinkedIn that way, but the more intelligent companies are using it to map out strategic connection strategies, meet key players, set up meetings, for account/agency-based marketing (ABM), for content sharing and much more.

LinkedIn should be a part of your end-of-FY marketing, and part of your year-round sales, marketing and business development efforts.

< I offer customized training on Social Selling for GovCon nationwide via webinar. Drop me a line for details - markamtower@gmail.com