This month I’ve been writing blogs about a problem that many small businesses face – the cost of marketing. Marketing can be expensive, especially if you get it wrong; but get it right and use the right sort of marketing tactics and you can easily find new clients, without wasting your precious budget. Click here to read the previous blogs in this series.

One of the best marketing tools that you can use as a coach, consultant or trainer, is generating referrals and recommendations. When you provide a service, it can be difficult to show potential clients exactly how you can help them. It can be hard to convince a prospect to spend money when they might not be sure exactly what results you can generate for them. However, if you’re looking for a new supplier, what will help you decide who to use? It’s quite likely that you’ll ask someone you know and trust for a recommendation; you’ll read reviews from other customers. One of the places where you might look for recommendations is on LinkedIn.

If you look at someone’s profile on LinkedIn, you can see the recommendations that they’ve been given by other people – usually their clients. Reading these recommendations can give you a really good understanding of what this person can really do and whether or not they can help you. The same applies to you and your LinkedIn profile. Recommendations can help you win business from potential clients.

How many recommendations do you have on LinkedIn?

Many people I meet tell me that they are worried about asking for recommendations on LinkedIn, so here are some tips that will make it easier for you.

• One of my clients emailed me to thank me for the work I’d done for him over the past few years. His message wasn’t scripted and had his voice. I replied to my client, asking if he would just copy and paste what he’d written in the email, into a LinkedIn recommendation for me. He had already written what he wanted to say, so a simple copy and paste job took a matter of moments and the next day, a lovely recommendation appeared on my profile.

• Sometimes I receive wonderful texts from clients, expressing their thanks for projects I’ve completed for them. Sometimes I type up their words – exactly as they’ve texted them – and email it to my client, asking them to put the words onto a LinkedIn recommendation. The same can be done with the hand written thank you cards that arrive in the post. Again, an easy job for the client.

• Don’t have any thank notes, emails or texts? Then you need to be a bit more strategic about gathering recommendations on LinkedIn. Now and then I look through my list of current clients (and ones for whom I’ve recently completed a piece of work) to see which of them hasn’t yet given me a recommendation. I think carefully about the work I’ve done for them and the results we achieved. Then I email them, or send them a recommendation request through LinkedIn, to ask them to say a few nice words about the specific project, results or activity. Sometimes I even draft something that I think they would have said themselves. Another easy task for my clients!

No matter how many recommendations you have on LinkedIn, you need to keep asking for them. This is because your most recent recommendations show up at the top of the list of all your recommendations. You don’t want to let this list look out of date, so every month at least, think about who you know who could write you a lovely recommendation, that could be the one that brings you your next client.

Generating recommendations is just one of the many tools that is available to you on LinkedIn – many of which cost nothing more than your time. If you need help getting more from your LinkedIn presence, or you would like a review of your profile, with plenty of recommendations on how you could improve it, get in touch by calling me on 01635 578 500 or by clicking here to email me.

Usually we charge £100 +VAT for carrying out a full LinkedIn profile review, but if you ask me nicely, we’ll do it for you for free! Get in touch now so you don’t miss out.