How One Firm Successfully Engaged a Former LinkedIn Insider to Increase Sales with Dan Swift

Yes, we’ve covered LinkedIn here before – and never like this.

What happens when you take a former LinkedIn insider/senior leader and put them to work helping a firm develop and implement a super successful strategy for serving advisors and building non-product value in the market?

[Hint: It’s a massively successful PVP-Peerless Value Proposition®]

Listen in to learn the whole story.

Dan Swift is one of the founding fathers of social selling at LinkedIn, LinkedIn Sales Solutions, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

In 2012 LinkedIn recruited Dan as a member of the senior leadership team to hire, train, and lead the Sales Solutions division at LinkedIn and bring LinkedIn Sales Navigator to market. He then launched LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Financial Services, Insurance and Banking. During his tenure, he created the LinkedIn profile optimization program ‘Resume to Reputation’. This program now forms the backbone of LinkedIn’s recommendations to members on profile best practices.

Today, Dan helps sellers, leaders and companies survive and thrive in an increasingly digital world.

Buyers have changed the way they buy. Have you changed the way you sell?

To inquire about booking Dan Swift for your next event through Wholesaler Masterminds Speakers Bureau contact us at info@wholesalermasterminds.com

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Wholesalers. The need to differentiate.

The market for wealth management is consolidating and traditional means of marketing and sales are simply no longer as effective as they once were. Like it or not, the world is going digital. Don’t take my word for it. Consider these data points from research bodies in the last 4 years:

• Buyers are 57% of the way through their buying process before they engage with sales – Corporate Executive Board

• 75% of buyers use social media to learn about potential vendors – IDC

• 74% of buyers chose the sales rep that was first to add value and insight – Corporate Visions

The business models of most financial services organizations around the world don’t embrace this new reality. Yes, I understand that it is a highly regulated industry. I am intimately acquainted with the security, privacy and compliance concerns that slow the adoption of new technologies and social media.

From speaking with financial advisors around the world, one theme is consistent: They need help understanding the power of social media for their business.

They require thought leaders to guide their thinking in realizing more growth by prospecting and engaging clients more effectively in an increasingly digital world. Social media, specifically LinkedIn, offers a new channel.

Forward thinking financial services institutions are beginning to roll-out thoughtful programs that are proving to attract new investment advisors to their wholesalers. Trained correctly and in a compliant fashion, wholesalers can differentiate themselves from other wholesalers to new investment advisors by helping them understand social media for business. Differentiation for wholesalers is key especially when pre-existing relationships with investment advisors have already been established. As we all know, barriers to entry are high as Investment Advisors only do business with 2 or 3 wholesalers.

Remember though, advisors want proof that social media isn’t a waste of time, a productivity-killer, and/or a security and privacy risk enabler before investing time learning how to weave it into their daily operating rhythm. They need to hear peer success stories to adopt anything new. They need to see quantifiable business results for themselves and their firms.

Programs like this can be a win-win. The wholesalers learn how to use LinkedIn to more easily find and engage new advisors. The advisors build new relationships with wholesalers while learning new skills in leveraging LinkedIn to drive new client acquisition and acquisition of new investable assets.

Written by Dan Swift