On the first post in this five-part series, we took a look at using LinkedIn to market your company and talked about the basics – completing your profile, creating a company profile – and how to prospect for customers by making connections and joining LinkedIn groups.
In part 2, we take a look at how to find business partners using LinkedIn.
Finding Business Partners
If you’re ready to find a partner – for a joint venture, for a possible merger, or to form a new venture – you may find the experience is a lot like dating: Kiss a lot of frogs, and hope to get lucky. That’s partly because meeting with a new potential partner is like a blind date. You know a little about each other, and may have some friends in common, but you don’t have a relationship yet.
Well, there are 70 million frogs to kiss on LinkedIn, but one advantage of using the site is that you can get to know a lot more about your blind date before committing to dance with them.
Finding Potential Partners
You can start your search for a partner by using LinkedIn’s advanced search feature. Along with normal things like location and company, you can search by all kinds of other relevant attributes such as:
- Function
- Seniority Level
- Company Size
- Interested In
This last attribute is very useful in finding members who are interested in making deals.
Unfortunately, to use this and the other search attributes in the above list, you must upgrade from the free membership to at least the $24.95 a month Business level. But if you’re serious about making a deal with a partner, it’s not much money, and you can cancel at any time. Plus you get more InMails (ability to message random people to whom you are not connected) and search results limited to 300 instead of 100 items.
Even if you don’t upgrade, you can use the advanced search to zero in on potential partners.
An alternative to paying for better LinkedIn search is to use Google, which places no limits on the number of search results. Simply format your Google query like either of the following:
site:linkedin.com +<name of your industry> +“new ventures” +<your location>
site:linkedin.com +<name of your industry> +“ business deals” +<your location>
For example, the following query turned up 2,450 results – 24X the number you could get with the free LinkedIn account – recently:
site:linkedin.com +“new ventures” +internet +minneapolis
The “site:” modifier restricts the Google search to pages on the target site, in this case, LinkedIn. The plus sign means the keyword is required. There are lots of other modifiers you can use with advanced Google searching as well. Remember, however, Google search is limited to LinkedIn members’ public profiles, while the internal search looks at all member information.
Researching Potential Partners
Now that you have your candidate list, prioritize it based on the Google results and start visiting their profiles. Be sure to note the LinkedIn Groups the candidates belong to; you may want to join them so you can contact them. Also note if you have second or third level connections who may be able to introduce you. See part 1 of this series for more information.
Once you’ve got a short list, be sure to Google each candidate and visit any relevant Web sites you discover.
Making the Connection
In part 1, we discussed the advantages of joining LinkedIn Groups. The most relevant one here is that you can privately or publicly message other group members. You can also use your group membership as a reason to send a connection request. So join the groups your short-listed candidates belong to, and start forging a relationship with them.
You also may want people in your network to connect you. I would recommend only trying to connect to second level contacts this way (friends of your friends.) The positive effect of an introduction can be less effective with third level contacts (friends of your friends’ friends.)
Once you’re connected, let the relationship begin! Here’s hoping you get lucky!
[...] Next up, Using LinkedIn to Find Business Partners [...]
[...] – and how to prospect for customers by making connections and joining LinkedIn groups. In part 2, we took a look at how to find business partners using LinkedIn. In this third post, we address [...]