Like all businesses, Angles, Inc., survives by reaching out to and connecting with prospective clients and customers.
Unlike most, we actually sell outreach and connection, so you would expect us to follow best practices and execute perfectly at all times. Sadly, we sometimes have to relearn the lessons we teach our clients, and, yes, that is embarrassing.
At the beginning of 2023, after taking a year off to serve a full slate of clients and upgrade our systems in order to serve more, we restarted our outreach campaigns.
Unfortunately, I neglected the fundamental rule of outreach, that prospects only care about one and only one thing: what big problem can you solve specifically for them?
Your headline and why it matters.
If you look at your LinkedIn profile, you’ll see the headline right below your name. It defaults to your job title, although many people will add awards, accomplishments, etc., to that space as well. It appears every time you post, write an article, make a comment, or try to connect with someone.
Along with your shared connections, it gives people a quick way to evaluate you and decide whether or not you’re worth their attention. Headlines are really important.
So, here’s what I originally wrote: “I connect clients with their best prospects and the tools to engage with them at scale.”
I worked very hard on that line because our team was doing just that. We connect our clients with their best prospects, and we enable our clients with HubSpot so they can engage at scale. We’re proud of our work and not afraid to say it.
No one cared.
Only 1 out of 10 of the people I reached out to on LinkedIn accepted my connection requests. As a mentor once told me, when the market speaks, believe it. Harsh, but true.
No one cares about your title. No one cares about your awards. No one cares what you do. No one believes you’re the best.
But everyone cares if you can solve a really important problem that they’re facing right now.
So, I took a hard look at what I was saying and remembered what I always tell clients. Your LinkedIn headline should be a Solution Statement in the form of “I solve X very big problem for Y very narrow audience”.
The bigger the problem and the narrower the audience, the more effective the Solution Statement.
I was giving a painfully generic solution to an undefined audience and it was blindingly obvious why it wasn’t working.
Because I was already reaching out to the CEOs of SaaS companies, I changed my headline to “I help SaaS companies attract and retain clients.” A very specific audience and a very big problem solved.
I literally changed nothing else—same audience, same connection request, same everything, and my connection rate jumped from 10% to 30% instantly, a gain of 300%. And I’ve been rewarded with a stream of engaging, fascinating conversations with CEOs in companies of all stripes.
So, if my embarrassment helps you with your outreach, then it was worth it. Update your LinkedIn Headline with a Solution Statement and see if it makes a difference. Hit me up if you’d like to discuss further.
