Social media provides a tremendous opportunity for distributors to connect with current clients and prospect for new ones. While some once-free services now require payment, there are still ways to get the same functionality from social platforms without having to pay a fee.

During the ASI Chicago Education Day session “Retire Your Rolodex: Use Social Media to Find Prospects and Grow Your Business,” Amanda Johns Vaden, founding partner at Southwest Consulting, offered attendees a step-by-step process for how to bypass extra costs while still getting the same results.

With LinkedIn, rather than paying for the advanced lead search, users can enter a title and location, such as “vice president of sales, Denver” in the search bar, Johns said. This will retrieve every single person who fits the criteria. From there, filters will allow the user to narrow down a search to the types of industries he or she is looking to penetrate. At this point, it’s optimal to look for first or second connections. For a first connection the relationship is there, but the second connection, Vaden said, is one relationship removed from turning a cold call to a warm call.

She said there are two options with the second connection. One is to ask your first connection for the introduction and the other is to call the second connection and reference the first. “I know my name doesn’t ring a bell but how do you know Jimmy Choo?” Vaden said is the ideal way to approach the call. You can create something that feels more natural and less like a sales call. When those connections turn out to be fruitful and you connect via LinkedIn with the new contact, you gain all of their second connections.

The end result is better outgoing prospecting with an assist by LinkedIn. When you do this type of search, Vaden said, LinkedIn will allow you to save three searches for free, and it will continue to search weekly for your selected criteria and send you new leads that fit. “It becomes an evergreen account of leads coming to your email address,” Vaden said.