Are you training your sales professionals in how to use the advanced features of LinkedIn for marketing, introductions, and relationship building? If not, are you potentially ignoring a tool that could dramatically leverage your time and effort? If you have not gone down this path yet, what’s holding you back?

Here’s a few ideas:

• Does everyone in your company have a LinkedIn Account?
• Has each person input their entire contact list to check who they know is already on LinkedIn?
• Have your sales professionals used their own contact list and that of everyone in the company to identify potential buyers at target companies who already know someone in your company – through which a warm introduction could be obtained?
• Do your sales people use the profile manager and tagging to sort, manage, email, and nurture potential contacts?
• Do your sales professionals all have impressive profiles fully filled out and an extensive LinkedIn Company Page?
• Are your sales professionals using the advanced features of LinkedIn, such as blogging, presentations, video, reading lists, and others to engage with potential clients?
• Have you brought in or hired a LinkedIn Sales Trainer to teach and train your team?
• Have you sent your sales people to online e-courses/webinars to learn how to adapt LinkedIn to their unique selling approach?

Do you have a precise plan of how to bring your entire sales team up to speed on using LinkedIn to improve sales?

Barry Deutsch