LinkedIn Offers Powerful Tools for your Sales Team

January 12, 2012 by · 1 Comment

LinkedIn for Sales

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

Filed Under: sales management, social media · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Do You Get A Ripple Effect Through Your Target Audience?

August 7, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

I really like the idea Mike Sansone wrote about on the Converstations Blog when he referred to amplifying your message by creating ripples in your marketing efforts.

One of the best ways to create ripples is to blog. You’ll be found and heard by your target audience, you’ll gain free publicity by folks on radio, in business publications, and local newspapers, and your content will continue to be “re-broadcast” in expanding circles of influence.

You’ve probably resisted blogging – perhaps considering it a waste of time. Now might be the time to consider starting to blog so that you can create an effective inbound marketing program – where others seek you vs. you trying to find them (outbound marketing). Inbound marketing is less expensive, has a higher conversion rate, and is less complex than traditional outbound marketing programs, such as cold calling, email direct marketing, and advertising.

Here’s the picture he paints in his blog article:

 

Let’s look at it another way. Go to the edge of a lake or river. Drop a stone into the water close to your feet. The ripples extend only outward. Yet, give the stone a throw (complete with extension and follow through) and the ripples continue extending outwarrd, but also come back to you.

 

If you could generate returns/conversion/success at a 4:1 ratio compared to traditional cold calling or emailing techniques to reach your intended audience – would the small time investment be worth it?

Have you started blogging yet as a business, speaker, consultant, or trusted adviser?

Are there social media strategies other than blogging which you use to create a “ripple effect” that extends and is amplified through-out your niche/audience/potential clients and customers?

Barry Deutsch

 

Filed Under: blog information, social media · Tagged: ,

LinkedIn: You Can No Longer Ignore This Social Media Tool

May 18, 2011 by · 1 Comment

LinkedIn Blog

When LinkedIn surpassed 100 million members, the official LinkedIn Blog published an interesting set of fun statistics. All joking and funny statistics aside, LinkedIn is an extraordinary powerhouse of a site. If you’re not using it for recruiting top talent, business development, market research, prospecting for sales, lead generation and nurturing, branding, pr, and content delivery to your target market – then you’re leaving a pile of money and opportunity sitting on the table.

Here’s a couple of simple examples to illustrate how poorly most people and companies use LInkedIn:

We created a simple one-page self-assessment for executive job seekers to evaluate their LinkedIn Profile to determine whether it was effective in attracting the attention of recruiters, hr managers, and hiring executives. Over 1000 executive job seekers sent us back their completed profiles – less than 10% met a minimum standard.

In a recent survey of company hiring practices in the Vistage and TEC Community of companies in the $5-$50 million revenue size, less than 5% use LinkedIn as a proactive sourcing tool to find passive candidates.

In our Executive Search Practice for high level sales professionals and sales managers,we discovered through in-depth interviewing that less than 20% leverage LinkedIn effectively for referral networking – yet referral networking has proven to be the most viable method of generating sales for products/services which lend themselves to solution selling vs. transactional selling.

What’s wrong with this picture?

If LinkedIn is such an effective tool and resource, why do so many professionals and companies underutilize it?

Is it a training issue – most professionals and companies don’t know how to leverage LinkedIn? Then the question surfaces of why they are not getting training? Is it a unconsciously incompetent issue – we don’t what we don’t know. Is it that there is a steep learning curve and no one wants to take the time to come up the learning curve because they don’t yet buy into the value from using LinkedIn?

Help me out – I’m curious why you’re not rushing to start using this amazing tool. Even if you just use it for recruiting great talent and prospecting for ideal customers, are you still not convinced it could bring better people to your company, reduce sales costs, and improve lead generation?

Here’s a few fun statistics from LinkedIn about their membership:

 

  • 1,091 profiles with chocolatier listed as a position
  • 79+ million job transitions/changes tracked
  • 46 profiles with beatboxer listed as a position
  • 428%: Year-over-year membership growth rate in Brazil, one of our fastest-growing countries
  • Lee, Smith and Kumar have alternated over the last 8 years as the most common last name of newly registered users
  • 951 years: duration of back-to-back 5-minute phone calls made by 100 million professionals
  • 50%: year-over-year growth in our iPhone skill index
  • 4 profiles with dog or cat psychologist / psychiatrist listed as a position
  • Some industries with the fastest year-over-year new member growth rates: Education (175%), Facilities Services (121%), and Ranching (112%)
  • 100% of Fortune 500 companies have executives on LinkedIn
  • 1 profile has martini whisperer listed as a position

 

To see all the fun statistics, click the link below:

The LinkedIn Blog – 100 Million Gumballs

Barry Deutsch

Filed Under: social media · Tagged: , , ,

Do You Have Powerpoint Presentations on Your LinkedIn Profile?

February 19, 2011 by · 1 Comment

I am Linkedin - Now What?

Jason Alba of “I’m on LinkedIn – Now What” fame wrote a blog post raising the question of whether you should have one choice, two choices, or many choices for the readers of your LinkedIn Profile to view your SlideShare Presentations (Powerpoints).

His recommendation is to guide your readers to one presentation – or direct them down a specific path. He gives examples of well-know internet luminaries using two presentations and forcing their viewers to “choose” one or the other.

Like Jason, up until now I’ve always felt more is better. My slideshare account is “linked” to my LinkedIn profile.

Should you have a separate slideshare account for your LinkedIn Profile in which there are only one or two presentations. You can always have a separate account with all your presentations.

Here’s how Jason summed it up on his blog post:

I think providing fewer choices to the viewer to go to where you want them to go to is better than showing a portfolio. You can easily send them to your slideshare account to see all of them if you want to… but from your LinkedIn Profile, point people to where you really want them to go to without adding too many choices, confusion or noise.

To read the full article on Jason Alba’s Blog regarding How many Slideshare presentations should you display on your LinkedIn Profile, please click the following link:

Optimizing Slideshare on Your LinkedIn Profile

Barry Deutsch

We’re about to launch our two brand new separate courses on Advanced Leveraging of LinkedIn. For Speakers, Consultants, Coaches, and Trusted Advisers the focus is on personal branding, networking, and nurturing your network for leads and opportunities. For CEOs, the focus is on using LinkedIn personally and through-out your company for recruiting, business development, sales, marketing, branding, and customer engagement. If you’re interested in joining our next e-Course class, please send a note to us through the contact form off the top menu.

Filed Under: social media · Tagged: , ,

Are You Adapting to the New Frontier of Social Media

June 2, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Image representing Mashable as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

One of my favorite social media “news” blogs to follow is Mashable. If you want to stay current on all the latest tool, tips, examples, illustrations of how to use social media – particularly in an entrepreneurial to small business company – you should subscribe to the RSS feed for Mashable.

I was reading an interesting article today that was was posted on Mashable titled 5 Small Business Success Stories. It talked about how 5 different small businesses  -4 retailers and 1 service company – were changing their entire business model as a result of social media.

My business model has changed dramatically with the coming of age of social media. My cost structure for recruiting talent has declined dramatically, my leads for new executive search projects, consulting projects, and hiring manager training have increased significantly through our web presence – especially blogging. We’ve even created an entire web-based business model that includes e-commerce and on-line training.

How are you leveraging – incorporating – adapting – social media into your business?

  • Are you engaging with potential customers at a different level?
  • Is social media enabling you to differentiate yourself more effectively?
  • Is the quality of your customer service increasing beyond your peers?
  • Can social media give you a competitive advantage?
  • Is it opening up a new world of networking for candidates, benchmarking, and information?

How have you started to adapt social media to your business model?

Barry

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