Bill Rice Internet Marketing > linkedin

5 Tips to Get More Sales from Linkedin

January 20, 2011 By
LinkedIn Sales

LinkedIn Can Be Your Best Friend

LinkedIn is a powerful tool that you can use in order to improve the sales of your business. It is a social network for salespeople and business owners. Some people use it to find employees, but it can also be used in order to streamline your sales method. The first part of taking advantage of this process is making sure that you understand who your customers are and what type of mindset they have. With that in mind, here are 5 sales tips that you can use in order to take advantage of LinkedIn.

1. Create a Clear Profile

It is surprising how common it is to find profiles that don’t really explain what a company even does. More than boasting about the benefits of any particular company, a LinkedIn profile should make it clear what service it provides to its clients or customers. It should go on to explain what results you can provide for your clients, and how things will improve for them if they work with you rather than somebody else or nobody at all.

2. Do Your Research

With LinkedIn, you have access to all of the information that you need in order to find the right person to get in touch with. It makes it possible for you to know everything that you need to in order to have a good business relationship before you even begin speaking with them. All of this makes it much simpler for your first sales call to go much more smoothly than it otherwise would.

3. Build Lasting Relationships

This is one of the sales tips that often goes ignored, but it is perhaps the most important. In order for a company like LinkedIn to be useful for you, you absolutely must use it on a regular basis. It is a good idea to use the system for about twenty minutes every day, keeping in touch with your business contacts. This ensures that your clients and business contacts don’t forget about you, so that you will be one of the first people that they get in touch with if something comes up that you have the skills to help them with.

4. Write Recommendations

If you work with somebody and you feel that they were legitimately helpful, be sure to recommend them. If you already have a working relationship with somebody who has an account, offer to write them a recommendation as well. In many cases, you will get a recommendation in return.

5. Recommendations

It is also a good idea to request recommendations from clients. Don’t get pushy about it, just realize that most people don’t think to do it without some prompting.

Filed Under: Social Networking, Social Selling Tagged With: Customer relationship management, Internet marketing, linkedin, linkedin marketing, Social Media, Social network

How to Use Social Media to Boost Your Sales

July 26, 2010 By

Social Media & Sales Fuel

Really social media isn’t so different from the skills you use daily to sell. The anxiety comes with learning to use those skills in a new environment. For many of us in sales, technology beyond our cell phones and email is a bit intimidating. However, if you straight arm social media you are giving up opportunity in your sale pipeline.

Social Media 101 for Sales

The name itself makes social media sound like a marketing thing, but rest assured its more like a telephone–definitely a sales thing. The difference? Marketing is good at blasting and broadcasting. Sales is good at connecting and having conversations.

Social media is about good conversations.

So, lets start with the mind-set that social media is for sales. And we are going to use it like any other sales tool. We’re going to learn it, exploit it, and generate as many good conversations as possible.

Here are the basic social media tools sales people should learn:

Linkedin - More than a resume, this social network is full of information on prospects and competitive intelligence. Plugging in and connecting your existing database of contacts will certainly reveal previously unknown connections and relationship, ready to be leveraged.

Facebook - Don’t underestimate this as simply a venue for neighborhood busy-bodies and teenagers. Facebook is increasingly becoming the primary destination of a large percentage of the Internet community. Although it is not a big player on the business front it will be–get acquainted now.

Twitter - Often described as micro-blogging or instant messaging on steroid, Twitter is a powerful tool for collecting competitive intelligence, sniffing out opportunities, and breaking through corporate firewalls (i.e., voice mail, email, and other gatekeepers).

Blogs - They’ve been around for years now, but they are still great ways to get closer to influencers in your market. Everyone reads them, your customers trust them, you’re smart to meet these important online publishers–they can help you land deals.

How Social Media Works

Think of social media as a blend between a contact database and a CRM system. If used correctly it will feed you a steady stream of news and updates that are important to your prospects.

Most social media tools immediately ask you to load in your contacts (i.e., from Outlook, GMail, or other email address book). This gives you a head start on find who in your sales database or prospect list is already actively participating in social media.

I guarantee you will be surprised.

Once you have your contacts loaded a few minutes a day reviewing Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter will give you more than enough inspiration and opportunity for calling on these folks. Taking it to an advanced level you can use the tool itself to engage and interact with these folks–commenting and promoting their own agendas and credibility in the social media channel.

Very possibly you will see opportunities to help these sales prospects advance their own objectives. Can you introduce them to people they want to meet? Can you help them with advice or expertise before you even discuss a sale? Can you help increase their standing or credibility in their industry or peer group?

Searching Social Media Content

Finding sales opportunities in the sea of disconnected social media tools and networks used to be complex. Not so anymore. A little time spent practicing with Google Advanced Search can bring you all the sales leads you can possibly work. However, you do need to practice and refine your social media search techniques.

Start by thinking like a customer, not a sales person. Stop using your language and use theirs to develop your searches. Think through the characteristics of your ideal sales lead.

Here are some ideas to fuel your quest for opportunity, search for:

  • Competitor’s names, products, and sales people
  • Common problems your product solves
  • Frequently asked questions you get on sales calls
  • The names of influencers in your industry or market

Creating these simple searches and then toggling between Google’s News, Blogs, Updates, and Discussions searches will bring you a 360 degree view of your sales opportunities and angles.

Give social media a try in your sales process.

What do you think are the good and bad aspects of using social media as a sales professional?

Filed Under: Social Media, Social Selling Tagged With: facebook, linkedin, marketing, Social Media, Social network, Social Selling

7 Reasons Social Media is for Sales Too

July 21, 2010 By

Social Media Sales

So, you’ve finally heard enough about social media. You’re to the point you actually think you might be missing something. You might even be hearing whisperings around the sales floor that this might be some of the top producers’ secret weapon to grab a few extra wins every month.

I’m glad you took the initiative to be here. We’re going to do a little equalizing.

You’re going to learn some of the basics of social medias. However, much more importantly we’re going to show you how to get value from it immediately–long before you’re a guru.

Why Try Social Media?

Okay, not quite convinced this is going to be worth your time to figure out? Let take a little walk down memory lane and talk about sales history.

Back in the day it all started with carrying a bag and walking door to door, getting a foot in the door, showcasing the product, and selling belly-to-belly at the kitchen table. (Notice all of our cliches come from old school sales).

Then things changed a bit. We started to send sales letters, picked up the telephone for a little cold calling, and blasted a few emails to stay top of mind. That’s right took a few marketing tricks to help us cover our prospects and sales pipeline a little more thoroughly and efficiently.

Social media is the next trick for personal lead generation. Think of it as the new telephone and the email of the future. Believe it or not surveys show that youngsters under 20 never use email–it’s Facebook or text message if you want to pull their chain.

7 Reasons Sales Should Be Using Social Media

Enough coaxing, you either want to learn this or you don’t. Here are 7 specific ways social media is going to immediately improve your sales process:

1. People hang out on social media - The fact of the matter is that millions of people are now congregating on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and hundreds of other social networking sites to stay connected and share ideas. If you’re in sales, why would you hang out on the Internet alone? (It’s kinda like eating alone).

2. Social media is stitch the fabric of referral networks – In the real (physical) world it is really hard to refer business. When someone hears a friends ask, “Do you know a good…” You have to recall the name of the great person you used, search around for a crumpled business card or a scribbled down number, and then you need to get it back to the person who asked the question. Most often these referrals don’t happen–in social media these friend just search the profiles of their Facebook friends and connect to the expert.

3. Trust is already inherent in social networking - Normally when we find people on the Internet or and advertisement for a service we start skeptical. Will they treat me right? Do they care about my business? Will they screw me over? There’s none of that in social media. If you’re in my social network and my friends vouch for you–that’s good enough to get started.

4. You can spot opportunities without cold calling – Cold calling is hard work. You have to break through the firewall and then start peppering the prospect with questions to see if there is a fit. Incorporating social media into your sales process lets you do most of the pre-qualification of a lead long before any call is made or email sent. Just read their profile and content. Is there a reason to do business, or not?

5. If you’re connected referring you is much easier – Outside of social networks you rarely refer someone you’ve never used. It’s too much of a risk and you probably don’t even know about these people and their services, unless it pops up in a random conversation with friends. However in social media you can search for great people to refer by seeing who your friends are endorsing, referring, and raving about. So, there are many times with social media you may get a referrals and endorsement from people you’re never even met.

6. Social media makes finding the right angle a snap – Starting a conversation is the hardest part of sales. What will trip their trigger? What is their burning objective right now? How can I make them a hero in their own company? These are the questions we love to know the answer to–they makes getting an executive’s ear easier. Interestingly enough managers and executives talk about these things all the time in their social networks, using them like advisory networks. And it’s all there for you to read and plan the perfect angle of attack.

7. You are going to find ins you never thought you had - Here’s my favorite. One of the first step in signing up with a social media or networking website is to automatically load in your address book. You will be floored by how many of your friends, colleagues, and prospects are already in the social media channel–instant ins and referral networks.

As you can see social media is not necessarily about engaging and Twittering all day. It’s about observing, listening, and searching for folks that need your products and services.

Then you can use all the user-generated chatter to guide you in the right approach to doing some of your traditional sales stuff–like cold calling, emailing, or even belly-to-belly selling.

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Filed Under: Featured, Social Media, Social Selling Tagged With: facebook, linkedin, marketing, Social Media, Social network, twitter

What’s Stopping You?

June 7, 2010 By
Amercian self-help writer Napoleon Hill (1883-...
Image via Wikipedia

I support large sales organizations trying to get the most out of generally very talented people. Unfortunately, many of these people don’t believe it. Or have forgotten it along the way. And it all comes out in a flurry of reasons why I can’t.

Now I’m not a mindless follower of the think yourself rich cult, but I do know (as my Dad often said) “Can’t Never Did Anything.”

So what’s stopping you from hitting that sales goal this month? Here are a few of my hunches and solutions.

Notice that most of these are less about thinking and planning and more about doing something. I’ve found that often, in sales particularly, the less I think about it the more it happens. Maybe the book should have been: “Stop Thinking and Grow Rich.” No disrespect to Napoleon Hill, but you get my point right?

What’s stopping you? How are you going to fix it? What are the trick you use to break out of sales slumps?

Filed Under: Social Selling Tagged With: Do It!, linkedin, Napoleon Hill, Social Selling

What’s in My Sales Stack?

June 1, 2010 By
A social network diagram
Image via Wikipedia

Glance, one of the software tools in my Sales Stack, introduced a very interesting Sales 2.0 concept in their post on Building a Custom Sales 2.0 Toolkit. They framed it in the analogy of the more traditional software stack. My simple definition: the combination of multiple software to create a full-featured, consistent, and stable platform on which you can build solutions.

I think they created a very useful analogy. It structures our thinking on how to enable our sales objectives, not just chase hope-filled sales tools. Using this framework you can quickly identify and setup your sales 2.0 platform and get to selling, confident you have the tools and the platform you need to win.

Here’s a peek into my Sales Stack:

1. Lead Generation: It’s always nice to have a steady flow of new conversations coming into your sales pipeline. Online lead generation is a great way to automate that consistent flow. For me I use a tight combination of blogs (Sales, Lead Buying, Lead Generation), eBooks, and email marketing for demand generation.

Specifically, I use the following software tools:

  • WordPress – Some still think WordPress is simply blogging software. I submit that it is a feature-rich, but easy to use and maintain content management system. Don’t just run your blog on it run your entire website on it. Make it your lead generation foundation and home base.
  • Thesis (WordPress Template) - Thesis is the WordPress theme that I use [affiliate link] on all my lead generation websites. Again, it is more than a theme. It’s a foundation for good design and SEO. A simple, unmodified base install will get you ahead of 90% of the websites out there in terms of clean design and traffic generating search engine optimization. It gets your lead generation game started with good fundamentals.
  • AWeber – I’m continually amazed at how many people neglect this critical component of traffic generation and lead generation. Email marketing is still, hands-down, the most responsive Internet marketing technique. If you don’t have a mailing list start one today. If you start one use AWeber [affiliate link].

2. Prospecting & Sales Intelligence: Attracting sales prospects and generating demand is one channel of opportunities. However, I think you also need to actively engage your market. This means seeking out those prospects that need your products and services, but simply don’t know it yet. That’s right, cold calling. This part of the sales stack also prepares you with better pre-call/pre-appointment preparation.

These are the tools I use:

  • Google - Surprised? You shouldn’t be Google is probably the most incredible advance in sales prospect since the telephone. I think of Google as my interface to an enormous database of sales prospects [grab my PDF on Google prospecting]  just waiting to be discovered. My clients are continually providing data and information about themselves, their preferences, their needs, and their wants. Selling to them is as simple as segmenting their data and engaging in their own dialogue.
  • Linkedin – A big part of any sales person’s success is networking. Linkedin is the de facto giant in networking business people and is my default database for B2B sales prospecting. It allows me to find and analyze companies and individuals I want to engage. It also does a fair job of generating new leads, with a few special Linkedin tricks I use.
  • Gist - This is one of the latest tools I’ve added to my sales stack. Gist is a simple way to keep me aware of what my relationships are doing in pursuing their own interests and goals. Using their direct interface and the plug-in for my email I never go into a conversation with a lead or contact without a quick snapshot of their latest activities in social media. As an extra bonus it gives me the opportunity to help them more efficiently, if I see them promoting or requesting something I can assist with on the spot.
  • Twitter - People needing immediate help are turning to their social networks. This provides great “targets of opportunity” for sales. And there is nowhere better to find these than on Twitter. I continually jump into discussions and conversations that net new relationships and sales via Twitter. Twitter is always a great place to gather a little intel on the personality of people you are planning to call or meet with–making breaking the ice much easier on cold calls and meetings.

3. Sale Enablement & Execution: At this point in your sales process you have a few prospects on the hook. Now you have to convince them to move forward. This is where the good conversation happens–telephone calls, face-to-face meetings, web demonstrations or webinars. In my business, I do a lot of showing, helping, and teaching. That means making contact and sharing.

Here is how I share:

  • Glance - I mentioned Glance at the top of this article, but they need a prominent mention in my Sales Stack as well. I’ve used all the regulars WebEx and GoToMeeting, but most have failed me regularly. Demonstrations are so critical to the Web 2.0 sales process and I often find myself giving impromptu demos. Doing a quick on-the-spot demos really shows off how well you know your stuff or have a software product that immediately adds value. Glance makes this simple. It works in all browsers, on all operating systems, and its simple URLs make it easy to give over the phone–getting my prospect and me quickly into a sale demo.
  • Skype - This is an old stand-by that I find creeping back into a more significant role again. Much of my company is virtual (we hire where the talent is–sort of silly to do it any other way, right?) so this is our primary means of communication. However, as our business grows I find myself engaging more internationally and Skype is really the simplest and most universal way to do this.
  • Google Voice – Much of my time is spent with clients and traveling. I certainly don’t want to have prospects waiting on me to get back to a desk phone in my office. So, I long-ago abandoned that relic and replaced it with Google Voice. Now my leads and prospects come to me wherever I am and get my live voice, not a voicemail. This is a powerful sales converter in this world of voicemail roulette.
  • Twitter – Again, Twitter pops into the stack. Twitter has become an increasingly primary means of communication, fitting in with email and phone. I am just as responsive to a prospect or client here as I would be in these more tradition modes of communication. However, I like the advantage of being able to share valuable (and lead generating) discussions beyond just one person. If I’m giving free advice or counsel away, which often the initial contact involves, I want as big an audience as possible–that’s lead generation! This is why I try to have much of my initial conversations with suspects on Twitter.
  • iPhone - This has become my communication command center. Since I spend as much time as possible away from the office. This is the nerve center for email, telephone, Twitter, Linkedin, and Gist. I can manage it all from this little workhorse.

4. Lead Management & Nurturing: Not every lead or even contact turns into a sale (at least not immediately) that where lead management is a secret weapon. Getting every one of your leads into a lead management system and learning to automate the nurturing process is a huge competitive edge.

This is even more significant when you generate many of your leads online. These leads are generally new suspects–they rarely close quickly. In addition, these leads will be at all stages of the buying cycle. Without lead management it will be impossible to manage any reasonable amount of these diverse prospects.

I use (of course) Kaleidico’s Sales Manager. It was one of those “scratch your own itch” projects and has become even more powerful with a strong, serious sales customer base.

Building a solid Sales Stack is critical in a Web 2.o sales world. There is so much data and the prospects coming from online sources are so diverse–you need help. Take some time today and carefully evaluate your Sales Stack–cut what you don’t need and integrate what you have into a seamless sales process.

What’s in your Sales Stack? Can you help me improve mine? I would appreciate the feedback.

Filed Under: Sales Management, Social Selling Tagged With: Advertising and Marketing, business, Customer relationship management, Google, Lead Generation, linkedin, marketing, Social network

Linkedin for Sales: Resume or Sales Letter?

May 17, 2010 By

When I browse through Linkedin I see tons of missed opportunity. Profile after profile looks like the tired old resume or curriculum vitae. This particularly saddens me when it’s a person that sells for a living.

Here’s the problem with most people’s Linkedin profile and usage: You set it up because you’re on the hunt for a job or because you might be in the future. Then, it sits and ages—dormant to you and your potential market. Even if one of these prospects does find it they get job titles and companies, but not a clue how you can help them right now.

My suggestion? Switch your thinking. Make your Linkedin profile a sales letter.

Here’s a quick couple of hints to get you started.

Get Attention

The headline in the Linkedin profile is one of the most under-utilized sales tools in Linkedin. Most people leave the default option, which is your current job title. Think about it. No one wants to buy a VP of Sales. They want to buy network performance monitoring, security software, a professional speaker, or a dog training guru.

These are elements of a headline. Let me illustrate.

Here’s my profile:

linkedin-profile-sales

Here’s the average sales person’s profile (sorry to pick on someone):

linkedin-profile-sales-bad

Who’s going to get the click/call? Obvious, right!

Here’s another reason this is so important. It’s your mini-sales ad in a Linkedin search (think Google AdWords). Again, who gets the click/call here:

linkedin-search

Pretty boring, and certainly no value proposition in any of these. You’re only ad space in Linkedin search is the headline. Make it count.

Generate Targeted Sales Traffic

Here’s another little under-utilized lead generation trick. Use your update or status box to generate targeted sales traffic. This is a simple way to land on your connections’ Linkedin home page (staying top of mind) and provides a call to action for new visitors to your profile.

This simple little update box, when combined with a website link, can be a powerful lead generation tool. Make your updates a brief call to action and add a link to a compelling landing page. This could be your website, a blog, a squeeze page, Slideshare.net LeadShare, your Facebook fan page, wherever you can capture leads or generate calls.

Here’s the box I’m talking about:

linkedin-status

Here’s an update in action. Would you click?

linkedin-status-2

Do you want more ideas on turning your Linkedin profile into a sales lead generation tool?

Sign-up for the newsletter and get my special report on Using Linkedin for Sales Lead Generation (in tomorrow’s newsletter)—only available to newsletter subscribers.

Filed Under: Featured, Social Media, Social Selling Tagged With: linkedin, Social Media, social selling
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