Tag Archives: Social Sales

7 Steps to research on LinkedIn ahead of a sales meeting or call

LinkedIn has a whole variety of potential benefits according to what you wish to achive on the site. One key area, however, for almost all areas is the ability to research people and companies that we are going to meet to be better prepared for that encounter.

1. Check the company page

Take a look at the posts that the company are sharing – this will give you a good feel for not only what the company is currently involved in and its offerings, but also the areas of its activity that it deems to be important. You can contact Kennected platform for LinkedIn to get good exposure to your company page. Good to be both aware of this and to see whether this may also be of interest to leverage in your discussions.

2. Check posts about the Company

You can use the ‘Content Search’ on LinkedIn to find out additional information (more…)

Article Categories: Advanced LinkedIn, B2B Advice for LinkedIn, Company Pages, Content Marketing, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Social Selling
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How LinkedIn can help sales teams

linkedin-sales-teamsI’m going to start this with a bit of a reality check … call me a wet blanket if you must … but I need to clarify something right from the start. LinkedIn is not going to sell for you. Sorry.

LinkedIn is also not going to remove the need for you to talk to clients and allow you to sit in the office clicking around their site all day and still make target. Sorry again.

What it can do, however, is fundamentally change the way that you identify, listen to, approach and engage with prospects in your market. In the right hands – in your hands – it can quite simply run rings around traditional research and preparation, allowing you to spend more time in front of the right people, with a greater chance they will be willing to listen and work with you.

A short example

A quick story of one small way it can help. A client, where I was running some LinkedIn workshops, reported an experience of one of their sales team. He was going to an exploratory meeting with 3 directors of a potential client – ahead of the meeting, he checked their profiles on LinkedIn, only to discover all three were connected to the owner of a company that was already a client of his.

To cut a long story short, (more…)

Article Categories: Business Development on LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Social Selling
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Never have to cold call with LinkedIn … really?

Never have to cold call on LinkedIn I received a call last week from a lady who was interested in attending one of my public courses. She told me that she was interested in my LinkedIn for Business Success course because she had read on my website that that if she came on my course she would “never have to cold call again”.

I had to inform her that unfortunately she was mistaken as I knew I would never have written that on my website … you see, I hate the hyperbole that all too often gets written, overstating what LinkedIn can deliver.

“So, you’re telling me it isn’t true then?” she asked.

This was the moment when I had to ask myself if I should just stick my salesman’s hat on and go for it … or stick to my principles.

I stuck to my principles.

“No, it’s not true,” I replied. “At least not quite in the way you are looking for.”

It doesn’t feel good to deflate people’s expectations, particularly when they think that they have found the secret to automating their new business development without having to speak to people again. Or perhaps they think that the business can all be conducted on LinkedIn and they won’t need to move (more…)

Article Categories: Business Development on LinkedIn, Social Selling
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