Social Selling

I thought about buying LinkedIn stock when it went public, but not just because it’s a great recruiting tool.  

For me, LinkedIn was a great sales tool.  I found that I could use it to locate prospects, and research prospects in preparation for phone conferences.   I preached the use of LinkedIn to every salesperson I encountered.  

A recent Forbes article indicates others agree.  It refers to a report claiming that salespeople who use social media close more deals.

The article refers to the use of LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and blogs.  Each has its own dynamics, and possible pitfalls.  Like any tool, to quote EC, “it’s in the way that you use it.”

I will post regularly here about how I’ve used LinkedIn to greatly improve the quality of sales prospecting and sales conversations.  The key is to upgrade from the basic free account to one of the paid premium accounts.  

The paid accounts allow you to cold email (“Inmail”) any Linkedin user who is open to accepting Inmails.  The paid plans also show more profiles in your search results, and provide full profiles of more LinkedIn users.   The account fees are a nominal investment for access to valuable business data.   

For more on the use of Inmails, and finding the very-hard-to-find using LinkedIn, stay tuned....