SlideShare una empresa de Scribd logo
1 de 49
Descargar para leer sin conexión
42

Ken Krogue
insidesales.com


Jamie Shanks

                  42 LinkedIn Inside Sales Tips
                  By Ken Krogue and Jamie Shanks
Introduction

                              42
The 42 LinkedIn Inside Sales Tips eBook is designed to help you drive new
business. You’ll learn critical practices to help you connect better with
prospects and customers and increase revenue.

Traditional selling channels of email and phone are tried and true, but
LinkedIn and other social channels can greatly increase sales performance.
Here is a preview on just one of the powerful tips — did you know LinkedIn
performs 7 times better than email in some cases? Get social and leave old
school selling in the dust.

These 42 tips were originally presented by Ken Krogue and Jamie Shanks
as a webinar which you can watch here.




                              LinkedIn is
                              out-pulling email

                              7-to-1
InsideSales.com | Sales for Life              Share this eBook:
Linkedin CheatSheet
Jamie Shanks Tips
1	Be a Thought Leader                 7	Follow ‘Hot Prospects’
2	Drive Opportunity                   8	Timing Within Followers
3	The Secrets within Groups           9	Timing Within Signals
4	Skills as a SEO Hunting Tool        10	Attack Followers
5	Save Your InMails                   11	Insights into their business
6	 ‘Hot Prospects’ in Groups


Ken Krogue Tips
12 	 Grab Your Name                   28	Use Tags to Categorize
13	Use a Good Picture                 29	Use LinkedIn Events
14	Complete your Profile              30	Offer Value to Connections
15	Make your Wedding/Funeral List     31	Recommend Others
16	Connect to your Customers          32	Use LinkedIn for Introductions
17	Follow your Customer’s Companies   33	Do a 3x3 Analysis
18	Connect to your Employees          34	Follow Prospect Companies
19	 Have a Point Person               35	Use 3 Free SEO Links
20	Connect to your Prospects          36	LinkedIn Events with Trade Shows
21	Respond by Email then Connect      37	 Promote  Share Every Event you Attend
22	Connect at Trade shows             38	Target Prospects by Size, Title, Industry
23	 Join Industry Groups              39	Ask for Recommendations
24	 Join Local Groups                 40	Ask for Customer Recommendations
25	Update on Twitter                  41	Make it Easy to Ask for Referrals from
26	Connect a Widget on your Blog         your Customers
27	Send Messages Instead of Email     42	Don’t SPAM



InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                 Share this eBook:
About the authors
                                   Tips: 1-11
                                   Sales for Life provides two things for clients.
                                   First, they train sales teams to drive business
                                   through LinkedIn and Twitter. Second, they
                                   become the sales rep themselves. Sales for
                                   Life has a social selling, lead generation
                                   program that takes over a company’s LinkedIn
                                   and Twitter accounts and begins driving
                                   new opportunities similar to traditional B2B
Jamie Shanks                       lead generation.
Managing Partner
Sales for Life



                                   Tips: 12-42
                                   Throughout Ken’s career, he has worked to grow
                                   the inside sales industry from a small department
                                   into an industry. Through his professional
                                   experiences, Ken has conducted research on the
                                   best practices and methods of selling—including
                                   socially. At InsideSales.com, Ken has used his
                                   experience of the inside sales industry to create
                                   a powerful sales automation software platform
Ken Krogue                         which increases the effectiveness and efficiency
President  Co-founder             of an inside sales department.
InsideSales.com




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                       Share this eBook:
1 Leader       Be a Thought
To start generating results from LinkedIn and social selling, you need to
become a thought leader within your industry. There are two avenues of
approach to being a thought leader in business.

Step One
If you’re a sales rep at Company ABC, you need to be subscribing to pieces
of thought-leadership that you can share with your prospects, vendors, and
clients.

For example, Ken is a fantastic creator of great thought-leadership. Jamie
subscribes to Ken’s blog and views the information using Feedly, a product
used to visualize RSS feeds into a newspaper. Other tools he uses to capture
quality content to share with his prospects are Scoop.it and HootSuite.

Step Two
Create original content. Easy ways of distributing content are using a blog,
SlideShare or YouTube (video is becoming extremely important).




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                Share this eBook:
2                      Drive
                       Opportunity
After relevant content has been curated and digested by your prospects,
you can start driving meeting requests through LinkedIn.

Remember, LinkedIn is not a repository for your resume. It’s a place to
actively drive business.

Example
If your prospect posted an article (update) on LinkedIn four minutes ago,
you can see they are engaged online. Whether you use the telephone to
call them or send a message through LinkedIn, you know the chances are
high that they are available to pay attention to your message.

Additionally, make sure you’re using a call-to-action at the bottom of
every message. This creates a much higher ROI. It’s a great method to
booking meetings.




                 Not                                         Is
        Place to sit passively                      To Use call-to-action
        Repository for resume                      Actively drive business



InsideSales.com | Sales for Life              Share this eBook:
3 Groups
                          The

                         Secrets within
Nothing is more powerful within LinkedIn than groups. As a member of
LinkedIn, you are allowed to join 50 groups. Use every one.


When deciding which groups to become a member
of, think in three levels.                                   Groups to join
First                                                         Think in
Join five to ten groups that everyone else in your
industry is joining.                                          3 Levels
Second
Go a layer lower within specific verticals. For               Industry
example, join groups that clients are involved in.

Third
                                                              Client
Most importantly, is to understand the persona                Involved
of your buyer.
                                                              Buyers
At Sales for Life, they sell to VPs of Sales and Sales
Directors. Therefore, they need to be involved in             Persona
every major group in North America that these
buyers are part of.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                    Share this eBook:
4 Hunting tool         Skills as a SEO
At the top of a company’s LinkedIn corporate page there is a button
called “Insights.” This is where LinkedIn provides a profile outline of that
particular company.

For example, on InsideSales.com’s LinkedIn page, it shows the most common
skills that InsideSales.com employees have.

How to Target
If you’re targeting companies like InsideSales.com, you can select a skill
like “Lead Generation.” The link will take you to a page that shows all the
most influential companies relating to that skill and the most populous
groups you’d want to join. This tool is extremely useful when mapping
out groups to join.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                Share this eBook:
5 InMails               Save your
If you aren’t connected to someone
on LinkedIn, you are unable to send
them a message without using InMail,
a paid service.

However, if you’re a member of Sales
2.0 and Inside Sales Experts you can
send anyone within that group a
private message even though you
aren’t a 1st degree connection.

There isn’t enough data yet to           send messages
determine if InMails are opened more     through a group page
frequently and have a greater ROI than
other LinkedIn messages. Regardless,
sending messages through shared
LinkedIn groups is the best avenue.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life          Share this eBook:
6 In Groups         ‘Hot Prospects’
The great part about groups is that they provide numerous prospects. After
sending a message and starting a conversation with a quality prospect, go
back into that same group and target other group members.

How to Find Prospects
You can do this by conducting advanced searches based on targeted
keywords, key company functions or seniority. This will provide you an
endless prospecting pool, all of which is available with free messaging.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life              Share this eBook:
7                     Follow
                    ‘Hot Prospects’
LinkedIn allows users to follow up to 5,000 people. Following is different
than connecting but the benefits are the same.

Best Practice
To build your database, go into any group you are a member of and pull up
the list of group members. You’ll notice that at the bottom of the profiles
of the people who you are in 1st degree connection, it will say, “Unfollow.”
If you start scrolling into the 2nd and 3rd degree connections, you’ll notice
that the button changes to “Follow.”




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                Share this eBook:
8 Followers              Timing within
Timing is everything when it comes to getting in touch with prospects. This
is where LinkedIn is so helpful.

By using LinkedIn as a “time trigger,” you know the moment a prospect
posts an update. Because of this, there is a strong possibility they could still
be on their computer. Use this as an opportunity to time your message and
increase the likelihood of making contact with a message on LinkedIn or
a phone call!

Tip
If your prospect has the time to be using LinkedIn right now – they probably
are available to take a phone call. You have a much higher probability of
getting him on the phone at this time than at any other time.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                  Share this eBook:
9 Signals
Use this tool to create
between 30 and 50
trigger words using
                         Timing within

competitors and key industry phrases. Check this tool three
times per day: in the morning, at lunch and in the evening.

How To
On the top bar within LinkedIn, hover over the option that
reads “News.” Within that drop down menu, select the third
selection called, “LinkedIn Signal.” This tool allows you to
create trigger words to keep track of particular topics.

You can probably imagine how powerful this tool is. If
someone says the words “social selling” and that’s one of
your keywords, you will hear it and will be able to respond
accordingly.

Tip
Sales for Life has found, from their own business, that 70%
of every lead created is through this method.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life               Share this eBook:
10
3 types of
Followers
                                   Attack
                                   Followers
                                    In addition to the “LinkedIn Signal feature,” there
                                    is another technique that is equally important
                                    for driving business with LinkedIn.

                                    First
Direct                              Pick a client with a strong success story from
Competitor                          using your product.

                                    Next
Competitive                         Go onto their corporate LinkedIn page and click
Emulation                           on “Followers.”


Consumer                            This immediately tells you they’re going to be
                                    the most receptive to a message that includes a
                                    success story featuring that client.

                                    Why?
                                    Because if you are a follower of a company you
                                    are one of three types of people: the direct
                                    competitor (they want to know what you’re
                                    doing), competitive emulation (other companies
                                    in your space with the same target audience), or
                                    consumer that have used your product (vendors,
                                    partners and past clients).



InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                         Share this eBook:
11 Business                  Insights into their

In addition to viewing the followers of a client, you can also gain powerful
information by clicking on that same company’s “Insights” button.

How To
This feature within LinkedIn will retrieve six similar businesses that you can
target. These are the people who would probably care about the success
story of that similar company. Start messaging these people—they could
provide great value.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                 Share this eBook:
12 name                             Grab your
Make sure that your public profile URL is shortened to contain just your
name, i.e. http://www.linkedin.com/in/kenkrogue. If you leave the default
assigned by LinkedIn, your personal URL will have a series of random letters
and numbers. It looks like a mess and is hard to remember and link to. Make
sure you grab your name before someone else does.

Tip
If you aren’t able to grab your own name, try adding something that says
something about your professional expertise or industry. For example,
if Ken Krogue had been taken, I would have chosen /kenkroguesales.
Sales says a lot more about me than /kenkrogue1, which is the typical
fallback selection.




                        Do
                                   www.linkedin.com/in/kenkrogue



                        Don’t      www.linkedin.com/in/kenkrogue
                                   www.linkedin.com/pub/ken-krogue/2/4a/328


                                   www.linkedin.com/pub/ken-krogue/2/4a/328




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                                   Share this eBook:
13 Picture                         Use a Good
LinkedIn is a professional site—it’s not a personal site like Facebook. That
being said, make sure your LinkedIn profile picture portrays you in a
professional manner. You probably won’t have the same profile image as
you do on Facebook.

How To
To ensure your picture looks professional, use a good, close-up picture that
stands out. At InsideSales.com, we use a black and white, short-cropped
head shot. Why black and white? It stands out. Make your picture unique
while maintaining a professional appearance.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                Share this eBook:
14 Profile                         Complete your
Set up your profile correctly to keep it fresh. This will help you gain credibility
within the LinkedIn environment. It’s actually not as hard as it sounds.

LinkedIn provides the user with the necessary steps to complete their
profile. By following all the steps, your LinkedIn profile can be 100 percent
complete within a few hours.

Take the time to fill in educational history and professional experience. It
will be easier to expand your professional network. More importantly, it
sends a message of proactivity to prospects who may look at your profile.

Warning: Using LinkedIn with an incomplete profile is a mistake. It
shows a lack of credibility and professionalism.




                                     100% profile completeness




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                    Share this eBook:
15                                 Make your
                                   wedding/funeral list
To begin building out your network, the first thing you can do is make a
wedding or funeral guest list.

Why?
This is an old prospecting technique with a new twist. I’m told that wedding
planners and funeral directors estimate the average wedding or funeral at
250 attendees if they don’t know how many people are coming.

Imagine if you linked to 250 people who care about you. Wouldn’t they
be the best place to start prospecting and looking for introductions,
recommendations, and referrals?




             MY NETWORK
                                          Build your
                                          Network
InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                Share this eBook:
16 Customers                       Connect to your

Within the B2B world, nobody is more important than your customers
and clients. With that in mind, it makes sense that you should connect to
each of them, adding them as part of your LinkedIn network.

By receiving their LinkedIn updates and content posts, I get to know
them and can start to connect to others that have similar interests and
pain points.

From connecting with your customers, they become your biggest resource
for prospects. We recommend that your CEO, VP of Sales, VP of Support,
among others, reach out as part of the welcome process to each new
customer and connect. Then reach out to them now and again to ask, “How are
things coming?”

Tip
Be sure to organize your customers with tags. That way you can easily
find them.

                                       Organize Customers with tags


     Reach Out
     to customers

InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                   Share this eBook:
17 Companies
                                   Follow your

                                   Customer’s
After connecting to your customers, follow their companies so that you can
see the news flow that comes through LinkedIn. Similar to Jamie’s previous
idea, by following customer companies you gain insight into the biggest
news coming out of that company.

Keep in Mind
Customers like when you know things that are going on in their organizations.
It shows that you care and that you are invested in keeping them as
a customer.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                 Share this eBook:
18 Employees                       Connect to your

When deciding who to add as a connection, start with the people you’re
surrounded by every day—fellow employees. If you’re in a management level
position, spend time and teach your colleagues and employees the value
of using LinkedIn as a team.

Tip
Do it from day one in the onboarding process for all new hires. In order
to gain the maximum results from LinkedIn, this should be a group effort.
Make sure you get your people together and coordinate your efforts
and strategies.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life              Share this eBook:
19 Person                             Have a Point

LinkedIn works by letting you view people who are two levels deep­ meaning
                                                                 –
you can connect to a person through a series of two other people starting
with the one you know.

Best Practice
Have at least one person in the company who reaches out to a lot of
connections. Make sure these are real connections and that your connection
requests aren’t spam. If everyone else at the company is connected to
the point person, they act like a “doorway” with great connections for
everyone else.

At InsideSales.com, I am the point person. Within my professional network
on LinkedIn, I am connected to over 3,100 people. Through me, all of my
sales reps have the potential to connect to far more people.

Beware: If headhunters and recruiters connect with your point person,
they have access to all of your people. Connect with caution!


 Who’s Viewed Your Profile?                                   Your LinkedIn Network


 6    Your profile has been viewed by 6 people in the past
      day.                                                    3,101       Connections link you to 14,680,285+
                                                                          professionals



 44     You have shwon up in search results 44 times in the
        past day.                                             20,395         New people in your Network since
                                                                             October 2



                                                               Add Connections




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                                        Share this eBook:
20 Prospects                       Connect to your

Just as you should connect to all your customers, you should also connect
with your prospects. Our salespeople are asked to connect to their prospects
right after the first contact attempt.

Do they always do it? The smart ones do. They understand that by
asking to become connected on LinkedIn it increases the rate of building a
relationship and rapport.

How To
You can search by keyword to find prospects. For us, anybody with “inside
sales,” “lead management,” or “salesforce.com” in their LinkedIn profile is
a prospect. Find out what the keywords are that target your audience and
begin generating your prospecting lists.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                Share this eBook:
21                                 Respond by email
                                   then connect
People always ask, “How do you build your connections?” Personally I use
the technique, “respond by email and then connect.” This method is a great
way to make connections with interesting and valuable people.

How To
Whenever you receive an email from someone you think would be a valuable
connection, simply respond by email and mention in the email that you will
be connecting by LinkedIn. In your connection request remind them you
just emailed them. LinkedIn penalizes you if you try to connect to too many
people who reject you because they don’t know or don’t remember who
you are.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life               Share this eBook:
22
My favorite task after going to a
                                   Connect at
                                   Trade shows
trade show is to take all of the new
business cards given to me and
connect on LinkedIn.

When you send the request to
connect, remind them of the
“common experience” you had
together at the trade show so they
remember and don’t reject you.

Best Practice
We have a rule at InsideSales.com
that we will never go to a trade
show unless we are sure that we
can set enough appointments
before the show even happens to
pay for the show.
                                       Remind about
Before we went to one of our biggest
                                       Common
                                        
                                       Experience
shows, Dreamforce (a Salesforce®
show) last year, we already had
over 700 appointments for demos
at the show. This year it was
over 1,000.


InsideSales.com | Sales for Life        Share this eBook:
23 Groups                          Join Industry
I strongly suggest that sales reps join industry LinkedIn groups. Why?
Because the days of lunch networking groups are gone. A great group on
LinkedIn for those in the inside sales industry is “Inside Sales Experts.” The
group was created by Trish Bertuzzi, the Founder and CEO of The Bridge
Group, Inc. in Boston.

When I first joined the group, there were 8,000 members. I recently checked
and there are now over 20,000 members. I don’t know anywhere else on
the planet where that many inside sales professionals congregate. Over the
years I have now met hundreds of them and I count them as friends. I did
this by getting involved in their discussions.




                                        Trish Bertuzzi




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                 Share this eBook:
24 Groups                          Join Local

In addition to joining industry groups, join professional groups in your
geographic area. This is a great tool, especially if you sell locally.

How To
Go to the Groups search window at the top right and type in your home
city and/or home state to find groups close to you. Now look for industries
that you want to find prospects in. These groups usually have quarterly or
annual meetings. That are a great resource for prospecting locally.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life               Share this eBook:
25 Twitter                         Update on
For the most part, you probably post similar content on LinkedIn and
Twitter. At least occasionally. Why not kill two birds with one stone? By
linking together your LinkedIn account with your professional Twitter profile,
specified LinkedIn updates can be sent out to your Twitter followers as well.

It’s a great way for your prospects and followers to see the latest news
about you and your company.

Warning: Just like most tools, this can be overused. I like to filter it
down to just the best updates.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                 Share this eBook:
26                                 Connect a

                                   Widget on your
                                   blog
In the social media age, content is king. By bringing in quality content that
your connections on LinkedIn would care about, you offer value.

Tip
Check out the widgets available on LinkedIn. I love the WordPress widget
that publishes my three most recent blog articles to my LinkedIn page. Just
like with automated Twitter posts this can be overused.

Make sure you are only pulling in the most relevant content to your
connections. However, if your blog is targeted at the same audience as your
professional LinkedIn audience you shouldn’t have too much of a problem.
If you’re interested in inside sales, subscribe to my blog KenKrogue.com.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                Share this eBook:
27 email
                                   Send messages

                                   Instead of
Through LinkedIn, InsideSales.com
constantly tests different media
through which to send messages
to prospects in addition to testing
the content of the messages. In
terms of response rates, emails
range between .1 percent and
.3 percent.

The exact same message sent


                                                   Power
in our early in-house tests by
LinkedIn responded 300 percent
better.

We recently released a new product,
PowerSocial, that integrates social
                                                   Social
                                                   Enable sales reps to learn
platforms into sales automation                    about and engage prospects
                                                   more intelligently.
technology. Already we have seen
increases in or response rates.                            Learn More

PowerSocial gives your reps a social
view without the distractions of
going to the social networking sites.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                    Share this eBook:
28 Categorize                      Use Tags to
LinkedIn allows you to use tags to categorize your customers from prospects,
friends, etc. tags are like ‘Circles’ on Google+. As your connections grow,
the tag allows you to slice and dice your LinkedIn network for all kinds of
communication purposes.

How To
Tags are found in the Contacts section of LinkedIn and are absolutely
invaluable for more advanced methods of using LinkedIn for prospecting,
such as sending targeted emails to only specific categories.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                Share this eBook:
29 events
                                   Use

                                   Linkedin
Look for LinkedIn events that
correspond to trade shows. By adding
the event, you can network within the
group and invite them to come meet
you at your booth at the trade show.

These groups attract hundreds of
users that will be attending the same
event. For example, if a group has
190 people who have said they are
attending that gives you 190 people
you can introduce yourself to before
the event even begins.

Remember Tip 22
InsideSales.com has a rule to schedule
enough appointments before the
event to pay for it. LinkedIn groups
are one way we accomplish this.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life         Share this eBook:
30                                 Offer value to
                                   Connections
It’s important to interact occasionally with your LinkedIn connections and
build relationships with them. Offer valuable content to your connections
including training materials, quality books, best practices, tips, tricks, and
best of all, referrals.

Best Practice
The best way to build a relationship is through providing quality, relevant
content. I reach out about every six months to my LinkedIn connections in
Utah and share my latest seminar with them for free. I probably have 70 to
80 people come. I do the same with webinars nationally and usually have a
few thousand attend.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                 Share this eBook:
31 Others                          Recommend
I strongly endorse giving recommendations to contacts such as co-workers,
colleagues, former employers and authors. It’s a great way to build morale
and friendships. Don’t wait for people to ask.

Tip
Make a personal goal to reach out and recommend one person a week.
If someone does something special, go tell them! You would be surprised
what taking the time to show gratitude and respect can do to open doors
and build strong rapport.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life              Share this eBook:
32
                                   Use

                                   Linkedin for
                                   Introductions
I wanted to get in contact with
the inside sales department at
Novell. I looked up the company,
found an old friend of mine
that works there, connected
with him, sent him a message
and asked for a referral. The result        
                                          My
was better than I could have
hoped for.
                                          Friend
My friend called me up and not only         ot me an
                                          G
                                             ppointment
                                           a
knew who I was trying to get in touch
with at Novell, but his office was only
two doors down. He walked down
the hall, knocked on his colleague’s
door and got me an appointment. It
was amazing.

That was my first productive use
of LinkedIn and I’ve been hooked
ever since.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life            Share this eBook:
33                                 Do a 3x3
                                   Analysis
If you’ve ever had a call that you weren’t quite sure how to begin the
conversation, this tip is critical. This is a technique that Steve Richard, from
Vorsight, taught me.

How To
Before reaching out to your prospects take three minutes and find three
things you have in common. This will help you have something to talk to
that prospect about. Keep this tip in mind when preparing to meet with
anyone for the first time whether it’s sales related or not.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                  Share this eBook:
34 Companies
                                   Follow

                                   Prospect
When following prospect companies, you can’t follow too many or your feed
gets overwhelmed–just as Jamie said. You have to be very strategic about
the companies you are trying to get into. This is a great way to be able to
speak intelligently when you have conversations.

Tip
I would recommend that you look at your prospect companies every time
before you call them back so you can know the very latest news from
that company.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life               Share this eBook:
35 Seo Links                       Use 3 free
Most people don’t realize that LinkedIn provides three free backlinks
that anyone can use for “Google juice.” These links should direct your
connections to content to gain more information about you, your company,
or your industry.

First
In the “Edit your profile” layout, click on the “Edit Contact Info”, this section
will expand.

Second
Next to “Websites” will be a “+ Add
to website” link, clicking the link
will open a new page. Change the
first box to “Other” and type the
content that you would like to be
the backlink.

Think of keywords that you want to
rank for on Google. These keywords
should be the text in your backlink.

Third
Insert the link the content will point to. For additional content on building
quality SEO, check out Ken’s articles on Forbes.com.



InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                   Share this eBook:
36
                                   Linkedin

                                   Events with
                                   Trade shows
We talked about LinkedIn Events in regards to trade shows. But how do you
actually make connections at these events? Well, if you find that the trade
shows you’re going to have the social media foresight to build a LinkedIn
event, then all you have to do is bring up all the individual attendees.

How To
Send a message saying, “Hi, I want to meet you and shake your hand. Come
by my booth during the show and let’s get to know each other.” By using
this method we’ve been able to add dozens upon dozens of additional visits
to our booth, even if we can’t set appointments.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life               Share this eBook:
37
                                   Promote  share

                                   Every event
                                   You Attend
I speak probably 20 to 25 times a
year and, often, I have found my
prospect base within LinkedIn.
I want to make my prospects aware

                                                Everyone Wins
of where I’m speaking because I
want to meet with them.

We’ve been able to move several                 When you
                                                 
LinkedIn connections from prospect
status to customer because they                 promote
                                                 
come to the event we’re already
going to. Everybody wins when
you promote events.
                                                Events
                                                 
How To
It’s really easy to do. Go into
LinkedIn, add the event to your
calendar, and promote it through
the “share” feature.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                     Share this eBook:
38 Industry
                                   Target prospects By

                                   Size, Title,

To help target prospects better, slice and dice your prospects through
LinkedIn’s advanced search. The advanced search allows you to search for
people and companies.

How To
When you search for companies you can target what you are looking for by
the size of the company, industry, and title. It’s all about the power of the
list, and LinkedIn is becoming one of the best in the world.

I love the concept of dynamic
emails. LinkedIn sends me half
a dozen dynamic emails with
different sources of leads every
morning.

I’ve found that the best
companies to target are those
who are hiring inside sales
reps. It’s a strong sign that they
are growing.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                     Share this eBook:
39                                 Ask For
                                   Recommendations
Just as you should give recommendations, you should also ask for
recommendations from co-workers, colleagues, and former employers.
Once you have lots of honest and frank recommendations, I like to move to
asking for recommendations from customers.

How To
It works best when you ask for recommendations early in the process as
a measure of how well you do. I also do this if a prospect is asking for
additional pricing discounts or negotiating terms aggressively.

You could say, “Well, with this discount I’m giving you, would you recommend
me on LinkedIn if I have earned it?”




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                Share this eBook:
40
                                   Ask for


                                   Customer
                                   Recommendations
If you present at a seminar, ask for a grade from those in attendance
through a LinkedIn recommendation. Having these recommendations
for prospects to see can also help to shorten the sales cycle.

This is similar to the Salesforce AppExchange—but here people recommend
your apps that work with Salesforce from third party vendors. For our app,
PowerDialer for Salesforce, we care deeply about recommendations that
are left on the AppExchange for our product.

In the social media world,
recommendations and comments
are the new currency used to
promote your business (check
out this article on Forbes.com for
more information about social
media currency).




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life              Share this eBook:
41                                 Make it easy to ask for

                                   referrals from
                                   Your Customers
To help generate more referrals, I tell my
prospects, “One of the best ways I grade myself
on how well I do is whether or not you are
willing to recommend me to other people just
like yourself when we are done.”

I set up this expectation early on and remind
them once or twice during the sales process.
Quite often I need to prompt them with ideas.
Recently, I’ve been using LinkedIn.

How To
This makes the whole process easier for both
parties. I often say something like, “To make it
easy for you and to help me grow my business
with your recommendations, I’ve found a few
people you know that I would greatly appreciate
an introduction to.”

Once they have given their approval you can
use the normal LinkedIn process. The LinkedIn
process is better than cold calling them on
my own.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                         Share this eBook:
42 Spam                            Don’t

Overzealous marketers ruined contacting by telephone, faxing, and email
by sending spam. Just don’t do it. It’s a mistake we should make only once.
I wish we had a dye that turned their LinkedIn page red for a week when
somebody uses LinkedIn to brazenly pitch their product!

Best Practice
Don’t try and sell them something, it’s a turnoff. Just offer great content.
If they want to buy something from you they will seek you out.




             Don’t                           Do
             Spam                             offer
                                              great
                                                ontent
                                              C




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life                Share this eBook:
Summary

                              42
Now that you fully understand how to make the most of LinkedIn to drive
business and results, you can now create a strategic plan to incorporate
social media efforts to increase revenue.

LinkedIn will play a large role in the future of sales – the good news is,
you’re already ahead of the majority of the industry. Hardly anybody is
using LinkedIn in a way to expand and grow business.

For an additional, more in-depth discussion on using LinkedIn to drive
business, watch this webinar featuring Ken Krogue and Jamie Shanks
available here.

Be sure to connect with Ken and Jamie on LinkedIn for inside sales industry
updates and best practices.




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life               Share this eBook:
Offers
Thanks for reading “42 Linkedin Inside Sales Tips.” While LinkedIn and
other social media platforms can certainly help drive business and
revenue, combining these tips with sales automation technology will
increase the productivity and efficiency of your sales team even more.

For additional resources to support your inside sales team, check out
some of the other solutions from InsideSales.com and Sales for Life.




           Schedule My Demo                        Learn More
           or Call: 877-798-9633




InsideSales.com | Sales for Life               Share this eBook:
Credits
Content
Ken Krogue |
http://kenkrogue.com
                                   42
Jamie Shanks |
http://salesforlife.com/blog


Writers
                                   Maximize Results
                                   Check out the eBook
Alex Orton |                       co-authored by Jon Miller of Marketo
Jessica Winn |


Copy Editors
Jessica Dyer |
Thomas Oldroyd |


Designers
Scott Humphries |
Stephen Gashler |                      Download eBook




Copyright © 2012 InsideSales.com     Share this eBook:

Más contenido relacionado

Destacado

Arming Your Sales Force to Thrive in Times of Uncertainty
Arming Your Sales Force to Thrive in Times of UncertaintyArming Your Sales Force to Thrive in Times of Uncertainty
Arming Your Sales Force to Thrive in Times of UncertaintyLinkedIn Sales Solutions
 
21 Hidden LinkedIn Hacks Revealed
21 Hidden LinkedIn Hacks Revealed21 Hidden LinkedIn Hacks Revealed
21 Hidden LinkedIn Hacks RevealedEmma Brudner
 
10 Tips to help you maximize your LinkedIn sales profile.
10 Tips to help you maximize your LinkedIn sales profile.10 Tips to help you maximize your LinkedIn sales profile.
10 Tips to help you maximize your LinkedIn sales profile.LinkedIn Sales Solutions
 
Business Development Presentation
Business Development PresentationBusiness Development Presentation
Business Development PresentationStephen Simpson
 
The Top Skills That Can Get You Hired in 2017
The Top Skills That Can Get You Hired in 2017The Top Skills That Can Get You Hired in 2017
The Top Skills That Can Get You Hired in 2017LinkedIn
 

Destacado (6)

Arming Your Sales Force to Thrive in Times of Uncertainty
Arming Your Sales Force to Thrive in Times of UncertaintyArming Your Sales Force to Thrive in Times of Uncertainty
Arming Your Sales Force to Thrive in Times of Uncertainty
 
21 Hidden LinkedIn Hacks Revealed
21 Hidden LinkedIn Hacks Revealed21 Hidden LinkedIn Hacks Revealed
21 Hidden LinkedIn Hacks Revealed
 
10 Tips to help you maximize your LinkedIn sales profile.
10 Tips to help you maximize your LinkedIn sales profile.10 Tips to help you maximize your LinkedIn sales profile.
10 Tips to help you maximize your LinkedIn sales profile.
 
Business Development Presentation
Business Development PresentationBusiness Development Presentation
Business Development Presentation
 
The Top Skills That Can Get You Hired in 2017
The Top Skills That Can Get You Hired in 2017The Top Skills That Can Get You Hired in 2017
The Top Skills That Can Get You Hired in 2017
 
8 Tips for an Awesome Powerpoint Presentation
8 Tips for an Awesome Powerpoint Presentation8 Tips for an Awesome Powerpoint Presentation
8 Tips for an Awesome Powerpoint Presentation
 

Más de InsideSales.com

7 Salesforce Reports Every Inside Sales Manager Should Be Pulling
7 Salesforce Reports Every Inside Sales Manager Should Be Pulling7 Salesforce Reports Every Inside Sales Manager Should Be Pulling
7 Salesforce Reports Every Inside Sales Manager Should Be PullingInsideSales.com
 
LEVERAGING ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING AND ACCOUNT-BAS
LEVERAGING ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING AND ACCOUNT-BASLEVERAGING ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING AND ACCOUNT-BAS
LEVERAGING ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING AND ACCOUNT-BASInsideSales.com
 
Are You Ready For Account-Based Everything? Five Focus Areas Hold the Answer
Are You Ready For Account-Based Everything? Five Focus Areas Hold the AnswerAre You Ready For Account-Based Everything? Five Focus Areas Hold the Answer
Are You Ready For Account-Based Everything? Five Focus Areas Hold the AnswerInsideSales.com
 
Beyond Cold Calling: Bridging Social Selling with Inside Sales for A Winning ...
Beyond Cold Calling: Bridging Social Selling with Inside Sales for A Winning ...Beyond Cold Calling: Bridging Social Selling with Inside Sales for A Winning ...
Beyond Cold Calling: Bridging Social Selling with Inside Sales for A Winning ...InsideSales.com
 
How High-Performance Sales Teams Squeeze The Most Out of Every Lead
How High-Performance Sales Teams Squeeze The Most Out of Every LeadHow High-Performance Sales Teams Squeeze The Most Out of Every Lead
How High-Performance Sales Teams Squeeze The Most Out of Every LeadInsideSales.com
 
Webinar Slide Deck: Where Does Social Selling Fit In Your Sales Process?
Webinar Slide Deck: Where Does Social Selling Fit In Your Sales Process?Webinar Slide Deck: Where Does Social Selling Fit In Your Sales Process?
Webinar Slide Deck: Where Does Social Selling Fit In Your Sales Process?InsideSales.com
 
12/02/15 RAIN Group Webinar Slides
12/02/15 RAIN Group Webinar Slides12/02/15 RAIN Group Webinar Slides
12/02/15 RAIN Group Webinar SlidesInsideSales.com
 
The High Velocity Inside Sales Model
The High Velocity Inside Sales ModelThe High Velocity Inside Sales Model
The High Velocity Inside Sales ModelInsideSales.com
 
Cold Call Voicemail and Email Strategies - Get More Contacts to Call You Back
Cold Call Voicemail and Email Strategies - Get More Contacts to Call You BackCold Call Voicemail and Email Strategies - Get More Contacts to Call You Back
Cold Call Voicemail and Email Strategies - Get More Contacts to Call You BackInsideSales.com
 
Call Reluctance: 3 Steps to Overcome Your Fear of Rejection when Selling By P...
Call Reluctance: 3 Steps to Overcome Your Fear of Rejection when Selling By P...Call Reluctance: 3 Steps to Overcome Your Fear of Rejection when Selling By P...
Call Reluctance: 3 Steps to Overcome Your Fear of Rejection when Selling By P...InsideSales.com
 
12 gamification principles to increase sales productivity and engagement 96dpi
12 gamification principles to increase sales productivity and engagement 96dpi12 gamification principles to increase sales productivity and engagement 96dpi
12 gamification principles to increase sales productivity and engagement 96dpiInsideSales.com
 
Cold Calling Tips and Million Dollar Sales Prospecting Secrets
Cold Calling Tips and Million Dollar Sales Prospecting SecretsCold Calling Tips and Million Dollar Sales Prospecting Secrets
Cold Calling Tips and Million Dollar Sales Prospecting SecretsInsideSales.com
 
The Art and Science of Lead Generation - Ken Krogue & Amanda Holmes
The Art and Science of Lead Generation - Ken Krogue & Amanda HolmesThe Art and Science of Lead Generation - Ken Krogue & Amanda Holmes
The Art and Science of Lead Generation - Ken Krogue & Amanda HolmesInsideSales.com
 
Ken krogue sales acceleration summit 2015
Ken krogue sales acceleration summit 2015Ken krogue sales acceleration summit 2015
Ken krogue sales acceleration summit 2015InsideSales.com
 
Applying Predictive Sciences To Sales
Applying Predictive Sciences To SalesApplying Predictive Sciences To Sales
Applying Predictive Sciences To SalesInsideSales.com
 
Big business expo 2015 - The Next Generation of Sales
Big business expo 2015 - The Next Generation of SalesBig business expo 2015 - The Next Generation of Sales
Big business expo 2015 - The Next Generation of SalesInsideSales.com
 
How to Rock Your Sales Revenue Right Now
How to Rock Your Sales Revenue Right NowHow to Rock Your Sales Revenue Right Now
How to Rock Your Sales Revenue Right NowInsideSales.com
 
31 Social Selling Tips - Ken Krogue
31 Social Selling Tips - Ken Krogue31 Social Selling Tips - Ken Krogue
31 Social Selling Tips - Ken KrogueInsideSales.com
 
The Quick and the Dead: Use Technology to Communicate Quickly and Kill your C...
The Quick and the Dead: Use Technology to Communicate Quickly and Kill your C...The Quick and the Dead: Use Technology to Communicate Quickly and Kill your C...
The Quick and the Dead: Use Technology to Communicate Quickly and Kill your C...InsideSales.com
 

Más de InsideSales.com (20)

7 Salesforce Reports Every Inside Sales Manager Should Be Pulling
7 Salesforce Reports Every Inside Sales Manager Should Be Pulling7 Salesforce Reports Every Inside Sales Manager Should Be Pulling
7 Salesforce Reports Every Inside Sales Manager Should Be Pulling
 
LEVERAGING ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING AND ACCOUNT-BAS
LEVERAGING ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING AND ACCOUNT-BASLEVERAGING ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING AND ACCOUNT-BAS
LEVERAGING ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING AND ACCOUNT-BAS
 
Are You Ready For Account-Based Everything? Five Focus Areas Hold the Answer
Are You Ready For Account-Based Everything? Five Focus Areas Hold the AnswerAre You Ready For Account-Based Everything? Five Focus Areas Hold the Answer
Are You Ready For Account-Based Everything? Five Focus Areas Hold the Answer
 
Beyond Cold Calling: Bridging Social Selling with Inside Sales for A Winning ...
Beyond Cold Calling: Bridging Social Selling with Inside Sales for A Winning ...Beyond Cold Calling: Bridging Social Selling with Inside Sales for A Winning ...
Beyond Cold Calling: Bridging Social Selling with Inside Sales for A Winning ...
 
How High-Performance Sales Teams Squeeze The Most Out of Every Lead
How High-Performance Sales Teams Squeeze The Most Out of Every LeadHow High-Performance Sales Teams Squeeze The Most Out of Every Lead
How High-Performance Sales Teams Squeeze The Most Out of Every Lead
 
Webinar Slide Deck: Where Does Social Selling Fit In Your Sales Process?
Webinar Slide Deck: Where Does Social Selling Fit In Your Sales Process?Webinar Slide Deck: Where Does Social Selling Fit In Your Sales Process?
Webinar Slide Deck: Where Does Social Selling Fit In Your Sales Process?
 
12/02/15 RAIN Group Webinar Slides
12/02/15 RAIN Group Webinar Slides12/02/15 RAIN Group Webinar Slides
12/02/15 RAIN Group Webinar Slides
 
The High Velocity Inside Sales Model
The High Velocity Inside Sales ModelThe High Velocity Inside Sales Model
The High Velocity Inside Sales Model
 
Cold Call Voicemail and Email Strategies - Get More Contacts to Call You Back
Cold Call Voicemail and Email Strategies - Get More Contacts to Call You BackCold Call Voicemail and Email Strategies - Get More Contacts to Call You Back
Cold Call Voicemail and Email Strategies - Get More Contacts to Call You Back
 
Call Reluctance: 3 Steps to Overcome Your Fear of Rejection when Selling By P...
Call Reluctance: 3 Steps to Overcome Your Fear of Rejection when Selling By P...Call Reluctance: 3 Steps to Overcome Your Fear of Rejection when Selling By P...
Call Reluctance: 3 Steps to Overcome Your Fear of Rejection when Selling By P...
 
12 gamification principles to increase sales productivity and engagement 96dpi
12 gamification principles to increase sales productivity and engagement 96dpi12 gamification principles to increase sales productivity and engagement 96dpi
12 gamification principles to increase sales productivity and engagement 96dpi
 
Cold Calling Tips and Million Dollar Sales Prospecting Secrets
Cold Calling Tips and Million Dollar Sales Prospecting SecretsCold Calling Tips and Million Dollar Sales Prospecting Secrets
Cold Calling Tips and Million Dollar Sales Prospecting Secrets
 
The Art and Science of Lead Generation - Ken Krogue & Amanda Holmes
The Art and Science of Lead Generation - Ken Krogue & Amanda HolmesThe Art and Science of Lead Generation - Ken Krogue & Amanda Holmes
The Art and Science of Lead Generation - Ken Krogue & Amanda Holmes
 
Sales in the cloud
Sales in the cloudSales in the cloud
Sales in the cloud
 
Ken krogue sales acceleration summit 2015
Ken krogue sales acceleration summit 2015Ken krogue sales acceleration summit 2015
Ken krogue sales acceleration summit 2015
 
Applying Predictive Sciences To Sales
Applying Predictive Sciences To SalesApplying Predictive Sciences To Sales
Applying Predictive Sciences To Sales
 
Big business expo 2015 - The Next Generation of Sales
Big business expo 2015 - The Next Generation of SalesBig business expo 2015 - The Next Generation of Sales
Big business expo 2015 - The Next Generation of Sales
 
How to Rock Your Sales Revenue Right Now
How to Rock Your Sales Revenue Right NowHow to Rock Your Sales Revenue Right Now
How to Rock Your Sales Revenue Right Now
 
31 Social Selling Tips - Ken Krogue
31 Social Selling Tips - Ken Krogue31 Social Selling Tips - Ken Krogue
31 Social Selling Tips - Ken Krogue
 
The Quick and the Dead: Use Technology to Communicate Quickly and Kill your C...
The Quick and the Dead: Use Technology to Communicate Quickly and Kill your C...The Quick and the Dead: Use Technology to Communicate Quickly and Kill your C...
The Quick and the Dead: Use Technology to Communicate Quickly and Kill your C...
 

Último

"ML in Production",Oleksandr Bagan
"ML in Production",Oleksandr Bagan"ML in Production",Oleksandr Bagan
"ML in Production",Oleksandr BaganFwdays
 
A Deep Dive on Passkeys: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
A Deep Dive on Passkeys: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptxA Deep Dive on Passkeys: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
A Deep Dive on Passkeys: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptxLoriGlavin3
 
SIP trunking in Janus @ Kamailio World 2024
SIP trunking in Janus @ Kamailio World 2024SIP trunking in Janus @ Kamailio World 2024
SIP trunking in Janus @ Kamailio World 2024Lorenzo Miniero
 
DevEX - reference for building teams, processes, and platforms
DevEX - reference for building teams, processes, and platformsDevEX - reference for building teams, processes, and platforms
DevEX - reference for building teams, processes, and platformsSergiu Bodiu
 
Use of FIDO in the Payments and Identity Landscape: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
Use of FIDO in the Payments and Identity Landscape: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptxUse of FIDO in the Payments and Identity Landscape: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
Use of FIDO in the Payments and Identity Landscape: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptxLoriGlavin3
 
Training state-of-the-art general text embedding
Training state-of-the-art general text embeddingTraining state-of-the-art general text embedding
Training state-of-the-art general text embeddingZilliz
 
Rise of the Machines: Known As Drones...
Rise of the Machines: Known As Drones...Rise of the Machines: Known As Drones...
Rise of the Machines: Known As Drones...Rick Flair
 
How AI, OpenAI, and ChatGPT impact business and software.
How AI, OpenAI, and ChatGPT impact business and software.How AI, OpenAI, and ChatGPT impact business and software.
How AI, OpenAI, and ChatGPT impact business and software.Curtis Poe
 
New from BookNet Canada for 2024: BNC CataList - Tech Forum 2024
New from BookNet Canada for 2024: BNC CataList - Tech Forum 2024New from BookNet Canada for 2024: BNC CataList - Tech Forum 2024
New from BookNet Canada for 2024: BNC CataList - Tech Forum 2024BookNet Canada
 
Developer Data Modeling Mistakes: From Postgres to NoSQL
Developer Data Modeling Mistakes: From Postgres to NoSQLDeveloper Data Modeling Mistakes: From Postgres to NoSQL
Developer Data Modeling Mistakes: From Postgres to NoSQLScyllaDB
 
The Role of FIDO in a Cyber Secure Netherlands: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
The Role of FIDO in a Cyber Secure Netherlands: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptxThe Role of FIDO in a Cyber Secure Netherlands: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
The Role of FIDO in a Cyber Secure Netherlands: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptxLoriGlavin3
 
Ensuring Technical Readiness For Copilot in Microsoft 365
Ensuring Technical Readiness For Copilot in Microsoft 365Ensuring Technical Readiness For Copilot in Microsoft 365
Ensuring Technical Readiness For Copilot in Microsoft 3652toLead Limited
 
TeamStation AI System Report LATAM IT Salaries 2024
TeamStation AI System Report LATAM IT Salaries 2024TeamStation AI System Report LATAM IT Salaries 2024
TeamStation AI System Report LATAM IT Salaries 2024Lonnie McRorey
 
"Subclassing and Composition – A Pythonic Tour of Trade-Offs", Hynek Schlawack
"Subclassing and Composition – A Pythonic Tour of Trade-Offs", Hynek Schlawack"Subclassing and Composition – A Pythonic Tour of Trade-Offs", Hynek Schlawack
"Subclassing and Composition – A Pythonic Tour of Trade-Offs", Hynek SchlawackFwdays
 
Dev Dives: Streamline document processing with UiPath Studio Web
Dev Dives: Streamline document processing with UiPath Studio WebDev Dives: Streamline document processing with UiPath Studio Web
Dev Dives: Streamline document processing with UiPath Studio WebUiPathCommunity
 
The State of Passkeys with FIDO Alliance.pptx
The State of Passkeys with FIDO Alliance.pptxThe State of Passkeys with FIDO Alliance.pptx
The State of Passkeys with FIDO Alliance.pptxLoriGlavin3
 
Transcript: New from BookNet Canada for 2024: Loan Stars - Tech Forum 2024
Transcript: New from BookNet Canada for 2024: Loan Stars - Tech Forum 2024Transcript: New from BookNet Canada for 2024: Loan Stars - Tech Forum 2024
Transcript: New from BookNet Canada for 2024: Loan Stars - Tech Forum 2024BookNet Canada
 
Digital Identity is Under Attack: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
Digital Identity is Under Attack: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptxDigital Identity is Under Attack: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
Digital Identity is Under Attack: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptxLoriGlavin3
 
unit 4 immunoblotting technique complete.pptx
unit 4 immunoblotting technique complete.pptxunit 4 immunoblotting technique complete.pptx
unit 4 immunoblotting technique complete.pptxBkGupta21
 
Anypoint Exchange: It’s Not Just a Repo!
Anypoint Exchange: It’s Not Just a Repo!Anypoint Exchange: It’s Not Just a Repo!
Anypoint Exchange: It’s Not Just a Repo!Manik S Magar
 

Último (20)

"ML in Production",Oleksandr Bagan
"ML in Production",Oleksandr Bagan"ML in Production",Oleksandr Bagan
"ML in Production",Oleksandr Bagan
 
A Deep Dive on Passkeys: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
A Deep Dive on Passkeys: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptxA Deep Dive on Passkeys: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
A Deep Dive on Passkeys: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
 
SIP trunking in Janus @ Kamailio World 2024
SIP trunking in Janus @ Kamailio World 2024SIP trunking in Janus @ Kamailio World 2024
SIP trunking in Janus @ Kamailio World 2024
 
DevEX - reference for building teams, processes, and platforms
DevEX - reference for building teams, processes, and platformsDevEX - reference for building teams, processes, and platforms
DevEX - reference for building teams, processes, and platforms
 
Use of FIDO in the Payments and Identity Landscape: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
Use of FIDO in the Payments and Identity Landscape: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptxUse of FIDO in the Payments and Identity Landscape: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
Use of FIDO in the Payments and Identity Landscape: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
 
Training state-of-the-art general text embedding
Training state-of-the-art general text embeddingTraining state-of-the-art general text embedding
Training state-of-the-art general text embedding
 
Rise of the Machines: Known As Drones...
Rise of the Machines: Known As Drones...Rise of the Machines: Known As Drones...
Rise of the Machines: Known As Drones...
 
How AI, OpenAI, and ChatGPT impact business and software.
How AI, OpenAI, and ChatGPT impact business and software.How AI, OpenAI, and ChatGPT impact business and software.
How AI, OpenAI, and ChatGPT impact business and software.
 
New from BookNet Canada for 2024: BNC CataList - Tech Forum 2024
New from BookNet Canada for 2024: BNC CataList - Tech Forum 2024New from BookNet Canada for 2024: BNC CataList - Tech Forum 2024
New from BookNet Canada for 2024: BNC CataList - Tech Forum 2024
 
Developer Data Modeling Mistakes: From Postgres to NoSQL
Developer Data Modeling Mistakes: From Postgres to NoSQLDeveloper Data Modeling Mistakes: From Postgres to NoSQL
Developer Data Modeling Mistakes: From Postgres to NoSQL
 
The Role of FIDO in a Cyber Secure Netherlands: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
The Role of FIDO in a Cyber Secure Netherlands: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptxThe Role of FIDO in a Cyber Secure Netherlands: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
The Role of FIDO in a Cyber Secure Netherlands: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
 
Ensuring Technical Readiness For Copilot in Microsoft 365
Ensuring Technical Readiness For Copilot in Microsoft 365Ensuring Technical Readiness For Copilot in Microsoft 365
Ensuring Technical Readiness For Copilot in Microsoft 365
 
TeamStation AI System Report LATAM IT Salaries 2024
TeamStation AI System Report LATAM IT Salaries 2024TeamStation AI System Report LATAM IT Salaries 2024
TeamStation AI System Report LATAM IT Salaries 2024
 
"Subclassing and Composition – A Pythonic Tour of Trade-Offs", Hynek Schlawack
"Subclassing and Composition – A Pythonic Tour of Trade-Offs", Hynek Schlawack"Subclassing and Composition – A Pythonic Tour of Trade-Offs", Hynek Schlawack
"Subclassing and Composition – A Pythonic Tour of Trade-Offs", Hynek Schlawack
 
Dev Dives: Streamline document processing with UiPath Studio Web
Dev Dives: Streamline document processing with UiPath Studio WebDev Dives: Streamline document processing with UiPath Studio Web
Dev Dives: Streamline document processing with UiPath Studio Web
 
The State of Passkeys with FIDO Alliance.pptx
The State of Passkeys with FIDO Alliance.pptxThe State of Passkeys with FIDO Alliance.pptx
The State of Passkeys with FIDO Alliance.pptx
 
Transcript: New from BookNet Canada for 2024: Loan Stars - Tech Forum 2024
Transcript: New from BookNet Canada for 2024: Loan Stars - Tech Forum 2024Transcript: New from BookNet Canada for 2024: Loan Stars - Tech Forum 2024
Transcript: New from BookNet Canada for 2024: Loan Stars - Tech Forum 2024
 
Digital Identity is Under Attack: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
Digital Identity is Under Attack: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptxDigital Identity is Under Attack: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
Digital Identity is Under Attack: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
 
unit 4 immunoblotting technique complete.pptx
unit 4 immunoblotting technique complete.pptxunit 4 immunoblotting technique complete.pptx
unit 4 immunoblotting technique complete.pptx
 
Anypoint Exchange: It’s Not Just a Repo!
Anypoint Exchange: It’s Not Just a Repo!Anypoint Exchange: It’s Not Just a Repo!
Anypoint Exchange: It’s Not Just a Repo!
 

42 LinkedIn Inside Sales Tips

  • 1. 42 Ken Krogue insidesales.com Jamie Shanks 42 LinkedIn Inside Sales Tips By Ken Krogue and Jamie Shanks
  • 2. Introduction 42 The 42 LinkedIn Inside Sales Tips eBook is designed to help you drive new business. You’ll learn critical practices to help you connect better with prospects and customers and increase revenue. Traditional selling channels of email and phone are tried and true, but LinkedIn and other social channels can greatly increase sales performance. Here is a preview on just one of the powerful tips — did you know LinkedIn performs 7 times better than email in some cases? Get social and leave old school selling in the dust. These 42 tips were originally presented by Ken Krogue and Jamie Shanks as a webinar which you can watch here. LinkedIn is out-pulling email 7-to-1 InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 3. Linkedin CheatSheet Jamie Shanks Tips 1 Be a Thought Leader 7 Follow ‘Hot Prospects’ 2 Drive Opportunity 8 Timing Within Followers 3 The Secrets within Groups 9 Timing Within Signals 4 Skills as a SEO Hunting Tool 10 Attack Followers 5 Save Your InMails 11 Insights into their business 6 ‘Hot Prospects’ in Groups Ken Krogue Tips 12 Grab Your Name 28 Use Tags to Categorize 13 Use a Good Picture 29 Use LinkedIn Events 14 Complete your Profile 30 Offer Value to Connections 15 Make your Wedding/Funeral List 31 Recommend Others 16 Connect to your Customers 32 Use LinkedIn for Introductions 17 Follow your Customer’s Companies 33 Do a 3x3 Analysis 18 Connect to your Employees 34 Follow Prospect Companies 19 Have a Point Person 35 Use 3 Free SEO Links 20 Connect to your Prospects 36 LinkedIn Events with Trade Shows 21 Respond by Email then Connect 37 Promote Share Every Event you Attend 22 Connect at Trade shows 38 Target Prospects by Size, Title, Industry 23 Join Industry Groups 39 Ask for Recommendations 24 Join Local Groups 40 Ask for Customer Recommendations 25 Update on Twitter 41 Make it Easy to Ask for Referrals from 26 Connect a Widget on your Blog your Customers 27 Send Messages Instead of Email 42 Don’t SPAM InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 4. About the authors Tips: 1-11 Sales for Life provides two things for clients. First, they train sales teams to drive business through LinkedIn and Twitter. Second, they become the sales rep themselves. Sales for Life has a social selling, lead generation program that takes over a company’s LinkedIn and Twitter accounts and begins driving new opportunities similar to traditional B2B Jamie Shanks lead generation. Managing Partner Sales for Life Tips: 12-42 Throughout Ken’s career, he has worked to grow the inside sales industry from a small department into an industry. Through his professional experiences, Ken has conducted research on the best practices and methods of selling—including socially. At InsideSales.com, Ken has used his experience of the inside sales industry to create a powerful sales automation software platform Ken Krogue which increases the effectiveness and efficiency President Co-founder of an inside sales department. InsideSales.com InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 5. 1 Leader Be a Thought To start generating results from LinkedIn and social selling, you need to become a thought leader within your industry. There are two avenues of approach to being a thought leader in business. Step One If you’re a sales rep at Company ABC, you need to be subscribing to pieces of thought-leadership that you can share with your prospects, vendors, and clients. For example, Ken is a fantastic creator of great thought-leadership. Jamie subscribes to Ken’s blog and views the information using Feedly, a product used to visualize RSS feeds into a newspaper. Other tools he uses to capture quality content to share with his prospects are Scoop.it and HootSuite. Step Two Create original content. Easy ways of distributing content are using a blog, SlideShare or YouTube (video is becoming extremely important). InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 6. 2 Drive Opportunity After relevant content has been curated and digested by your prospects, you can start driving meeting requests through LinkedIn. Remember, LinkedIn is not a repository for your resume. It’s a place to actively drive business. Example If your prospect posted an article (update) on LinkedIn four minutes ago, you can see they are engaged online. Whether you use the telephone to call them or send a message through LinkedIn, you know the chances are high that they are available to pay attention to your message. Additionally, make sure you’re using a call-to-action at the bottom of every message. This creates a much higher ROI. It’s a great method to booking meetings. Not Is Place to sit passively To Use call-to-action Repository for resume Actively drive business InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 7. 3 Groups The Secrets within Nothing is more powerful within LinkedIn than groups. As a member of LinkedIn, you are allowed to join 50 groups. Use every one. When deciding which groups to become a member of, think in three levels. Groups to join First Think in Join five to ten groups that everyone else in your industry is joining. 3 Levels Second Go a layer lower within specific verticals. For Industry example, join groups that clients are involved in. Third Client Most importantly, is to understand the persona Involved of your buyer. Buyers At Sales for Life, they sell to VPs of Sales and Sales Directors. Therefore, they need to be involved in Persona every major group in North America that these buyers are part of. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 8. 4 Hunting tool Skills as a SEO At the top of a company’s LinkedIn corporate page there is a button called “Insights.” This is where LinkedIn provides a profile outline of that particular company. For example, on InsideSales.com’s LinkedIn page, it shows the most common skills that InsideSales.com employees have. How to Target If you’re targeting companies like InsideSales.com, you can select a skill like “Lead Generation.” The link will take you to a page that shows all the most influential companies relating to that skill and the most populous groups you’d want to join. This tool is extremely useful when mapping out groups to join. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 9. 5 InMails Save your If you aren’t connected to someone on LinkedIn, you are unable to send them a message without using InMail, a paid service. However, if you’re a member of Sales 2.0 and Inside Sales Experts you can send anyone within that group a private message even though you aren’t a 1st degree connection. There isn’t enough data yet to send messages determine if InMails are opened more through a group page frequently and have a greater ROI than other LinkedIn messages. Regardless, sending messages through shared LinkedIn groups is the best avenue. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 10. 6 In Groups ‘Hot Prospects’ The great part about groups is that they provide numerous prospects. After sending a message and starting a conversation with a quality prospect, go back into that same group and target other group members. How to Find Prospects You can do this by conducting advanced searches based on targeted keywords, key company functions or seniority. This will provide you an endless prospecting pool, all of which is available with free messaging. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 11. 7 Follow ‘Hot Prospects’ LinkedIn allows users to follow up to 5,000 people. Following is different than connecting but the benefits are the same. Best Practice To build your database, go into any group you are a member of and pull up the list of group members. You’ll notice that at the bottom of the profiles of the people who you are in 1st degree connection, it will say, “Unfollow.” If you start scrolling into the 2nd and 3rd degree connections, you’ll notice that the button changes to “Follow.” InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 12. 8 Followers Timing within Timing is everything when it comes to getting in touch with prospects. This is where LinkedIn is so helpful. By using LinkedIn as a “time trigger,” you know the moment a prospect posts an update. Because of this, there is a strong possibility they could still be on their computer. Use this as an opportunity to time your message and increase the likelihood of making contact with a message on LinkedIn or a phone call! Tip If your prospect has the time to be using LinkedIn right now – they probably are available to take a phone call. You have a much higher probability of getting him on the phone at this time than at any other time. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 13. 9 Signals Use this tool to create between 30 and 50 trigger words using Timing within competitors and key industry phrases. Check this tool three times per day: in the morning, at lunch and in the evening. How To On the top bar within LinkedIn, hover over the option that reads “News.” Within that drop down menu, select the third selection called, “LinkedIn Signal.” This tool allows you to create trigger words to keep track of particular topics. You can probably imagine how powerful this tool is. If someone says the words “social selling” and that’s one of your keywords, you will hear it and will be able to respond accordingly. Tip Sales for Life has found, from their own business, that 70% of every lead created is through this method. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 14. 10 3 types of Followers Attack Followers In addition to the “LinkedIn Signal feature,” there is another technique that is equally important for driving business with LinkedIn. First Direct Pick a client with a strong success story from Competitor using your product. Next Competitive Go onto their corporate LinkedIn page and click Emulation on “Followers.” Consumer This immediately tells you they’re going to be the most receptive to a message that includes a success story featuring that client. Why? Because if you are a follower of a company you are one of three types of people: the direct competitor (they want to know what you’re doing), competitive emulation (other companies in your space with the same target audience), or consumer that have used your product (vendors, partners and past clients). InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 15. 11 Business Insights into their In addition to viewing the followers of a client, you can also gain powerful information by clicking on that same company’s “Insights” button. How To This feature within LinkedIn will retrieve six similar businesses that you can target. These are the people who would probably care about the success story of that similar company. Start messaging these people—they could provide great value. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 16. 12 name Grab your Make sure that your public profile URL is shortened to contain just your name, i.e. http://www.linkedin.com/in/kenkrogue. If you leave the default assigned by LinkedIn, your personal URL will have a series of random letters and numbers. It looks like a mess and is hard to remember and link to. Make sure you grab your name before someone else does. Tip If you aren’t able to grab your own name, try adding something that says something about your professional expertise or industry. For example, if Ken Krogue had been taken, I would have chosen /kenkroguesales. Sales says a lot more about me than /kenkrogue1, which is the typical fallback selection. Do www.linkedin.com/in/kenkrogue Don’t www.linkedin.com/in/kenkrogue www.linkedin.com/pub/ken-krogue/2/4a/328 www.linkedin.com/pub/ken-krogue/2/4a/328 InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 17. 13 Picture Use a Good LinkedIn is a professional site—it’s not a personal site like Facebook. That being said, make sure your LinkedIn profile picture portrays you in a professional manner. You probably won’t have the same profile image as you do on Facebook. How To To ensure your picture looks professional, use a good, close-up picture that stands out. At InsideSales.com, we use a black and white, short-cropped head shot. Why black and white? It stands out. Make your picture unique while maintaining a professional appearance. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 18. 14 Profile Complete your Set up your profile correctly to keep it fresh. This will help you gain credibility within the LinkedIn environment. It’s actually not as hard as it sounds. LinkedIn provides the user with the necessary steps to complete their profile. By following all the steps, your LinkedIn profile can be 100 percent complete within a few hours. Take the time to fill in educational history and professional experience. It will be easier to expand your professional network. More importantly, it sends a message of proactivity to prospects who may look at your profile. Warning: Using LinkedIn with an incomplete profile is a mistake. It shows a lack of credibility and professionalism. 100% profile completeness InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 19. 15 Make your wedding/funeral list To begin building out your network, the first thing you can do is make a wedding or funeral guest list. Why? This is an old prospecting technique with a new twist. I’m told that wedding planners and funeral directors estimate the average wedding or funeral at 250 attendees if they don’t know how many people are coming. Imagine if you linked to 250 people who care about you. Wouldn’t they be the best place to start prospecting and looking for introductions, recommendations, and referrals? MY NETWORK Build your Network InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 20. 16 Customers Connect to your Within the B2B world, nobody is more important than your customers and clients. With that in mind, it makes sense that you should connect to each of them, adding them as part of your LinkedIn network. By receiving their LinkedIn updates and content posts, I get to know them and can start to connect to others that have similar interests and pain points. From connecting with your customers, they become your biggest resource for prospects. We recommend that your CEO, VP of Sales, VP of Support, among others, reach out as part of the welcome process to each new customer and connect. Then reach out to them now and again to ask, “How are things coming?” Tip Be sure to organize your customers with tags. That way you can easily find them. Organize Customers with tags Reach Out to customers InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 21. 17 Companies Follow your Customer’s After connecting to your customers, follow their companies so that you can see the news flow that comes through LinkedIn. Similar to Jamie’s previous idea, by following customer companies you gain insight into the biggest news coming out of that company. Keep in Mind Customers like when you know things that are going on in their organizations. It shows that you care and that you are invested in keeping them as a customer. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 22. 18 Employees Connect to your When deciding who to add as a connection, start with the people you’re surrounded by every day—fellow employees. If you’re in a management level position, spend time and teach your colleagues and employees the value of using LinkedIn as a team. Tip Do it from day one in the onboarding process for all new hires. In order to gain the maximum results from LinkedIn, this should be a group effort. Make sure you get your people together and coordinate your efforts and strategies. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 23. 19 Person Have a Point LinkedIn works by letting you view people who are two levels deep­ meaning – you can connect to a person through a series of two other people starting with the one you know. Best Practice Have at least one person in the company who reaches out to a lot of connections. Make sure these are real connections and that your connection requests aren’t spam. If everyone else at the company is connected to the point person, they act like a “doorway” with great connections for everyone else. At InsideSales.com, I am the point person. Within my professional network on LinkedIn, I am connected to over 3,100 people. Through me, all of my sales reps have the potential to connect to far more people. Beware: If headhunters and recruiters connect with your point person, they have access to all of your people. Connect with caution! Who’s Viewed Your Profile? Your LinkedIn Network 6 Your profile has been viewed by 6 people in the past day. 3,101 Connections link you to 14,680,285+ professionals 44 You have shwon up in search results 44 times in the past day. 20,395 New people in your Network since October 2 Add Connections InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 24. 20 Prospects Connect to your Just as you should connect to all your customers, you should also connect with your prospects. Our salespeople are asked to connect to their prospects right after the first contact attempt. Do they always do it? The smart ones do. They understand that by asking to become connected on LinkedIn it increases the rate of building a relationship and rapport. How To You can search by keyword to find prospects. For us, anybody with “inside sales,” “lead management,” or “salesforce.com” in their LinkedIn profile is a prospect. Find out what the keywords are that target your audience and begin generating your prospecting lists. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 25. 21 Respond by email then connect People always ask, “How do you build your connections?” Personally I use the technique, “respond by email and then connect.” This method is a great way to make connections with interesting and valuable people. How To Whenever you receive an email from someone you think would be a valuable connection, simply respond by email and mention in the email that you will be connecting by LinkedIn. In your connection request remind them you just emailed them. LinkedIn penalizes you if you try to connect to too many people who reject you because they don’t know or don’t remember who you are. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 26. 22 My favorite task after going to a Connect at Trade shows trade show is to take all of the new business cards given to me and connect on LinkedIn. When you send the request to connect, remind them of the “common experience” you had together at the trade show so they remember and don’t reject you. Best Practice We have a rule at InsideSales.com that we will never go to a trade show unless we are sure that we can set enough appointments before the show even happens to pay for the show. Remind about Before we went to one of our biggest Common   Experience shows, Dreamforce (a Salesforce® show) last year, we already had over 700 appointments for demos at the show. This year it was over 1,000. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 27. 23 Groups Join Industry I strongly suggest that sales reps join industry LinkedIn groups. Why? Because the days of lunch networking groups are gone. A great group on LinkedIn for those in the inside sales industry is “Inside Sales Experts.” The group was created by Trish Bertuzzi, the Founder and CEO of The Bridge Group, Inc. in Boston. When I first joined the group, there were 8,000 members. I recently checked and there are now over 20,000 members. I don’t know anywhere else on the planet where that many inside sales professionals congregate. Over the years I have now met hundreds of them and I count them as friends. I did this by getting involved in their discussions. Trish Bertuzzi InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 28. 24 Groups Join Local In addition to joining industry groups, join professional groups in your geographic area. This is a great tool, especially if you sell locally. How To Go to the Groups search window at the top right and type in your home city and/or home state to find groups close to you. Now look for industries that you want to find prospects in. These groups usually have quarterly or annual meetings. That are a great resource for prospecting locally. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 29. 25 Twitter Update on For the most part, you probably post similar content on LinkedIn and Twitter. At least occasionally. Why not kill two birds with one stone? By linking together your LinkedIn account with your professional Twitter profile, specified LinkedIn updates can be sent out to your Twitter followers as well. It’s a great way for your prospects and followers to see the latest news about you and your company. Warning: Just like most tools, this can be overused. I like to filter it down to just the best updates. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 30. 26 Connect a Widget on your blog In the social media age, content is king. By bringing in quality content that your connections on LinkedIn would care about, you offer value. Tip Check out the widgets available on LinkedIn. I love the WordPress widget that publishes my three most recent blog articles to my LinkedIn page. Just like with automated Twitter posts this can be overused. Make sure you are only pulling in the most relevant content to your connections. However, if your blog is targeted at the same audience as your professional LinkedIn audience you shouldn’t have too much of a problem. If you’re interested in inside sales, subscribe to my blog KenKrogue.com. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 31. 27 email Send messages Instead of Through LinkedIn, InsideSales.com constantly tests different media through which to send messages to prospects in addition to testing the content of the messages. In terms of response rates, emails range between .1 percent and .3 percent. The exact same message sent Power in our early in-house tests by LinkedIn responded 300 percent better. We recently released a new product, PowerSocial, that integrates social Social Enable sales reps to learn platforms into sales automation about and engage prospects more intelligently. technology. Already we have seen increases in or response rates. Learn More PowerSocial gives your reps a social view without the distractions of going to the social networking sites. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 32. 28 Categorize Use Tags to LinkedIn allows you to use tags to categorize your customers from prospects, friends, etc. tags are like ‘Circles’ on Google+. As your connections grow, the tag allows you to slice and dice your LinkedIn network for all kinds of communication purposes. How To Tags are found in the Contacts section of LinkedIn and are absolutely invaluable for more advanced methods of using LinkedIn for prospecting, such as sending targeted emails to only specific categories. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 33. 29 events Use Linkedin Look for LinkedIn events that correspond to trade shows. By adding the event, you can network within the group and invite them to come meet you at your booth at the trade show. These groups attract hundreds of users that will be attending the same event. For example, if a group has 190 people who have said they are attending that gives you 190 people you can introduce yourself to before the event even begins. Remember Tip 22 InsideSales.com has a rule to schedule enough appointments before the event to pay for it. LinkedIn groups are one way we accomplish this. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 34. 30 Offer value to Connections It’s important to interact occasionally with your LinkedIn connections and build relationships with them. Offer valuable content to your connections including training materials, quality books, best practices, tips, tricks, and best of all, referrals. Best Practice The best way to build a relationship is through providing quality, relevant content. I reach out about every six months to my LinkedIn connections in Utah and share my latest seminar with them for free. I probably have 70 to 80 people come. I do the same with webinars nationally and usually have a few thousand attend. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 35. 31 Others Recommend I strongly endorse giving recommendations to contacts such as co-workers, colleagues, former employers and authors. It’s a great way to build morale and friendships. Don’t wait for people to ask. Tip Make a personal goal to reach out and recommend one person a week. If someone does something special, go tell them! You would be surprised what taking the time to show gratitude and respect can do to open doors and build strong rapport. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 36. 32 Use Linkedin for Introductions I wanted to get in contact with the inside sales department at Novell. I looked up the company, found an old friend of mine that works there, connected with him, sent him a message and asked for a referral. The result    My was better than I could have hoped for. Friend My friend called me up and not only   ot me an G    ppointment a knew who I was trying to get in touch with at Novell, but his office was only two doors down. He walked down the hall, knocked on his colleague’s door and got me an appointment. It was amazing. That was my first productive use of LinkedIn and I’ve been hooked ever since. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 37. 33 Do a 3x3 Analysis If you’ve ever had a call that you weren’t quite sure how to begin the conversation, this tip is critical. This is a technique that Steve Richard, from Vorsight, taught me. How To Before reaching out to your prospects take three minutes and find three things you have in common. This will help you have something to talk to that prospect about. Keep this tip in mind when preparing to meet with anyone for the first time whether it’s sales related or not. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 38. 34 Companies Follow Prospect When following prospect companies, you can’t follow too many or your feed gets overwhelmed–just as Jamie said. You have to be very strategic about the companies you are trying to get into. This is a great way to be able to speak intelligently when you have conversations. Tip I would recommend that you look at your prospect companies every time before you call them back so you can know the very latest news from that company. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 39. 35 Seo Links Use 3 free Most people don’t realize that LinkedIn provides three free backlinks that anyone can use for “Google juice.” These links should direct your connections to content to gain more information about you, your company, or your industry. First In the “Edit your profile” layout, click on the “Edit Contact Info”, this section will expand. Second Next to “Websites” will be a “+ Add to website” link, clicking the link will open a new page. Change the first box to “Other” and type the content that you would like to be the backlink. Think of keywords that you want to rank for on Google. These keywords should be the text in your backlink. Third Insert the link the content will point to. For additional content on building quality SEO, check out Ken’s articles on Forbes.com. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 40. 36 Linkedin Events with Trade shows We talked about LinkedIn Events in regards to trade shows. But how do you actually make connections at these events? Well, if you find that the trade shows you’re going to have the social media foresight to build a LinkedIn event, then all you have to do is bring up all the individual attendees. How To Send a message saying, “Hi, I want to meet you and shake your hand. Come by my booth during the show and let’s get to know each other.” By using this method we’ve been able to add dozens upon dozens of additional visits to our booth, even if we can’t set appointments. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 41. 37 Promote share Every event You Attend I speak probably 20 to 25 times a year and, often, I have found my prospect base within LinkedIn. I want to make my prospects aware Everyone Wins of where I’m speaking because I want to meet with them. We’ve been able to move several When you   LinkedIn connections from prospect status to customer because they promote   come to the event we’re already going to. Everybody wins when you promote events. Events   How To It’s really easy to do. Go into LinkedIn, add the event to your calendar, and promote it through the “share” feature. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 42. 38 Industry Target prospects By Size, Title, To help target prospects better, slice and dice your prospects through LinkedIn’s advanced search. The advanced search allows you to search for people and companies. How To When you search for companies you can target what you are looking for by the size of the company, industry, and title. It’s all about the power of the list, and LinkedIn is becoming one of the best in the world. I love the concept of dynamic emails. LinkedIn sends me half a dozen dynamic emails with different sources of leads every morning. I’ve found that the best companies to target are those who are hiring inside sales reps. It’s a strong sign that they are growing. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 43. 39 Ask For Recommendations Just as you should give recommendations, you should also ask for recommendations from co-workers, colleagues, and former employers. Once you have lots of honest and frank recommendations, I like to move to asking for recommendations from customers. How To It works best when you ask for recommendations early in the process as a measure of how well you do. I also do this if a prospect is asking for additional pricing discounts or negotiating terms aggressively. You could say, “Well, with this discount I’m giving you, would you recommend me on LinkedIn if I have earned it?” InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 44. 40 Ask for Customer Recommendations If you present at a seminar, ask for a grade from those in attendance through a LinkedIn recommendation. Having these recommendations for prospects to see can also help to shorten the sales cycle. This is similar to the Salesforce AppExchange—but here people recommend your apps that work with Salesforce from third party vendors. For our app, PowerDialer for Salesforce, we care deeply about recommendations that are left on the AppExchange for our product. In the social media world, recommendations and comments are the new currency used to promote your business (check out this article on Forbes.com for more information about social media currency). InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 45. 41 Make it easy to ask for referrals from Your Customers To help generate more referrals, I tell my prospects, “One of the best ways I grade myself on how well I do is whether or not you are willing to recommend me to other people just like yourself when we are done.” I set up this expectation early on and remind them once or twice during the sales process. Quite often I need to prompt them with ideas. Recently, I’ve been using LinkedIn. How To This makes the whole process easier for both parties. I often say something like, “To make it easy for you and to help me grow my business with your recommendations, I’ve found a few people you know that I would greatly appreciate an introduction to.” Once they have given their approval you can use the normal LinkedIn process. The LinkedIn process is better than cold calling them on my own. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 46. 42 Spam Don’t Overzealous marketers ruined contacting by telephone, faxing, and email by sending spam. Just don’t do it. It’s a mistake we should make only once. I wish we had a dye that turned their LinkedIn page red for a week when somebody uses LinkedIn to brazenly pitch their product! Best Practice Don’t try and sell them something, it’s a turnoff. Just offer great content. If they want to buy something from you they will seek you out. Don’t Do Spam offer great   ontent C InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 47. Summary 42 Now that you fully understand how to make the most of LinkedIn to drive business and results, you can now create a strategic plan to incorporate social media efforts to increase revenue. LinkedIn will play a large role in the future of sales – the good news is, you’re already ahead of the majority of the industry. Hardly anybody is using LinkedIn in a way to expand and grow business. For an additional, more in-depth discussion on using LinkedIn to drive business, watch this webinar featuring Ken Krogue and Jamie Shanks available here. Be sure to connect with Ken and Jamie on LinkedIn for inside sales industry updates and best practices. InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 48. Offers Thanks for reading “42 Linkedin Inside Sales Tips.” While LinkedIn and other social media platforms can certainly help drive business and revenue, combining these tips with sales automation technology will increase the productivity and efficiency of your sales team even more. For additional resources to support your inside sales team, check out some of the other solutions from InsideSales.com and Sales for Life. Schedule My Demo Learn More or Call: 877-798-9633 InsideSales.com | Sales for Life Share this eBook:
  • 49. Credits Content Ken Krogue | http://kenkrogue.com 42 Jamie Shanks | http://salesforlife.com/blog Writers Maximize Results Check out the eBook Alex Orton | co-authored by Jon Miller of Marketo Jessica Winn | Copy Editors Jessica Dyer | Thomas Oldroyd | Designers Scott Humphries | Stephen Gashler | Download eBook Copyright © 2012 InsideSales.com Share this eBook: