What Is The Added Value of LinkedIn When You Are In Sales? - Many people among which sales men have a Profile on LinkedIn and some connections. The power of LinkedIn is that it makes the relationships between people visible. Before LinkedIn good sales people already thought who they could ask for referrals. Before LinkedIn good sales people thought about which contact could possibly know potential customers. LinkedIn helps to deal with this process much more effectively and efficiently. LinkedIn uncovers many unexpected relationships between people. LinkedIn shows these relationships.
What Is The Added Value of LinkedIn When You Are In Sales?
By Jan Vermeiren
May 21, 2009 - 7:10:04 AM
Many people among which sales men have a Profile on
LinkedIn and some connections. However, most of them ask themselves: what can I
actually do with it? What is the added value of LinkedIn for me?
The most important reasons why LinkedIn is such a powerful
tool, are:
It is the largest online
business network with more than 35 million members worldwide. In 2008
LinkedIn grew from 19 million members to 34 million and it is still
growing.
The power of LinkedIn is that
it makes the relationships between people visible.
The consequence of those two aspects is that the chances
are big that the person you want to do business with also has a Profile on
LinkedIn and that you can see who you have in common.
Don’t let the “simplicity” of this fool you. Never before
we had the chance to see which personal contact of ours could introduce us to
our prospects.
Before LinkedIn good sales people already thought who they
could ask for referrals. Doing business is so much easier when a mutual contact
introduces you to a prospect. The trust between the two other parties is
transferred to you. This increases your chances to make a sale dramatically.
Before LinkedIn good sales people thought about which contact could possibly
know potential customers. The disadvantage of this approach is that they had to
make some guesses about the network of their contacts. Another disadvantage was
that they sometimes got referrals to people or organizations which didn’t
qualify as potential customers after all. The result: a significant loss of
valuable time of all parties involved.
LinkedIn helps to deal with this process much more
effectively and efficiently. LinkedIn helps to reverse the situation: instead
of guessing who your network could introduce you to, you look up potential
customers on LinkedIn (via their name or via parameters like function, industry
and geography). Since many people are on LinkedIn chances are high you won’t
only find them, but also the people you have in common.
LinkedIn uncovers many unexpected relationships between
people. It is already hard to maintain our own contacts and keep up to date of
all the changes in our own network. It is impossible to know who the people
from our network know. LinkedIn shows these relationships. Your neighbor who
you never discuss business with might be connected to the prospect you are
already trying to get in touch with for a long time!
To your success !
Jan
Jan Vermeiren, founder of Networking Coach
PS: more tips can be found in the book "How to REALLY
use LinkedIn".
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