Recently, LinkedIn asked me (since “you’ve been posting some great stuff on LinkedIn” – wow, pretty cool!) what trends I see for 2019.

My answer: MORE

Strategy-level:

MORE mobile, digital, social and more data-driven and customer-centric decision-making and experimentation with innovations like AI and AR.

Tactics:

MORE social selling. I get so many spam calls, I don’t budge when my phone rings now, and I get so much spam email that I only view my Focused folder in Outlook. Social media will go from a “nice to have” to a “must have” for sales + business development.

MORE creativity with advertising. TV and traditional display ads get less eyeballs by the second. Companies will get more and more creative with advertising. For example:

• “In-game” TV ads – so you can’t DVR past them – that appear during sporting events today. These will become more prevalent,
• Ads on voice technology like Alexa – or even sponsored results, which gets dicey because you wouldn’t know if it’s the “best” answer or a sponsored answer
• “Anti-beacons” like Burger King’s new Whopper campaign. I’ve never understood why mall stores don’t have anti-beacons set up for their competitors’ stores. If I’m running Gap, I’m sending someone an offer every time they walk into H&M.
• Ads inside of video games – Roblox already does this. I saw an Aquaman movie ad on the wall of a building inside my son’s Xbox game recently. Integrated video game advertising!
• As automatic cars start to take off, how long will it be before we start seeing ads on our windshields?

MORE automation, and not always in a good way. Everyone wants to automate everything in marketing and sales, but many companies lack processes to support the automation, so they end up spamming the heck out of people, or they never follow-up outside of their automated sends, and thus, miss opportunities.

MORE video. As video comprises more and more of the internet’s content, everyone will be doing video in 2019. Facebook and LinkedIn already favor video over all other content. Those that are reluctant to do video in 2018, will be forced to do it in 2019 to sustain their current reach.

This will be an exciting year with a lot of big leaps forward in marketing in sales. It will be fun to watch it all unfold!

Words matter. For example, “financial advisor” is searched for 10x more than “financial professional.”) When your team writes LinkedIn profiles, websites and sales materials, use words your prospects typically use. This will allow you to get found and be more easily understood.

Other surprising results:

• “Sales” 70x more than “business development” – no one wants to say they do sales, but you are much more likely to be found if you do
• “Innovation” 2x more than “innovative” – craft your content to use that tense instead
• “Strategy” 50% more than “strategies”
• “Online” 10x more searches than “digital” – an oldie, but a goodie
• “Digital marketing” 10x more searches than “online marketing” – but not when it comes to marketing
• “SEM” 20x more than “search engine marketing” – abbreviate this one
• “SEO” 15% more than “search engine optimization” – this one doesn’t matter at much
• “Social media” 80x more than “social networks” – it may not be grammatically correct at times, but using “social media” will get you found more
• “Facebook” 80x more than “social media” – if you are talking about Facebook, say “Facebook”

Want to run some searches on your own? Check our Google Trends (https://trends.google.com) to do comparisons between 2 or more words or phrases.

Since LinkedIn introduced articles, more and more LinkedIn users are writing them. They are a great way to provide value to your connections, and help establish yourself as a thought leader. Many LinkedIn users are still sitting on the sidelines, though.

I’ve suggested posting LinkedIn articles to many of my connections. However, some are reluctant because they are afraid of putting themselves out there (or afraid of compliance). I gave a friend of mine some tips last week, and I thought I would share them with you as well to make it easier for you.

Step 1: Have an objective in mind.

We are not writing for writing’s sake. Your 10-page X-Files fan faction is great, but it’s not necessarily right for LinkedIn. Think about who your target audience is, and what you want your personal brand to be. What do you want to be to that audience? A trusted partner? A disruptor?

Answering your objective will help you determine what you want to write, as well as how you want to write it (e.g. challenging vs. helping).

Step 2: Write your article.

This is 95% of the work. Pick a topic you that you know a good deal about, and will accomplish your objective. Then, write a few paragraphs about it. Remember to keep your target audience in mind – what do they know about this topic already? What information would be helpful? Where do you need to push the envelope?

Nothing is more challenging to read on your phone than
20-line paragraphs.

Step 3: Make it easy to read.

Your article doesn’t have to be War and Peace, and in fact, should probably be less than 1,000 words. A majority of LinkedIn articles are read on mobile devices, so keep that in mind when you are writing – keep it short and get to the point quickly.

Nothing is more challenging to read on your phone than 20-line paragraphs. Keep paragraphs to 3-4 sentences maximum.

Break up your copy with bulletpoints, callouts, or in a list format, so it’s easier for users to read. Many readers will scan the text and look for signals to stop like bolded text, bulletpoints, callouts (e.g. the “Nothing is more challenging…” callout above) or numbers.

Step 4: Make it compelling.

This is a blog piece, not a dissertation, so find ways to keep your readers interested like quotes, embedded video that tells your story, or an image that illustrates a point you’ve made such as this one from ComScore about mobile device usage:

Step 5: Summarize what you have said

Even if the user reads nothing else, give them 2-3 key takeaways at the bottom of the article. If the reader is simply scanning the article, this may be the only thing he/she reads, and that’s okay. They will have gotten the gist of the article, and you will have accomplished your objective.

Step 6: Have a call to action

You don’t have to have a giant, toll-free number inserted 10 times into your article. However, you do want to give the reader the ability to easily follow-up with you. I usually add this to the end of the piece.

Don’t go too far, though, and have a link every third word about great pieces you have written before (see how annoying that is). I find it frustrating to read an article that is 50% promotions about previous articles.

Step 7: Don’t overthink it

I wrote this article in 20 minutes. Again, it’s not War and Peace.

• Make sure it makes sense
• Make sure it sounds professional
• Correct grammatical issues
• Find and image
• Post it

(Note: If you are financial services, add “run it by compliance first” to that list).

Don’t ask 15 people to edit it before you post. Remember, if worse comes to worse, LinkedIn has an “edit article” button, which allows you can make changes to the piece after you post it.

Step 8: Find a key image

Each article has an image at the top of the page. Yours should represent your article, and also be eye-grabbing. Images of people usually tend to grab people’s attention.

Another, more risky route is to use something that people don’t normally see. I once used two apples for a post because I was talking about the need for an apples-to-apples comparison when measuring data. Nobody clicked on it. I don’t recommend using an apple image!

You don’t have to have a giant, toll-free number inserted 10 times into your article. However, you do want to give the reader the ability to easily follow-up with you.

Step 9: Think of a lead-in

When you post a LinkedIn article, you have the option to write a lead-in just like you do when you share someone’s else’s post. Use this to write something that will entice people to read the article (but stop short of sounding like click-bait).

Step 10: Tell people about it

Everyone has strong advocates in their networks, energize those advocates by letting them know you posted a new article, and ask them what they think. Your frequent engagers will be happy to share your piece. Offer to share feedback on their work as well.

Remember, if worse comes to worse, LinkedIn has an “edit article” button with which you can edit the piece after you have posted it.

Key takeaways:

• Have an objective
• Write about something you know
• Make it easy to read on mobile
• Don’t overthink it
• Tell people about it

About the author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping organizations GAIN + RETAIN clients using digital strategy and social media. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling. To learn more about how to evolve your marketing and sales approaches for the digital age, reach out anytime at 323.972.3566.

Photo: jseliger2

Early in my career, my boss called me into his office first thing on Monday morning. As anyone who has worked in a corporate role before knows, that’s not a good sign. As soon as I sat down, he blurted out “I looked at the numbers, and you’re messing up the online advertising campaigns, you need to fix it.”

I knew I had optimized the heck out of the display advertising campaigns, and every month, performance was increasing, so I asked to see which report he was viewing.

He showed me a report that tracked campaign results for two similar products (we’ll call them Product A and Product B).

The report tracked results down to the lead level. He said, “The Product A campaign received a lot more clicks and leads, but you are giving 5x the impressions to the Product B campaign. We need to shut the Product B campaign down, and move all our impressions to the Product A campaign immediately.”

So, I told him I’d be right back. I went to my desk to get the report that tracked results all the way down to profitability.

That report showed that at the end of the customer journey, even though the Product A campaign received far more clicks and leads, the company closed about the same number of sales from both the Product A and Product B campaigns. Furthermore, the company’s profit margin on Product B was 5x higher than Product A.

My boss looked at the report, thought for a second, and proclaimed “WE NEED TO SHUT DOWN THE PRODUCT A CAMPAIGN, AND ONLY RUN THE PRODUCT B CAMPAIGN!!”

I smiled and said, “just let me handle it.” And to his credit, he did.

So, how could this hour-long, semi-tense back and forth on a Monday morning have been prevented? To solve the problem, you have to diagnose the problem.

There were 2 problems here:

Problem #1:

My boss wasn’t looking at the full data picture. I’ve always told clients that I can get you a high click-through rate, for example, if that’s all you care about. I can get my team to design a “funny cat video” meets “shoot the zombie ad” that will get boat loads of clicks. But are those clicks going to convert to leads and ultimately to sales? Absolutely not.

Which is why having that end-to-end data picture was so incredibly important.

Now, let’s apply this thinking to social media. How do you measure the success of your social media efforts?

If you answered awareness or engagement, that’s not necessarily bad (it’s better than nothing!). However, at some point, senior management is going to ask “what is the value of our social media efforts?” If you only track to the awareness or engagement level, then how do you effectively answer that question? How do you know if social media is somewhere your marketing and sales teams should spend their time?

Well, let’s look at your non-social media sales and marketing efforts. How do you measure the success of those efforts? Leads? Revenue? Net income? WHICHEVER OF THOSE METRICS YOU USE ARE THE SAME METRICS YOU NEED TO USE TO TRACK YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA EFFORTS!

And the closer you get to the end of the journey, the better idea you’ll have as to the true success of your efforts (and the value to the organization).

Now, I know what some of you are thinking – that’s great for advertising and email, but it’s much harder to do for social, and besides we SHOULDN’T do that right? Social is different. It’s not a sales and marketing channel.

Most of us treat social like this magical purple pegasus that flies around spreading candy and rainbows everywhere – it doesn’t live by the rules of our other marketing and sales channels.

But we need to change that. We need to treat social like any other channel because:

Senior management measures social media success the same way as any other sales and marketing channel

Senior management wants to know how many sales our LinkedIn efforts are generating, or how many leads our Facebook campaign creates. That’s their job. They are running a business. A business needs to smartly spend money on things that generate profitable business.

Thus, you HAVE to measure your social media efforts in the same way you measure your other sales and marketing efforts.

This apples-to-apples measurement approach will help the two biggest problems that most social media teams face:

1. Lack of budget
2. Lack of resources

Apples-to-apples measurement solves these problems because it levels the playing field.

If you can compare display advertising campaigns to Twitter campaigns using the same metrics, you can show which is providing more value to the organization. If you can compare LinkedIn messaging to cold calls using the same metrics, you’ll know exactly with which of the two your sales team should spend their time (hint: it’s LinkedIn).

If you can prove social media is providing more value using the same metrics, then suddenly, the skies part, the sun comes out, cherubs start singing, and you will get the budget and resources you need. It may not be super-easy to track social like other channels, but it’s 100% worth it!

Problem #2:

My boss didn’t know the end-to-end results that we had. That was my fault. I wasn’t doing a good enough job socializing the data. Sure, I sent a report out every week via email, and you could argue that he should have been reading it, but VPs/SVPs are very busy people.

Sometimes, that extra step to open the document is too daunting of a task. It’s easy to say “I’ll look at it later,” and close the email.

So, proactive communication is key. If you have great numbers – tell EVERYONE, and ESPECIALLY your boss. In your 1/1s, talk about the numbers, how they are increasing, and what a great job the team is doing. How else will he/she know?

When you send out reports, include an executive summary (2-3 bulletpoints maximum) at the top of the email, so if they don’t have time to look at your incredibly detailed report, they get the high-level story. Senior leadership has zero time in the day. Make it easy for them.

This is also an effective way to influence change at an organization (it’s hard to argue with numbers). If you go to your sales managers, and say they need to spend as much time on LinkedIn as they do on the phone, you will be kindly escorted out of their office. If you show that you get 5x the meeting rate, for example, using social selling as compared to cold calling, NOW you’ve got those sales managers’ ears.

Summary

End-to-end measurement and apples-to-apples comparisons take the guesswork out of your social media efforts. They will tell you EXACTLY which channels, campaigns and content are most valuable to the business and the client alike, and it is imperative that you measure your social media efforts as close to the end of the purchase journey as possible to determine the bottom-line value.

About the author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, helping companies GAIN + RETAIN clients using digital strategy and social media. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling. To learn more about how to evolve your marketing and sales approaches for the digital age, reach out to Robert.

Photo: Kirinohana

Since the launch of the new LinkedIn user interface, users have lamented that the Advanced Search is gone, it only exists in Sales Navigator now, and you have to pay for it.

I was upgraded to the new user interface last night, and I noticed something interesting: Advanced search isn’t gone.

The “Advanced” button that used to be next to the search bar is gone. That’s true:

OLD top nav:

NEW top nav:

However, you can still do advanced searches in regular LinkedIn. They are just more integrated into the regular search functionality.

To start, type what you are searching for in the search bar. For example, if I wanted to find VPs of Marketing at Wells Fargo in the St. Louis area. I would start by searching for “Wells Fargo,” waiting a second, and then clicking “People who work at Wells Fargo” from the possible options. Here are the results I get:

Okay, so 394,392 results. If I’m looking to find, connect, and start a relationship with VPs at Wells Fargo in St. Louis, that is an unmanageable number.

However, if you look on the right side of the page, you will see many of the filters you used to see in Advanced Search. They’re not gone, they have just been moved.

So, I will filter by 1^st and 2^nd for Connections, the Greater St. Louis area as Location, Wells Fargo as the Current Company, and finally, Financial Services or Marketing and Advertising as the Industry. (Note: you can also filter on Profile language, Nonprofit interests and schools).

Once I add these filters, here’s what I see:

Now, we are down to 170 results. That’s muuuuuch better. If I needed to, I could review this list one-by-one and find those VPs that are in Marketing roles, but that would be time-consuming.

The biggest challenge is that the title filter is no longer available in the regular version of LinkedIn. With the new LinkedIn interface, it’s only available in Sales Navigator.

BUT…actually, that’s not entirely true. If you click on “Structuring your search,” LinkedIn gives you helpful tips on how to write your search queries:

The page overlay that appears shows you how to do complex searches…in the regular version of LinkedIn, AND YOU CAN STILL SEARCH BY TITLE!!

(Here is the URL for that page: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/76015  – note: besides that page there are also a lot of other helpful tips in that same section of LinkedIn Help)

So, let’s start over. With this new information, I would type my search like this:

title: (VP OR Vice President) AND company: “Wells Fargo”

Here are my initial results:

My new initial results set is a much smaller number (29,209 vs. 394,392), and they are all VPs, meaning: I JUST SEARCHED BY TITLE IN THE NEW LINKEDIN USER INTERFACE!

Now, if I run the same filters I ran before, my results look like this:

I could trim this further with more advanced Boolean searches (e.g. exclude Assistant Vice President and Senior Vice President), but even without doing that, I’m down to 86 opportunities, which gets me much closer to my target audience.

My advice: I always recommend that my clients upgrade to Sales Navigator. I’ve been using for years, and it keeps getting better and better from my perspective. However, if you can’t afford it, or don’t want to make that investment, I recommend you get really good at writing Boolean searches. Once you get the hang of it, then they roll off your tongue/fingertips. LinkedIn even has videos that help you write them on the LinkedIn Learning site: (https://www.linkedin.com/learning/search?keywords=boolean%20search)

Key Takeaways

• Advanced Search is not gone from regular LinkedIn
• You can still search by title in regular LinkedIn

If you find any other hidden nuggets in the new user interface, please share!

About the author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping organizations GAIN + RETAIN clients using digital strategy and social media. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling. To learn more about how to evolve your marketing and sales approaches for the digital age, reach out to Robert.

Photo: Rafiq Sarlie

Today, LinkedIn rolls out their new Sales Navigator Inbox. I got a sneak preview, and I must say, it’s like a sales and social media dashboard / command center / mini-CRM all wrapped into one page.

Here are the highlights – it:

1)     Allows you to search for someone to write to – both within and outside of your current connections.

2)     Gives you the name, picture and description of the person you have selected to send to, and also allows you to view their profile (opens in a new window). Note: if you are not connected to that individual, the “View profile” button says “Connect” instead, and allows you to send an invitation to connect.

3)     Also pulls in that person’s phone number, email address and website URL from their contact information (so you can follow-up in the off chance that your InMail is not answered)

4)     Shows you the connections in common with that person. For example, I have 59 shared connections with Craig, to whom I am writing this note. These connections are a great conversation starter to get a warm referral (a warm referral is definitely the best way to reach out).

5)     Shows you LinkedIn groups that you are both a part of – another potential ice-breaker for a prospect.

6)     Shows you what that person has posted/shared on LinkedIn recently – another great thing to reach out to someone about – especially if they wrote it. Engaging with someone’s content is the purest form of flattery!

7)     Creates a signature for you…automatically. I didn’t type any this information. I assume the Inbox is pulling this content from my contact information. I like it – less work for me.

Also, in the new InMail experience, when you send someone an InMail, the window pops up on the right side of the page, so you can still see all the vital information about the person, and all the of features I mentioned about the Inbox are available in that window as well.

Conclusion

You used to have to search all over in LinkedIn for this information. Now, the new Sales Navigator Inbox and InMail experience provides it all to you, and at the right time and in the place where you need it most, when you are reaching out to someone. Great stuff. Let me know what you think of the new Sales Navigator Inbox in the comments.

Related Articles:

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Connect with your pizza boy on LinkedIn

NEW FEATURE in LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes company research faster and easier

About the Author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping companies transform their social media programs from driving engagement to driving sales. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling.

If you’d like to learn how to evolve your marketing and sales strategy for the new, digital age, train your teams how to use a sales-driving social selling approach at your organization, or talk University of Michigan football, feel free to reach out to us:

Every year, LinkedIn brings together sales leaders from around the globe at their annual Sales Connect conference. This year, it is clear that Sales Navigator is a big priority for LinkedIn. They are continuously investing and expanding the capabilities of Sales Navigator, and today they announced a slew of new features focused on 5 key areas to create what they are calling a “System of Engagement.”

1) Tags and Notes – you can now write tags and notes and organize information on leads or accounts and categorize any way you want – such as where you met, how to follow-up, or the contents of your last conversation. Tags and Notes launched a couple of weeks ago. Personally, I’ve been hoping for this one for quite a while, and I have been loving it so far. Here’s what it looks like in action:

2) CRM – LinkedIn announced an integration with Salesforce a while back, and now through their CRM Partner Program, they will be allowing other CRM companies to create apps that plug Sales Navigator into other CRM platforms. The first batch of partners are Oracle, SAP, SugarCRM, HubSpot and NetSuite.

You will be able to see LinkedIn information at the contact level. You can set up leads, and act upon that activity more easily – you don’t have to move back and forth between platforms anymore. This lowers the barrier to social selling. No longer will you have to cut and paste information from LinkedIn into your CRM. This is huge.

You can also write directly into your CRM – more things you will no longer have to copy and paste into your CRM system and vice versa.

3) InMail 2.0 – a group of new enhancements to InMail were announced including:

• The current iteration of InMail blocks the entire window when you are sending a message. Now, the window be on the side of the screen on the desktop, similar to Gmail’s interface.
• LinkedIn will also give you icebreakers – common connections and items to include in your messages to improve likelihood of a response – while you are creating your InMail.
• You can include attachments now. Let me repeat that: You. Can. Include. Attachments. Now. Hallelujah! It’s also through a great, interactive, data-rich service method called PointDrive,

4) Search – You will now be able to search by:

• Spotlights – a group of key sets of information that will give you ways to drill deeper into your search results such as how many of your results have changed jobs in the last 90 days, have been mentioned in the news the past 30 days and have posted on LinkedIn in the past 30 days
• Department size and revenue (to determine if a company should be in your target audience)
• Senior leadership changes at companies (new people tend to make changes to personnel and technology)
• Zip code of a company’s headquarters (until now any office would appear in search results, but most decision makers are in a company’s headquarters)
• Growth of both company and department (to see the trajectory of a company and department)
• Content (keywords for content they are posting to see what is important to them)

Some of these enhancement are live (Spotlights, department size and senior leadership), and the rest are coming soon.

5) Sales Navigator for Gmail – this integration of Sales Navigator and Gmail brings Sales Navigator directly into your Inbox. You’ll have all the information you would have in Sales Navigator (connections in common, interests, shared companies, more) that you can use to start a conversation now in Gmail.

This one is already live as well. You can this find plug-in in the app store on mobile (search Sales Navigator) or here:

When I spoke with Derek Pando, Senior Marketing Manager at LinkedIn, he related “the new Sales Navigator features are to enhance the overall customer experience of Sales Navigator, and to integrate it into daily workflows to get people the information they need as easily as possible.”

With these new launches, LinkedIn has showed that they realize the way forward for them is through Sales Navigator, and the best way to do that is to help set sales teams up for success by making it as easy as possible to do social selling.

So, Sales Navigator users, what do you think of the new features?

About the Author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping companies transform their social media programs from driving engagement to driving revenue. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling.

If you’d like to learn how to set-up a sales-driving social selling program at your organization, contact Robert at 323-972-3566, or simply complete the short form below.

When I was younger, I loved my cassette tapes. I refused to move over to CDs for the longest time. For a while, I missed out on some good music because record companies eventually starting distributing only the biggest sellers via cassette, and I loved my alternative music. I finally broke down, bought a CD player, and caught up with the rest of the world.

This is how the world of sales is now. A lot of individuals and companies are holding on to their cold calling and blast emailing to reach potential clients because they have worked historically – even though success rates for these methods decline each year. They are missing out on a lot of opportunities as a result.

When was the last time you answered a phone call from a number you didn’t know? I know when my phone starts ringing, the first thing I do is look at the number. If I don’t recognize it, then it goes straight to voice mail. For emails, 90% of the time, it gets deleted.

So, how you get in front of those potential clients nowadays? What is the CD that you need to start using? The answer is social selling – using social media to get closer to your clients, strengthen relationships, build trust and drive sales.

First Steps

Although social selling is a relatively new concept, some brands are already successfully leveraging it to drive business. Personally, I mostly use and recommend LinkedIn because it’s the most used social network for business purposes.

On LinkedIn, it’s important to have a profile that is complete (picture, summary, experience, more). It’s also important to connect with the right people and engage with content.

If you do nothing else, those steps are a good start because as a result, you can be found on search engines (LinkedIn has great SEO), you can stay top-of-mind, and you can establish yourself as a thought leader. How do these things help you? If your current and potential clients see enough content – which originates from you – that is important and relevant to them, then you are no longer a sales rep. At that point, you are a trusted partner with your connections, which is the ideal relationship – both of you helping each other. I have seen this approach generate leads and sales.

The Next Level

To get even more out of LinkedIn, you need to go a step further down the customer journey. This step involves the Sales Navigator product and more customized content.

With Sales Navigator, you can send InMails (sending messages to people you don’t know), do advanced searches, save accounts and leads, and get a steady stream of news and information about your connections and potential clients sent to you.

The content at this level, is as 1:1 as you can make it, and is through LinkedIn messaging. At this point, you’ve got a good idea of your key clients’ needs because you’ve been reading what they post, you know which content they engage with of yours, and you have a ton of information on their profile. So, hopefully, you have your clients segmented into groups, so now can you write messages for each of these segments, and then customize for the individual. Is this hard to do at scale? It’s not easy, but the success rate is so much higher vs. cold calling and blast emailing, that it’s absolutely worth it. (And don’t forget, it’s much higher value to your client!)

Why Does Social Selling Work?

In addition to not knowing who is calling or emailing, think about just the sheer VOLUME of phone calls and emails you get at work during a day. In my last corporate role, for example, I received about 30 calls and 300 emails per day.

How can you cut through all that noise with an introductory call or email? Your product and messaging don’t matter because they have little chance of ever being seen/heard!

Now, think about how many LinkedIn messages you receive in a day – is it one? Maybe one per week? I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, and I don’t think I’ve ever received more than 10 in a day. My average is one. So, 30 phone calls or 300 emails vs. one LinkedIn message – which one do you think will actually get read by your intended audience? Personally, I read 100% of the LinkedIn messages and InMails I receive. Compare that to your current email open rates.

Now, I’m not suggesting you spam the heck out of all your potential and current clients on LinkedIn. Quite the contrary. As I mentioned above, content on LinkedIn needs to be targeted and relevant to your audience. Do your research first.

Stop! I don’t have time for this!

The push back I always get about social selling is that is takes too much time. My response is: would you rather spend 8 hours calling 100 people with a non-targeted, generic message, or 4 hours doing research and sending out customized, relevant LinkedIn messages that are targeted to your audience? With which group will you be able to have more informed, personalized conversations? Which one do you think will generate leads with a higher propensity to transact?

Finally, think about the opportunity lost if you are not social selling. Let’s use the financial services vertical as an example. According to multiple surveys, a strong majority of financial advisors are using LinkedIn for business purposes. So, if you are a financial advisor, and you are NOT using LinkedIn as part of your sales process, you are in the minority now. You are still listening to cassettes while your competitors are listening to CDs.

Key takeaways

• Cold calling and blast emailing are becoming less and less effective
• Social selling is a win-win for both the client and the sales representative
• There are multiple levels of social selling, but the key is to start now – every little bit helps

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