The biggest reasons that you should be on LinkedIn now if you are in sales or in a company that sells products or services are:
Your LinkedIn profile acts like an “on-line” trade show booth – 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
You will be in the company of 260 million or more colleagues (with 84 million in the U.S. alone) – it’s like the biggest networking party ever. There are over 3 million business pages. This is a professional community, intended for people to connect with people they know and trust. Like going to a trade show or Chamber of commerce meeting, it won’t benefit you unless you interact in smart ways on an ongoing basis.
Your profile can serve as inbound marketing for you – in other words, the key words and phrases you use in your profile are all searchable. For free.
You will be able to see and participate in conversations that those in your targeted industries are sharing. It is a simple way to learn more about your target markets and about specific individuals in those markets. You could even grow visibility as an expert in those market niches – all depending on what your goals are.
Are you Ready for the 30 Day Challenge?
It is simple – make a time investment of 15 minutes a day, 4 days a week (more if you have the time) for the next 30 days. Consider it an experiment (that's how I first approached Twitter use). You will see as you dive in more that there are serious advantages to using LinkedIn - such as InMail, advanced searches, and daily reminders about your ever-growing network.
First of all, make sure you have created a strong LinkedIn profile
If you have a profile, make sure you've done the key steps to maximize it - professional headshot, strong headline, helpful, customer-focused summary, and your contact information are the basics.
This first step – creating or improving your profile is the foundation to success. Don’t move on to the next steps until this is done. This is you on the web – make it good.
Now decide what days you can put 10-20 minutes into LinkedIn business building. Put this in your calendar so you don’t forget and so that you honor the time – this is what Covey would call, “Quadrant 2 time” – relationship building and referral building time that is "important not urgent" - and really priceless.
In 15 minutes a day, four days a week, you can:
Being visible online is like when, in outside sales, you drop by a client’s location – or see them at a trade show. It is often not until suddenly the customer SEES you and remembers something they want to buy or want to tell you. Replicate this phenomenon through being socially visible. It works!!
If you struggle with any of these areas, contact us and we'll show you how.
There are a least a dozen good ebooks about how to leverage LinkedIn - for starters check out Jill Konrath and Ardath Albee's Cracking the LinkedIn Sales Code which gives examples of sellers who have benefited by leveraging LinkedIn as a business tool.
Other LinkedIn post to take a look at: