Koka Sexton is director of social strategy at InsideView and director of InsideView’s Social Selling University. InsideView helps sales professionals know their leads and prospects inside and out by delivering real-time sales intelligence seamlessly to any CRM. By combining social media insights with traditional editorial sources, InsideView increases sales productivity and revenue. You can follow him on Twitter @KokaSexton.
Everyone knows that LinkedIn profiles are great online resumes, but did you know they can also be terrific sales lead generation engines? Your sales team is already chock full of content — sales presentations, data sheets, case studies and existing customer references. There’s no reason why LinkedIn can’t be an online, findable and social extension of this. Indeed, LinkedIn is a portal to your company’s goods or services, and each sales rep with a LinkedIn profile is an online ambassador to a closed deal.
At the same time, buyers and the process of buying has changed significantly in the past few years, especially in the B2B sector, where the sales cycle is longer and more complicated. Gone are the days when buyers turned to sales people to educate them on every aspect of a good or service. According to Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, up to 95% of qualified prospects looking at a company’s website are there to research and are not yet ready to talk with a sales rep, but an overwhelming majority of them intend to make an eventual purchase from you (or your competitors).
Think of your sales team as an army of lead-generating and nurturing soldiers on LinkedIn. If today’s potential customer is going to take on a lot of self-research before being ready for sales outreach, the more information your team can make available, findable and sharable, the better. LinkedIn apps can help. So sales managers, listen up: Here are 5 LinkedIn applications no sales team should go without.
1. WordPress
WordPress has become ubiquitous with both blogging and content marketing, and has been available as a LinkedIn app for nearly three years. If your company blog is run on WordPress, it’s essential you set up this app on your LinkedIn profile. Not only does it give you professional credibility, but that traffic to your company site can become a new set of sales leads. At my company, 20% of our web traffic comes from our sales team using the WordPress LinkedIn app.
2. SlideShare
SlideShare took the online content world by storm with one simple concept: a place to store and share all those great PowerPoint presentations. Sales professionals are no strangers to the “slide deck,” spending hours crafting the perfect overviews, cost-benefit analyses and illustrative customer success stories. Your prospective customers should be able to get this information on their own time and outside of the formal sales environment. At the same time, you should be generating informed sales leads 24/7. According to a SlideShare spokesperson, “the LinkedIn app is a strong source of traffic to SlideShare.com.” You’d be remiss in not taking advantage of this powerful app.
3. Box.net
When your sales collateral goes beyond the slide deck, there’s Box’s app. Like the others, it’s free. But unlike the others, this can be your ultimate repository of customer case studies, white papers, proprietary or branded how-to guides, ebooks and more. Think of it as free storage space just for your best sales content. As the starting point for a potential sales lead, your prospect can get into the nitty gritty of your company right through your LinkedIn profile.
4. TripIt My Travel
With the World Travel & Tourism Council reporting that “reducing business travel poses significant business risks, including losing customers to the competition,” it’s no wonder why sales people and their prospects are on the road so often. TripIt's app makes it easy to share where you’re headed, and when you’re connected to your leads, vice-versa. While the web has made it easier than ever to establish relationships, there’s nothing like being able to grab coffee or lunch with a business prospect face-to-face when you’re in the same city.
5. Events
Much of that travel can be attributed to conferences and industry meetups -- gatherings you never want to miss. That's where the Events app comes in handy. With this app, your sales team can do a ton of automated networking with little effort. For starters, post events that your company will be attending (large and small) to spread your company’s presence in your market and industry area. And on the ground level, sales reps will be able to see all of the events on the radar of their entire network, which is like having a professionally relevant meetup recommendation engine working full time.
Let us know how you and your sales colleagues use LinkedIn in the comments.
More About: apps, business, linkedin, MARKETING, sales, slideshare, trending, tripit, WordPressFor more Business & Marketing coverage:Follow Mashable Business & Marketing on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Business & Marketing channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Posted on Sun, 31 Jul 2011 22:08:29 +0000 at http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/Q2ZsAariU78/
Comments: http://mashable.com/2011/07/31/linkedin-apps-sales/#comments
Everyone knows that LinkedIn profiles are great online resumes, but did you know they can also be terrific sales lead generation engines? Your sales team is already chock full of content — sales presentations, data sheets, case studies and existing customer references. There’s no reason why LinkedIn can’t be an online, findable and social extension of this. Indeed, LinkedIn is a portal to your company’s goods or services, and each sales rep with a LinkedIn profile is an online ambassador to a closed deal.
At the same time, buyers and the process of buying has changed significantly in the past few years, especially in the B2B sector, where the sales cycle is longer and more complicated. Gone are the days when buyers turned to sales people to educate them on every aspect of a good or service. According to Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, up to 95% of qualified prospects looking at a company’s website are there to research and are not yet ready to talk with a sales rep, but an overwhelming majority of them intend to make an eventual purchase from you (or your competitors).
Think of your sales team as an army of lead-generating and nurturing soldiers on LinkedIn. If today’s potential customer is going to take on a lot of self-research before being ready for sales outreach, the more information your team can make available, findable and sharable, the better. LinkedIn apps can help. So sales managers, listen up: Here are 5 LinkedIn applications no sales team should go without.
1. WordPress
WordPress has become ubiquitous with both blogging and content marketing, and has been available as a LinkedIn app for nearly three years. If your company blog is run on WordPress, it’s essential you set up this app on your LinkedIn profile. Not only does it give you professional credibility, but that traffic to your company site can become a new set of sales leads. At my company, 20% of our web traffic comes from our sales team using the WordPress LinkedIn app.
2. SlideShare
SlideShare took the online content world by storm with one simple concept: a place to store and share all those great PowerPoint presentations. Sales professionals are no strangers to the “slide deck,” spending hours crafting the perfect overviews, cost-benefit analyses and illustrative customer success stories. Your prospective customers should be able to get this information on their own time and outside of the formal sales environment. At the same time, you should be generating informed sales leads 24/7. According to a SlideShare spokesperson, “the LinkedIn app is a strong source of traffic to SlideShare.com.” You’d be remiss in not taking advantage of this powerful app.
3. Box.net
When your sales collateral goes beyond the slide deck, there’s Box’s app. Like the others, it’s free. But unlike the others, this can be your ultimate repository of customer case studies, white papers, proprietary or branded how-to guides, ebooks and more. Think of it as free storage space just for your best sales content. As the starting point for a potential sales lead, your prospect can get into the nitty gritty of your company right through your LinkedIn profile.
4. TripIt My Travel
With the World Travel & Tourism Council reporting that “reducing business travel poses significant business risks, including losing customers to the competition,” it’s no wonder why sales people and their prospects are on the road so often. TripIt's app makes it easy to share where you’re headed, and when you’re connected to your leads, vice-versa. While the web has made it easier than ever to establish relationships, there’s nothing like being able to grab coffee or lunch with a business prospect face-to-face when you’re in the same city.
5. Events
Much of that travel can be attributed to conferences and industry meetups -- gatherings you never want to miss. That's where the Events app comes in handy. With this app, your sales team can do a ton of automated networking with little effort. For starters, post events that your company will be attending (large and small) to spread your company’s presence in your market and industry area. And on the ground level, sales reps will be able to see all of the events on the radar of their entire network, which is like having a professionally relevant meetup recommendation engine working full time.
Let us know how you and your sales colleagues use LinkedIn in the comments.
More About: apps, business, linkedin, MARKETING, sales, slideshare, trending, tripit, WordPressFor more Business & Marketing coverage:Follow Mashable Business & Marketing on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Business & Marketing channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Posted on Sun, 31 Jul 2011 22:08:29 +0000 at http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/Q2ZsAariU78/
Comments: http://mashable.com/2011/07/31/linkedin-apps-sales/#comments