Business Growth Blog

LinkedIn can be a powerful sales tool. But in order to get results, you have to use it consistently.

Create a New Sales Habit

If you’re in sales (or any job, really!) your day is already jam packed. How can you make time for LinkedIn?

Learning something new can be a drag at first. It takes time to learn new systems and develop new habits. It also takes a commitment to stay with it long enough to develop a level of proficiency that will get you a return on your investment.

So, to answer the question “How can you make time for LinkedIn?” -- you simply must schedule time to focus on it if you feel strongly enough about the ROI in the long run. And, just like anything else, it’ll get easier as you begin to incorporate it into your daily activities.

If you’re ready to jump in, here are six activities you can do to start creating good LinkedIn habits.

Take advantage of a great networking and relationship management tool, LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a very powerful tool when used correctly. But just “being” on LinkedIn is not enough. Having a profile on LinkedIn will get you about the same thing as going to a party and standing in the corner. Someone might come up to you, but you can’t expect any results. If you want to get results you have to learn to utilize the tool to interact and commit to doing it.

Salespeople are swamped. They usually have all kinds of required quotas so management can track their progress -- phone calls, meetings, presentations, proposals, etc. The response I hear from salespeople is that they seriously do not have time to learn and use social media for sales.

However, top sellers do use LinkedIn -- and very successfully. According to a survey of over 3000 salespeople done by Jill Konrath, top sellers spend over six hours on LinkedIn per week.

That same six hours could potentially be 50-100 phone calls if you’re dialing for dollars. But on the flip side, it can easily take 50 phone calls to secure one appointment. (On a side note -- what’s your phone call to appointment ratio? Check out the comments Fresh Sales Strategies LinkedIn group question I started to hear what other salespeople have to say.)

So here’s the main question: Where should you be spending your time for maximum impact? Hitting the phones or networking on LinkedIn?

A couple of months ago, I decided I wanted to start actually communicating with my online network, and I thought LinkedIn groups would be a good place to do that.

It wasn’t long before, lo and behold, I started to get some sales leads from my efforts.

I don’t just go into Linkedin groups willy-nilly. I have a purpose, and truthfully, it’s not necessarily to sell. But the cool thing is, once you start putting yourself out there and getting to know people, sales start to happen. That’s what networking is about though, right?

Here are 4 really great reasons to start engaging in LinkedIn groups:

Most companies are missing huge opportunities to use LinkedIn for business growth. Usually, employees are pretty much on their own. LinkedIn is technically a personal asset. As an employer, you can’t force your employees to update their LinkedIn account. The way they represent your company on their profile and to their network may – or may not – align with your corporate communication strategy. Companies can create a win-win by helping their employees develop strong LinkedIn profiles and habits.

It’s the beginning of a new year and you’re probably thinking about what you want it to look like for you. You may have some challenges you want to overcome or things you want to improve upon. I know I do!

It got me thinking...what if we shared our goals with each other to see if we can collaborate in some way?

The problem is that, for me, asking for help is extremely hard. But I recently learned a lesson that is helping me get over it!

Our client, Jill Konrath, author of two best-selling sales books, Selling to Big Companies and SNAP Selling, started a LinkedIn group called Fresh Sales Strategies back in August of 2008.

Her goal was to develop a community for salespeople to come together to share fresh ideas about what works in today’s selling environment.

When Moon Marketing joined forces with Jill to implement social media strategies in August of 2012, she had about 2500 group members. Not too bad! As part of our strategy development, we evaluated the return on investment in spending time developing an even stronger LinkedIn group. Here is what we discovered: