The Sales Café

Everyone's got a LinkedIn account, right? If you are a sales executive and you don't, then hasten to LinkedIn right now and create one. I'll wait.

Let's face it, LinkedIn is the ultimate personal sales tool - meaning, it's an incredible tool for selling yourself and networking with business contacts. It's definitely the best resource and reference aid when you are job hunting. It's different from most social media outlets in that it's about social business - connecting with your industry and corporate contacts, rather than your family and friends.

As of May 2010, LinkedIn boasts more than 66 million members, with nearly 34 million in the U.S. alone. (See more stats here.) That's a big number, but I am often surprised at how many sales executives don't have LinkedIn accounts, or just don't use the accounts they've set up.

If you have put off creating one until now, you must be thinking either (a) it's too difficult to maintain or (b) you are too high up in the corporate ladder or too established in your current position to need one. Both are not true. It's very easy to maintain a LinkedIn account and it's becoming too vital as a tool in your networking belt to eschew. What's difficult is putting it to good use on a consistent basis even when you're not looking for a new job.

It takes only a little extra effort to get the most from LinkedIn. The key is automating your account so that all you really have to do is just keep adding contacts.

After the initial steps of creating your LinkedIn account [which are:  signing up, adding your resume highlights, posting your photo (yes, you really need a head shot), and connecting with as many of your contacts as you can find on the site], here are three actions that will propel you to the next level of LinkedIn.

1. Broaden your network. LinkedIn provides excellent statistics on your existing network of contacts. When you see a summary of your network, you get an instant picture of where you've focused in your career and an idea of where you might want to expand moving forward. You don the same with your business, right? To find the stats on your network, go to your list of Contacts and then click on the Network Statistics link.
2. Join groups. A LinkedIn Group keeps you connected in subtle ways. I get automatic email updates from my list of LinkedIn Groups. It's a quick reference to what people are talking about and what topics are hot within those groups.
3. Add your blog feed. This is an excellent way to add personality and thought leadership [industry buzz word] to your profile. I use a LinkedIn application called Blog Link. Every time I post to any of the blogs I write, the app automatically updates my profile.

There are so many more things you can do to become a LinkedIn power user - even beyond having hundreds of contacts in your network. These three steps will get you started.

Why bolster your LinkedIn? Because today, building your online presence is more important than it once was to build your local presence. What's the first thing you do when you're interested in working with or buying something from someone? It most likely involves Google. In the business world, it really should include LinkedIn.

Yes, I have a LinkedIn account and No, I don't use it enough. Connect with me on LinkedIn and then join me for the next few months in working just a little harder to get the most from using it. If you do, you'll be able to read the updates on my progress right from your news feed, automatically.

People buy from people. Trite but true, whether it's B-to-B, B-to-C, complex or simple business relationships. Successful salespeople never lose sight of that little fact. Talk to one and ask them. Look in the mirror and ask yourself!

What complicates things is how many options there are for meeting people, from Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook to plain old networking meetings held by local organizations, and everything in-between. Perhaps no matter how much your company spends on marketing, sooner or later, the buyer is going to check YOU out, on their own, without your knowledge. They want to see if you're the kind of person they want to do business with.

Knowing that, how will you position yourself? Do you want to portray a conservative persona on LinkedIn and a cool one on Facebook? Would you rant on Twitter or "keep your powder dry" knowing that your potential customer might be shopping you instead of your company? One thing is for sure, when everybody shops the Web, your presence is required and your privacy is not the buyer's concern. 

Companies spend an enormous amount of energy and money trying to control the buyer-seller conversation on their websites. However the trip shoppers take, of their own choosing, on their way to a buying decision tells us an interesting story. When we analyze the traffic on our own site, we see people moving from the home page to the blog, to the team page and then out of the site, moving on definitely to LinkedIn and probably to Facebook or Twitter. I think this is common.

So, the moral is YOU, whether you are the owner, CEO, VP Sales, or an account executive, may have more to do with how enticing your product or service looks to the buyer than any feature, benefit or research paper that the marketing department can come up with.    

Here is everything you need to know about social media networking:

It's all about the conversation.

That's it. Whether you blog, employ LinkedIn, spend time on Facebook, Twitter, post questions and answers on Sales 2.0 or even make daily visits to your dog's breed site and forum, you are engaging in a conversation. Conversation is the "informal interchange of thoughts, information, etc.," according to Random House. Okay, so usually it's spoken, oral communication and, for the most part, this is written (but that is changing quickly with the influx of video communication). But I submit to you that the reason you are engaged in any of these social endeavors, and what keeps you going back, is for the interaction with the other people on the site. 

Sure, you are trying to sell them something, but isn't the conversation where sales starts? In a cold call, it might begin with "Hi, my name is..." or "What do you do when you need...." On LinkedIn, it's posting your professional information--your background, your current work--and trying to drum up a following of contacts by talking to them. On Facebook, it means sharing something about yourself with your friends and colleagues. It's all a conversation.

The saying goes that no product moves without salespeople. The point here is that no sales happen without a conversation. And for many products and services today, the conversation is happening on social media.