July 29, 2013. This guest post is from Matt Ferrucci, who is a student at Boston College. He’s spending the summer at Reflection Films, learning a little about video production and marketing.
LinkedIn is on the rise. Corporations, small businesses, and even students are using it to enhance business prospects and get themselves out in the open. Jill Konrath and Ardath Albee, in a presentation entitled Cracking the LinkedIn Sales Code, detail some useful insights about LinkedIn that are surprisingly unknown.
They surveyed over 3,000 sellers in order to measure how often and in what manner LinkedIn is being used. Their key findings were:
Another statistic that’s very telling shows that nearly 90% of top sellers consider LinkedIn not just important, but essential to building a substantive, professional presence. As an aside, consider that use of LinkedIn does not directly correspond with sales success. It is a useful tool, but the manner in which it is wielded is crucial.
The presentation also emphasizes the fact that selling is all about the people. Some habits of top sellers include:
They end with a list of actions that should be taken to become one of those top sellers:
1. Enhance your professional presence (create a LinkedIn account is a good way to start!)
2. Take time to research your prospects – look people up on LinkedIn
3. Connect with colleagues/customers regularly
4. Do what you can to accumulate recommendations and endorsements
5. Build prospect lists
6. SAVE your prospect lists for future reference
Photo credit to Nan Palmero