As a salesperson, your company should be equipping you with
all of the necessary tools to succeed in helping your business make money. Such
tools include extensive training and production information, relevant business
leads, and a LinkedIn account.
Yes, I said LinkedIn.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, LinkedIn is the
go-to social media website for business connections. It is a MUST have when it
comes to things like networking and prospecting. In fact, when I first started
in sales, my boss demanded that I create a LinkedIn.
Fast forward to the present, and I have built up a decent
amount of contact from my time doing cold calling and working for the business.
Not only that, but as I mentioned earlier, having a LinkedIn account even makes
prospecting easier!
You’re probably wondering how LinkedIn helps make sales
prospecting easier. It’s actually rather simple and I will be providing you
with 2 easy steps that will help you narrow down your contacts in order to
identify your individual target at a company that you want to try to sell to.
1: A Simple Search!
Hopefully, you have realized by now that there is a “search”
feature at the very top of LinkedIn. USE IT! Search for the name of the company
you want to sell to. Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy! From here, you will then find a
long list of names of people who work at said company.
On the left side of the list, you will find another list of
checkboxes. Make sure to check the box of the current employer so that you will
only find people who CURRENTLY work at said company.
After browsing the list, you will probably end up finding
somebody with a job title that you think would be relevant to you, so you will
want to get in touch with them.
2: Get Their Name!
This is the hard part! LinkedIn, due to its very nature,
keeps many things about its users private (unlike Facebook!). In general, you
need to have mutual connection in order to not just look at somebody’s profile,
but to even get their name! While their names will probably show up as simply “LinkedIn
User”, I have discovered a VERY simple trick to get around this
.
It’s actually pretty funny as to how simple my workaround
is. I simply use a Google search.
I copy and paste the person’s title into
Google and make sure to include LinkedIn. Let’s say John Doe is the Head of
Marketing at JD Inc. On Linkedin, his name will show as “LinkedIn User”, with a
title of “Head of Marketing at JD Inc.”. On Google, I will type “Head of
Marketing at JD Inc.” “LinkedIn”, then voila! It will show “John Doe” in the
Google search results. I click that link and not only do I now have his name,
but I also have his full profile! All of this without having any mutual
connects!
Do you have any other LinkedIn "hacks"? If so, please leave a comment! The readership and I would all love to learn more ways to increase our sales!
