Accelerate the Growth of Your Business Using LinkedIn w/ Viveka von Rosen [Episode 153]

Viveka von Rosen is the leading LinkedIn, social selling expert, and author of LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour A Day.

In today’s episode, Viveka and I chat about LinkedIn, social selling and how businesses can use these platforms to build a stronger relationship with their prospects and clients. We also discuss how sales reps can use these tools to warm up their cold calls for inbound or outbound.

Bullet Points

• What is the biggest misconception in regards to LinkedIn?
• How to utilize Sales Navigator.
• Why is LinkedIn becoming more isolated?
• What should Sales Reps focus on about LinkedIn?
• What are the differences between LinkedIn and other social media outlets?
• What is the psychological aspect of using LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has become an indispensable tool for sales reps but like everything else in life it suffered from a little too much attention. There is increasing talk about LinkedIn succumbing to some of the overused spam tactics that have plagued email, and others are saying they are done with LinkedIn altogether. However, all of your contacts for your prospects and customers are on LinkedIn – more than likely the best way to connect with potential buyers, prospects, and services.

There are many misconceptions about LinkedIn, it isn’t just a job seeking tool. Sales reps do not realize how critical of a social selling, content marketing, and lead generating tool it is, which is a problem for corporations because some of them are conservative and don’t realize the benefits of LinkedIn. Don’t worry about employers thinking you are job seeking, you can shut that feature off on your profile.

Some people also think that LinkedIn is a social media site, which harms them. It is a business tool first and foremost that has the added social elements, such as timeline and groups.

Sales Navigator is better than the regular messenger on the unpaid side of LinkedIn. The ability to sort and see the communications of your prospects is huge and contacting people that you aren’t linked to is a big bonus.

LinkedIn is isolating themselves, which is going to cost them business. They are also disenfranchising from the free membership, and that’s who their paid customers are paying for access. What LinkedIn fails to remember is there are over 400 million users, and only 3 million of those users are Premium. There are many other ways LinkedIn could monetize, but that is not going to happen if they keep upsetting their bigger group of people, catering to their higher end premium users is going to isolate them even more.

LinkedIn’s end user agreement states you need to represent yourself; people need to use their full first and last names, post a picture of themselves, not their company. There is a feature that you can make your name and photo visible to everyone, make sure to add a professional headline in 120 characters or less.

You can warm up those cold calls by doing research on LinkedIn, so that when you pick up the phone you know who the person is that you are speaking with. This will go long ways to your prospect or customers knowing, liking, and trusting you. Spend time curating relationships by making sure no matter what, your prospects or clients know you are the one to go to for the information they need. You don’t have to be a professional writer to share content, utilize someone else’s information you know will solve your client’s pain points.

Give LinkedIn a try for 30 days to test out the practices. If you don’t get the benefits within those 30 days then maybe it isn’t the proper platform for you.

Learn More About Viveka von Rosen:

What’s your most powerful sales asset?

The ability to empathize by listening to clients.

Who’s your business role model?

Bob Burg

Name one book that every sales person should read.

Ask : The counterintuitive online formula to discover exactly what your customers want to buy…create a mass of raving fans…and take any business to the next level by Ryan Levesque

What’s your favorite music to get you pumped up?

Everything, except for Country Music.

What’s the one question you get asked by sales people?

Does LinkedIn really work?