Every day, sales leaders and reps ask me whether they should purchase LinkedIn Sales Navigator as a tool for themselves or their sales reps.
My response is simple: “You’d be crazy not to and you as a sales leader will become obsolete if you don’t.”
I am a big believer in drinking your own Kool-Aide. And as the only full-service social selling training company, we myopically track the progress of our own individual social selling lead generating efforts.
For instance, looking at the month of July, I had the privilege of hosting 55 sales meetings. That’s an average of 3.53 appointments per business day! We grew our network by 15%! And we had 452 social shares delivered to my personal LinkedIn social feed. Finally, we had 39.85% of appointments we requested result in a meeting. How did we do it?
100% of our leads are sourced using the same exact social selling training techniques we teach.
Outside one of the most important principals that I teach of learning how to humanize the connection experience, one of the most important social selling tools we use is LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Normal sales reps are using antiquated prospecting techniques to attract their modern buyer. Normal sales reps aren’t using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Normal sales reps produce normal results. Here is my suggestion to you as a sales leader and sales rep:
Don’t Do ¡˥∀WɹON
If you’re not using LinkedIn Sales Navigator to attract today’s modern buyer, then you’re missing one of the most powerful tools in your selling arsenal!
In this Two-Part series, we’ll cover some of the most valuable features that LinkedIn Sales Navigator provides to help you drive more sales each and every month! Subscribe to our email list to be the first to know when Part 2 is posted.
Social Selling with LinkedIn Sales Navigator:
By learning and leveraging the different features of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can build your personal and professional brand and develop relationships with the leads most relevant to you.
Your goal is to drive more sales. LinkedIn Sales Navigator provides the features and filters to make connecting with the most relevant leads as easy as possible. That saves you time. And we all know time is money.
When speaking to sales reps around the globe, I tell them that if their sales leader or CEO won’t invest in this tool for you, then do it yourself! Be your own CEO and get the application with your own dollar if you have to. Sales Navigator is too important of a tool for connecting to your modern buyer.
My recommendation – Don’t Do ¡˥∀WɹON
What are the benefits of LinkedIn Sales Navigator? Below are the three crazy sexy filters and features that will help make sure you spend your time wisely when socially engaging. Don’t forget to subscribe to our email list to be the first to know when Part 2 is posted!
Benefits of LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lead Builder (Part 1):
After you have created a lead list using Lead Builder, above the listed contacts you will see at the top a side-scrolling list of filters. These in my opinion are the most powerful filters of LinkedIn Sales Navigator for a sales person! It is pure AWESOMENESS!
1. Those Active in the Last 30 Days
Social selling is all about building and nurturing relationships through social networking. However, sales leaders and sales reps want to ensure they’re not wasting their time engaging and prospecting with people who are not active on social networks.
Perfect. Now you don’t have to. This is the only social selling tool that allows you to build a lead list then filter and see which prospect has been active on LinkedIn in the past 30 days.
Seriously!? Yes.
There is an extremely high probability that if someone was active in the last 30 days they are more likely to:
- Read your engagement
- Be more open and receptive to engagement
- Engage back with you
In our social selling training we teach our reps to focus their attention and spend their time engaging with active executives first. What do you do with the other prospects that haven’t used LinkedIn in the last 30 days? Save that question and we’ll answer it in an upcoming blog post.
2. Leads That Follow Your Company
If you’re a sales rep who works for a larger organization, or one which has a significant social following on your company’s LinkedIn page, then this next feature is going to blow your mind!
LinkedIn Sales Navigator allows you to specifically filter anyone that is “Following” your company’s LinkedIn page. If a prospect is following your company’s page and not a customer and not engaged with a sales rep there’s a HIGH probability that they’d be willing to engage with a rep, even if only to learn more for a future opportunity.
GOLDMINE!
Sales reps need to know these types of details. No more hours spent scrolling through your list of followers to find relevant leads. Now it is right there on your LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lead Builder page.
LinkedIn literally narrows your list of leads into those obviously interested in your company, the products or services you provide, and your company’s expertise. Take advantage! Engage, help and develop that relationship!
3. Shared Experiences
This filter narrows your leads into those who share common experiences with you. This includes attending the same school, working for the same past employer, and/ or being in the same LinkedIn group.
For Real!?
Social Selling and sales is about finding common ground to build a relationship. LinkedIn Sales Navigator just showed you the common ground to do so by highlighting shared experiences. Leverage your shared experiences to start a conversation with your prospects.
Do not immediately pummel these leads with sales pitches! Social selling is about nurturing relationships, building trust, helping, and answering questions that then leads to a sales opportunity. Cold calling and pitching your products or services as the perfect solution without nurturing that relationship or understanding how you can help a buyer is an old school sales technique.
Don’t Do ¡˥∀WɹON
If you’re still trying to attract the modern buyer by being normal, you need social selling training to properly teach you how to leverage these shared experiences to increase sales.
Leveraging Sales with LinkedIn Sales Navigator:
Some social selling trainers will tell you that you can do social selling without LinkedIn Sales Navigator. To me, that’s like playing football without pads.
In 2014, 74% of sales people who beat their quota by 10% or more say they have an excellent understanding about the use of social media for prospecting, nurturing relationships, and closing deals. Your goal is to help your customers solve business problems. LinkedIn Sales Navigator can help you connect with your modern buyers. Especially ones that may be talking about their business problems online!
Don’t Do ¡˥∀WɹON
Be your own CEO and take charge of growing your sales revenue. For more help, watch my interview with Brynne Tillman (another amazing social selling expert) as we discuss LinkedIn Sales Navigator Best Practices.
And don’t forget to subscribe to our email list to receive the Benefits of LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
This article originally appeared here.