Let’s Not Go Suing LinkedIn, Salespeople
You’ve probably heard about the lawsuit against LinkedIn for having sent annoying emails to the wrong people. You might very well be one of those wrong people, and in that case you’d be entitled to as much as $1,500 from the settlement. But I think you should think twice before clicking submit on that claim form.
Do you remember life before LinkedIn? This amazing service — free for 90% of us — has revolutionized the way we do business and made our jobs A LOT easier than they used to be. So before you wag a finger at LinkedIn while cashing your $1,500 settlement check, consider these ways that LinkedIn has enhanced your life as a salesperson.
Finding Prospects Is a Breeze
Finding out if you’re pursuing the right person is as easy as clicking on their bio page. It’s a wealth of information that you didn’t even need to ask for – it’s just THERE for the picking. Your contact’s company, title, department, how long they’ve been working there, where they worked before, where they went to school – maybe even a personal statement and bit about interests outside of work.
The same is true in reverse for us salespeople. If we have a well-crafted LinkedIn profile, prospects will be able to find out more about us before we even have a conversation. It saves both of us a lot of time in the long run and can even be used to showcase recommendations from happy customers.
Engaging Customers and Prospects Is Easier Than Ever
Functions like InMail, Groups, and Publisher allow salespeople to keep prospects and customers engaged on all levels. Send a private introduction to a contact on InMail, keep your customers in-the-know on industry news in groups, and reach a wide group of potential new prospects by blogging on LinkedIn publisher. You can even keep up with your target company in real time by following their page or reading their blog posts on publisher.
Staying up to date with all of your connections for future opportunities is also easier than ever. It used to be hard to remember all the names, faces and details of everyone you’ve encountered in the past, but if they’re part of your LinkedIn network, it’s all at a glance on your computer screen and likely to be up to date since it’s maintained by them. If you want to be super organized, you can even sort your contacts into categories.
Networking 2.0 is Possible with LinkedIn
Arguably one of the best things about LinkedIn is you get to see the six degrees of separation matrix laid out before your eyes. Talk about revolutionary, this is something that the sales folks who blazed the trail before us would have never imagined. You can see who you’re connected to through someone in your network, see who your prospects are connected to, find out how people within networks are connected – the whole web of connections is right there.
If you have a paid account with LinkedIn you can use the enhanced search function to filter people by industry, company, position, location, past company etc. It’s an amazing tool for expanding your prospect search.
The list of LinkedIn’s virtues goes on and on, but the point is this: LinkedIn is (mostly) free and we probably couldn’t do our jobs this well without it. It’s become a critical tool for salespeople and helped us tap into networks that were once extremely difficult to get into.
So. Now that I’ve (hopefully) sent you on a guilt trip, are you still seething with emotion over the spammy emails that LinkedIn sent you? Do you feel like you need reparations for the trauma of having your inbox violated? The way I feel about it is that you shouldn’t turn your back on a good friend because of a minor transgression, let alone raid his pockets. Then again, maybe you need to nip these things in the bud.
Tell us your thoughts on the LinkedIn lawsuit below.
