Earlier this year LinkedIn celebrated reaching 1 million users in New Zealand – or around a quarter of the population. Their growth globally is also impressive at over 277 million members and 2 new members a second.
It is no wonder LinkedIn profiles are fast becoming the preferred source of truth – from tradespeople, right through to global enterprises – that are struggling to maintain their CRM.
Coupled with this mass adoption, I’ve also heard some startling statistics from the folks at LinkedIn. 75% of B2B purchases are influenced by social media and 57% of the buying process is complete before sales reps are involved. That really hit home the necessity to get social media sales working efficiently for you. A personal brand on LinkedIn and regular engagement with your audience and clients is a must.
You’ve no doubt got more than the basics mastered for B2B sales. But what about some of the advanced features LinkedIn offers, or the many other free tools available, to open and maintain relationships with clients?
LinkedIn Sales Navigator lets you mark a target and tells you when a new person enters the role
What if instead of searching for someone at X company in X industry you could save a search and narrow it right back. Sales Navigator lets you add: job function, shared groups and seniority level. You can save that search and be alerted when a new person enters and meets that criteria.
Better still, filter back the search to a company name and limit the results to the CXO you’re targeting. You can save it as an alert so when that CXO leaves – you can target their replacement. You could use this for gatekeepers as well, or for leads into brand new organisations if a great contact moves on.
TeamLink as part of Sales Navigator lets you see any contacts to leads from within your team
The short description sounds like sales utopia, the place where everyone is a brand ambassador and making sales for the business. TeamLink, when connected, allows you to see any person in your organisation that has a first or second degree connection to the potential client you’re searching for. You can leverage them for a warm lead or better insights into your next pitch. If you are using sales navigator you could also include interests to see if a team member plays golf or sails with the potential client or is a supporter of the same philanthropic cause.
Salesforce and Sales Navigator can show latest LinkedIn updates and Tweets from a select group
This allows you to create a group that you may be targeting within an organisation. Say the digital marketing team to sell them your analytics tool. You can monitor updates and tweets from the whole team or narrow to a specific contact. If they have questions or are posting about an area you have expertise in, why not flick them a copy of your research or a relevant white paper.
Newsle monitors and alerts you of press mentions of your contacts
As a backup to monitoring them on LinkedIn, why not plug your LinkedIn and Facebook profiles into Newsle. Scraping the public internet, Newlse sends you a notification and snippet when a contact is featured in the news. A fantastic opener for meetings or to rekindle a lead.
If you’re on Gmail – Use Rapportive to show latest posts from that email contact
In a similar vein to Newsle, Rapportive, allows you to see the latest social media posts from your contacts, again a great opportunity to garner insights into their world.
What do you use?
There a number of other tools I am sure to have missed. I would love to hear what helps you find leads, nurture relationships and ultimate win business for your organisation.
Nick Allen - Marketing, Growth & Running 