Micro Marketing For Salespeople: Create Your Own Lead Generation Machine from The Sales Foundry on Vimeo.Did you know that 70% of the average B2B seller's leads are self-generated? The most successful salespeople are always looking for the best strategies to improve their performance. And social media,...
Advanced LinkedIn Secrets of Sales Superstars from The Sales Foundry on Vimeo.For many sales pros, Linkedin is the #1 way to find and connect with prospects. And for those that understand how to use it's many features, it is a way to sucessfully sell products...
Social Selling practices are growing in popularity among IT solution providers because it’s a proven way to find new IT buyers. Applications like LinkedIn, Twitter, and others have become important prospecting tools as well as effective communication channels for IT buyers who are active on...
On the first episode you’ll meet James Royer, Director of Digital and Social Media at the Tampa Bay Lightning. Learn how the Lightning converts fans into brand advocates and drives loyalty, ticket sales and merchandise sales....
As a B2B sales veteran, I am a big advocate of keeping my social communications on LinkedIn “All Business”. In fact, I once hid someone from my Home Page updates because of their rants over the ‘49ers football team. However, I am slowly moving ever...
Kendra Lee of The KLA Group is a top IT seller, sales advisor and business owner that trains salespeople how to shorten time to revenue in the SMB market. Her company specializes in the Information Technology industry and Kendra has been a featured speaker at...
When teaching people how to leverage LinkedIn, one of the first things I cover is the importance of having a recognizable photo. I use the acronym F.F.F (Fill the Frame with Face) and use the hypothetical example of, “if you want people to recognize you...
Eric Marcy of The Savo Group discusses Social Selling and LinkedIn Sales Navigator....
Facebook’s January 15 announcement of its new Graph Search function brings long overdue search functionality to the leading (personal) social networking site. It also signals that Facebook’s focus is still on being a personal application to communicate with your friends. Now I realize that some B2C businesses (i.e. retailers, restaurants, consumer brands) benefit from Facebook, but Graph Search does little to improve Facebook’s weak position as a social selling platform for B2B sellers. Here is why.
Some of the examples of what you can search for using Graph Search include:
• Photos you’ve taken on vacations, with certain friends, or other criteria
• All your friends in a particular city or of a common interests
• What movies/restaurants/bands you might like based on ones your friends like
This is a nice feature for people who have invested in building their Facebook presence and want some Google-like capabilities to get the most from all that information. But if you are like many B2B sales professional who are more concerned with finding more customers than you are with finding more friends, then your response might be, “Big deal”.
In the B2B social selling world, prospecting searches are all about demographic criteria like:
This is an update to the December blog entry on the new Profile format.
In October, LinkedIn announced a new Profile format. While it is the biggest visual change to LinkedIn in it’s nearly ten-year history, the announcement went largely unnoticed because it was a phased roll out over many months.
Well, it’s noticed now. LinkedIn rolled out the new Profile to most of its members in December. Here are four changes and the action to take in order to optimize them.
1. BIGGER PHOTO – Your Profile photo has always been important. It is even more so now. First, the photo is a little bigger in the new format so make sure it represents your desired professional image. No spouse, baby, distracting backgrounds, or bowling trophy unless you make your living bowling or you are The Big Lebowski (a.k.a. The Dude). Second, your photo is now used in places that used to only show your name (text). One example is the “HOW YOU’RE CONNECTED” section, which shows common Level 1 Connections. Since the image size is very small in these secondary views, make sure to follow my F.F.F. rule (Fill the Frame with Face).
THE ACTION: Upload a current, professional-looking headshot (silhouette or light, opaque background recommended).
2. ACTIVITY – LinkedIn has been working hard to drive more usage on its site and one way they are doing it is by showcasing a summary of your Updates, Comments, Discussions, and other LinkedIn “activities”. It’s now right under the main information section of your Profile (just above the Background section). Active posters are being rewarded for contributing to LinkedIn’s content.
THE ACTION: Begin a regular schedule of posting on LinkedIn.
3. ADD MEDIA – This is the biggest change both in terms of what LinkedIn took away and what they added.