5 specific ways salespeople can use LinkedIn

5 specific ways salespeople can use LinkedIn:

Great article. Here is my summary:

5 specific ways salespeople can use LinkedIn

1. Find out who they should contact in order to secure customer meetings; use LinkedIn to ensure they were contacting the right person but make first contact via email


2. Find out more about people they will meet prior to customer meetings: where they have worked in the past and who they might know in common


3. Research their competition: monitor a prospective customer’s connections to find out which competitors and salespeople are working on the account.


4. Join groups to keep in touch with colleagues they worked with in the past, follow companies of interest, and to improve industry related knowledge or sales-skills.


5. Keep existing customers informed about their company’s offerings; use LinkedIn to send short messages that contained links to press releases, white papers, analyst reports, product announcements, and company produced videos

How they should not use LinkedIn in sales:

• making an unsolicited initial customer contact directly through a LinkedIn invitation

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