How I Used the Free Version of LinkedIn to do $1.3 Million in Sales in One Year as a Copier Rep

By Larry Levine – I absolutely love the personal relationship building aspect of sales. Based on building these personal business relationships, I discovered the secret power behind LinkedIn. It’s the personal connection which makes the difference. Bottom line… you can’t consistently become successful in the sales world without building personal, authentic and meaningful relationships. It is amazing how 80 years later, Dale Carnegie and his infamous book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” still resonates today. The two key successes in sales today, building relationships and changing the way people think. This can be still accomplished by integrating “social” into the sales process.

I often refer to myself as an old school sales guy with a modern twist. Yes, the old school foundation of selling is still alive and well. The foundation is simple, never lose sight of the two P’s… prospecting and the phone.
Using my personal connection philosophy, I put to use a daily dose of the 5 Vitamin C’s. These are Cleverly Capture, Converse, Collaborate, Connect and Convert. This allows me to start connecting with key people and decision makers–the same people who often times ignore my countless voice mail and email messages. Yes, I still use the phone and I still leverage email; however, the calls and emails take on a whole new meaning. These have now become warmer and a bit more personable based upon the relationships built with my LinkedIn connections. Within the business community, LinkedIn has become my best social business development friend. Life as a copier rep is challenging and I get it. I thrive and embrace personal and business challenges. No risk no reward!

Fast forward with me to the summer of 2013. After spending almost 20 years of my sales career with the same dealership I decided it was time for a change. I set the ego and fear aside to embrace the next chapter of my copier sales career. This opportunity was a “net new” sales position within the Corporate Major Account team for a global office technology manufacturer. I was handed zero current clients and had to build out a target account list to call on. This didn’t bother me as I knew LinkedIn was my best business friend. I ask you all, how many tenured sales reps would leave 20 years of business behind them to venture off into new horizons without a single account to feed off of. The answer my friends is zero!

The $1.3 Million Sales Story

The first 90 days was humbling as I threw up goose eggs; big fat zeros! I was beginning to build my relationship funnel. I strongly believe in order to have a healthy sales funnel you have to engage and commit to building up your relationship funnel while managing your network funnel as well. From my relationship funnel, I soon started to convert these relationships into net new meetings. These net new meetings took on an entirely different meaning as I already had developed the personal connection on LinkedIn.