By John Wiedenheft, GreatAmerica – I’ve taught dozens of classes on LinkedIn during my time at GreatAmerica, and as LinkedIn has evolved, so have my classes. My most recent iteration, LinkedIn 201: Using LinkedIn for Sales, hit the preverbial nail on the head within GreatAmerica, so today I’m sharing the meat of that class with you. LinkedIn is no longer a resumé or a Rolodex, so make sure you know how to use LinkedIn for Sales!

Use LinkedIn for Research

One thing many people don’t know about LinkedIn is its crazy search capabilities. Apply those not-so-secret superpowers to your own sales process and your ideal prospect. Think about the characteristics that define your ideal prospect, what are the characteristics that matter to you? What defines the prospects you would do anything to work with?

Examples of characteristics:

  1. Job Title — Who do you work with regularly? President? vCIO? CTO? Don’t search for “sales manager” if only the Vice President of Sales can make purchasing decisions.
  2. Location — Are you responsible for a certain state or territory? Looking to expand a particular metropolitan region?
  3. Products or Services — What products or services does your ideal prospect sell? For example, if you offer Managed IT services, but don’t support Apple products, don’t search for prospects selling Apple.

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