LinkedIn Selling?

If you define selling as quoting, presenting, and closing sales, LinkedIn selling stinks. If, however, you understand selling as a more complex and inclusive process, LinkedIn selling might just be a very helpful tool.

Let’s Talk Sales Pipelines Shall We?

We are all familiar with the sales pipeline. It is that portion of revenue generation that we track by proposals, quotes, and presentation that process into revenue—sales! However, every good sales person and many savvy business owners also realize that there are two additional pipelines that are a part of the sales process: marketing and prospecting.

The marketing pipeline is about the distribution of your brand presence and primary message into the market place. It is where our business and its offering get discovered, where potential clients learn about our existence and our services. The prospecting pipeline tracks the contacts and qualification steps of selling. Yes, they know who we are, but are they in need of or qualified as potential clients for our products or services? Are we qualified to solve their problem? If the answer to these questions is yes, then we can move the prospect into our sales pipeline.

Here Comes the Conclusion...

With this understanding, we could—and should—argue that LinkedIn is a BIG help in developing our marketing and prospecting pipelines. This, in turn, will generate more opportunity for the sales pipeline. LinkedIn Selling works.

Get LinkedIn and sell.