Sales Training Article: Social Selling on LinkedIn
By Gary Walker, EVP of Channel Sales & Operations, CustomerCentric Selling® – The Sales Training Company
I’m a regular contributor to 
CustomerCentric Selling®’s weekly ‘Sales Thought.’ (If you’re not receiving them in your inbox every Monday morning ;to subscribe.) For those of you following me, you see a short article, a sales tip, maybe even a sales tactic, about every third week that I personally author. As a contributor, I’m on a mission to provide you with actionable information that you can use to:
- improve your sales performance
- add to or improve your existing skill set
- and potentially help advance a current opportunity you’re working on.
Why? Because in almost every respect I am a salesperson just like you are. I’m constantly striving to be more effective. On a daily basis I’m working to:
- identify new opportunities
- engage with senior sales executives
- identify issues that I might be in a position to help them address
- understand why these issues exist
- understand how these issues are impacting their sales organizations and salespeople
- and understand what CustomerCentric Selling® capabilities they believe they need, moving forward, to correct the performance of an underperforming team.
This week, it’s going to be a little different. I recently came across a blog entitled, “5 Ways to Boost B2B Sales Through LinkedIn Social Selling” that I want to share with you. It was written by Russell Banzon, Demand Generation Manager at Inkling. I’ve elected to share this with you for the following reasons:
1. You can put his five (5) strategies into play immediately; they are all actionable NOW. They are tactical!
2. His strategies are identical to what we have been teaching in our CustomerCentric Selling® Prospecting and Business Development Work Sessions.
3. Social Selling continues to be overlooked by most salespeople and the organizations they work for. However, did you know that social sellers create 45% more opportunities and are 51% more likely to achieve quota?
4. LinkedIn is NOT just a place where you post your profile and sit on the sidelines and wait. You’ve got to join in the game. It’s time to participate!
5. Articles, posts and blogs like these give people the courage to begin to change how they sell.
6. It helps validate what we have been instructing our clients to do for the last three (3) years!
Like I said, this is a departure from my traditional contributions and posts, but I think you will benefit from Russell’s strategies and how succinctly he has positioned them. Read it, begin to put them into play and forward this post to a co-worker or peer.
CLICK HERE to read Russell’s post on LinkedIn Social Selling.
Take a look at the sales training workshops available to you.