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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Make selling a social affair! The ABCs of sales have changed. It's no longer: A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. The new way of selling is: A-Always, B-Be, C-Contributing to your buyer's journey. Social selling is an effective way to engage with your customer, and the world's most powerful social selling tool for any B2B sales professional is LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It allows you to gain access to more leads, more InMail, and data to track your efforts. With the help of LinkedIn Sales Navigator For Dummies, you'll learn how to write effective InMail messages and engage with prospects on the world's most successful professional networking site. Along with utilizing those features, you'll also benefit from access to full profiles outside of your network, guidance on how to best optimize your own profile for sales opportunities, and much more. * Use lead recommendations to get in front of the right buyer * Analyze your social selling efforts with real-time data * Reach more leads with customized InMail messages * Save 30 - 60 minutes a day previously spent on acquisitions If you're a B2B sales professional who is new to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, this is the one-stop resource you can't be without.
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Seitenzahl: 263
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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LinkedIn® Sales Navigator For Dummies®
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949882
ISBN 978-1-119-42768-1 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-42775-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-42776-6 (ebk)
LinkedIn® Sales Navigator For Dummies®
To view this book's Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “LinkedIn Sales Navigator For Dummies” in the Search box.
Table of Contents
Cover
Introduction
About This Book
How This Book Is Organized
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Where to Go from Here
Part 1: Getting Ready to Generate Leads
Chapter 1: Selling Is a Social Business
Defining Social Selling
Looking at the Four Pillars of Social Selling
Collecting, Connecting, Converting: The Formula for Success
Exploring the Sales Navigator Plans
Activating Your Sales Navigator Account
Measuring Efforts with the Social Selling Index
Opening Access with TeamLink
Planning Your Roadmap for Social-Selling Success
Chapter 2: Determining Your Target Audience
Defining the Buying Personas
Identifying Customers’ Pain Points
Who Are the Stakeholders and What Are Their Dreams?
Chapter 3: Mapping the Buyer’s Journey
Understanding Where Customers Do Their Research
Meeting the Customer: How Accessible Are You?
Conducting the Transaction: What Motivates Your Customers?
Creating Fans: Will Your Customers Recommend You?
Up-selling or Cross-selling: Achieving the Customer’s Dream
Part 2: Building a Database of Leads
Chapter 4: Setting Up for Success
Navigating the Home Page
Filtering Your Updates
Sharing Updates on LinkedIn
Tracking Your Social Selling Index
Tracking Who’s Viewed Your Profile
Monitoring Your Recent Views and Searches
Chapter 5: Identifying Leads
Setting Key Preferences
Performing a Quick Database Search
Searching the LinkedIn Database Using Advanced Search
Using Boolean Operators in Sales Navigator Searches
Customizing Your Search Results
Saving Your Searches
Zeroing in on the Best Results with Sales Spotlights
Chapter 6: Saving Leads and Accounts
Saving a Lead
Adding Tags and Notes to Your Leads
Viewing Similar and Suggested Leads
Saving an Account
Adding Tags and Notes to Your Accounts
Viewing Similar and Suggested Accounts
Part 3: Engaging with Leads
Chapter 7: Becoming Top of Mind with Your Leads
Engaging with Leads
Sorting Updates by Type
Creating and Managing Content with PointDrive
Chapter 8: Connecting with Leads
Identifying Common Ground
Reaching Out with Connection Requests
Approaching with InMail Messages
Part 4: Turning Leads into Valuable Relationships
Chapter 9: Developing a Daily Routine
Achieving Social-Selling Success in 30 Minutes
Tracking Your Saved Leads and Accounts
Monitoring Recommended Leads and Accounts
Managing Your Sales Navigator Inbox
Engaging with Leads Using PointDrive
Chapter 10: Using the Mobile App
Accessing the Sales Navigator App
Monitoring Activity on Your Home Screen
Perusing Recommendations in Today’s Discovery
Searching with the Sales Navigator App
Managing Saved Leads
Accessing Your Account Settings
Part 5: The Part of Tens
Chapter 11: Ten Tips for Advanced Lead Generation
Quantity versus Quality
Saving Connections as Leads
Increasing Response Rates and Engagement with Your Profile
Best Practices for Requesting an Introduction
Conversation Starters
Managing Your Sales Navigator Inbox
InMail Do’s and Don’ts
Adding and Saving Your Default Signature
Adding Attachments to Your InMail Messages
LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Gmail
Chapter 12: Ten Tips for Account Management
Accessing Administrator Settings
Viewing Account Types and Billing Information
Connecting Sales Navigator to Your Company’s CRM System
Managing Access to InMail and Messaging
Enabling TeamLink
Activating New Users
Checking Activation Status and Sending Reminders
Removing Users
Viewing Usage Reports
Exporting or Printing Usage Reports
Chapter 13: Ten Social-Selling Leaders to Follow
Melonie Dodaro
Jan Willem Alphenaar
Koka Sexton
Neal Schaffer
Mic Adam
Richard van der Blom
Alex Kroon
Mark Williams
Wendy van Gilst
Gabe Villamizar
Chapter 14: Ten More Social-Selling Resources
LinkedIn Profile Cheat Sheet
LinkedIn Unlocked
LinkedIn Sales Blog
Social Selling LinkedIn Search
#Social Selling Twitter Search
Anders Pink
Top Dog Social Media
Venture Harbour
HubSpot Sales Blog
Harvard Business Review
About the Author
Advertisement Page
Connect with Dummies
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Introduction
Salespeople need leads. That’s nothing new. What has changed though, is the way in which salespeople get new leads. In 1995, cold-calling was hot, no pun intended. You just bought yourself a list of leads and started calling everyone on that list. Or you ripped a few pages out of the telephone directory in your hotel room and started knocking on doors. That’s something I used to do — successfully, too!
Would that still work today? Of course not! For starters, there are no telephone directories in hotel rooms anymore. I suppose you could go online to find and print a list of leads and then start knocking on doors. But if you can go online, so can your buyers. And they do!
Your buyers are not just relying on Google to find what they are looking for, either. In fact, a 2014 study by IBM revealed that 75 percent of customers use social media as part of their buying process (www.nancypekala.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ibm-social-selling.pdf). An even bigger challenge for salespeople is that according to a study by HubSpot, only 29 percent of people want to talk to a salesperson to learn more about a product or service, while 62 percent will consult a search engine (www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics).
This is why many salespeople rank prospecting as one of the most difficult parts of the sales process.
LinkedIn recognized this rapid change in the world of sales and introduced Sales Navigator in 2012 to help salespeople with their social-selling efforts. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a premium subscription service designed to help salespeople identify, follow, and connect with decision-makers. At the time, it was still part of the main LinkedIn professional networking site. In 2014, around the time LinkedIn attained 300 million users, LinkedIn Sales Navigator was introduced as a stand-alone tool.
About This Book
LinkedIn Sales Navigator For Dummies is your comprehensive guide to using Sales Navigator for social selling on LinkedIn. I introduce you to all the features of LinkedIn Sales Navigator and even show you how to sign up, if you haven’t done that already. This book is useful whether you’re just starting out with social selling or you’re an experienced social seller already. In addition to showing you how to map the buyer’s journey, identify and connect with leads, and become top-of-mind with your leads, it addresses what techniques are effective on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, helping you determine your own successful social-selling strategy.
How This Book Is Organized
This book is divided into the following five parts:
Part 1: Getting Ready to Generate Leads
In this part of the book I show you how to plan your roadmap for social-selling success and identify your ideal buying personas. I start our journey by taking a deeper look at the definition of social selling and how social selling can help you increase your sales results.
Part 2: Building a Database of Leads
In the previous part, you identified your ideal buying personas. Now that you know who to look for, in this part 1 show you how to find them with Sales Navigator. I also show you how to save your searches, leads, and accounts.
Part 3: Engaging with Leads
You’ve now added a bunch of leads and accounts. Now what? Well, these people you are now following may not even know that you exist. In this part, we look at how you can get on their radar in a non-pushy manner. In this part 1 also show you how to reach out to your leads using connection requests and InMail messages.
Part 4: Turning Leads into Valuable Relationships
Fifty percent of identified sales leads are still not ready to buy. One of the first sales lessons I learned was that when a potential client says “no,” he or she usually means “not now.” Therefore, it’s important that when potential clients say no, you don’t just forget about them and move on to the next. In this part 1 show you how to encourage the people you’re following to think of you first when they’re ready to buy.
Part 5: The Part of Tens
This is one of my favorite parts, as I get to share some advanced strategies here. For starters, I share ten tips for advanced lead generation within Sales Navigator. These tips will work best for you if you’ve already read the first four parts of this book and you’re comfortable using Sales Navigator. I also include ten tips on how to make the most out of managing your accounts.
There are many people who inspire me in the LinkedIn and social-selling world. So, in this part, I include a list of ten people who I believe you should also follow, as their content is highly valuable. And for the readers who just cannot get enough, I also include ten additional resources you may want to consult to up your social-selling game. Some are free, some are not, but all are excellent!
Foolish Assumptions
In writing this book I assume that you:
Are a sales professional familiar with LinkedIn with an established LinkedIn network.
Recognize that social networking — and social selling — is becoming more and more prevalent among your businesses and your customers.
Either have a Sales Navigator account or plan on signing up for one.
Icons Used in This Book
Throughout this book you’ll find special icons that call your attention to important information. Here’s what to expect:
This icon is used for (more) helpful suggestions and additional tidbits of information you may find useful.
Everything is worth remembering in this book, but this icon points out the specific information that bears repeating.
This icon is used when you should heed my advice to avoid potential pitfalls.
Where to Go from Here
If you don’t know where you’re going, Chapter 1 is a good place to start. However, if you see a particular topic that piques your interest, feel free to jump ahead to that chapter. Each chapter is written to stand on its own, so you can start reading anywhere in the book and skip around as you see fit.
This book also comes with a free Social Selling Strategy Cheat Sheet that gives you seven quick strategies on how to quickly and efficiently optimize your social-selling game plan. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for LinkedIn Sales Navigator For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the Search box.
Now, go get you social-selling game on! I wish you the very best.
Part 1
Getting Ready to Generate Leads
IN THIS PART …
Learning the formula for success in social selling
Understanding the “four pillars of social setting” according to LinkedIn
Deciding which Sales Navigator plan is right for you
Using TeamLink for expanding your network exponentially
Planning your roadmap for success in social selling
Chapter 1
Selling Is a Social Business
IN THIS CHAPTER
Defining social selling
Discussing the ins and outs of LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Activating your account
Identifying the important features
Social media has been around for over a decade, and social media marketing isn’t that much younger. It’s only been in the past five years or so that sales professionals have really harnessed the power of social media to connect with prospects and close the deal.
In this chapter, I discuss what social selling is and what goes into a successful social-selling endeavor. I also introduce you to a powerful tool, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and tell you about two of its especially robust features — the Social Selling Index and TeamLink — that will help you take your social selling to the next level.
Defining Social Selling
What is social selling exactly? It’s pretty much just what the name sounds like — utilizing online social channels for selling purposes. Sales professionals interact with prospective customers through social media by answering questions and providing helpful content in order to move the potential customer through the sales funnel.
When it comes to having a successful social-selling strategy in your organization, you need to know right from the start that social selling is about both outbound prospecting and inbound marketing:
Outbound prospecting:
involves gathering intelligence and learning as much as possible about your customer base.
Inbound marketing:
is the process of building a pipeline of leads by providing content, such as in the form of newsletters, blogs, and postings on social media platforms.
Most sales teams are already using tools like LinkedIn and Twitter to learn about their customer bases. It’s the process of building an inbound marketing system, however, that’s the hard part. That’s because the process of discovering, curating, and sharing content can take significant time from someone’s day. This is why LinkedIn Sales Navigator is such a game changer. It gives you the ability to do both outbound prospecting and inbound marketing all on one platform.
Looking at the Four Pillars of Social Selling
According to LinkedIn, social selling involves taking a four-pronged approach that it dubbed the “four pillars of social selling.” These four pillars are defined as follows:
Create a professional brand.
Having a strong professional brand shows prospects that your company is active in all areas of the industry. Customers only do business with brands they trust.
Focus on the right prospects.
LinkedIn states that over 76 percent of buyers are open to having a conversation with a sales professional via social media. Sales Navigator helps you identify the right decision-maker with whom to have this conversation through the use of filters and advanced search functions.
Engage with insights.
Position yourself as a subject matter expert and thought leader by sharing helpful industry news as well as commenting on posts made by others. This helps salespeople remain in potential clients’ minds.
Build trusted relationships.
Establish a rapport with prospects by identifying a common ground. Provide relevant content that addresses their pain points as opposed to some generic sales materials that try to cover every feature of your product.
Collecting, Connecting, Converting: The Formula for Success
Collecting, connecting, and converting are often called the “three C’s of online sales” (see Figure 1-1). However, they are the key ingredients to the recipe of any type of sales, not just the online variety. If you were speaking with someone who knew nothing at all about sales, and you say that all it comes down to are those three words, they’d know exactly what to do to make a sale (in theory, of course). Here’s a refresher to set the stage:
Collecting:
This is how a business gathers its intel about contacts and leads. The methodology used differs depending on the organization and where the potential customer is in the buying cycle, but collecting generally includes things like capturing email addresses via landing pages, webinar sign-ups, and opt-in forms. It’s best to try out different collection methods to ensure you’re using the best one for your needs.
Connecting:
Here’s where an organization makes the first contact with the prospective customer, be it through automated response email or other personalized follow-up sequences. It’s important that the connection method used is specific to the recipient. It must speak to the buyer’s needs at the precise time and location in the buyer’s journey to bring the recipient closer to the sale. (
Chapter 3
is dedicated to the buyer’s journey.)
Converting:
Now we get to enjoy the fruits of our labors. Converting is when the
potential
customer becomes an
actual
customer, or at least becomes a well-qualified lead. The point is that the customer took a direct step further along the buyer’s journey, be it scheduling a demo or making an actual purchase.
FIGURE 1-1: The three C’s of online sales.
The three C’s may seem overwhelming or maybe even like a waste of time. You may even be tempted to skip a step or two. But never fear! LinkedIn created a helpful, robust sales tool that helps professionals move through those stages (hopefully) without a hitch. It’s what we all came here for. It’s LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and it’s time we jumped right into it!
Exploring the Sales Navigator Plans
As of this writing, LinkedIn offers everyone a free month to try LinkedIn Sales Navigator. After that, LinkedIn offers three Sales Navigator plans: Professional, Team, and Enterprise. Each plan comes with specific benefits:
Professional:
$79.99 per month (billed monthly) or $779.88 per year (which breaks down to $64.99 per month) when you buy an annual subscription. This account includes the following features:
20 InMail messages per month
1,500 saved leads
Who’s viewed your profile
Extended LinkedIn network access
Advanced lead and company search
Lead and account recommendations
Territory preferences
Job change alerts
Prospect and company news alerts
Sales Navigator for Gmail
Notes and tags
Learning center
Sales Navigator Mobile App
Team:
$129.99 per month (billed monthly) or $1,199.88 per year (which breaks down to $99.99 per month) when you buy an annual subscription. This account includes everything in the Professional-level plan plus the following features (the benefits marked with double asterisks [
**
] are only available for accounts with ten or more team members):
Search includes people who follow your company page
10 additional InMail messages per month
3,500 additional saved leads (5,000 total)
10 PointDrive presentations per month
Team network warm introductions with TeamLink Extend
CRM (customer relationship management) integrations
25 out-of-network unlocks per month
Basic seat management
Usage reporting
Volume and multi-year discounts
**
Invoicing**
A dedicated relationship manager
**
Enterprise:
Pricing depends on the needs of your organization so you must call for specific pricing information. This account includes everything in the Professional- and Team-level plans in addition to the following features:
20 additional InMail messages per month
5,000 additional saved leads (10,000 total)
Unlimited PointDrive presentations per month
Company network warm introductions with TeamLink Extend
Single sign-on integrations
Enterprise-grade seat management
Activating Your Sales Navigator Account
Now that we’ve gone through the nitty-gritty about what each subscription plan offers, it’s time to sign up! You can begin your journey into LinkedIn Sales Navigator–land directly from your personal LinkedIn account.
Once you’re logged into your LinkedIn account from a desktop computer, follow these steps to activate a Sales Navigator account:
Click the Work (or More) icon in the main navigation menu bar at the top of your screen, as shown in Figure 1-2.
This icon looks like a grid with six squares. A drop-down menu appears.
Select the Sales Solutions option.
You are now on the Sales Navigator home page as shown in Figure 1-3.
This set of steps assumes you’re ready to purchase a Sales Navigator plan. If you’re still trying to decide if the service is right for you, you can either request a demo or sign up for a free trial (individual accounts only) by following Steps 1 and 2 and then selecting either the Request Free Demo or Start Your Free Trial button and following the on-screen prompts. If you are ready to purchase a plan, continue to Step 3.
Click Compare Plans in the top menu bar.
You see the subscription plan options shown in Figure 1-4.
In the subscription box of choice, click the Buy Now button.
If you’re buying a subscription for yourself or a small team, select the Professional-level plan. If you’re making the purchase for a team of two to ten people, you may select the Team option; although, some of the benefits of the Team-level plan (such as PointDrive) only become available when ten or more licences are purchased directly from LinkedIn (not online). With a team over ten people you also have the option to select an Enterprise-level plan, and you must also call to speak with a LinkedIn Sales Navigator sales representative. The remainder of these steps take you through the process to purchase a Professional-level plan.
You can purchase a plan at an annual rate and save up to 25 percent on the monthly cost, or you can choose the convenience of a monthly subscription and pay a little bit more.
On the page that appears, click the Select Plan button in the purple highlighted box (Figure 1-5).
At this point the page slides down and you’re finally presented with a button to click to actually sign up for the service! You never thought we’d get there, huh? Well, we made it … almost.
Click the Start My Free Month button.
I know, I know. What do you have to do to actually buy a subscription?! This is a good thing, though! LinkedIn gives you the first month for free, regardless of whether you are ready to purchase a subscription or not. That way, if you decide it’s not the right tool for your needs, there’s no commitment and you don’t lose any money.
Enter your payment information and click the Review Order (for credit card payments) button or the Continue to PayPal button.
LinkedIn requires you to either enter in a credit card number or connect your PayPal account to start your trial subscription since you will be charged automatically each month once your free trial month is over. If you click Continue to PayPal, you finish the transaction on the PayPal website.
If after you start the free trial you decide you don’t want to purchase the plan after all, but you don’t cancel within that first month, your official subscription will start and you will be charged.
If everything looks correct, click the Start Your Free Trial button.
Congratulations! Now the fun begins!
FIGURE 1-2: Click the Work icon to access Sales Navigator.
FIGURE 1-3: Your introduction to Sales Navigator.
FIGURE 1-4: The three Sales Navigator plan options.
FIGURE 1-5: Select the plan you wish to purchase.
Measuring Efforts with the Social Selling Index
You’re probably eager to jump right in and start tinkering around with your new sales tool. If you take nothing else away from this book, however, take away the fact that you have to have a plan. The saying, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” exists for a reason! So, before we get into the nitty-gritty of Sales Navigator, there are a few topics to discuss to ensure you make the most out of your subscription.
The first of those topics is the Social Selling Index (SSI). SSI is the measurement of how your sales activities are performing. Sales Navigator has a special SSI dashboard that paints you a picture of how your social-selling endeavors are going as well as how you stack up against your LinkedIn network as a whole. It tracks your progress over time, showing you where you’re performing the best and where there’s room for improvement.
As shown in Figure 1-6, the SSI dashboard illustrates how you’re performing on each of the four elements of social selling — establishing your brand, finding the right people to connect with, engaging with the data gained through insights, and building relationships with both your sales peers as well as prospects.
FIGURE 1-6: Get a clear picture of your Social Selling Index on your dashboard.
The Social Selling Index isn’t just some gimmick LinkedIn thought up to give sales professionals something cool to look at. LinkedIn data shows that social-selling leaders — those individuals with high scores in all four categories — create 45 percent more opportunities than their peers with lower scores, and they are 51 percent more likely to reach their sales quota when utilizing this data to improve their social-selling skills. The numbers don’t lie, folks! Social selling is imperative for success in sales these days, and keeping an eye on your SSI in LinkedIn is the perfect way to ensure you’re staying at the top of your game. Check out Chapter 4 for more details on accessing your SSI dashboard and the importance of always keeping track of your SSI score.
Opening Access with TeamLink
If you have a Team- or Enterprise-level Sales Navigator plan, you have access to an extremely helpful feature called TeamLink. TeamLink is a tool that allows you to view and search the connections of the team members with whom you share a Sales Navigator account.
Even if you’re not directly connected to your teammates on LinkedIn (and why not?), you can still view their first-degree connections (in other words, the people they are directly connected to), thereby opening up your network exponentially. You don’t have this capability with personal LinkedIn profiles or with the Professional-level Sales Navigator plan.
In the Team- or Enterprise-level plans the TeamLink feature is enabled by default in the Settings menu, which is also where you can choose to turn off the feature if you see fit (but why would you?). With access to this information you can easily see who on your team can connect you with potential leads. The search function even suggests the best path to take in terms of who to leverage in order to make these introductions to the prospect. Everyone knows that one of the hardest parts of sales is having to make cold calls, but with TeamLink, this “call” warms up considerably, increasing your chance of making a successful connection — and maybe even a sale down the line. Sales Navigator even gives you the option to just show TeamLink leads when searching for prospects, as this can often be the most low-hanging fruit.
