To help a sales team hit their numbers, sometimes sales leaders must perform a little air traffic control to determine how sales reps are using their time. It’s easier than you might think for sales leaders to help their team accelerate sales. It begins by helping sales reps harness the power of their social networks—especially LinkedIn.
Amar Sheth, a trainer on social selling and vice president of customer success at Sales for Life, says sales leaders can drive better results by helping their team obtain actionable and timely information through LinkedIn. In this issue of Promotional Consultant Today, we explore the tactical plays Sheth encourages sales leaders to put in motion.
1. Know every key stakeholder moving into accounts. If you’re not using LinkedIn to research contacts and stakeholders in your accounts, it’s time to change up your approach. Sheth says it’s crucial to know every key contact and stakeholder by focusing on your accounts, territory or account segment on LinkedIn. You can set up a LinkedIn advanced search for accounts with key titles or geographies, enabling you to see every person joining specific accounts. Instead of wondering what’s going on within accounts, sales reps can see the latest happenings and obtain the knowledge to help propel deals forward.
2. Know when past employees join key accounts. Sheth recommends sales leaders also keep track of when past employees of successful clients join key target accounts. If you have a spectacular case study-type customer that loses key players to an account you’re pursuing, they could be more receptive to your message. You know these people have the right buying titles since they’re coming from a successful client. Of all the people you could be spending time on, past employees are well worth the pursuit.
3. Create a power user list to seek rapid referrals. Everyone can do this step, whether your title is regional vice president or sales manager. Sheth says to get a list of all the key contacts in your most successful customer accounts and begin to research their LinkedIn networks. If their networks are open, you can search for other key people they can introduce you to. You might discover that you serve on the board with a prospect that one of your colleagues is targeting. LinkedIn can help reveal many important relationships and linkages when you take the time to seek them out. Too many sales leaders leave this opportunity untapped.
When you’re a sales leader trying to reach your sales goal, try implementing the tactics above. You can set up and run these plays today, whether you have the free version of LinkedIn or LinkedIn Sales Navigator. When you do, you can spend more productive time with your team and make strategy and coaching the focus of your meetings instead of asking sales reps for details and activity reports.
Source: Amar Sheth is vice president of customer success at Sales for Life. He has trained thousands of people around the world on social selling through a style that blends storytelling and motivation.
