Lots of people talking about LinkedIn lately – especially in context of using it to generate more sales opportunities and leads.
For those of you unfamiliar with LinkedIn, the concept is fairly simple. It’s an online social networking hub – you create your personal profile with employment history, education and you start “linking” to people on the site that you know.
It’s easy to imagine how this network would grow quickly, putting you in potential contact with lots of new people through introductions of the folks you already know.
I’m all for finding new sales tools but I never found LinkedIn particularly suitable for generating business. But of course, people can disagree.
Here’s Scott Allen making a gleeful plea at Jill Konrath’s blog with three ways salespeople can use LinkedIn:
Lead Generation
Find and be found. Search by title and industry for the ideal contacts at your ideal customers. Search by title and company name for specific target customers.
Sales Acceleration
Search for people in your prospect’s company who are not closely involved in your deal – preferably 2nd degree contacts, not 3rd degree.
Solution Delivery
Quite often, especially for small businesses, you can’t do it all yourself. LinkedIn is invaluable for finding partners with particular skill sets who can help you deliver the total solution.
Great point by Scott – and in theory they’re all very true. And if you’re not in direct sales but more in the business of marketing yourself as a speaker, author or freelancer, Scott’s remarks might be even more valid.
The problem is, however, that for those of us selling products and services to “brick and mortar” Corporate America, reality often looks quite different.
Here are three reasons why I think LinkedIn is not a great business to business sales tool.
1. My prospects aren’t on LinkedIn – I have a profile and direct and indirect connections to friends, colleagues, people I reported to and folks that worked for me, even a few people with whom I worked on shared projects. Pretty powerful if you’re looking for a job and need a referral – or, as Scott suggests, are looking for someone who has a specific skill you need in a project you’re running.
But those are not the people I sell to. They’re not C-level folks in Fortune 1000 companies to whom I would like to be referred. Why are those people not there? Much of this could be related to point 2.
2. My network on LinkedIn isn’t private – This is another big issue for me. Sure, I could try to get some of my business network, the relationships with people that really matter to me from a business perspective, up and running on LinkedIn. But why on earth would I, if the contacts in my network aren’t 100% private from prying eyes and could in theory be used as a prospecting ground by others in the same industry.
3. LinkedIn drives quantity, not quality – LinkedIn’s membership system focuses in many ways on the goal of growing your network. Number of connections and number of recommendations you have received are a prominent part of your “standing” in the community. But members can add virtually anyone as their contact – which has resulted in an avalanche of invitation emails, often from people you don’t even know. So people end up with 500+ contacts, which is probably great for social networking but not so useful for generating business.
I mean, think about it. How many of those people do you even really know?
So don’t get us wrong, we do like LinkedIn. The social networking element is nice. The ability to ask your network questions and get great answers is very cool. But we feel it’s a long, long way from being what business to business salespeople would need to generate sales.
What are your thoughts?
Also read our post on Inquisix, a service that lets salespeople and business owners exchange trusted referrals.
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I always reply to requests from folks that use LinkedIn, but I don’t really use it, nor will I ever.
My industry will never use “tools” like this as a means to sell or network.
That being said, I don’t want to discout the people who want to link to me, so I gladly reply and link, hoping it may come full-circle some day and provide a contact at the right time.
I believe it’s like a ton of web apps out there. Great concept, people are scared not to be in it, but it really doesn’t do anything for the majority of them.
I will say there are definitely individuals who “collect” connections in Linkedin, however there are those of us who use the system in a different way. I use it for information gathering and account penetration, rather than trying to directly peddle my wares. I have found this to be helpful and productive – as with anything – it is what you do with the information that counts….
@Mike – Well, I disagree a bit with your last statement.
I think it does good things for people in areas of networking. I have gotten back in touch with a few people I lost track of over the years. I see it like “classmates” on steroids- I just don’t see it as a tool to really generate business for the reasons I outlined in the post. There are tools with a much better fit, one of which I will introduce in the next few days.
For people that read this post, I would love to be proven wrong here. Do you use LinkedIn to generate business? If not, how *do* you use it?
Mike, you say “your industry” will never use tools like these, not even for networking. Why do you say that? What makes your industry uniquely different from others here?
Karen, fair enough. Could you elaborate a bit on your “information gathering and account penetration” comment? How do you use LinkedIn to do that?
I couldn’t agree with you more. As a big fan and user of LinkedIn I use it just as you subscribe. It is pretty good in business development situations too – finding those 1-3 people you would like to work with at a different company. But driving 10+ clients through social networking – not likely.
I spoke at a conference the other day and asked who uses LinkedIn – lots of folks raised their hand. I asked one individual how many contacts he had and he said around 150. I asked how many of them are real customers, someone who sent him a purchase order or signed a contract. The answer was 2.
So how does a business drive more business is leveraging social networking? Check out salesconx.com a marketplace for business networking. Think of LinkedIn meets eBay.
Evan
What I mean is I can look at my 2nd degree contacts and gather valuable contact names and titles, which I then use to get past gate-keepers in the companies I am trying to break into. I find, just having that gets me further than cold-calling blind.
Hay Jan – I’m in the brick, stone and concrete block industry and some of my customers don’t even have voicemail in their office as of yet.
They don’t have voicemail on their cellphones, not because they don’t like voicemail, but because they can’t record a greeting nor figure out how to listen or reply to one.
It’s a face-to-face industry, where handshakes are still the only way to make a deal, which is why I drive 250-350 miles a day shaking hands and visiting an owner on a project site, not behind a desk.
Jan,
Interesting that you call LinkedIn a social networking site when I think they’d argue that they’re a business networking site. Their revenue model suggests that they’re actually a job posting site competing for recruiter $$’s with monster and theladders. A successful one, mind you. After all, they convinced many of us, including me, to upload our resumes for free.
Like you, many of my prospects aren’t on LinkedIn. If they are, they’re usually 3 degrees or more away. That makes InMail just another way to cold call them. Instead, I use LinkedIn to keep track of my sales colleagues as they move from company to company.
To be fair, I have heard of one suggestion for salespeople to get prospect introductions on LinkedIn. A sales consulting company, Basho Strategies, hosts a seminar (now online) on how to effectively use LinkedIn to generate business for salespeople. They suggest looking at your network updates to see who your connections have recently added. If those new connections are interesting to you, then reach out to your connection and ask for an introduction.
- Michael
Jan, I don’t think it’s about the 10, 20 or 500+ direct contacts, but about the 1,2 or 3M contacts you could reach through them.
I’m a consultant practising strategic planning, new business development and highly creative projects for SME through to large international companies. The trust relationship allows me to get introductions to people who will see me and who do want to buy my B2B service.
It works both ways. By having a fully featured profile, prospects come to me to ask me to help them solve a complex problem, or to work out a new way to do something.
I don’t rely on it as my sole way of garnering new business, but it is just one tool in the whole Web 2.0 marketing armoury. It just happens to be one of the better ones.
That’s why I welcome new connections. And I don’t IDK anyone.
Interesting counterpoints, Jan. I’ll see if I can’t shift my “gleeful plea” to a more persuasive argument.
Re: #1 – I don’t honestly know how many C-level or VP-level Fortune 1000 people there are in LinkedIn. I do know that EVERY Fortune 1000 company is represented and it’s used by the staffing departments of most of them. But I think there’s a mistaken expectation that you have to be able to directly reach a C-level executive in order for it to be useful. How often do you actually sell directly to C-level executives as your first contact? That’s the key. Most of the time, isn’t it a VP or a Senior Manager or a Director who’s identifying the need and championing it for a C-level decision? And THOSE people are most definitely in there.
Re: #2 – You can set it so that your network is not browsable by your contacts, making it impossible for people to use “your network” as a prospecting ground. People could only request to contact specific people in your network that they discovered somehow else, and it would, in theory, be only people you knew doing so.
Re: #3 – It’s all in how you use it, and the vast majority of users don’t use it for quantity. Unfortunately, the increased visibility of those who do kind of skews the impression. Furthermore, it’s now quite common even for many of us who only connect with people we know to have 500+ connections (I’m approaching 700). I have yet to see ANY indication of a correlation between number of connections and business success. I get success stories all the time from people with just a couple of hundred connections. Sure, the unwanted connection invitations from strangers can be a nuisance, but they’ve taken steps to curtail that, and it certainly seems to have dropped off in the past year. Small price to pay for the benefit received, I think.
Ok, maybe we call LinkedIn a Social Business Network.
Use it for both social and business purposes, prospects, and as much in life, the two do overlap. I have many business associates as friends that I have never done business with. Vice Versa. Rather, as a NETWORKING tool, it is a good , uh network, to keep in touch with people in similar veins.
Reconnect and communicate with people we would not have the oppportunity to do wo if it were not for email and tools like LinkedIn. Personally, I do not “use” the tool for prospecting – rather I try to employ the opportunity to get in touch, and keep in touch with resources. My two cents.
What a delight to find you Jan, and Sales Team Tools (lost track of you since “Eyes On Sales.”) I found this post — and the comment stream — so rich, I just had to let our own readers know about it.
I even surfaced the question at our monthly meeting (consortium of Atlanta area Marketing pros) this morning. Result: 8 experts, almost as many perspectives, lively discussion . . . several new ideas for leveraging LinkedIn and other vehicles.
Anyway — Thanks for raising the question!
- Stone
I have never felt like LinkedIn was a good sales tool either. It can help if you are looking for specific executives and you want to find out more about them, but not for lead generation. The way we prospect at my company is by targeting growing companies, by email marketing, and getting referrals.
Tom,
You should read Jan’s post on better ways to use online systems for getting referrals.
http://www.salesteamtools.com/2008/02/14/what-would-you-give-for-an-introduction-to-your-ideal-prospect/
P.S.
There is yet another factor that I have not seen addressed as yet, and one that I am a bit uncomfortable with. I do not use LinkedIn as a sales tool because I caution this mode of intrusion, and/or the invasion of privacy.
Sure it is OK to use LI as a reference tool, and a research resource, and
I would feel a bit uncomfortable by “intruding” in this space just to sell somebody something.
re: Bob – agreed…but isn’t a big part of sales the prework and research you do about contacts and companies you are trying to get into?
If you don’t think this is important – I’d suggest you ready Harvey Mackay’s book “Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty”.
Absolutely correct Karen. That is why I mentioned that I do use LinkedIN for research and reference resources…and I will also look look down in the well : “Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty”.
Thanks Karen!
@Bob VL…. you said it in one sentece very well…
“… do not use LinkedIn as a sales tool because I caution this mode of intrusion, and/or the invasion of privacy.”….
Linkedin
If it is get linked to someone I know, it is fine. But I wouldn’t use it for prospecting, since a) I don’t want to hookup with someone I don’t know yet 2) missing value of recommendations
Linked allows now hide your contact list completely even from your contacts:
This setting is in “Connections Browse”
Inquisix
As such Linkedin is valuable to keep existing links but does not represent value of a recommendation. For this Inquisix is better. But these 2 services don’t compete necessary. It’s almost like comparing a Facebook with Myspace for example. Both are social networking sites but different proposition.
Jigsaw, Demandbase
Jigsaw and Demandbase are for purchase of self-maintained lists for cold calling. Also a different category.
Salesconx
Salesconox is an extreme case of misusing links (warm connections) and selling them for profit as lists. I think this particular service should be banned.
First of all, I am a big Jil Konrath fan, and agree with her points. However, you make good contrarian opinions.
I also think that another great feature of LinkedIn is that it allows you to find connections when they move from one job to another. What if an old colleague changed jobs, didn’t tell you, and is now working at a company that you want to sell to?
This is another reason that I believe int he power on LinkedIn.
Thanks,
Pat O’Malley
http://www.PatrickOmalley.com
Great article. It’s good to read something contrary to the hype.