7 LinkedIn Tips for Sales Professionals

Sales professionals can use LinkedIn to increase their network, learn about prospects, do research for sales opportunities, and communicate with decision makers. Here are 7 tips for sales professionals to optimize LinkedIn:

  • If your profile isn’t complete, your potential connections might not trust who you are when you reach out to them. Flesh it out with relevant information that helps potential connections learn about you, and maybe even trust you too. Here is a list of ten overused buzzwords you should avoid in your profile.

 

  • Grow your network audaciously. If you want to use LinkedIn for sales purposes, it’s well advised to have a very large network. I’m not talking hundreds of first-degree contacts; I’m talking thousands, if not more.

 

  • Ask for introductions from your connections. When you do searches, make sure you don’t forget your first-degree contacts as you reach out to prospective contacts. As you do this, you’ll put your brand and messaging top-of-mind with your first-degree contacts. Make sure to foster individual relationships so you don’t just take-take-take in the affiliation. Remember: Relationships are two-way streets.

 

  • Join Groups where your audience is, or where their contacts are. Contribute to Group Discussions, but more importantly, browse through the members to look for contacts that you can convert. Send Group Members Inmail messages with clear, concise messaging—focus on the relationship, but let them know why you want to connect and how they can benefit from your relationship. The last thing you should do is send a template message like so:

LinkedIn invitation

 

 

  • Consider advertising on LinkedIn. Their new advertising features afford you with the ability to choose certain types of LinkedIn users. It’s comparatively expensive, but the ads go in front of a demographic that is supposedly above average in regard to income, professional status, and decision-making power.

 

  • Become a LinkedIn writer. All LinkedIn users with connections are able to publish articles on LinkedIn Pulse. If enough people read, share and like the articles, LinkedIn will give them wider distribution – just like the content its Influencers are publishing.

 

  • Make yourself searchable. Many sales professionals forget to share their profiles with major search engines and hide their profiles from internal searches. Wrong move if you are in sales. Be sure to also include your email and work number as well as ensure that whatever is visible online is up-to-date.

To be successful in sales, you need access to a powerful tool that will enable you to measure and maintain your sales pipeline management. You need a tool that will allow you to quickly calculate such things as Number of Leads, The Average Cost Per Conversion and Drop Off/Win Rate. That’s InfoFlo! Click here to learn more about InfoFlo CRM.

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8 Ways to Improve Your Rapport Building Skills

Here are 8 tips for our customers on how to build customer rapport in sales:

  1. Make sure your body language, words, and tone of voice are all professionally aligned. I remember one time I was told, “I’m sorry, you’ll be much happier with this solution instead,” which made very upset. I wasn’t upset with the fact that he was trying to solve my problem. On the contrary, I would have preferred someone to correct me if I was wrong. His body language showed me otherwise – a person who looked at me as another customer wasting his time. He was already eyeballing the next customer walking through the doors.
  2. Always make eye contact with the person(s) you are conferring with. Don’t stare at one person in particular – look at everyone equally. They say that there’s only three degrees of separation between equality (looking squarely at someone), self-centeredness (looking down at someone), and insecurity (looking up at someone with a raised head).
  3. Be genuine in your excitement and enthusiasm. Customers are easily influenced by a sales representative who is confident in their sales skills and loves their job.
  4. Watch how you speak to people. Try to match the pitch, speed, and volume of the person(s) speaking to/with you. That means, if someone is talking in a quiet voice, you should do the same.
  5. Check your attitude problems at the door. Use your positive body language list to reposition your attitude until your mood improves.
  6. Listen before talking. The last thing you want is to talk about you and your products/services and how they are great. Perhaps the customer wants something different. You will never know until you ask.
  7. Eliminate the “I” in every sentence you say. Replace the “I” with “you”. How will the customer benefit from your products or services?
  8. Sales agents should be able to adapt their approach – there is no reason to think that all customers should be approached using the same style.

Remember that it takes less then one minute to make an impression with a decision maker. Make the right impression and you will develop trust and get the sale. Develop the wrong impression and you will lose the business to someone else.

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6 Mental Skills All Successful Sales Managers Have In Common

Looking to become successful in sales, especially if you are in a cut-throat, competitive industry? Here are 6 mental skills that all successful sales managers have in common. It would help you to have them as well.

 

1. Attitude

Successful sales managers realize that attitude is just a choice and that they should always choose the one that is positive. They view each prospect as an opportunity to compete and learn from their successes and failures. More so, they pursue excellence, as opposed to perfection, and realize that being a successful sales manager does not always mean being perfect.

 

2. Motivation

Successful sales managers realize the rewards and benefits of their work. They are able to persist through the difficult tasks and slow times, especially when the rewards and benefits are immediately imminent.

 

3. Goals & Commitment

Successful sales managers have goals that are realistic, both short term and long term. They are aware of how well they are currently performing and are able to develop detailed plans that will help lead them to their goals.

 

4. Self-Talk

Successful managers in sales are able to maintain self-confidence during slow times with realistic and positive self-persuasion. They would coach themselves as they would their best friends or colleagues. They would also use self-talk to control negative behaviors and thoughts during competitive and slow times.

 

5. People Skills

Successful managers in sales realize that they are part of a team and that they cannot prosper alone without the help of their teammates. When appropriate, the managers communicate their thoughts and feelings to the people that listen to them. They also have effective skills for dealing with difficult clients, opponents and colleagues.

 

6. Customer Intelligence

The best sales managers understand that their business cannot survive without customers, and the better they understand their customers, the more successful they are likely to be. They thereby create specific personas for their target customers.

 

To be successful in sales, you need access to a powerful tool that will enable you to measure and maintain your sales pipeline management. You need a tool that will allow you to quickly calculate such things as Number of Leads, The Average Cost Per Conversion and Drop Off/Win Rate. That’s InfoFlo! Click here to learn more about InfoFlo CRM.

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7 Characteristics of Productive Sales Reps

We surveyed 100 sales managers who recently purchased one of our CRM Software package. Here are 7 characteristics that they believe all productive sales reps should have:

 

sales-productivity

 

1. Plan Your Day

The surveyed sales managers suggested planning daily activities the night before, which would allow you to get the ground running earlier each and every day.

2. Get Enough Sleep

The average time a sales manager sleeps is 7 hours. Several sleep studies cited in a recent WSJ article have also argued that seven hours is the optimal amount of sleep when it comes to various cognitive and health markers.

3. Drink Coffee

Over 50% of our surveyed sales manager stated that they relied on coffee in order to get into their daily routine. According to FDA, 200-400 mg of coffee is safe enough to drink for the everyday adult. Too much of it can cause restlessness, tremors, irritability and insomnia.

4. Embrace Mobile

Mobile devices are the key to modern sales productivity. Over 75% of sales managers surveyed listed Evernote and their CRM tools as their most used productivity tools.

5. Leadership

Respect and trust are easy words to say, but much harder to earn with customers. A great sales rep will practice what they preach- they inspire those who matter to them and to whom they matter to through example.

6. Take Initiative

Sales reps don’t wait for orders. They’re go-getters and take matters into their own hands. Being disciplined like this helps salesmen to stay on track. If something has to be sold, there is a way to do it.

7. CRM

All our sales managers agreed that their CRM tool was important and helped them become productive. The tool helped them organize their prospecting efforts, manage and share tasks, record details about specific customer calls and more.

To be successful in sales, you need access to a powerful tool that will enable you to measure and maintain your sales pipeline management. You need a tool that will allow you to quickly calculate such things as Number of Leads, The Average Cost Per Conversion and Drop Off/Win Rate. That’s InfoFlo! Click here to learn more about InfoFlo CRM.

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