etailinsights eCommerce Data and Sales Blog
Sales Hack: Share Their LinkedIn Post
posted by Darren Pierce
Sharing on LinkedIn
Where are the gorillas?
A note to those who have been living under a rock for 10 years… “Welcome back! LinkedIn is important now.”
Founded in late 2002, LinkedIn began with a revenue model of selling their user’s willfully contributed information to recruiters. While this was going on, LinkedIn was quietly building the most comprehensive and accurate “social network” of professionals in the United States. On June 13, 2016, Microsoft decided the time was right to acquire LinkedIn, a professional social network of over 100 Million active users worldwide, for a reported $26.2 Billion. A tip of the cap to you, LinkedIn.
My favorite part of LinkedIn is the ability to connect with others and pick up what’s happening in the SaaS sales ecosystem. Although we find LinkedIn to be a bit light on eCommerce contacts, it is still a wonderful free tool to use for any software sales professional, especially when targeting the Fortune 500. And members are constantly posting their own blog topics or other handy articles/announcements that are worth reading.
Hint: If you want to find gorillas, go to the zoo. If you want to find your prospects, go to LinkedIn. You see, as SaaS salespeople, we go where our prospects hang out. And many of them are active on LinkedIn – posting, liking, sharing, connecting, and just hanging out.
Sales Hack: Share Their LinkedIn Post
“Ok… I’m here. I’m logged in to LinkedIn. What now?”
No seriously, we get that question a lot. It’s why there are dozens of social selling consultants popping up each week. Everyone wants to know how to use LinkedIn in the most effective manner. In fact, we even got into the game with social selling video blog posts such as How to Successfully Set Scheduled Meetings Prior to a Trade Show. You see, SaaS salespeople know where the Gorillas are now, but they don’t know how to get their attention.
LinkedIn prohibits the direct solicitation of someone you don’t know or haven’t worked with in the past. Not to worry, give this a try:
- In the top navigation search, change the type of search to “Posts.”
- Search for the CEO of your prospect by name. In my case, I searched for Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Computers
- Michael Dell and I are not connected, but his most recent post came up in the search with a giant blue button saying “Share.” Click that, and share with your network. And, guess what? Now you have worked together, you helped him evangelize his most recent post to your own network.
- Now, you can invite Michael to connect. Be sure to include a short note in the invite that you love his most recent post and you recently shared it. You look forward to working together more in the future.
- Once he accepts the invite, set a reminder for yourself to share another one of his posts in the future. This will be simpler, now that you are connected, and you can see all of his most recent posts.
