Top Salespeople Use LinkedIn to Sell More

Steve W. Martin (Harvard Business Review) recently interviewed 54 top salespeople about how they use LinkedIn to research accounts, prospect for leads, and generate sales. All of the study participants sell technology-based products to the IT departments of mid to large size companies.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="150"] Image via CrunchBase[/caption]

The study included three types of salespeople: 33% were inside salespeople who sell exclusively over the phone, 41% were outside field reps responsible for acquiring new accounts, and 26% were outside field reps who managed existing client account.

More: Top Salespeople Use LinkedIn to Sell More - Steve W. Martin - Harvard Business Review.

Should you add things to your to-do list you've already done, just to cross them off?

I am a fan, to some extent, of to-do lists. I know of people who add things they've already done, so they can cross them off. Somehow I just can't wrap my arms around it though.

Do you do this? Does it really help?

At the end of the day, add items to your list that weren't there but which you accomplished, just so you can cross them off. "This gives you a sense of productivity," Williams says.

via How to Conquer Your To-Do List CIO.com.

Are we big enough to apologize for firing people because of our incomptence, not theirs?

When I read this I was stunned. It is the right thing to admit this, but I have never heard anyone say they fired people and it is because of their own incompetence.

I must confess. I am in the same boat here. Some of the people I've fired were incompetent. Some weren't and I was the problem. In a big organization, sometimes it doesn't seem to matter. To the people it happens to, it does matter.

So here is the challenge. Go back through the last few years. What percent falls into one group or another?

Then think through. What can I do to prevent that from happening next time?

As the year ends you think about your life, your accomplishments, your failures. In my case, as a tech entrepreneur I was thinking, not about the thousands of people I hired in my life through my companies and who did well and sometimes very well, but about the people I have had to fire. These people come in two distinct groups. The ones I had to fire because they were incompetent and the ones I had to fire because I was incompetent.

With the first group I am at ease. But this post is dedicated to the second group. The ones I had to fire because my start up didn't take off as planned. Like the first employees at Fon, we had to fire half of them only to hire others three years later. Like Fon took off, but later. It was hire, fire then hire again. Before at Jazztel the same thing happened: we hired too many, we then had to lay off hundreds and over time Jazztel has gone to an employee count that is at its highest ever. For both Fon and Jazztel, 2012 has been the best years of their existence but this is little consolation to the people I had to fire at the time. To those I owe an apology. My only excuse really is that the life of an entrepreneur is one of trial and error, and in my quest to build great companies I have to give things a try, and sometimes I am dead wrong. And people lose their jobs because of that. And they have families, mortgages, plans, and they suffer.

So here it is: this is an apology to all of those I had to fire in my life because I screwed up, because I failed, because I was incompetent. I am really sorry.

via An Apology | LinkedIn.

Motivate millennials, bill customers later, Klout perks, LinkedIn recruting and more

Motivate Millennials: Take a Cue From Video Games Millennials don't readily accept doing tasks just because "I said so." They want to understand why they should do something--the overall objective, goal, or purpose. And they want to wrap their heads around how the work that we do as a company impacts our customers. To keep millenials engaged, take time to explain the purpose, and cause and effect of how their role is important. Just like popular video games, they need a princess or a kingdom to save.

Bill Customers Later, Get Paid Now Just in time for the holiday shopping season, PayPal will let you offer customers a buy now, pay later option. Bonus: You get paid right away.

Klout Makes Perks Easier to Claim Klout announced several enhancements to its Perks program Wednesday, including an update to its iPhone app as well as a new Passbook card.

How Small Businesses Can Use LinkedIn to Recruit In one sense, LinkedIn has revolutionized job recruiting, but in another sense it hasn't. After all, the social network is just a giant database of potential employees. To actually recruit, you still have to email or even -- gulp -- pick up the phone. If you're a small business, you have to do some number-crunching to determine how much to invest in LinkedIn. If you're looking to fill just one or two positions, then spending $7,000 or so for LinkedIn Recruiter might be a bit extravagant. However, if you considered hiring a specialist or firm to fill those positions, that 15% to 30% of a hire's first-year salary might go to the recruiter.

Applying Customer Centricity Beyond the Private Sector Customer centricity is often associated with steps that companies in the private sector can take to build closer relationships with their customers and to deliver products, services, and experiences that are designed with the customer in mind. But customer centricity doesn't just apply to the business world. As a Peppers & Rogers Group white paper points out, a growing number of governments, associations, and non-profits around the world are adopting best practices from the business community and designing citizen-centric offerings and experiences for its constituents.

Are you putting your career at risk by not building your social network?

This is powerful. Think 5 years from now. Not too hard to do in some cases. Or, think 2 or 3. Will you regret not moving faster? I'm thinking we will.

Let's move fast. Let's get with it.

Picture yourself as an Executive in 2017, struggling to make sense of how many of your peers failed to become social. Many of them pushed aside by their more savvy underlings who built up both internal and external social networks. Their large networks wield tremendous power, collective intelligence and the ability to influence both employees and customers. Many of the executives that didn’t adapt were caught in a type of ‘vocational innovator’s dilemma’; where they stubbornly refused to change despite the warning signs.

Welcome to the new world. It’s the same as the old – only faster, smarter and a bit more effective.

via SAP's CIO: You're Putting Your Executive Career at Risk if You're Not Social - Forbes.

It is a social revolution. And it isn't going away.

It is a full scale social revolution. So some questions:

• Do you have accounts on all the current social media?


• Are you active and post content?


• Do you respond to others?


• Do you use rich media like photos and video?

This where we are headed fast. For leaders of organizations, do your employees see that you get it? Are you there and relevant? Are you willing to be open?

The future is here and now. Imagine it is the year 2017. Other leaders have been part of the social revolution for years. You decide to start. Will it be too late then?

Related articles

• The social revolution is a trust revolution (customerthink.com)


• Dreamforce 2012: Businesses must prepare for social revolution (itpro.co.uk)


• Dreamforce 2012 Keynote (slideshare.net)


• Salesforce.com's Benioff fine-tunes social enterprise, revolution rhetoric (zdnet.com)