Back in August 2011, LinkedIn released a product called “LinkedIn for Salesforce” which, with time, would finally become the Sales Navigator. It allowed you to integrate your Salesforce and LinkedIn accounts, in order to have access to your Salesforce profiles and merge them with the social network, getting more information from your contacts.
What is the new LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
According to their blog’s explanation, “Sales Navigator is a data-driven product that enhances the buyer-seller relationship and makes it more efficient. Tapping into the power of our network of 313 million members, and the data that underlies it, we make it easy for sales professionals to stay updated about key accounts, focus on the right people, and build trusted relationships along the way”.
Some of the main key features are:
- Lead and account recommendations
- Job changes, common connections notifications
- CRM integration with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics
But, why is LinkedIn interested
Social Networks are useful far beyond checking your friend’s holiday pictures and #Icebucketchallenge’s all over the world. They can be used as a selling channel, a concept known today as Social Selling, that has become a way of generating lots of profit for people like Lewis Howes, one of the most known “social sellers” on LinkedIn.
And LinkedIn knows that its platform can be an awesome tool for you to increase sales. You can connect with millions of people in a wide range of categories and sectors, all over the world, that would be really difficult to connect with otherwise by using traditional channels like cold calls or emails.
But, first of all, let’s check some data on why is it so important that we shift into a new selling reality:
- There are, on average, 5.4 people involved in each buying decision process. (These are the people you need to contact in a traditional sales process until you reach the Decision Maker).
- 75% of B2B buyers use social media to be more informed on vendors.
- 76% of buyers prefer a vendor recommended by their network in order to trust her/him.
- 90% of Decision Makers never respond to a cold outreach.
Checking these numbers, it is quite clear that we need to develop our social selling skills and, if we are a company, integrate it into our strategy to sell our products.
So, how exactly is LinkedIn Sales Navigator going to help us boost our sales?
We were asking ourselves this same question, and that’s why we took part
They were talking about the 3 objectives that LinkedIn is trying to solve with its new product: focus on the right people on the right companies, stay informed and build trust.
1. Focus on the right people
By changing your settings and introducing which people and sectors are you interested in, LinkedIn’s algorithm will automatically start showing you the people profiles and company pages that are more relevant to you. You can then save the leads that fit your needs and see
Source: LinkedIn
2. Stay informed
You’ll get sales insights in order to do a more effective selling. You’ll be able to see what are your leads
Also, with the Sales Navigator, you’ll be able to access and contact all LinkedIn’s database, far beyond from your 3rd degree, and unlock their full profile. (Remember that LinkedIn works based on degree connections, being the 1st-degree ones your contacts; 2nd-degree ones your contacts’ contacts with whom you are not linked; and 3rd-degree ones, people with whom there are 2 degrees of contacts between you and your targets, so you can’t see their full profile.)
Source: LinkedIn
3. Build trusted relationships
You won’t buy something from someone you don’t trust right? Well,
So, we can see that Social Selling era is here to stay and replace the old and annoying cold prospecting era. If the new LinkedIn Sales Navigator can simplify this process for us, then it will be worth giving it a try (but don’t forget that,
If you need more information or you want to contact their sales department for a demo, check LinkedIn’s Business webpage.
And, If you are interested in developing your own
