In modern sales, an omni‐channel approach to prospecting and sales engagement gives you the highest probability of reaching the right prospect, at the right time, with the right message. From the phone and email to video, direct and text messaging, and social media, B2B sales professionals have more ways to engage prospects than at any time in history.
LinkedIn, in particular, has become a crucial part of the modern B2B toolkit. For the sales profession, LinkedIn is the most important technological advancement since the telephone.
I've endured my share of salespeople who whine that they are not comfortable on social media, don't know how to use it, think it is a waste of time, and mostly complain that they don't have time for it. If you are in this camp, then you need to wake up – and fast!
There has never been a time in sales when so much information about so many buyers was this easy to access. And not just contact information, but context. Through the social channel, we gain glimpses into our prospects' behaviour, desires, preferences, and triggers that drive buying behaviour and open buying windows.
It is critical that you include LinkedIn in your sales strategy. As a sales tool, it is essential. No matter what you are selling, LinkedIn is no longer optional.
To be blunt, it is stupid to ignore LinkedIn. Pure sales malpractice. Eventually it will be a death sentence for your career.
Enter Daniel Disney, a man who lives and breathes LinkedIn. Daniel's passion and energy for LinkedIn is infectious, motivating, and present on every page. It makes this wonderful book hard to put down.
What I love most about this book is that it is short on theory and long on how‐to. It is a practical deep dive into every facet of LinkedIn. Daniel teaches you exactly how to leverage and master LinkedIn for lead generation, prospecting, advancing pipeline opportunities, and elevating your personal brand.
If you are ready to master LinkedIn and gain a distinct competitive edge in the marketplace, start reading now. But, before you get started, stop and grab your highlighter. I promise you will need it.
1 – Jeb Blount, CEO of Sales Gravy (www.salesgravy.com) & author of Virtual Selling: A Quick‐Start Guide to Leveraging Video, Technology, and Virtual Communication Channels to Engage Remote Buyers and Close Deals Fast
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
My name is Daniel Disney, and firstly, no, I am not related to Walt Disney (that I know of anyway).
I am on a mission to help everyone leverage LinkedIn to its full potential to grow their personal brands, grow their businesses, generate more leads and sell more.
What separates me from 99% of the LinkedIn experts and trainers out there is that I am a salesperson at heart, not a marketer.
Whilst I have learned how to generate a very large amount of consistent qualified inbound leads from LinkedIn, grow brands and reach millions of people through content, my passion and focus has always been, and will always be, selling.
Here are a few of my LinkedIn achievements:
70,000+ Personal LinkedIn Profile Followers
650,000+ LinkedIn Company Page Followers
£Millions in Revenue from LinkedIn
300+ Articles Published on LinkedIn
150 Million+ Content Views Every Year
10,000+ New Followers Every Single Month
No.1 Most Influential Sales Expert on LinkedIn 2018, 2019 and 2020
Not only have I achieved a lot on LinkedIn, but I continue to do this every single day, even as you're reading this book right now.
I leverage LinkedIn and social selling not only to sell my LinkedIn training courses and international keynote talks, but I use it to sell advertising packages for my other business, The Daily Sales. I utilise everything that you will read in this book to generate opportunities, grow relationships, close sales and manage accounts selling advertising space and media partnerships.
What you'll read in this book are tried, tested, proven and mastered techniques, strategies and tips for turning LinkedIn into a lead generating and sales closing machine.
For more information on me and what I offer, along with daily social selling, LinkedIn and sales tips, follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, subscribe to my YouTube channel and check out my website –
MY LINKEDIN JOURNEY
I joined LinkedIn on Monday 15th October 2012 after joining a fast‐growing tech business as their Regional Sales Manager. Tasked with bringing on new big accounts, I started doing what I had always done, picking up the phone and cold‐calling.
One morning, a few weeks into the role, an email came through from ‘LinkedIn’. The headline mentioned that someone I knew had sent me a connection request through LinkedIn. (Now, even if you don't have LinkedIn, people can add you from your email address, which in turn prompts people not using LinkedIn to create a profile.)
Curious, I took a look at this social network called LinkedIn. It didn't look like Facebook or Twitter, it was filled with professional content, people had job titles, it was like an online networking event. I set up my profile and accepted the connection request.
After struggling to get through to some of the larger companies that I was targeting, one problem kept cropping up. Every time I would get through the gatekeeper, nine times out of 10 they would only connect me to the decision maker IF I had their name. The problem was that the information I had wasn't fantastic and often didn't come with names, or where it did they were people who had left many, many years ago.
One account was really bugging me, as I had a strong feeling it would be a really good fit and a really good opportunity. So, I logged into LinkedIn and decided to search for their company page. When I scrolled around, I noticed there was a page within it that had all of their employees listed. I clicked through, scrolled around and then right there in front of my eyes was the full name of the decision maker I had been trying to reach for weeks.
Barely two to three minutes of scrolling on LinkedIn and I'd found something that I had needed for weeks, the key to get through the tough gatekeeper door. I phoned up the company, gave them the name and was connected straightaway.
This was the start of my LinkedIn journey.
After learning that particular function on LinkedIn, I then started to read the information on my prospects' profiles. Before I knew it, I was finding tons of valuable information that I could then use on sales calls and visits. The next progression was learning how to use the messaging function to start conversations with prospects and even progress/chase opportunities through the sales process. Eventually I was even closing deals through LinkedIn messages.
The
