Thanks Karen!

If you don’t think this is important - I’d suggest you ready Harvey Mackay’s book “Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty”.

There is yet another factor that I have not seen addressed as yet, and one that I am a bit uncomfortable with. I do not use LinkedIn as a sales tool because I caution this mode of intrusion, and/or the invasion of privacy.

Sure it is OK to use LI as a reference tool, and a research resource, and
I would feel a bit uncomfortable by “intruding” in this space just to sell somebody something.

You should read Jan’s post on better ways to use online systems for getting referrals.

http://www.salesteamtools.com/2008/02/14/what-would-you-give-for-an-introduction-to-your-ideal-prospect/

I even surfaced the question at our monthly meeting (consortium of Atlanta area Marketing pros) this morning. Result: 8 experts, almost as many perspectives, lively discussion . . . several new ideas for leveraging LinkedIn and other vehicles.

Anyway — Thanks for raising the question!

- Stone

Use it for both social and business purposes, prospects, and as much in life, the two do overlap. I have many business associates as friends that I have never done business with. Vice Versa. Rather, as a NETWORKING tool, it is a good , uh network, to keep in touch with people in similar veins.

Reconnect and communicate with people we would not have the oppportunity to do wo if it were not for email and tools like LinkedIn. Personally, I do not “use” the tool for prospecting - rather I try to employ the opportunity to get in touch, and keep in touch with resources. My two cents.

Re: #1 - I don’t honestly know how many C-level or VP-level Fortune 1000 people there are in LinkedIn. I do know that EVERY Fortune 1000 company is represented and it’s used by the staffing departments of most of them. But I think there’s a mistaken expectation that you have to be able to directly reach a C-level executive in order for it to be useful. How often do you actually sell directly to C-level executives as your first contact? That’s the key. Most of the time, isn’t it a VP or a Senior Manager or a Director who’s identifying the need and championing it for a C-level decision? And THOSE people are most definitely in there.

Re: #2 - You can set it so that your network is not browsable by your contacts, making it impossible for people to use “your network” as a prospecting ground. People could only request to contact specific people in your network that they discovered somehow else, and it would, in theory, be only people you knew doing so.

Re: #3 - It’s all in how you use it, and the vast majority of users don’t use it for quantity. Unfortunately, the increased visibility of those who do kind of skews the impression. Furthermore, it’s now quite common even for many of us who only connect with people we know to have 500+ connections (I’m approaching 700). I have yet to see ANY indication of a correlation between number of connections and business success. I get success stories all the time from people with just a couple of hundred connections. Sure, the unwanted connection invitations from strangers can be a nuisance, but they’ve taken steps to curtail that, and it certainly seems to have dropped off in the past year. Small price to pay for the benefit received, I think.

I’m a consultant practising strategic planning, new business development and highly creative projects for SME through to large international companies. The trust relationship allows me to get introductions to people who will see me and who do want to buy my B2B service.

It works both ways. By having a fully featured profile, prospects come to me to ask me to help them solve a complex problem, or to work out a new way to do something.

I don’t rely on it as my sole way of garnering new business, but it is just one tool in the whole Web 2.0 marketing armoury. It just happens to be one of the better ones.

That’s why I welcome new connections. And I don’t IDK anyone.

Like you, many of my prospects aren’t on LinkedIn. If they are, they’re usually 3 degrees or more away. That makes InMail just another way to cold call them. Instead, I use LinkedIn to keep track of my sales colleagues as they move from company to company.

To be fair, I have heard of one suggestion for salespeople to get prospect introductions on LinkedIn. A sales consulting company, Basho Strategies, hosts a seminar (now online) on how to effectively use LinkedIn to generate business for salespeople. They suggest looking at your network updates to see who your connections have recently added. If those new connections are interesting to you, then reach out to your connection and ask for an introduction.

- Michael

They don’t have voicemail on their cellphones, not because they don’t like voicemail, but because they can’t record a greeting nor figure out how to listen or reply to one.

It’s a face-to-face industry, where handshakes are still the only way to make a deal, which is why I drive 250-350 miles a day shaking hands and visiting an owner on a project site, not behind a desk.

I spoke at a conference the other day and asked who uses LinkedIn - lots of folks raised their hand. I asked one individual how many contacts he had and he said around 150. I asked how many of them are real customers, someone who sent him a purchase order or signed a contract. The answer was 2.

So how does a business drive more business is leveraging social networking? Check out salesconx.com a marketplace for business networking. Think of LinkedIn meets eBay.

Evan

I think it does good things for people in areas of networking. I have gotten back in touch with a few people I lost track of over the years. I see it like “classmates” on steroids- I just don’t see it as a tool to really generate business for the reasons I outlined in the post. There are tools with a much better fit, one of which I will introduce in the next few days.

For people that read this post, I would love to be proven wrong here. Do you use LinkedIn to generate business? If not, how *do* you use it?

Mike, you say “your industry” will never use tools like these, not even for networking. Why do you say that? What makes your industry uniquely different from others here?