The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

LinkedIn is the most popular professional social networking site out there, which means if you have a B2B business or cater to other professionals in a specific industry, it could be the ideal platform for growing your business.

By now, you’ve updated your LinkedIn profile using the Ultimate LinkedIn Profile Checklist. Now you want more engagement, you want your LinkedIn posts to attract more viewers and increase shares—but where do you even start?

While recently chatting with a new salesperson about setting appointments with new business target accounts, the seller said, “I never leave a message if my call goes into voicemail. I don’t want to waste time leaving a message.”

It’s no secret that leaving a good sales voicemail is hard. Even the most well-crafted messages often get ignored by prospects. However, leaving a voicemail is a wise investment and a critical part of the sales process that enables sellers to stand out and connect with prospects, and here are four reasons why.

As sales professionals, one of the biggest challenges we face is trying to connect with a new prospect. With so many different touchpoints, it’s easy for a prospect to avoid or ignore your voicemails, emails, texts, or LinkedIn request.

If you want your message to stand out, it’s critical that you have a solid valid business reason (VBR) that establishes you as trusted and valued. However, it’s equally important to ensure you have a strong email subject line. You can have the best valid business reason on the planet, but if the email is never opened by the intended recipient, what good is it?

If you fail two out of every three at-bats in the Major League, you'll end up in the Hall of Fame. If you fail 90% of the time as a venture capitalist, you'll end up being a multi-millionaire—possibly a billionaire.

So, why are salespeople afraid to fail? And why do sales managers often berate a salesperson when they fail? If you’re never failing, then you’re probably never winning either. We tell our team to take risks and explore new opportunities, but are we reiterating that embracing failure is actually good for business?

From personal branding and thought leadership to prospecting, lead nurturing, and recruiting—there are many benefits to using LinkedIn as a sales professional. The problem is that sales professionals don't have time to set up or update the basics of their LinkedIn accounts to best represent them and their company. 

You can't build a great building on a weak foundation, and the LinkedIn profile is just that: the foundation that could affect the success of your social efforts. Use this checklist to ensure your profile is updated and the best representation of your personal brand, the products you sell, and what you have to offer a prospect.

Technology has disrupted the traditional techniques we have used to approach prospects. Today, the most successful developers of new business have a smart and focused prospecting strategy.  They concentrate their efforts on a disciplined strategy that provides more appointments and more revenue. 

The shotgun approach of yesteryear is dead. Before technology disrupted our approach, we could sit down, call 100 prospects, and get ten appointments. Any mention of not having enough appointments was met by your sales manager with, “This is a numbers game! Sit down with the phone, and don’t quit calling until you get ten appointments.”  Today that strategy is total folly. 

Whether it's in the gym or on the field, athletes like Michael Jordan and Tom Brady are known for being the hardest workers during practice. And, as the greatest athletes of all time, they're not out there trying to learn something new—they're simply practicing the basics.

Josh Kaufman, author of The Personal MBA, writes that to go from “knowing nothing to being pretty good” actually takes about 20 hours of practice—that’s 45 minutes every day for a month. As leaders, we're accustomed to being great at what we do. But in order to learn something new and help your salespeople get better, everyone must practice. 

Historically, the term sales collateral referred to one-sheets and brochures that often hung on a wall, and when the sales team met with a client or prospect, they would grab a one-sheet to help build their case—and it worked great! In the 21st Century, you need more.

Someone once said that perceptions can’t be wrong because it’s a perception, an opinion and impression of someone else. However, perceptions are often wrong because if they were right, they would be called facts.  

Whether we deserve it or not, we’re judged by every person that we connect with. The words that come out of our mouth firmly establish an imaginary tattoo on our forehead as we stand in front of a quality prospect.

Perception is everything, and how you’re seen by your team, prospects, and clients is a key to success. New research shows that you have 27 seconds to make a positive impression and 1 minute to prove value in any given situation. Like it or not, how you look, dress, and speak helps people to form an opinion of you.

The things you do are often more powerful than the things you say. 

New business prospects are more likely to increase their engagement level when they know a seller truly cares about them and their business. Think about your own buying habits—are you more likely to do business with someone who cares about you compared to a slick talking salesperson who only cares about making a sale?