I talk to a lot of sales leaders every week and very few I've spoken with give any training to their reps whatsoever about utilizing LinkedIn (other than reviewing the functionality of Sales Nav.).
Why aren't we setting our reps up for success in this arena? We teach them how to write an email, how to handle objections on the phone, etc but nothing for this specific (very important) channel. Curious to hear from people who have incorporated LI into their training and what the result was? Time well spent or complete waste of time?
Great conversation to start @scott-barker.
No, most sales leaders don’t because they often don’t know how to do it themselves. Which is ok, it’s a newer approach. It also has a marketing feel. As you know LI is about the long game and most sales leaders, especially start-up have a hard time justifying time spent on long game activities.
I am starting to see, and encourage, LI professional branding on job descriptions.
In fact, when I look at resumes one of the first places I go after a quick glance is to their LinkedIn profile and I specifically look to see how often they post, recent activity, etc. If I don’t see anything, I will point this out to my client so they understand how important it is. It’s not at the hiring requirement by any means, but it’s definitely a strong indicator IMO.
“As you know LI is about the long game and most sales leaders, especially start-up have a hard time justifying time spent on long game activities.” I could not agree more with this, @rharris415.
Too much of sales is “what did you do for me today?” “Oh, you spent 30 minutes curating a list on Sales Nav? That could have been time you spent dialing.” No thank you.
I think as we start to realize that sales development is modernizing and the role is no longer about getting in activity numbers we’ll see a shift to more autonomous reps. @scott-barker that’s where I think it hits your question “Why aren’t we setting our reps up for success in this arena?” We don’t *need* to train them if we expect them to just recite a script and send out templated emails to the list we provide them. Once we get past that mentality and move towards enabling a modern SDR, tools like SalesNav training will be much more commonplace.
Unfortunately a lot of the “coaching” I’ve seen is to
-connect with prospects on Linkedin
-Pitch them if/when they accept, since they are more likely to read that than an email
There are so many things leaders should be coaching reps on
1-Personal branding. The value of it, and how to do it right on Linkedin
2-Content creation. Why and how to do it.
3-Engaging with your audience the RIGHT way etc…..
Gabe Villamizar has published a few things around #1, and Hubspot has a lot of great resources as well. I’ve used both of those in the past, and also done custom training based on the personas of the people I’m training.
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Great question, Scott. For years, when I was still training, companies paid me to train their sellers how to use LinkedIn but it sometimes took convincing. Until I showed them the type of sales results that can be generated even using the FREE version.
I think the issue has 2 possible parts:
1. Sometimes sales leaders equate LinkedIn to Facebook or Insta. Something their kids, family and maybe they themselves play around on. They don’t think of LinkedIn as a strategic selling tool. Same can be said about their lack of understanding that Twitter is also an excellent sales tool IF you know what to do.
2. When a platform/product is FREE, I think that equates to easy to use and figure out. In other words, sales leaders figure it is free so how hard can it be? Why pay to train them? What they do not understand is that “clicking buttons” isn’t using LinkedIn (or any tool like it) to follow a strategic prospecting/buyer engagement process that drives measurable results that can be tracked. Since most reps don’t take the time to figure out how to use LinkedIn to their advantage, they flounder around and become frustrated.
Once I would point this out to sales leaders and take a few minutes to show them how fast they or someone on their team could use LinkedIn to achieve prospecting goals, especially if other methods were not working, they started drinking the kool-aid pretty fast.
That’s my 2 cents.
Hi @scott-barker This is a very interesting observation. I was appointed as a LinkedIn Learning Champion at my current place of employment. I suggested courses and advised our employees/teams regarding using LinkedIn.
LinkedIn has a lot of great courses and then a lot of courses that might not be pertinent to existing job functions, especially in the Sales roles. For instance, Photography is a great course I am sure, but not a key course for developing a Sales persons career.
We tried assigning for example 6 specific courses for everyone that had the title of sales in the job role.There was
no formal process to manage this. We kept up with the courses on a Career Development Form, and it was very tedious.
When we first launched LinkedIn Learning, everybody wanted a license, and it seemed as if there was great interest. We had everyone meet with their direct manager and discussed their career development, then HR issued the license.
I would say after about 60 days, the interest in LinkedIn Learning plummeted. We tried allowing one hour per week to take a course, but even with that, those that scheduled time on their calendar took that opportunity to do other tasks, like customer calls, etc.
We tried different things, like having a manager from a different department suggest a course. The problem with that was a lot of courses that were suggested didn’t align for everybody, and soon everyone disregarded the suggested courses.
I think as far as training goes, it can be produced internally and managed internally for best results, and quite economically I might add. That way the topics are way more job centric and you can manage the content. You can quiz employees on the subjects to see if they really took the course and to see what areas they still need work on. Perhaps I would suggest even picking a particular subject and having a Q & A and then sending out the recording and create a procedure for the team to keep up with their training.
If you have someone looking at implementing LinkedIn Learning, I would definitely do a cost analysis. Test it for 90 days or so (before signing the contract) , see how many courses were completed and compare that to their job functions, and try to figure out the possible ROI to the company.
I personally think LI Learning is like anything else, you get out what you put into it.
For the money and the time, I personally would create my own content and manage it. Just for more control and more pertinent information.
Thanks for the question, I hope I have helped. Cheers!
Macky
Love that your organization went after this. I wonder if they over-engineered.
IMO before you spend money on LinkedIn learning you need to make sure your sales team has the following…
3000 1st degree connections, period. With goals to 5k, 10k, 15k, etc.
Teaching reps how to leverage their own brand for success
Teaching reps how to become a voice in your industry on LI.
This is where real LI sales occurs, not from a course.
Maybe ya’ll did that already, but that’s where I think the focus for LI in sales needs to be.
Hey @rharris415 How are you? Thanks for the response!
Yes, I think they did over engineer, cost was involved.
It wasn’t offered to everyone in Sales at the same time .
That created animosity among some as I recall.
I don’t think upper management realized the value of having a
personal brand. You can’t hold a webinar once or twice on the
benefits of having your personal brand and expect results.
I think you need to set aside a portion of your day to work on
your personal brand.
Very interesting on your idea of the 1st degree connections.
That would take a very long time to go from 3K to 5K doing it
the correct way. Would you say that all of your 1st degree
connections need to be from the same/ current industry you are
in? I am curious, enquiring minds want to know!
Thanks for the response Richard!
Cheers!
Macky
Great questions Macky, and I am doing well. Hope you are too. Yes, it can take time to grow but you do it in small amounts. Can you get people to send 15 personalized invites to people each day? That’s 400+/ month. Some will do more as well.
Can you teach them, regardless of connections how to write and respond to posts? Yes, that builds brand more than connections.
As for industry, I think all sales reps should be connecting with sales people and leaders to keep learning, as well as connecting with others in your own industry, and focus content there.
Thank you for the great responses @rharris415
If I get back from Furlough city, I will definitely re-start this
LI Learning program using your suggestions.
Yes, I think it is best to connect across all industries.
Thanks Richard!
Macky