Linkedin: Sales + Marketing
(book excerpt from How to Sell on LinkedIn)
Aligning Sales & Marketing on LinkedIn:
Historically, marketing would tell customers what they wanted and sales would tell them why they wanted it. Today, readily available information has empowered customers and has shifted the sales game. Having sales and marketing aligned around LinkedIn can prove to be a powerful combination. Lack of alignment between the two can be deadly for the business.
“All it takes is hearing one too many times ‘Where are the good leads?’ from sales and ‘You don’t follow-up on everything’ from marketing to know there’s an opportunity for better alignment.” ~ Greg Forrest, Sr. Manager, Marketing Operations & Demand Center, Concur
As a salesperson, you expect company executives to have sales and marketing teams aligned around similar goals or key performance indicators (KPIs). If you aren’t sure, it doesn’t hurt to ask and as an individual sales person you should.
How:
- Ask marketing what their short and long term plans efforts for LinkedIn are.
- Ask marketing for suggestions on how you could improve—even if their suggestions don’t help in the short term, you will be first on their list if they want to test something with their marketing dollars and might provide you with bonus exposure on LinkedIn.
- Stay abreast of marketing’s activity on LinkedIn; you never want a client to know more about your business than you do.
- Ask what premium services marketing is currently paying for on LinkedIn and if there is any way you can leverage these.
For more tips, check out my book How to Sell on LinkedIn.
