I began my professional career as a sales rep for a fortune 500 company selling office equipment.  Competition was fierce and the product I was selling had become a commodity.  The best way to make a sale with some margins, was to put people into the market.  That meant I had to find the accounts before my competition did and show them how my product could make their lives better.  My tool of choice, cold calling.  Fortunately today there is a tool available that makes the task of prospecting a lot easier than knocking on doors.

Linkedin

If you are unfamiliar with Linkedin you are missing out on a great prospecting tool.  Linkedin is a social network for professionals.  On Linkedin, business professionals of all levels create profiles and share information in the hopes of finding business opportunities, new employees, and career opportunities.  What most people fail to realize is in the process of creating their account, they have shared a great deal of information about themselves.  Information that a smart sales rep or business owner can use to enter deals.

Linkedin’s Advanced Search

The real power of Linkedin lies in the advanced search functionality.  By clicking on advanced search in the upper right hand corner of the web page you can filter your keyword search by location, industry, title, company, and school.  When used correctly, Linkedin’s advanced search can unlock the doors leading into almost any deal.  

For example, you have been trying to set an appointment with the VP of marketing of a fortune 500 company for the last two years, but have been unsuccessful getting a contact name.  With the help of Linkedin’s advanced search you could search out the company and the title of the position that normally makes the decisions.  Assuming that person is on Linkedin, you can see who the contact is and read his / her profile, gaining valuable information that can be used to get the appointment.

Having a hard time getting past a gatekeeper?  Let’s go back to advanced search and type in the company name.  This will return a list of all the employees in that company who have Linkedin profiles.  Now start looking for some common ground.  See if you are a 1st connection (you are connected directly) or 2nd connection (one of your connections is directly connected) with any of the employees.  If you are a 1st connection, make a phone call to see if they can help you get an appointment.  If you are a 2nd connection, call the person you are connected with to ask for an introduction to the employee (2nd connection).  Leverage your connections to bypass the gate keeper all together.

Let’s look at one more possibility.  Let’s say you are a business owner or sales rep that focuses on a specific geographic territory.  It would be nice to have a list of all the people who have the title of CEO, President, Owner, Partner, and Member in that geographic territory.  Simply go to Linkedin’s advanced search and type in the location and title.  Linkedin will return a list of everyone with that title in your geographic region.

Linkedin is a very powerful prospecting tool that can help you better allocate your time as a business owner or sales rep.  Stop spending countless hours gathering information through cold calling and start using tools like Linkedin’s advanced search.

Have a Linkedin prospecting tip?  Let us know by posting a comment below.