It seems that every day I find a new reason to get excited about LinkedIn.
Yesterday it was because I was contacted by a trainer who I hadn’t heard from in ages who has had a baby and wants to come back and work for us.
And today, it was because I realised that one day, perhaps sooner than we think, LinkedIn might become more important to me than our CRM system.
A bit of back story: a mate of mine is looking at setting up a company in Australia, and he wanted to know whether I could set him up some meetings in Melbourne. The first place I thought of was LinkedIn. Within about 4 seconds I discovered all of my contacts in Melbourne, 54 in total, and their up to date information. There is no WAY I could have found that information so easily in one place in any other system I have. (I pasted a picture below for you to check out).
How long is it before we can use LinkedIn as a starting point for all of our customer contact? Already we can make notes on people, and save their details. I haven’t checked this but we can also probably send out traditional mail, host conferences and virtual exhibitions, use it as a platform for virtual meetings and everything else.
If you…
- Don’t get the whole LinkedIn vibe at the moment,
- Only have 16 contacts, and
- Don’t have a photo up
…then maybe it’s time to get a bit more motivated about LinkedIn. PARTICULARLY if you are in sales, Account Management or some sort of client liaison role. Maybe it could make your life just that little bit easier?
Give us a call if you would like to find out more, or check out our new book, The Natural Sales Evolution: Your Customers Have Evolved – Have You? where we include a whole chapter on simple ways to generate new leads with LinkedIn.
Maybe calling LinkedIn our next CRM is taking things a bit too far. But I do kind of like the idea of having a warm, alive, community database rather than ours which is rather one-way, one-dimensional and a bit dull compared to LinkedIn!
