LinkedIn re-launched the LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator on 31st July 2014, a new tool to support social sales. A similar service was previously offered as part of the premium subscription but the re-release of the tool as a standalone product and app aims to be attractive to businesses’ needing up-to-date information from LinkedIn about potential leads.
Social selling is about establishing a presence on social networks to find the right people, get insights, engage with those people and build trust. This enables sales professionals to be better at sales lead generation, sales prospecting, cold calling, building and maintaining relationships, and much more!
One of the main advantages of the LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the opportunity to use it for collaboration. By signing up a whole sales team, the company would receive licenses for each employee to link the team and pull networks of sales team into one master network. This enables a team to learn more about potential clients as the everyone will be able to see how the lead is potentially connected (1st related) and therefore they might get information about them before the first contact is madet. Furthermore LinkedIn offers the synchronisation of the app with a company’s CRM system (Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics) so that they can import their existing contacts. All accounts will be mapped within the application and based on preferences, LinkedIn will also suggest new accounts. On top of this, the app allows users to search for companies and professionals. Once the potential clients are found, it is possible to save leads, comments and dates in Sales Navigator, in order to to make a note for a follow-up-call. Once the sales person is connected with selected accounts their activities and news would show up on the ‘home’ page within the app and the user would be able to watch the relationship movement and take action accordingly.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is currently only in English language available for desktop and mobile web, but the company has plans to launch mobile apps in multiple languages.
This is a product relaunch and so it is imperative LinkedIn ensures the new release succeeds where the previous one didn't. They appear to have worked hard to upgrade the service to make it a wholly Sales focused product.
Another risk is the increased awareness of the risk of sharing sensitive information with applications and websites. Companies may not feel comfortable uploading all of their contacts and networks on to the platform in the fear that a hack (much like the password hack in 2012) might occur again. Although contact information is not always highly sensitive, there is no evidence of exactly what data they import into their system
Finally, the biggest decider in the success of the Sales Navigator will be its reception with both sales professionals and other users of LinkedIn. Some are already expressing fears that they will be targeted by unwanted sales attention more now than ever due to vague connections made via Linkedin. There is no option to opt out of being on the receiving end of the service at this point, so the risk runs high that individuals will resist the new product.
The market-leading new tool is aimed at sales professionals on LinkedIn. Much like Talent Solutions is for recruiters, LinkedIn hopes to gain traction in the sales industry by giving sales people specific access to potential clients through the sites well established networks. Find out how this works in more detail further on.“The launch of the new Sales Navigator underscores our opportunity to continue building scalable, diverse businesses that add value for both our members and customers.” (Derezin, 2014)
Social selling is about establishing a presence on social networks to find the right people, get insights, engage with those people and build trust. This enables sales professionals to be better at sales lead generation, sales prospecting, cold calling, building and maintaining relationships, and much more!
In a lay man’s terms social selling could be described as the ability to sell yourself in terms of social capital: using your social connections and sociability as a driving force for sales. That can extend to applying the affordances of social technology or social media so as to sell a product or market yourself as a professional.
According to Forbes social selling is not just about starting the sales process with social tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Social selling is about sales people building a strong personal brand. LinkedIn markets social selling as a tool that drives result. LinkedIn's Sales solutions provide the tools to do social selling right.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn uses its impressive database to allow people using the tool to receive targeted lead recommendations based on their own networks and Customer Relations Management (CRM) profiles. It also allows the user to follow potential leads and get timely insights on the people and companies they care about. Major features of the new tool include Teamlink, Premium searches with Lead Builder, Real-Time Sales Updates and InMail Messages. The application is designed for a sales user interface. Subscribers would get inserts based on news alerts, updates by that person or updates by people in that company. But the basic requirement to be successful with the LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a strong professional brand. To support building this brand, LinkedIn launched a new premium subscription type ‘Spotlight’ in June 2014.
At present, the Sales Navigator application is available at 3 upgrades levels.
At present, the Sales Navigator application is available at 3 upgrades levels.
- Sales Basic
- Sales Professional (AUD69.99/MO Annual)
- Sales Team (AUD107.99/MO Annual)
Depending on the version chosen, you can view the services provided here.
To support the launch, LinkedIn currently offers a free subscription month available for all members to test the new product. One of the main advantages of the LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the opportunity to use it for collaboration. By signing up a whole sales team, the company would receive licenses for each employee to link the team and pull networks of sales team into one master network. This enables a team to learn more about potential clients as the everyone will be able to see how the lead is potentially connected (1st related) and therefore they might get information about them before the first contact is madet. Furthermore LinkedIn offers the synchronisation of the app with a company’s CRM system (Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics) so that they can import their existing contacts. All accounts will be mapped within the application and based on preferences, LinkedIn will also suggest new accounts. On top of this, the app allows users to search for companies and professionals. Once the potential clients are found, it is possible to save leads, comments and dates in Sales Navigator, in order to to make a note for a follow-up-call. Once the sales person is connected with selected accounts their activities and news would show up on the ‘home’ page within the app and the user would be able to watch the relationship movement and take action accordingly.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is currently only in English language available for desktop and mobile web, but the company has plans to launch mobile apps in multiple languages.
This is a comparison (from LinkedIn itself) of the differences between the standard LinkedIn.com and Sales Navigator Application.
Risks
This is a product relaunch and so it is imperative LinkedIn ensures the new release succeeds where the previous one didn't. They appear to have worked hard to upgrade the service to make it a wholly Sales focused product.
Another risk is the increased awareness of the risk of sharing sensitive information with applications and websites. Companies may not feel comfortable uploading all of their contacts and networks on to the platform in the fear that a hack (much like the password hack in 2012) might occur again. Although contact information is not always highly sensitive, there is no evidence of exactly what data they import into their system
Finally, the biggest decider in the success of the Sales Navigator will be its reception with both sales professionals and other users of LinkedIn. Some are already expressing fears that they will be targeted by unwanted sales attention more now than ever due to vague connections made via Linkedin. There is no option to opt out of being on the receiving end of the service at this point, so the risk runs high that individuals will resist the new product.