It is more important than ever to have a solid LinkedIn Profile.  Not just to maximize your presence, provide consistent branding but to attract prospects, investors and top talent.

In today’s business world, when we meet with a professional connection, the first thing many of us do is Google them.  Google yourself right now, is your LinkedIn profile one of the very first links that appears? Click through it, is your profile telling your story? Does it represent you the way that it should?  If you are like most professionals, it probably isn’t getting your message across. Here are a few tips to help you 

• Make sure your headline is more than just your title, it should be your value proposition

• Be sure to take advantage of all 3 website listings – even if it is highlighting 3 separate pages from 1 website

• Customize your Public Profile URL

• Add SEO (Search Engine Optimized) verbiage so you are found (Google Key Word Tool)

• Share press releases, company news and pertinent information in your newsfeed and in groups

• Add applications such as Slideshare and Box.net so you can share video, marketing collateral and PowerPoints 

BDU can help you with your profile CLICK HERE

To learn more about Leveraging LinkedIn check out our Video – 5 LinkedIn Tips so You Never Have to Cold Call Again!

Brynne Tillman 

3 Tools to Help Them Get There

The most customer facing group we have are the professionals answering the questions our clients are asking every day. Their interaction is a rapport building opportunity to create a customer loyalty experience, but it is also the best opportunity to identify other needs of theses clients.  There isn’t a better time to close than after an objection or issue has been handled, so, are you positioned to take advantage of those moments – are your customer service professionals identifying triggers that would generate a lead or conversation with the sales team?

Here are 3 tools that can help you right away: 

1. Create a list of triggers words or phrases so when the client says them the customer service represtative knows to ask qualifying questions

2. Make a list of quailifying questions that help identify an additional need and ask them to accept a call from the sales team to talk with them further about solutions related to the uncovered need

3. Create alliances and rapport between the sales team and customer service. Consider pairing them up and offering incentives for leads and business conversion.

BDU believes that a little bit of sales training in the customer service department will drive a lot of leads to your sales department, an investment that will pay dividends!

Bryn Bowersock

To schedule  a FREE 30 minute consultation please EMAIL US

All Sales Managers, VP and Director of Sales, and Business Owners need to ensure that their sales team is representing the company the way we expect it to, and that includes social media profiles.  Do you think prospects are googling your Sales Professionals to check them out? I bet they are, and guess what comes up first almost every time? Their LinkedIn Profile, front and center.  Doesn’t it make sense to have a handle on it? Here are 5 quick tips to work toward that goal:

1. Does your sales team have a consistent Profile, branding your company, telling the right story and representing your company the way you would like to?
2. Do you have a system to collect the contact information of your sales team’s connection?
3. Is your sales team leveraging their warm market to get qualified introductions by identifying whom they know that knows their target prospect?
4. Are your team members in groups where their competition or prospects are hanging out? Most people tend to gravitate toward industry specific groups and are marketing to their peers not potential clients.
5. Are they posting quality content that is driving prospects to your website, or better yet converting into leads?

As a sales manager you have a one line job description, to make your sales team successful.

Sound easy? Actually, this can be a company’s biggest challenge.  In order to to be a good manager you need to be a great leader, but how does that happen? Often when managers “try” to lead they fail because they haven’t yet built trust within their team.  Trust is the number one attribute that a team must have in order to be led.  The individual sales team members must know that they are being led in the right direction with their interest in mind.  How do you instill this in the fabric of the team?

1. Your word needs to be trusted.  Don’t over promise and under-deliver. Even if your answer isn’t what they want to hear, they at least know you are honest.

2. You need to exude confidence for your product and service, enthusiastic about the job and dedicated to your company.

3. You should be purposeful in everything you do. Don’t waist their time by making sure every interaction is productive.

4. Set clear expectations with your team, if the expectations change – explain it well and avoid changing the rules and uping the anti as much as possible.  Think about the impact of change to the moral of the team and the risk/reward of making that change.

5. Have an open door policy. Your team needs to know that you can be trusted, you are a good listener, and are open to new ideas.

To schedule  a FREE 30 minute consultation please EMAIL US

My Father, Bob Gordon, was a quiet man with a dry wit and a deep sense of right and wrong.  In some ways he was very hard to get to know; he was not the best communicator and was often stubborn in his convictions.  My Dad was a CPA at some of the top firms on Wall Street and for the second half of his professional life had run his own successful practice in North Jersey.  He passed away with hundreds of clients who loved him, were loyal to him and could never have been wooed away by his competition…and guess what? He never sold one client on his services in his life. As a professional sales trainer this always seemed to be an anomaly to me.  ”How did he grow his business, pay his staff, his mortgage and go on vacation if he never sold”?  And, after years of wondering, it hit me last night, he didn’t sell – he solved. My Dad, the quiet man of few words, understood how to listen to the needs of the person on the other side of the desk. He did very little talking, but he did a lot of asking and listening.  He heard everything he needed to help his clients make the best financial decisions and he detached from what he got out of it. I doubt that he ever spent one moment thinking about how much he would make on each of his clients because his only goal was to do exactly what was right and best for them.

—Brynne Tillman