LinkedIn as a sales lead tool? Not yet
- Summary:
- LinkedIn would like us to consider it as a sales lead building tool. It's a nice idea but from my experience it is flawed by poor execution.
I've been conducting something of an experiment the last week inside LinkedIn.
To date, most pundits have said that LinkedIn is the new CV repository. That has an interesting side effect. So for example, when you see a bunch of your contacts updating their profiles, it is (sometimes) a sign there's an uncomfortable re-org going on. From what I can tell, that's often true.
But in recent times, LinkedIn has been positioning itself as a place where you might prospect for leads. Here's the email info you get when signing up for the free trial:
On its face, this looks like a solid proposition but in order to test that there are a few things that need to happen. For a start, it's helpful to know who has reviewed your profile. So that gets a tick in the box. Except that when I look through, most of those who have reviewed my profile are people to whom I would likely have a connection anyway at some point. They are not necessarily the people I want to reach directly from a sales cycle standpoint.
Another way to test this comes from accepting invitations and then looking to see who else LinkedIn matches you against. In my case it appears that LI looks at who I am already linked to, attaches some sort of score to those existing patterns and then applies that to discover suggestions it makes on other people's behalf. So far, the results have been largely disappointing although there are exceptions.
Her's what I want to achieve but cannot. An existing contact has a group of connections that are very interesting to me but...in order to get to them, I have to invite their connections and select one of a handful of limiting options to indicate why they should connect. (see image) That's because those connections are more steps removed from me.And there's the rub. I don't have the connection, I only know them from their profile but would like to know more. It's like meeting someone at a party but not having the the magic intro phrase with which to say hello and start a conversation.
I suspect this goes back to how we make connections inside services like LinkedIn and other communities. We mimic what we always do in real life - connect first with those we already know, thus establishing a pattern from which the algorithm takes over. I'd go further.
It seems to me that the LI algos are rather crude. I don't for example see much evidence that they contextualize their suggestions based upon the breadcrumbs I leave by way of content. I may be wrong but even though LI unquestionably adds people I do not know today, too many of them are adjacent to those I already know and who are peripherally part of my existing party going troupes. What I really want are the outliers and an easy way to connect with those.
So for example, if I see someone who falls into that genuinely 'new' category and who has looked at my profile, I'd like a simple way of asking them how I might help them. Hang on - I can do that through the LI 'InMail' system. Except when I try (I am on the Basic Premium trial) it asks me to upgrade and even then, the number of InMails that can be sent is a paltry 3 or 10 per month depending on which plan I choose. I can attempt some introductions via others with whom I am already connected but that's a much slower method, based upon existing connection methods.
Verdict
LI works well as an online CV resource. It is clear many professionals prefer this community to others like Twitter. It is also clear that LIs relatively closed nature acts as a way to create naturally safe places where meaningful conversations can happen between like minded people. But as a sales lead builder?
I am far from convinced. So far, my experience tells me there are way too many barriers in place or it is simply too hard.
While the parallels between employment recruitment and sales lead building may seem tempting, the algorithms needed to work that through programmatically are fundamentally different. Until LI deals with that then I'm afraid the sales lead generation idea is interesting, but poorly executed.
Featured image: © Ben Chams - Fotolia.com