The need to increase sales is an ongoing process. Rather than becoming complacent after meeting your goals for the current fiscal year, you need to keep on working to stay ahead of your competition. To accomplish your goals you need to add new customers to your customer base. You need to generate more leads. Technology offers many online tools to generate leads. One of those tools, LinkedIn, will be the subject of today’s discussion.

The Role of LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become a hub for the business world. In case you aren’t yet a member, LinkedIn is a professionally focused social media tool whose primary goal is fostering online professional networking. The number of registered users is now more than 300 million. That represents an enormous opportunity for any business.

How to use LinkedIn

Prospecting on LinkedIn is becoming more and more popular. Even though there are other social websites that are used for this purpose, LinkedIn seems to provide a more natural environment because of its singular professional orientation.

• Join a group: Groups are the central focus for finding leads on LinkedIn. This is a great way to connect with prospects. There are a vast number of groups representing every (legitimate) industry in the world. By joining a group you get an opportunity to let other people know how you can offer solutions. Initially, it is best to take it slow and listen to the discussions in each group. Then, when you become familiar with the tone and focus of each group, join the conversation. Be there to supply solid, informative answers and background about issues that come up. Be a resource. In your posts don’t talk too much about yourself. Instead, talk about the problems you can solve and the pains you can remedy.
• Create your own group: The difference between joining a group and creating your own group is that you get to manage your own group. But it could be a while before your group will grow to a size significant enough to contribute to your lead generation. So, joining a large size group to start could be your best bet. However, basically you will be generating the leads the same way no matter what.
• Increase the size of your group: If you have more patience and want to start your own group you may want to take steps to grow your group quickly. LinkedIn has tools available to connect with the other members directly. Those members are known as your first-degree connections. The members connected to those connections on LinkedIn are known as the second-degree connections. But then they can also join your group thus enhancing the membership at a much faster rate
• Generate leads: Once you have established your presence on LinkedIn and members know what you are capable of doing, chances are that someone will want to connect with you for your services.

To Find and be Found: This phrase sums it all up. Most of today’s online activity revolves around this notion whether that activity is personal, social or professional. Any business activity (finding a location, setting up a business, forming sales and marketing teams, etc.) will be futile if you can’t find a customer or you can’t be found by a customer. There has to be a centralized location where a seller and a buyer can meet. In cyberspace, LinkedIn is that location..