Powerful ways Sales Managers can attract Social Sales Professionals

LinkedIn has been a great platform for me to promote my personal brand, drive thought leadership and build personal business relationships. Of course, this all starts with how you position yourself on LinkedIn. Remember positioning yourself is not bragging about how great you are. It is positioning yourself in the eyes of your clients. What is it you can do and provide to them?

Just as youth dominates the sports scene, youth is and will continue to change the selling landscape.

Well this got me thinking........ Positioning yourself is a great way for V.P. of Sales, Sales Managers and principal owners to attract high quality, social selling sales professionals.

Lets face it, the talent pool is sometimes challenging when it comes to finding the ideal candidate. All of us who have been in a sales management capacity have probably run through the course of options when trying to find that special person.

A great place to start is with your LinkedIn profile. Take a look at your profile and ask yourself, “Does my current profile speak to my accolades as a sales manager or does it speak to what potential sales professionals want to hear?"

Here are a few quick tips to think about…..

1. Professional headline. This is your moment to grab the attention of the ideal candidate. Most people are not aware your professional headline follows you wherever you go on LinkedIn. This means every post, every comment, group discussion and published article. Would a professional headline of Sales Manager at XYZ Company entice someone to want to know more versus Helping sales professionals meet their quotas through coaching and collaboration?
2. Summary Section. This is the second most powerful part of your LinkedIn profile. I love this section! In 2,000 words or less this describes to people who you are, what motivates you, why you do what you do and how you can help sales professionals get to the next level in their careers. I am a huge fan of story-telling. Why not tell your story of how you can help? Appeal to their emotional side and position yourself as a relationship builder.

We all know the workforce is changing at a rapid pace. What appeals to the generation of adults today is vastly different from the generation of 20 years ago. Retooling your LinkedIn profiles to appeal to the generation who leverage social media to communicate is a great way to attract and build a talent pool to interview.

Social media and social selling are not going anywhere. As sales managers and principal owners we must be open to change in order to grow our businesses. What better way to build this than leveraging being “social” and incorporating this into your daily business routines. Remember "Rome wasn't built in a day" and neither is growing sales.

Check out my special LinkedIn report for sales managers

This is my two cents, hope you enjoyed.

About Larry Levine, I coach copier sales professionals by helping them tell their story on LinkedIn. I provide marketing services to help independent office technology dealers thrive in a changing marketplace. I am huge L.A. Dodger fan and fitness fanatic. You can follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, www.dealermarketing.net/what-we-do/linkedin and www.dealermarketing.net