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Sales professionals are increasingly finding value in building their own leads and pipeline through social selling. According to the Sandler Training, “We’ve found that many sales professionals struggle with this mysterious task called ‘social selling.’ It’s the kind of thing they know they should do — the kind of thing they are often told they’re doing incorrectly — and maybe even get frustrated with themselves because they sometimes don’t know what to do.”

In “LinkedIn the Sandler Way,” Sandler Training and LinkedIn Sales Solutions share secrets to uncovering ideas for prospecting and selling online. These “secrets” are only secret in the sense that, for most salespeople, the topics uncover ideas so new that they probably haven’t become part of a sales team’s daily culture.

In the publication which may be downloaded from the Internet, sales professionals are urged to follow the “Nine Commandments of Social Selling” in order to make it easier for sales prospects to want to do business:

1.  Provide a solution that doesn’t involve buying anything — If you really want to show sales prospects how much you care, put your experience to work on a problem that doesn’t have a sales solution.

2.  Be mindful of their time when sharing content — When sharing helpful content with prospects, show that you respect their time by making it easier to gain value from the content.

3.  Send a detailed agenda in advance of your meeting — Many prospects skip sales meetings because they’re not entirely sure what’s in it for them. A detailed agenda shows you’ve considered the meeting from their point of view.

4.  Make your demos specific to the prospect’s problems — A buyer-centric demo is more useful and less boring for the buyer, which means it’s more likely to elicit a favorable response.

5.  Lead with insights — If you come across a dynamite article that speaks to something your prospects care about, take the time to forward it to them. If you struggle with finding content, a few minutes each day searching LinkedIn Pulse or other industry news sites can have a big impact.

6.  Make your prospect look good — If you’ve been following your prospects on LinkedIn, you likely have developed a sense of their goals and motivations. If you can help them further their career goals, they’ll be more likely to help you with yours.

7.  Make them feel understood — As in many personal relationships, sometimes the best thing you can say to prospects is nothing at all. Take the time to listen to what they hope to gain from a purchase or what specific hurdles they’re facing.

8.  Share their content or updates without pressure to reciprocate — When your prospects write status updates or long-form posts on LinkedIn’s publishing platform, you can respond by leaving an insightful comment or simply sharing their content with your network. Show that your motive is to be helpful by not immediately following up with a request for a sales meeting.

9.  Play matchmaker — Use the broad professional network you’ve built to spot people who aren’t connected yet but could mutually benefit from being introduced. When you broker this type of introduction, you’ve added value for two people simultaneously.

Sandler Training has a network of more than 250 offices worldwide, with professional trainers providing more than 450,000 hours per year of instruction in 23 languages. For more information about Sandler Training visit www.sandler.com. To download a free copy of Linked In The Sandler Way, visit www.sandler.com/resources/sandler-books/linkedin-social-selling.