Jason talks about perspective, LinkedIn Sales Navigator and B2B blogging.

February 8, 2017 / in General Information / by Jason Terry

Author: Jason Terry

There are so many things running through my head this week. So I picked three to talk about!

Perspective.

I met with one of my peer advisory groups Friday morning, February 3rd. We met at Doug Hubler’s office (Apex Business Advisors) on the 16th floor of the Darth Vader building. I took a photo of I-435 and Metcalf from the conference room at 7:45am. The city was starting to wake up and people were on their way to work.

Being high above the hustle and bustle for a minute was a perspective builder. It was a visible reminder that I was there to work ON the business and not IN the business for a couple of hours.

My peer group talks about business and personal topics. Positives and negatives. We get wisdom, strength, support and encouragement from each other. It is one of the most important things I commit my time to on a monthly basis. If you’re not actively involved in a peer advisory group, I recommend you look into joining a group or starting your own.

One of my take-aways from the discussion was about leadership styles and a book recommendation from Andrew Kneisler called Crucial Conversations. I bought the Kindle version and I’m looking forward to reading it in the small spaces between client visits over the next two weeks.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

I signed up for a 3 month trial of LinkedIn’s add-on product called Sales Navigator. We’ve gotten a few questions about this tool during our LinkedIn training classes with our clients, and it’s time for me to dig in and see if it’s worth the spend.

So far, the answer is “yes” for people doing 100% sales through relationship. But for most people, the free version is just fine. I think that over time, Sales Navigator will become more important as LinkedIn continues to move functionality our of the free experience and into Sales Navigator.

For example, paid Professional level accounts have lost the ability to do granular advanced searches on key metrics like company size and employee seniority… that functionality got moved into Sales Navigator. I’ve had a Professional paid account for years. LinkedIn sent me an email explaining that they were removing a feature that wasn’t used often by the “majority of their members”… but if I wanted to continue to use the feature I could upgrade to Sales Navigator. Yes, I see what you are doing LinkedIn…

It’s obvious to me that LinkedIn is looking at ways to be more profitable, which I understand and respect. I just hope they don’t go too far, too quickly and alienate their user base. As I was writing this post, I got another email from LinkedIn titled, “Jason, should you be expensing your Sales Navigator account?” How’s that for timing and validation of their motives? Again, smart business… but I hope they are careful with their changes in the coming months.

Let me know if you are interested in hearing more about my experience with Sales Navigator in a future blog post.

Blogging

I continue to be amazed at how mainstream storytelling through blogging has become. More and more companies are asking for help and want to know how the process works. We’ve been doing this for eight years and it’s finally catching on.

There are still a lot of questions, but conversations we’ve been having lately are more about how the actual process works instead of why companies should be doing it.

Did you know?

• B2B companies with a blog receive more leads than those that don’t. (Source: Huffington Post)
• Companies that blog receive 97% more links to their website. (Source: Business 2 Community)
• Blogs have been rated as the 5th most trusted source for accurate online information. (Source: Search Engine People)

There are 14.1 million articles on the web about the “benefits of blogging”. We can say from personal experience with companies all over Kansas City that it works. It really works. It’s worth the time and expense in so many ways. And whether you need our help to get started or not, you should make sure storytelling is an integral part of your marketing strategy in 2017.

Let me know if any of this resonated with you! And if there’s a topic I should cover, I would love the suggestion… just email me at jason@bluegurus.com. Thanks for reading!