Why Do Businesses Hire So-Called "Salespeople" Who Don't Use Linkedin, Twitter And Blogs To Build Business And Relationships?

I’ll never understand why people who make their livings by “prospecting” and selling – like car salespeople and realtors and financial services people – aren’t using the awesome power of Linkedin to build their networks of prospects and referral sources.

I don’t know why their bosses don’t require it.

I don’t know why their bosses don’t provide them with training on how to use Linkedin.

I don’t know why their bosses aren’t modeling the behavior.

Take car dealers, for instance. If there’s a business that needs to use every tool at their disposal to sell their product in this weak economy, it’s car dealers. I just did a Linkedin search on what may be the largest automobile empire in my market and found only 5 people from that company with Linkedin accounts.

I performed a search on another auto empire in my market and found only one employee from that empire with a Linkedin account.

I know this: if I were the sales manager or GM at any car dealer I wouldn’t hire a so-called sales or marketing person who doesn’t have a Linkedin account or isn’t using it every day to start and strengthen relationships.

As my regular readers know, back in December of ’09 (see blog archive) I wrote a short series of three posts on “business development” that got me a nice plug on the SMPS.org site (Society for Marketing Professional Services). New readers – especially readers who don’t know how to use Linkedin - may want to look in my blog archives and read those December ’09 posts and any other posts that mention Linkedin.

As far as I can tell, most car salespeople, realtors and others who make their livings by knowing people, seem to think it’s the boss’s job to bring prospects to them through expensive advertising.

Picture this: it’s a cold January or February night. There’s snow and ice on the ground and the car lot is full of cars that nobody’s looking at. Car “salesmen” are in the showroom telling jokes and watching TV and flirting with the cute new website sales manager and nobody’s doing anything to bring customers into the showroom.

Does the dealership have Wi-Fi? Do the sales reps carry smart phones? If the answers are yes and yes, why aren’t the sales reps using their laptops and their smart phones to go to Linkedin and see what they can do to scare up a customer? Why does the dealer have to buy expensive ads to attract customers?

And why don’t these car “salespeople” have blogs about cars, trucks, financing, and other things of interest to car buyers?

Why are car dealers hiring people who aren’t using every tool at their disposal to sell cars?

Why do real estate brokers hire realtors who don’t have contact info on their Linkedin page, don’t have a real estate blog, don’t have a Facebook page and don’t know how to Tweet in a way that connects them to people without annoying them?


Why don't people whose business depends on knowing people - and that's most of us - join Linkedin groups? In my area there are several groups business people should join if they want to have instant access to other Linkedin users. For example, I own a group named LinkedSt.Albans. 


What's that? You don't know how to join a Linkedin group? Give me a call. I'll help you out. Free. 


What's that? You have a Linkedin account but you have no idea what to do with it. If you're in the Charleston-St.Albans area just call me and I'll come to your business and give you a tutorial that will show you how to unlock the awesome power of Linkedin.


A friend of mine wants to syndicate her internet radio show to radio stations.  I performed a simple Linkedin search on the words "radio syndication" and found over 2,000 people in my network who can help her syndicate her show. That's the power you're not using if you don't use Linkedin to build your business.

Come to think of it, my new readers may want to go to my archive and look at my instructional posts on Linkedin and Twitter.