LinkedIn Sales Navigator released product updates on Wednesday, adding more features for discovering and managing leads, a redesigned Help Center and an integration with its content-sharing app Elevate.
Bringing more content into Sales Navigator. LinkedIn first launched Elevate — an app designed to help users curate and share content on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook — in 2015. Now, Sales Navigator users who also use the Elevate app will receive alerts on their Sales Navigator homepage when new content is available.
Users will be able to access the content without having to log into
“Marketers will still be able to control what content they’d like to see employees post,” writes Doug Camplejohn on LinkedIn’s Sales Blog, “But now Sales Navigator users will have an even easier time boosting their brand and the brand of their company.”
LinkedIn reports salespeople who regularly share content are 45% more likely to surpass their quota.
New ways to manage lead lists. As part of the quarterly update, Sales Navigator will now let users sort Custom Lead Lists by Name Account and Geography, and Custom Account Lists can be sorted by Name and Geography.
Users will also be able to copy a lead list that was shared with them, creating a new list that they can own, and perform a “bulk save” for all leads or accounts from a shared list. There’s also a new feature that lets users remove shared lists from their list hub.
Lead discovery updates. Sales Navigator is increasing the number of results when performing a search for new leads. Previously, it capped the total available search results at 1,000, but is increasing that number to 2,500, giving users a longer list of potential leads.
When a user sends a request to connect on LinkedIn via the Sales Navigator platform, they now will be able to save that potential connection as a lead. Regardless
A redesigned Help Center with new chat function. LinkedIn has redesigned the Sales Navigator Help Center, giving more visibility to shortcuts, recommended topics and the “Contact Us” link. It is also rolling out a “Chat with Us” feature that lets users contact support rep via a chat function in real-time.
Whey we should care. LinkedIn says more than 1.3 million lead and account lists have been created in Sales Navigator. For marketers managing B2B campaigns, this latest update will benefit their content strategy efforts, helping them push more content to their sales team. On the sales side, the update offers more functionality with improved lead discovery and management features.
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It’s not exactly news that programmatic advertising, automation
But change, like time, marches on, and these trends continue to turn the media world upside down. Exhibit A: the sales organizations of media and digital ad tech companies that sell to agencies. Programmatic and consolidation have imposed a new sales team structure, though many not quite realize it yet. Any organization that sells to agencies, and seek that all-important master services agreement (MSA) with any of the holding companies, will need to adapt their organizations to the new reality.
In the old days (by which I mean just a few years ago), the sales organization inside of a media company, ad network or any other entity that sold into an agency needed to be vertically aligned with the agency. For instance, GroupM has many agencies under its umbrella, and some of those agencies have multiple sub-agencies. Each agency, and sometimes even the sub-brands, acted as separate entities to sign their own contracts with media owners (or ad networks and digital ad companies).
To support these multiple contracts,
But as programmatic took off, as agency consolidation accelerated, and as brands began to squeeze margins, the holding companies realized they needed to drive efficiency. One strategy — which is occurring as I write this — is to replace the multiple I/Os with a global MSA at the holding company level. This approach requires less administrative overhead, lends itself to the potential of automation and provides both sides more ability to negotiate services and costs with the sellers.
As a result of global MSAs, seller sales teams can function with a new streamlined staff. They essentially need executive-level employees to negotiate the global MSAs, a rank and file sales staff who can provide the day-to-day support to get deals closed and live.
This change is notable for a few reasons. First, contrary to popular belief, programmatic and automation haven’t eliminated jobs, though it has changed the jobs themselves. Sell-side sales team members are just as busy as ever, albeit they’re doing different things.
Second, the required skill set of the executive-level salesperson is now far more complex. It’s one thing to negotiate an MSA with a sub-agency, it’s another animal altogether to negotiate one across a global holding company that spans many countries and sectors. Add to that, the holding companies are bombarded with requests for MSAs, and the executive level salesperson must figure out a way to distinguish his or her company from the rest of the pack. That takes some imagination and foresight.
What does this mean for sales organizations?
Without a doubt, sales organizations need to position themselves to this new world order. Doing so requires three main actions. First, they must organize around an executive-level salesperson who has the necessary skills to make those MSAs happen.
Next, that executive must learn and understand what it takes to create those agreements and get those deals signed. This isn’t an easy task given that the individual must understand the inner workings of a holding company along with their requirements for brand safety, SLAs, measurement, verification and so on. Add to that, this executive must articulate to the holding company why his or her company is unique and worthy of the MSA.
Finally, some reorganization is required. The senior-level salesperson, in particular, will need to be redeployed, as his or her function is essentially going away. I suspect many or most have tech skills that can easily be repurposed within their organizations.
I share this insight based on our team’s experiences working with agencies in the sincere hope that sales organizations begin making the necessary adjustments so they can be even more successful selling in ideas, concepts
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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The 614 Group, enables results-driven client marketing efforts in the practice areas of content monetization and revenue strategy, brand safety, technology and digital systems integration, and corporate strategy.
This year’s two-day Prime Day event has come to a close, and Amazon reported it was the biggest shopping event in its history. Prime Day sales totaled more than Amazon’s 2018 Black Friday and Cyber Monday revenue combined, according to the company.
“Prime members purchased more than 175 million items throughout the event. Prime Day was also the biggest event ever for Amazon devices, when comparing two-day periods,” said Amazon.
An extended Prime Day means more sales. It’s worth noting this year’s Prime Day was the longest yet, starting 12:00 a.m. PT on July 15 and lasting a full 48 hours. Last year’s Prime Day was 36 hours long, and 2017’s lasted 30 hours. Obviously, the more time Amazon gives Prime members to shop for discounted products, the more revenue it’s going to generate.
It is notable Amazon was able to outperform its Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales during a 48 hour period in the middle of summer — two time periods of the same length. By the end of this year’s Prime Day, Prime members in 18 countries bought more than 175 million items on Amazon.
Big day for Prime Member subscriptions. Amazon said it saw more new Prime Member subscriptions on July 15 than any other day in its history, and “almost as many” on the second day of the shopping event: “Making these the two biggest days ever for member signups.”
Amazon didn’t release member signup numbers, but more than a year ago, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos confirmed the company had more than 100 million Prime members.
SMBs cross the $2 billion mark. Small and medium sized businesses selling on Amazon generated more than $2 billion during this year’s Prime Day — doubling last year’s more than $1 billion in sales by SMBs.
“Prime Day 2019 was another record-breaking success for independent third-party sellers—mostly small and medium-sized businesses,” said Amazon, “Globally, these businesses far exceeded $2 billion in sales this Prime Day, making it the biggest Amazon shopping event ever for third-party sellers when comparing two-day periods.”
It’s worth noting that from a regulatory perspective, it’s in Amazon’s interest to tout itself as a “friend” of SMBs.
Amazon’s impact on the industry. Amazon launched Prime Day in 2015 to drive Prime memberships, but the shopping event has grown well beyond the company’s original loyalty shopping initiative — and reframed the commerce calendar industry-wide.
The shopping event is now defined as the kick-off to back to school shopping season, with other online retailers piggy-backing onto the sales event and taking advantage of the e-commerce push
Still, online retail forecasts show Amazon will continue to grab a bigger share of the e-commerce market. A report from FTI Consulting predicts Amazon’s online market share will reach 43% this year, with the company positioned to own more than half of all online sales by 2024.
Why we should care. FTI Consulting’s report said, overall, the online retail growth rate is decelerating. “Online sales growth in the mid-teens (14% – 17% YOY) has been as consistent and reliable this decade as the chances of the New England Patriots making the playoffs,” according to FTI, “The script flipped in mid-2018 when online sales growth began to decelerate towards the low-12% vicinity in the most recent two quarters.”
While Prime Day has become a force of its own, it’s also a reminder that as merchants compete for customer transactions with deals, free shipping
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