LinkedIn for Business: How Advertisers, Marketers, and Salespeople Get Leads, Sales, and Profits from LinkedIn

11. Best Practices: Traditional and Modern Sales

Salespeople are critical to most businesses. It’s the rare business that thrives on marketing alone (think Amazon.com) and doesn’t require any salespeople. Even in the case of Amazon, CEO Jeff Bezos had to sell the viability of his business to investors, Wall Street, and the media. It’s worth $25 billion now, but Amazon was not profitable for 6 years.¹ Telling everyone “don’t stop believing” (think Journey) took some serious salesmanship. And it turned out he was right. But most businesses still require salespeople, either as customer service in retail stores or as expert consultants who help businesses purchase multimillion-dollar solutions.

This chapter summarizes traditional sales and how or ...