Stealing Customers though LinkedIn

If you are a truly successful sales person then you can’t have ignored the latest trends in sales and marketing in the B2B arena when prospecting – LinkedIn. However, do you know that you may be allowing your competition to know exactly what you are doing and who all of your customers are?

Now there’s a scary thought!

Information on customers is highly valuable to the salesman. In fact I have seen many salesmen hiding much of the information from their own company as a way of protecting their job security. Its one of the reasons that there is so much push back on implementation of CRM systems such as Salesforce.com or ACT!

So where is the backdoor to this mine of data?

First, let’s look at LinkedIn briefly and some basic human characteristics when networking on this social media tool for business. Here are some assumptions:

• The majority of people when sent an invitation to connect will do so.
• The number of connections someone has on their profile is often seen as a measure of how successful they are (wrong).
• When a salesman visits a customer he often connects with them via LinkedIN directly afterwards.
• Most people leave their connections wide open to viewing by another connection
• Verticals are incestuous and it’s not uncommon to have competitors in your past connections

So, with all this said, it is not difficult for a savvy competitor who is a 1^st degree connection with you to go through all of your connections trolling for companies of interest. All they have to do is click on the “connections” link in your profile and hey presto, a goldmine – every one of your contacts available to see. And LinkedIn makes it easier by allowing them to search within your connection to make the process even smoother.

About now you should be worried.

So what do you do? 

Option 1 – The Gatekeeper

You can go through all of your connections looking for competitors and then remove them one by one (go to “Connections” and then “Remove Connections” and choose who to get rid of. They will be informed that you have done this, by the way).

A little intensive and takes some time with always the worry that you will miss someone. Plus, let’s be mercenary about this, connections to other sales contacts can also serve as a life blood to future career options so you shouldn’t burn your bridges whenever possible.  Plus competitive reps can be very creative about finding avenues to become one of your connections if they are suitably motivated.

Option 2: Lock Down

The best way and the simplest - just shut down the ability for anyone to see who your connections are. With a closed network your connections can see your entire profile, but cannot see your full list of connections.  The one exception is that your connections can see connections that you share together. 

So go to “Settings” on your LinkedIn account and under Privacy Controls, select the text link titled  ‘Select who can see your connections’. Toggle the drop down from ‘Your Connections’ to ‘Only You’.

In addition (and don’t forget this), ‘Activity Broadcasts’ provide auto-updates from your account.  Take time reviewing the privacy controls and consider your options. Lock this down also.

Ok, take a moment and breathe a sigh of relief. You are now safe from prying eyes.

And then take the next step…

“If someone can do this to me, why can’t I do this to them?”

One of the hardest parts of selling is getting to the right person. Who are they, What is their job title, What do they really do? It can be a huge time waster. If your competition has already done this, then why not stand on their shoulders.

Look through your connections and see if you can find a competitive salesman. If not, try and connect with them. Try three or four within a company; at least one, if not more, will accept. Then click on their connections and off you go.

The joy of LinkedIn is that there is no audit trail of what you are doing once you have made the connection and closed off your Activity Broadcast. So nobody will even know.

Is any of this wrong or illegal? Not in the slightest. If your competition broadcast this information then why not use it. Just make sure they can’t do it to you first.

LinkedIn is a wonderful tool for prospecting but to use it effectively you have to know the advantages and disadvantages and how to use both to further your sales goals.

Good hunting.