LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner on Thursday at the IMG World Congress of Sports positioned his online professional-networking company as one that could have dramatic effects on how those in sports both hire talent and solicit sponsorships. Social media has transformed myriad industries despite the fact that the space is still nascent, and Weiner said that his company’s proprietary algorithms, including most notably its Sales Navigator program, are helping to extend this transformation to the sports-business space. He said, “You take an organization like the NBA and they’ve been very forward thinking with regard to how to leverage LinkedIn as a platform. Historically, over the last year or so, that’s been very focused on the way in which they sell and the way in which the NBA supports teams in their sales effort to sell more box seats and bring more businesses from the community into those team’s efforts. And Amy Brooks, who heads up marketing there for the NBA, has been really visionary in the way she’s leveraged the tools on linked in like Sales Navigator. Sales Navigator enables your sales forces to leverage the powers of their networks to ensure that they really never you never have to do another cold call again because once you’re leveraging the power of a network up to three degrees and weak ties between relationships, you can identify a prospect -- the person ultimately you’d like to be able to get in touch with -- and then rather than pick up the phone and have to introduce yourself, you see who within your network is best capable of introducing you to that person and that warms up the relationship in a way that just blows cold calling out of the water. We hope to make cold calling obsolete through this kind of approach. And it’s not just how you leverage your network -- it’s also identifying the right prospect: Being able to check out their profile; what’s important to them. And then the way in which you can engage in that individual. And so for all of these reasons, social selling is changing the way companies go to market and the NBA in particular were just able to see the possibilities much earlier than others.”
FURTHERING THE RELATIONSHIP: Weiner said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, after talking to Brooks, brought the LinkedIn executive team to the league's officers and the two sides were "able to talk about other ways in which the NBA could leverage LinkedIn." Weiner: "Our talent-solutions products enable you to recruit not just active candidates but passive candidates -- people not looking for work but are most qualified to take the roles that you have. We’re a really strong marketing platform: The way in which you build your brand and introduce new products and services, the way you market why your company is the best one to work for. For all of these reasons, we think we can be a great partner to the leagues.”
