Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard that the secret to sales is networking. Networking gurus would have you believe that all you have to do to sell the most cars in the country is go to enough cocktail parties and you’ll have people lining up before your dealership opens on Monday morning.

This is a great theory -- in theory. The reality is that people have commitments. Your salespeople have families and personal lives and as much as they want to make lots of commissions, they don’t want to spend their whole time schmoozing with strangers. Luckily, there is an online way to do your schmoozing and it doesn’t require dressing up or wearing nametags.

LinkedIn for Auto Dealers

LinkedIn is a social networking site in the truest sense of the term. Many of the sites that say they’re for networking are actually more conducive towards socializing. While there’s nothing wrong with socializing, it doesn’t do much to advance your career or your wallet.

LinkedIn is different. It’s a purely professional way to keep in contact with associates, colleagues, friends, acquaintances and people you’ve met through business. Through the network you make what are called ‘connections’ with people you know and trust, creating a web of people who can vouch for each other professionally.

How Can LinkedIn Help Your Auto Sales?

As part of your automotive internet marketing strategy, LinkedIn can help you connect with people in the position to buy your vehicles. In addition to the people you already know, LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to make second and third degree connections to the trusted associates of people you know. This can build your sphere of influence simply by signing up. People get to know and trust you before you’ve even met.

How Is LinkedIn Better?

Every social network has its pros and cons and each can be a valuable piece in your automotive internet marketing puzzle. LinkedIn has the added benefit of a ‘gated-access approach’ which means that you can’t be contacted by people not connected to someone you know. You need to have pre-existing relationships with people before you can connect with their associates which greatly reduces spam and people trying to game the system.

How to Get Started

Anybody can create a free account on the system. Sign up with a username and password and enter your relevant career details. When you’ve done that, all you need to do is start looking for people you know by searching for them by email address or name. Let the networking begin!