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LinkedIn master\xa0Mike Shelah talks to us about the ABC's of LinkedIn: Always Be Connecting, Always Be Cultivating, and Always Be Customizing. Use the LinkedIn social network to\xa0find your dream job or get an "in" with whatever joint venture\xa0you want to achieve.\n\nDisplay TranscriptRobert Plank: We're going to be talking about LinkedIn with Mr. Mike Shelah. Now, Mike is a LinkedIn-made man. He is a sales pro who rocketed his way to the top. Thanks to effective networking skills. Mike teaches others how to harness the power of LinkedIn, infectious, enthusiastic, and practical. I can't wait to talk to this guy. Hey, Mike. How are things today?\n\nMike Shelah: Robert, things are wonderful. Thank you so much for having me on the show.\n\nRobert Plank: I'm glad to have you, and the big reason is because ... I mean, this site called "LinkedIn." Maybe I should get logged in right now. LinkedIn. I have an account. I filled stuff out. I've made a group. I've done a couple different things, but I really don't get it, so I'm hoping that you could clear a bunch of things up about it today.\n\nMike Shelah: Yeah. I am happy to do so. Because of people like you, I have a career, so I am grateful for that.\n\nRobert Plank: Nice, so tell us about it.\n\nMike Shelah: The first thing that I like to say is what LinkedIn is not, and it's not Facebook. A lot of people are very familiar with Facebook. They enjoy it, and they engage on it on a regular basis, and then they look at their LinkedIn profile almost next to never. They occasionally log in to see if they have new invitation requests. They'll use it rather heavily if they're looking for a job, and sales professionals to some extent are better at using it, but even most sales professionals really use LinkedIn incorrectly.\n\nHere's what I mean by that. Over the years, I've developed what I call the "ABCs of LinkedIn," and I don't mean always be closing. Most people think of Alec Baldwin in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross where he goes, "Always be closing. Coffee is for closers." I think that might be one of the most despicable things that's ever happened to sales because people really look at sales that way that you have to beat people over the head with a hammer in order to get them to buy your product, or you have to trick them, or you have to manipulate them, and that's not what sales is.\n\nThe most important piece of sales is if you imagine the products and services that your company offers as a circle, and then you imagine your customers' needs as another circle, and then you imagine your competitors' needs as a third circle.\n\nRobert Plank: Okay.\n\nMike Shelah: There's a spot where all three of those circles lay over each other, and specifically, there's a spot where your circle lays over your customers' circle and your competition's circle doesn't, and that's the value edge. That's the differentiator that makes you the preferred vendor over your competition, and LinkedIn can do such an effective job of helping people sell. When I say sell, I like to remind people that looking for a job is temporary sales. Very rarely are salespeople out of a job for a long time because they're used to selling themselves, and most people that are not in the sales world, they don't embrace the sales mentality because they don't want to be viewed as salesy, and I can appreciate that.\n\nRobert Plank: Got you.\n\nMike Shelah: There's a lot of horrible examples, but LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful tool to find clients and to find your dream job, and I'll start with the first ABC which is "Always Be Connecting." I did a speaking engagement for the Baltimore Business Journal here in Maryland a couple weeks ago. I had a great audience, and when I began speaking, I told the audience, "I want you to look to your left. I want you to look to your right, and what you should have seen are people."\n\nHuman nature inclines us to sit next to people we already know, and if you do that, you're doing networking wrong.