Analyse Asia 58: Understanding relationships in Asia with Vicky Skipp

In this episode, we interviewed Vicky Skipp, Head of Sales Solutions in Asia Pacific and Japan, LinkedIn. From Vicky’s experience in sales from Adobe to LinkedIn over the past 15 years and building her own personal board of directors to guide her career journey, we discuss how the sales process in Asia have changed from a wide broadcasting approach to targeted social selling and the importance of relationships in sales and business in Asia. Vicky provided a primer to how LinkedIn sales solutions helped companies such as SAP to build up their existing and new sales pipelines in Asia. Finally, Vicky provided some tips for executives in how they can build their personal brand on LinkedIn.

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Here are the interesting notes and links to the discussion (with timestamps included):

• Vicky Skipp (LinkedIn)
  • How did she started in the area of technology? [0:55]
  • In her prior roles in McAfee, Netsuite and Adobe, what are her reflections and lessons learnt from working in technology for the past 15 years? Interesting food for thought: it’s about transformation and how she progress in her career, building her own personal board of directors to mentor and guide her through her career. [1:50]
  • As the Head of Sales Solutions, LinkedIn Asia Pacific and Japan, and what are her roles and responsibilities in LinkedIn? [3:48]
• LinkedIn in Asia Pacific [4:30]
  • A quick introduction to LinkedIn as the largest professional social network and overview of the products. [4:52]
  • Interesting data points on LinkedIn: 380M professionals worldwide with 73M users and 10 offices in Asia Pacific with 31M in India.
  • Does LinkedIn need to localise their products in Asia Pacific and specifically in sales solutions? [6:45]
  • Introduction to LinkedIn Sales Solutions and how it helped companies to build up business to business (B2B) sales through relationships and social selling. 76% B2B decisions are done thru recommendations by a IDC study. [7:36]
  • LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI) and case studies:
    • Introduction to Social Selling Index – understand how connected individuals within LinkedIn are measured using the SSI. In Singapore specifically, the social selling index for the professionals is 26 similar to North America. [11:00]
    • Macquarie Telecom [12:11]
    • SAP [13:40]
• The impact of social selling in businesses and how companies discover, build and manage new and existing relationships in Asia. The need to manage trust in Asia and making information relevant to pitch to the right customers. [16:00]
• How should executives leverage on LinkedIn to build their personal brand?

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