- Lack of product diversity (Marketing / Media business) — about 5-10 years behind the industry curve
- Go-to-market pace: product releases are slow as molasses and those that do launch are feature and functionality based vs tangible new products to market.
- Internal systems and sales productivity tools are underutilized. Be prepared to work out of a lot of manual spreadsheets instead of a CRM for running and forecasting your business.
- Overemphasis on operational process and underemphasis on actual selling and selling tactics
- Sales Management. Many of the managers in the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions business are not sales managers. Former Ops and management consultants are hired to be “sales managers” and do not have field selling experience. They will force operational process down your throat to the point where you forget how to sell because you spend 75% of your selling time writing the book on it.
- Lack of hiring diversity and exclusivity. LMS senior leaders brand themselves as diversity and inclusion advocates when in actuality they will keep hiring internal candidates from their inner circle who walk, talk, and look, and think just like them. If you make one mistake, it will stay with you throughout your time with Linkedin marketing and you will be branded as such until you suck up to the next shiny new manager in line who submits to group think because that is in fact the only way you will get promoted. They will use Leadership, Leverage and Results as “performance evaluators” but the truth is these “levers” are subject to your manager and how they think about you or have been forced to think about you at a certain moment in time. These metrics could push you out or spun up to promote you.
- Takes years to get promoted if you are not part of the “inner circle”
