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In particular, it can help you if you:   Belong to a company that is not well known Can't always find the right person at a large company to sell to Are looking for leads for big ticket items Are selling to companies where nobody picks up a phone any more LinkedIn selling is somewhat limited if you are selling to individuals. LinkedIn is great for finding leads.  But if you are already in contact with the right people at prospect companies, it won't be very helpful. The Premium accounts will help you find the right buyers and contact them.   When you search with a Premium account, you will be able to read the full name of the people you find in search. Premium account holders can also send a limited number of "LinkedIn InMails" directly to the sales prospects they find.  They are "guaranteed opened," meaning, if the person you are trying to contact does not open the message in seven days, your credit is refunded and you get to try with someone else. Sales accounts cost USD$ a few hundred to USD$1000 per year. LinkedIn search is pretty user friendly, but it still takes a bit of practice to get the right people to come back on the search.   You probably already know who the economic buyers for your product are, but you may not know what their job titles are. For example, if you want to set up meetings with materials managers of food manufacturing companies, you simply set your search filter to show you people in food manufacturing with title material manager. You may need to specify additional keywords to get the exact list of people you are looking for. InMails are messages sent via LinkedIn to the prospect you want to contact.   Consider hand crafting the message to the prospect.  LinkedIn only gives you a limited number of InMails, and charges you for them, so you want to make each one count.   LinkedIn fits the VITO letter model a lot more than the smile and dial model. Remember that putting in a personal note referencing your connection to the prospect increases your success dramatically. Since you only have a limited number of InMails, you may want to use other ways of contacting prospects that you can find without LinkedIn.  You can try:   Guessing their email address. Using a lead database. Phone call Facebook messages.  Facebook also charges for premium emails, but sometimes it is pretty cheap. LinkedIn lets you see the contacts of your contacts, some of which could be sales prospects.   Make a list of your happy/reference customers who might introduce you to their friends. Add these customers as connections on LinkedIn. Browse your customers' connections.  You will find some connections that could also be sales prospects for you. You can approach these new prospects in several ways.  You can hit them with an InMail, do a LinkedIn introduction request (which does not count against your InMail quota), contact them offline, or ask your customer for an introduction. Note that adding your customers as your connections can have risks.  A clever competitor sales rep might be able to see who you are connected to unless you set your privacy correctly.  You can avoid this by hiding your connections.

Summary:
Know that LinkedIn is very powerful in getting sales leads. Know when LinkedIn cannot help you. Consider signing up for a Premium LinkedIn sales account. Determine the job titles of your sales prospects, so that you can search for them. Contact your prospects via LinkedIn InMails. Don't waste your InMails. Use LinkedIn for reference selling.