Why I'd pay $100,000/yr. for LinkedIn!

"Ultimately, it's not going to be about man versus machine. It is going to be about man with machines." - Satya Nadella

I personally think LinkedIn should start to charge its members more.

I realize this is controversial and could be wildly unpopular but please hear me out:

LinkedIn recently got acquired by Microsoft and released a new interface. Newsflash: It's better and I highly doubt that was a Microsoft move in the slightest as software development cycles can take years. There just hasn't been the time so you're naive to petition them to bring back free or web 1.0 LinkedIn.

The platform is simpler which is always a plus with software User Interfaces, especially when you're looking to utilize them on mobile. The new version looks beautiful on mobile by the way!

You now have to pay for Sales Navigator to get many of the free or Premium features we all know and love like Advanced Search... get over it. They're smart to monetize what hundreds of millions of people already find extremely valuable on a daily basis. Ad-supported business models alone are unsustainable.

LinkedIn has the world's first Relationship Management system with self healing data.

Really... think about that!

Over the last 2 years, I've taken an extremely bullish position on LinkedIn by concentrating almost all my blogging activity within it. This has built out 120,000+ followers of my Publisher channel, and driven in speaking and consulting business like a supersonic flywheel. There's no reason you couldn't have done exactly what I did. In fact, I cataloged the exact blueprint for how and shared it with all of you open source right here. I was gobsmacked when I hit 5,000 followers. At 100,000 the reach is purely surreal.

I just landed a book deal with a well respected publisher in New York (who also reps Mike Weinberg & Mark Hunter) to break my bestselling business writing global especially in the US, primarily on the topic of COMBO Prospecting . In many ways, I owe it all to LinkedIn... starting on free, then moving to Premium, then to Sales Navigator

So can you see why I'd be willing to have paid $100,000 a year, the last two years, to alight upon this magic carpet ride in white and blue font? I owe Jeff Weiner and Reid Hoffman a gargantuan debt of gratitude for the intangible payoff to my career and personal brand that betting on them has been.

What's more? I have consulted with leading CEOs and SVPs of Sales on 4 continents and have it on authority, that millions in fresh pipeline are being driven in by LinkedIn Sales Navigator and closing. So the Return on Investment is extremely powerful. The biggest story I hear about in the Enterprise is the mind blowing power of the connections your company's own executive layer already has in the prospect base but didn't even realize they could unlock. There are typically 1 or 2 degrees of separation between someone influential in one's own organization and that of the "dream prospect's."

It's evident to me why LinkedIn cannot share personal emails or phone numbers without poisoning its secret garden beyond exposing the jigsaw puzzle of relationships it already does. And so I've taken quite a bit of heat for suggesting that a super savvy CMO or Sales Leader buy both LinkedIn Sales Navigator (Enterprise Edition with TeamLink) plus best-of-breed dialer software such as DiscoverOrg.

This is the reality of the modern selling world: those that win will always cobble together the ultimate sales stack!

Give LinkedIn a chance to grow and improve. For the millions of sellers that "sell on value," see the value in this product and be willing to pay a premium for it, just like you encourage your prospects to acquiesce to with your own 'solutions'. To do any less than that is patently hypocritical.

Sales teams that move quickly into investing in the LinkedIn toolset, will have a unique competitive advantage in their markets

Writers that jump headlong into LinkedIn Publishing and leverage the organic reach that is possible by going ballistic in here with your best ideas, may see their career as authors, at last take flight. Traditional blogs are dead. They're static, aren't connect to the social or interest graph, and seldom ever get many comments - even for celebrities and influencers.

I'm excited for the future of LinkedIn, especially when you combine the talent and heart of Satya Nadella, Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner who are servant leaders empowering thousands of elite coders around the globe. This can only be a win-win for sellers everywhere.

The Artificial Intelligence revolution is upon us and based on the opening Satya Nadella quote, there's no other company that's quite positioned like Microsoft and LinkedIn on Earth to combine predictive analytics with big data and social networked intelligence on a global scale right now. What these folks can build from a technology perspective, is unlimited and astounding!

I've read some posts this week about a mass exodus, petitions to bring back "free" or premium, and just general pessimism about Microsoft's 'heavy hand'. Let's keep the blame on fist-pumping Steve Ballmer (who poo-pooed "mobile," invoking Clippy's ghost) who is gone and give Satya a chance, the progressive steward that he is.

I predict LinkedIn will last 100 years because Hoffman took 10 years for it to become an overnight sensation. It was the slow and steady horse in the social network race. It's moat is that slow burn of network effects at scale, Metcalfe's Law, and utility rendering antifragile barriers to entry.

So go ahead LinkedIn and charge serious members more and leverage exclusivity to up the ante on the quality of the flora and fauna in this garden. Only serious LinkedIn members need apply. There's value in the strength of weak ties, I always say but there's extreme value in the caliber of the nodes on the network. I challenge LinkedIn and Microsoft to continue to make it better to the point that the CEOs themselves come out en masse because they can't afford to miss the quality of the content and data being shared here, a pulsing hub or neural network for humanity's future.

If Elon Musk himself needs to be logging into LinkedIn daily: then there's hope and you've truly won.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' button and also share via your Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook social media platforms. I encourage you to join the conversation or ask questions so feel free to add a comment on this post. Please follow my LinkedIn post page for all my articles and visit me at www.tonyhughes.com.au if you are looking for a keynote speaker. Go to www.RSVPselling.com for sales methodologies that generate pipeline and manage complex opportunities. Flickr: Satya Nadella: Bhupinder Nayyar, Steve Ballmer: Long Zheng, Jeff Weiner: TechCrunch, Futuristic: Steve Johnson, Elon Musk: Steve Jurvetson, RAF Tornado GR4: Defence Images