LinkedIn quietly acquired PointDrive this week. On the surface, the move looks like a grenade launch at Salesforce. This is not a shock, of course, when we all learned that a big influence on Microsoft buying LinkedIn was because they didn’t want Salesforce to get it.
“PointDrive’s talented team has built an easy-to-use application that allows sales professionals to package, personalize, and deliver polished and engaging sales content to their prospects and customers,” said the company. “Through their product they simplify the buyer-seller conversation in ways that result in more productivity and generate greater efficiency.”
LinkedIn has a solid history of making acquisitions that can easily integrate into their primary service, no matter what one’s profession profession might be. Examples include Slideshare and CardMunch (which was awesome and shouldn’t have been killed, by the way). Salesperson, recruiter and marketer alike can use most of LinkedIn’s acquired services.
PointDrive is built for sales people, making it easy to send prospects a link that breaks down whatever services and products said salesperson is pimping.
“From presentations to images, to links and videos, what they’ve created has quickly gained traction with sales professionals in a wide range of industries,” the company said. “Our very own global sales organization became a PointDrive customer about a year ago and their product has become one of the most valued tools for our teams.”
Here’s a link to a live sales page. Notice it’s customized to a specific sales person. Their demo video goes deep:
It’s not difficult, however, to see how this shiny new tool might help recruiters. These days, sharing the uniqueness of an employer brand comes down to sending a candidate a link to a company’s careers page or maybe a profile page on a job site. Fun, but not very warm and personal.
PointDrive could change that.
With PointDrive, recruiters might easily be able to send candidates a custom page that promotes the finer points of a job or an employer. Then, add to this package the fact that this page comes in a slick interface that’s also mobile friendly – great for text messaging and emails, by the way – and you’ve got something pretty cool.
The reality that jobs on LinkedIn are now posted with a profile photo of the actual person who posted the job means LinkedIn isn’t afraid to connect postings and companies with actual recruiters and hiring managers. So, why not go one step further and empower these recruiters to share slick, sales-like pages to candidates on top of their LinkedIn profile.
About the Author
Joel Cheesman has over 20 years experience in the online recruitment space. He worked for both international and local job boards in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. In 2005, Cheesman founded HRSEO, a search engine marketing company for HR, as well as launching an award-winning industry blog called Cheezhead.
He has been featured in Fast Company and US News and World Report. He sold his company in 2009 to Jobing.com. He was employed by EmployeeScreenIQ, a background check company. He currently runs Hire Daily, a site for recruiting news and is the founder of Ratedly, an iOS app that monitors anonymous employee reviews. He is the father of two children and lives in Indianapolis. Yes, he’s on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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