The Leadership - Leverage - Results Framework

How Linkedin manage performances and what you can learn from It

As most of you know I’m a proud Linkedin Alumni.

I spent there almost four incredible years, in the EMEA HQ in Dublin, Ireland. From 2014 until 2018.

This is still by far the best personal and professional experience of my life.

All I have today was almost built during those years. My network, my friends, my clients.

I will always be thankful for that time.

But let me tell you how Linkedin manage its sales team and their performances.

The entire organisation, including the 6,000 members of the global sales team, was evaluated using a single framework: the Leadership-Leverage-Results Framework.

Let’s call it LLR for simplicity, apologies for the jargon.

LLR was everywhere in our training, talks, hiring processes, celebrations, and even our scores.

In fact, during quarterly appraisals, we were scored on each of the three principles, and each principle was weighted differently to add up to a maximum of five points.

Results carried slightly more weight than the other two principles.

Our scores determined our promotion, pay raise, or PIP (performance improvement plan).

Now let’s dive into each principle.

Leadership

Every sales rep, from SDRs to interns, directors and VPs was required to demonstrate leadership at LinkedIn. This was evident in their daily tasks and projects.

• What are some ways you can support and manage your team?

• How do you give and receive feedback?

Leadership was an essential requirement.

Each person was expected to approach their daily tasks and interactions with a leadership mindset.

By building and growing top performers in this way, you not only develop a strong team but also create an incredible pool of talent for future leadership positions.

Leverage

When I joined LinkedIn, the company was experiencing rapid growth and had not yet been acquired by Microsoft.

In Dublin, I was the first Account Manager for the Italian market at LinkedIn Sales Solutions. During my time there, we were in the process of launching Sales Navigator in EMEA.

Although LSS (LinkedIn Sales Solutions) was essentially a startup within a larger organisation, LinkedIn Talent Solutions and LinkedIn Marketing Solutions were the most well-known and revenue-driven business units.

As a result, we needed leverage and anything that would help us scale faster.

LinkedIn’s definition of leverage was: doing more with less.

It’s as simple as that.

Examples of leveraging include webinars for customers and successful projects that are passed on to help others.

It’s funny to think that such a large corporation like LinkedIn demanded ‘leverage,’ but if you think about it, leverage is a key principle to apply to both big corporations and early-stage startups.

More importantly, what if all your employees worked to make each task or project scalable for the entire organisation?

Just think about it for one second.

Results

Funny enough, the results were last.

But don’t worry, we were all very aware of the results we had to bring. Indeed.

We all had results in mind, all the time. Our quarterly goals were tracked on our individual and company dashboards.

We weren’t aggressive as other organisations but hitting your sales goal was crucial.

Was crucial to keep your job or to get promoted.

We would look out for achievement but also pipeline created and activities. Forecasting was also big, with a marginal error of <10%.

One big lesson here for me was that despite being a driven and competitive sales organisation we didn’t feel it much.

However, managing results is crucial if you are an early-stage startup.

Ultimately, failing to manage results would mean failing to take care of your salespeople.

What you can learn from all this

The fact that LinkedIn had three principles, instead of just one (such as results), is a valuable lesson.

Even if you don’t perform perfectly (since performance depends on the situation), you can still be an asset if you score high on the other two principles.

However, growing salespeople who excel in all three principles lead to high-performing teams.

Leadership, leverage, and results form a framework that shaped me as a sales rep and leader.

If you are building your sales team, consider using a framework to drive performance.

Whether your team has 1, 10, or 50 people, it is important to find what works best for you.

However, keep in mind that sales success is not solely about achieving your goals or scaling projects.

Being a top performer involves more than that.

Hope this helps, see you on the other side, Ciao!