The Water Cooler: What Decision Makers Are Reading on LinkedIn (and Why Sales Pros Should Care)

Welcome to the first edition of the LinkedIn Sales Blog’s “The Water Cooler.” The water cooler, of course, is that place in the office where you run into colleagues, and you end up discussing the news of the day, whether it’s business, entertainment, fashion, sports, or (gasp!) even politics.

In many ways, LinkedIn is the virtual water cooler of the business world. Members are reading more and more articles on LinkedIn. There’s been a 60% year-over-year increase in updates viewed in the LinkedIn feed.

As a salesperson, what your target audience is reading and interested in can be incredibly valuable information. So we delved into the articles that Decision Makers — the men and women who make the choices of what products and services to buy — are reading on LinkedIn. Below, you can see the top 10 articles Decision Makers engaged with in December.

The articles attracting the attention of Decision Makers have many common threads. This influential audience is interested in what successful people have to say: Advice from Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, for instance, got a lot of attention from Decision Makers. They also were engaging with articles about how to more effective at their jobs by reading articles about time management, about how Walmart CEO Doug McMillon reminds himself how fleeting success can be, and about how to travel more efficiently and comfortably.

Lessons for Salespeople: These top 10 articles show Decision Makers looking for an edge. By reading about the insights of Gates, Buffet, and McMillon they’re searching for useful information that can help them do their jobs better and their companies become more successful. As a salesperson, you should understand this mindset and know that you’re more likely to be well received by Decision Makers when you position what you’re selling as giving them an edge.

Top 10 Articles Business Decision Makers Engaged With on LinkedIn in December

1. The World’s Most Successful People Don’t Actually Start Work at 4 a.m. They Wake and Work Whenever the (Heck) They Decide, by Jeff Haden, Inc.
2. Here’s the One Photo the Walmart CEO Keeps on his Phone to Stoke ‘Healthy Paranoia’ in race against Amazon by Lauren Thomas, CNBC
3. 5 Books I Loved in 2018 by Bill Gates
4. The 2 Things People Judge You on Immediately, According to a Harvard Psychologist by Jenna Goudreau, Business Insider 
5. Car Dealership Controller Embezzles $1.1 Million by Eric Freedman, Automotive News
6. Warren Buffet Says You Should Hire People With These 3 Traits, but Only 1 Will Point to a Truly Successful Employee by Marcel Schwantes, Inc. 
7. The CoFounder of HQ Trivia and Vine had Died at the Age of 35 by Jake Kanter, Business Insider 
8. I Flew Home for the Holidays on a Little-Known Airline with Zero Wait time That Feels Like a Chartered Jet, and I’m Never Flying Normally Again by Erin Brodwin, Business Insider 
9. When People Ask How You Are, Stop Saying ‘Busy’ by Robert Glazer 
10. Billionaire Warren Buffet: The ‘One Easy Way’ to Increase Your Worth by 50 Percent by Catherine Clifford, CNBC 

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