Walking the Talk: LinkedIn’s Best Practices to Advance Women in Sales

<p>This study reveals how the professional network leader LinkedIn is providing leading-edge diversity programs across their global salesforce in order to increase the percentage of women in sales and sales leadership. LinkedIn’s organizational vision is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workplace. For LinkedIn, diversity and inclusion are key to achieving this vision. This application research study outlines best practices and approaches LinkedIn has taken to enhance support for women in the sales ecosystem. While we know diversity initiatives cut across broader gender inclusion initiatives, this article is focused on binary gender data. In this study we examine new diversity programs implemented for women in sales by LinkedIn, and the successes to date. Practical implications are explored. The key contribution of this study is the presentation of best practices for diversity and inclusion of women in sales in the Internet Technology (IT) industry which may be used by other organizations to help advance women in sales.</p>