LinkedIn is an essential social network for commercial prospecting. Here are some tips to help you define and succeed with your social selling strategy on the platform.
LinkedIn is much more than just a platform where job supply and demand meet. It is now one of the essential social networks for commercial prospecting. For what? The numbers speak for themselves:
- 790 million registered members in October 2022
- 50% of B2B buyers base their purchasing decisions on information received from their LinkedIn contacts
- 76% of B2B buyers trust recommendations from their professional network
These statistics clearly indicate that LinkedIn is a gold mine for online prospecting and generating qualified leads. However, to take advantage of it, you must have a successful social selling strategy that takes into account the realities of the platform. Discover in this article, 5 tips for a successful social selling strategy on LinkedIn.
Optimize Your Profile To Boost Your Social Selling Efforts
When you aim to sell using the power of LinkedIn, you’re looking for prospects to do business with, not recruiters or hiring managers. That’s why you shouldn’t create a LinkedIn profile that shows how good you are at selling. Instead, you should create a profile that shows how much you have already helped many people with your expertise.
For example, you can create a title like this: “[Title]: Helping [Prospects] with [Promise] through [System or Tool]. “. In practice, this gives: Digital Marketing Consultant: I help entrepreneurs to sell more thanks to Facebook advertising . This type of headline naturally attracts qualified leads. This is a great way to boost your social selling efforts.
You can do the same for your presentation and your current position. Please feel free to enter numbers. For example, you can indicate that you are helping your customers reduce their costs by $500,000 or that you are helping them achieve a 100% rate for safety standards. Always to optimize your profile, remember to put a profile picture that highlights you and do not hesitate to add your profiles from other social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram) for more credibility.
Build A Qualitative Network And Expand It
To make sales through LinkedIn, you must create a powerful and dynamic network. However, you have to be selective in the process to expand your network. Since your goal is to sell, you need to target a different audience than most professionals. If your current LinkedIn contacts are family members, friends, and pals you’ve dated, then you have a long way to go.
With the LinkedIn search bar, you can filter who you send invitations to join your network. Identify mainly potential customers. You can use automation tools like ProspectIn to regularly send out requests to expand your network. By staying diligent, you can build a quality network. Added to the quality of your profile, you can attract potential customers to you.
Set Up An Effective Prospecting Process
Now that you’ve finished optimizing your profile and have set up the process to create and expand your network , it’s time to work on your prospecting system. As your network expands, don’t hesitate to start a conversation with your contacts. It is advisable to study the profile of each one to set up a personalized approach.
With a little detective work, you can quickly get an idea of what you should talk about with your contacts and assess their needs. It must be recognized that this way of doing things can be time-consuming and off-putting. There are other much more effective solutions, but which require a certain financial investment. We discuss them in the paragraphs below.
Boost Your Social Selling Efforts With InMail
Anyone in the sales industry knows this. It is difficult to reach decision makers in companies. This is normal since they receive emails and calls all day long. They set up several filters so as not to be disturbed on a daily basis.
That’s where InMail comes in. It’s an internal messaging system from LinkedIn. Thanks to this system, you can send a message to any LinkedIn user without necessarily belonging to your network. The system guarantees that your message will reach their inbox.
You can therefore integrate the use of InMail into your social selling strategy on LinkedIn. According to the platform, an InMail is 30 times more likely to get a response than a cold call. This is a great asset for you. The only catch is that you have to have a premium LinkedIn account to use this feature.
Use The Sales Navigator To Speed Up Your Prospecting Process
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a paid feature of LinkedIn that takes your sales prospecting to the next level. This feature allows you to do advanced searches to more accurately identify qualified leads . The filters available are among others:
- Search by title;
- Search by company;
- Keyword research;
- Search by location.
Also Read: How To Search LinkedIn For Jobs