LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network making it a gold mine for prospecting and engaging customers. In fact, 50% of B2B buyers use LinkedIn when making purchasing decisions. Your customers are almost certainly on there, but are you making the most of LinkedIn’s potential when it comes to leads?
If not, there are many ways you can use your LinkedIn profile to find warm leads and drive engagement. Here are just three of them:
Make Your LinkedIn Profile More Than a Resume
If you’re using LinkedIn as a sales pro, then you are there to make connections and find prospects. However, if all your profile does is show them that you are an established salesperson, there’s not much to make them want to connect or engage with you. You need to do something more than passively have a profile.
In order to engage your growing number of connections, it’s important to be sharing interesting and relevant content that appeals to your target market. If for example, your product is a piece of HR software and your prospects are HR professionals, then you should be actively sharing and curating interesting content about HR tech trends and news. It also often a good idea to have a paid account such as LinkedIn Navigator. By doing this, you’ll gain even more relevant connections, become familiar to those in the industry to whom you want to sell, and build credibility with these target leads.
Prospect, Prospect, Prospect!
Now that you’ve started building a credible LinkedIn persona, it’s time to go after your leads.
Connect with the right audience by using LinkedIn Search. Rather than simply going after professionals in your target industries, narrow the search fields to bring up the decision makers who will have the authority to buy e.g. heads of departments.
Once you’ve made a relevant connection, don’t push too hard. Instead, go for the soft sell to drive more engagement. Make sure you’ve done some research to identify a potential pain point for their company and mention how your product can help in a short message that asks to schedule a 10-minute call. Then follow up a week later if you haven’t had a response.
Get Active in LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn Groups give you another great way to gain the attention of prospects, build credibility and drive engagement. Find groups that are relevant to your target industry or join groups that you have found your target customers are members of by looking at their profiles.
One of the great features of LinkedIn is that it permits you to join lots of groups. By joining up to 50 groups, you can massively increase your reach and potential touches with prospects.
A word of warning: Don’t make the mistake of joining a group just to make a sales pitch. People dislike unsolicited pitches intensely. There are seen as spam and will damage your personal brand. Rather, use the group platform to share your industry knowledge and problem solving capabilities with the people you are targeting. In this way, you are positioning yourself as reliable expert who they will come to trust and engage with. And as an added bonus, LinkedIn allows you to send InMails to any connection (whether it’s 2nd or 3rd) that you are in the same group with, allowing you to engage with far greater number of prospects that you would be able to otherwise.
About the Canadian Professional Sales Association
Since 1874, we’ve been developing and serving sales professionals by providing programs, benefits, and resources that help you sell more, and sell smarter.
Contact us today at MemberServices@cpsa.com or 1-888-267-2772 to see how we can help you and your team reach new heights in sales success.
Copyright ©2017 by The Canadian Professional Sales Association. For permissions, contact editor@cpsa.com.
This content is exclusive for CPSA members
Become a Member
Already a member? Login to see full the article.