LinkedIn has become one of the most used platforms by B2B businesses. According to Statista, LinkedIn is the second-most popular social media platform used by B2B marketers, ranking only behind Facebook. What makes LinkedIn a useful tool for businesses is that it is effective for social selling. Other social media platforms are useful for learning more about target audience, while LinkedIn can make it easier for businesses to reach them.
LinkedIn states that it is the top social media platform used for social selling by sales reps followed by Twitter and Facebook. What differentiates LinkedIn from other platforms is the fact that it is more professional. LinkedIn is mainly used for professional interactions and helps a business demonstrate its authenticity. Businesses can use several features that can help them share valuable information with target audiences and build meaningful relationships with them. In this article, we will discuss how businesses can do social selling on LinkedIn and make the most of what this platform has to offer.
What is Social Selling?
Social selling is using social media platforms to find prospects, build relationships and achieve your sales goals. This method enables sales reps to generate leads and reach out to them without the need for cold calling. It is a great way to build trust with prospects and create meaningful business relationships.
Social Selling on LinkedIn
Social selling on LinkedIn refers to using LinkedIn to find, connect and build relationships with leads and prospects to drive sales.
Lead generation is an important aspect of your entire selling process. Before you reach out to your prospects you need to find them first. Let’s look at how you can generate leads on LinkedIn.
Lead Generation on LinkedIn
Lead generation is an important part of your social selling efforts. LinkedIn is a great tool to help you find quality leads that are interested in the types of products or services you sell. Here are some ways that can help you generate leads.
Search
To find people on LinkedIn, search is a powerful tool. Search can help you look for people with the help of various filters. You can look for your existing connections and other mutual connections. Apart from your connections, you can also look for people outside your network. There are various qualifiers that can help you find people. You can find people based on some of these qualifiers:
- Location
- Current company
- Industry
- School
- Profile Language
- Open To
- Keywords
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Sales Navigator is a great tool for sales professionals. It is a paid feature and is available for both individuals and teams that can help in improving your search and expanding your network. It can be a good investment for businesses who want to target the right prospects who are interested. Users can also save leads to the HubSpot CRM.
Here are the various tiers you can sign up for:
Sales Navigator Professional: There are 20 InMail messages available per month and other advanced features.
Sales Navigator Team: There are 30 InMail messages per month, advanced features, and administrative tools.
Sales Navigator Enterprise: There are 50 InMail messages per month, advanced features, and CRM integrations.
Lead Builder
If you are using Sales Navigator, you can leverage Lead Builder, a feature that can enable you to save prospects as leads. You can find their posts and updates on your homepage and reach out to them when the time is right.
How to Do Social Selling on LinkedIn?
Share meaningful content
To engage your ideal customers, you need to share relevant information with them. The content you share should be meaningful for your audience and help in solving their problems. You can share different types of content like infographics, images, videos, articles, news and more. The goal of sharing these valuable insights is to establish yourself as a thought leader. This helps your target customers trust your business as experts and encourage them to communicate with you.
If you publish blogs, then you can share them on your LinkedIn page. You can also share articles from other credible sources that offer industry insights. Share information that helps solve the problems of your ideal customers. Relevant and quality content can encourage your prospects to engage with your content.
Join LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn Groups are a space for like-minded professionals to connect, exchange ideas and share valuable content. If you want to expand your LinkedIn and reach people outside your connection, then this is a great way to do so. In these groups you can filter members based on their location, industry, job title and more. This makes it easy for businesses to target potential customers.
Join various groups relevant to your industry. You can also join other groups that your target customers are interested in. When you are in these groups, be active. Share valuable content with other group members. Have discussions on various topics through comments. The goal is to establish yourself as a thought leader and attract leads. When your prospects see you as an expert they will want to invest in your business.
Customise invitations
When you are sending connection requests to your prospects, you will be interacting with them for the first time. With this request it is important to send a personalized message. By sending a personalized message you can tell the prospect why they should be adding you to their network. Long paragraphs are not needed, just a few sentences are enough.
You can add points like personalized greetings, mutual connection and groups, any content they engaged with, any relevant information on their profile. These points can be good ice breakers and enable you to connect with your audience. Ensure that you write a message that attracts your users to talk to you.
Have valuable conversations
The message you first send to your leads is just to start the conversation. You also need to keep the conversation going with meaningful discussions. The sale is not going to happen right away. Before you get into the sales discussion, you need to have valuable conversations with your leads. You can start by engaging with any content they share. You can also share some valuable pieces of content with them.
Then you can start discussing the problems they face which are relevant to your products and services. You can slowly start introducing them with the products or services you offer. The point of having valuable conversations first, is to not make the leads feel that you are just trying to sell. Only sending sales related messages in the beginning can discourage them from engaging with you.
Set up a phone call
After you have spent an appropriate amount of time understanding your leads and having a conversation with them you can contact them. If you feel like the lead is not ready to have a serious discussion, spend some more time before you initiate to take the conversation offline. When they are ready you can set up a phone call or meeting to discuss their problems and offer solutions on behalf of your business.
LinkedIn Tips for Sales Reps
Sales reps are going to connect with prospects on LinkedIn, hence it is important that they build credibility with their audience. By optimizing their profile, sales reps can gain the trust and confidence of their audience. When prospects find relevant information on a salesperson profile, they feel more comfortable communicating with them further.
When you connect with your prospects, they are going to look at your profile. It is the first impression you make about your business. Your profile should show your audience what your brand is all about and how you can help them.
Headline
Start by writing a strong headline that introduces your business to the audience. Here is a simple formula to write an attention-grabbing headline:
“[Title]: helping [prospects] do X.”
This headline can show your target prospects how your business cam helps them.
Summary
LinkedIn summary should include a paragraph or two, not more than that. The summary should describe your role and how you can help your prospects. Describe the exciting part of your job and talk about how you can provide prospects with unique experiences. Prospects are going to skim your profile and they should be able to find all the relevant information about you. This summary can encourage your leads and prospects to trust you and have a conversation with you.
Job Description
Write about your current position. Write about your accomplishments to tell people how you were able to contribute to the business. This can enable them to trust you and the business in solving their problems.
Profile Picture
It is important that sales reps have a profile picture for their LinkedIn. According to LinkedIn, having a profile picture makes your profile 14 times more likely to be viewed. It is better for prospects to know who they are talking to. Ensure that you take a professional looking headshot. A good profile picture can help optimize your profile and make it more visible.
Lead generation is an important aspect of your entire selling process. Before you reach out to your prospects you need to find them first. Let’s look at how you can generate leads on LinkedIn.
Measuring Social Selling on LinkedIn
When you have implemented your social selling efforts it is important to measure your activities. Social selling index (SSI) can help you measure the effectiveness of your social selling efforts.
What is the Social Selling Index?
LinkedIn’s social selling index is a metric to measure a business’s social selling efforts. It was first introduced by LinkedIn in 2014. The SSI can help you measure a company’s adoption of the “4 Pillars of Social Selling” on LinkedIn.
Here are LinkedIn’s 4 Pillars of Social Selling:
- Creating a professional brand by building a LinkedIn profile
- Finding the right prospects
- Sharing relevant, meaningful, and engaging content
- Building meaningful relationships
The SSI is scored on a scale of 0-100 based on your LinkedIn activities related to the 4 pillars of social selling. According to LinkedIn, here is what businesses with high SSI are capable to achieve:
- 45% more sales opportunities
- 51% more likely to hit quota
- 78% of social sellers have more sales compared to those who don’t use social media
To find out your LinkedIn SSI score, sign into your account and go to the Social Selling Index dashboard. You can measure your social selling activities based on this. You can also make improvements to your existing social selling efforts based on this score.
Social selling can take your sales efforts to the next level. With the help of your social media platform, you can build long-term relationships and credibility for your brand. What sets apart LinkedIn from another social network is that it is designed for social selling. This is a platform that is used by professionals worldwide to have serious business discussions. Hence, establishing your brand’s credibility here is important. To excel at social selling on LinkedIn refer to the 4 pillars of social selling. These pillars can give a good direction to start social selling on LinkedIn.
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