Categories
Social Selling

How To Make Your LinkedIn Profile More Attractive To Buyers

If you want to succeed in today’s modern selling environment, you have to accept that the power lies in the customer’s hands.

Our access to information has drastically increased in the last couple of decades, and customers are taking full advantage of the availability of objective data to form their own opinions and beliefs about the options at their fingertips. Buyers have never been more in control of their purchasing decisions, with the product being the only variable that sellers can adjust.

The impact of this change is especially felt by B2B sellers. In the past, buyers would, upon discovering a need for a particular product or solution, reach out to different companies to get information about their offerings, their features, and their prices. Conversely, sellers can easily cold call decision-makers and help them uncover a need they did not know existed.

But this isn’t the case anymore. In fact, most of the B2B buying process is performed out of the seller’s sight, with buyers doing their own research digitally via online content and social media, specifically on LinkedIn.

Social selling on LinkedIn: the key to B2B sales success

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social networking site, with over 800M members across 200 countries. This makes it the perfect platform for social selling, with nearly endless opportunities to generate leads and referrals, prospect efficiently, and build relationships with your customers.

Social selling success on LinkedIn hinges on the sellers’ application of both outbound and inbound strategies. This is the only way to achieve undisputable results that could be felt across the entire organization.

Outbound social selling strategies

What comes to your mind when you hear the word “sales”?

Chances are you’re probably imagining a sales rep reaching out to a customer to promote their product or service, maybe through a phone call or via a meeting. This is exactly what outbound sales is: The process in which the seller initiates communication with a prospective buyer via sales activities such as emailing, cold calling, or social selling.

While outbound selling methods are clearly effective—that’s how sales reps have been meeting their quota for years—it’s not enough if you want to surpass your sales goals. You can make the most of your outbound sales efforts by strategically targeting only the accounts with the highest likelihood of conversion.

Still, this isn’t enough to be successful in sales. The best sellers complement their outbound sales techniques with inbound sales methods. This turns them into lead magnets, attracting customers in their sleep.

Inbound social selling strategies

Turning your LinkedIn profile into a lead magnet requires a strong, carefully crafted personal brand. Your personal brand should show that you are an active participant in your industry, thus establishing your authority and knowledge. Do it right, and expect to reap its benefits—the most notable of which is an increase in the inquiries you’ll get from prospects.

To achieve this, the first thing you need to do is to optimize your LinkedIn profile.

How to optimize your LinkedIn profile

An updated, optimized LinkedIn profile can boost the reputation of any professional, but it’s especially helpful for people in sales and marketing. It adds credibility to both you and your company and helps you reach a broader audience.

Ready to revamp your LinkedIn presence? Start with the following areas of your profile

1. Your Profile Photo and Background Photo

Your photo is the first thing that people notice when they visit your profile. Upload a high-resolution, well-lit headshot, preferably one where you’re smiling to give a friendly, approachable impression. While you’re at it, update your background photo to indicate your professional brand. Remember, first impressions last—so you better make sure your photo creates a positive impact.

2. Your Headline

Your headline is where you can highlight what you do and how you can help your customers. Use action-based keywords to project confidence and authority, and use terms that clearly define your role and contributions.

3. Your About/Summary Section

Your summary should complement your headline, adding more details about how you can help your customers win. Use this section to position yourself as a thought leader in your field. Try not to exceed 150 words—any longer, and it’ll be tedious to read.

4. Your Recommendations

Recommendations serve as social proof of what you have written in your Headline and About sections. For customer-facing roles, a minimum of five recommendations would be ideal.

5. Your Activity

This is where your profile’s visitors can see your perspectives about your industry. Share relevant content, comment on your connections’ news, and engage with posts that resonate with you—these simple actions go a long way in showing that you’re an active, contributing member of your online community.

Conclusion

A strong LinkedIn presence is necessary to survive and thrive in today’s modern, cutthroat B2B sales environment. The sooner you accept this, the faster your revenue team can meet quotas, grow pipeline, and maximize profitability. 

The easiest way to strengthen your LinkedIn presence is by optimizing your profile. 

Upload clear profile photos that reflect your personality, write a headline that shows your professional capabilities and include a personal summary that sheds more light on your accomplishments. Don’t forget to post and share content regularly, and ask for recommendations from people whom you have worked with.

Categories
b2b sales

How To Start Building Your Personal Brand

If you want to stand out from the rest of the sellers in the market, you need a strong personal brand that reflects what you stand for.

Your brand tells potential buyers what they can expect from you. It tells them about your personality, your processes, and your working style. And, depending on how well you build your brand, it tells them how reliable you are as an authority in your industry.

The Importance Of Having A Personal Brand

At Sales for Life, we believe that a strong personal brand isn’t just nice to have as a seller, but a must-have.

In fact, one of the first things we teach in our flagship course, The ScalePipeline System, is the importance of building a strong personal brand. We have a whole module about it: Modern Branding Fundamentals, where we teach sales professionals how to build their professional reputations and increase conversations by strategically creating and sharing content on LinkedIn. This gradually builds you up as an authority in your industry, making prospects see you as someone they can trust.

Build your personal brand well, and you’ll have customers reaching out to you instead of the other way around. You’ll have the power to draw in leads in your sleep. And that’s why having a strong personal brand is the best inbound sales strategy.

So how can you get started building your personal brand?

3 things you need to know when building your personal brand

The first thing you need to know when building your personal brand is that there are three things that will ultimately determine the results of your efforts. Think of these three factors as levers that determine the effectiveness of your engagement efforts: Many times, when your sellers’ messages aren’t resonating, they’re probably not manipulating some of these levers.

  1. The stories you tell people: the stories have to offer value for your prospects: You should be able to make them money, save them money, or mitigate their risk.

  2. The mediums through which you tell stories: The medium by which you engage with your prospects informs your message. Whether it’s email, video, text, snail mail, or LinkedIn—creative sellers will consider a variety of different mediums, recognizing that they can’t predict which medium is going to land with the customer. It helps to use an omni-channel approach, testing different engagement strategies to socially surround that customer.

  3. The cadence and sequence: This pertains to the order and operation by which you tell your stories. Key account selling is not for two-week closes. It takes several weeks and months to close deals—and that’s why you need to engage with your audience regularly and repeatedly in order for your brand to stick in their minds.

If you isolate each one of these levers, you’ll be able to develop an engagement action plan. But first, you need to recognize that a one-time approach doesn’t work. Sending one message and hoping you get a response is not a strategy.

Always think about how you can manipulate these three levers to alter the results and outcomes that you’re trying to achieve. As a seller, you should always think five chess moves ahead. That’s why the best key account sellers have at least five sales plays in their pocket, being delivered over weeks and months. This way, they’re constantly engaging with and nurturing their customers.

LinkedIn: The Best Place To Start Building Your Personal Brand

One of the most optimal mediums to build your personal brand is LinkedIn. It’s the most conducive platform for building a professional presence that properly showcases your work to your network.

 Below are the five basic things you can do to improve your LinkedIn profile—and, correspondingly, your personal brand.

  1. Add a professional profile photo: Pick an appropriate profile photo that corresponds with your role. It doesn’t have to be taken by a professional photographer, but it has to be clear with a non-distracting background and should showcase you in your best light. 

  2. Write a distinctive headline: Your default headline is your current employment position, but you can write your own to demonstrate your expertise or your role. Think of your headline as your personal tagline—include the words and phrases that you’d like to be used to describe you.

  3. Change your LinkedIn background photo: You can upload a LinkedIn background photo to tell your network more about who you are and what you do. You can use it to echo your company’s brand, or to share your own hobbies and achievements.

  4. Optimize your summary and experience sections: Your LinkedIn profile and your resume should not show the same things. Your experience should list your major accomplishments and the key positions you’ve held, along with brief explanations of each role. Meanwhile, your summary is where you can dive deeper into your vision for your role or company. Back up your achievements with statistics, and use keywords to make your profile easier to find.

  5. Ask for recommendations: The most effective kinds of advertising are those done for you by other people—and that’s exactly what LinkedIn recommendations do. Recommendations from trusted contacts whom you work or have worked with will be visible to your network, giving your reputation an instant boost.

Conclusion

Building your personal brand is necessary to boost your professional reputation. It’s doubly important when you work in sales. A strong personal brand can turn you into a lead magnet, thus functioning as your inbound sales strategy.

Being active on LinkedIn is one of the easiest ways to build your personal brand. Optimize your profile, network strategically, and publish content regularly. Keep in mind the three levers that will affect your engagement strategy: Your stories, mediums, and cadences. Adjust your sales plays constantly to get the results you want, and constantly engage your audience so your brand will leave a strong impression on their minds.