When it comes to social selling, LinkedIn might not be the first platform you think of.
However, over 76% of buyers are ready to have a sales conversation on LinkedIn — making it a valuable place to generate leads.
Ready to level-up your strategy and make sales on LinkedIn? Discover our top six tips in this blog post:
Why Should You Sell on LinkedIn?
If you don’t already have a LinkedIn social selling strategy, you could be missing out.
With nearly 740M users globally, LinkedIn is the home of a thriving professional community. In fact, over 70% of top-performing salespeople are active on the platform.
That’s a huge audience to tap into.
Plus, LinkedIn is full of features that are perfect for brand marketing — from engagement-boosting polls to targeted outreach tools.
With the right strategy, LinkedIn can be a powerful platform for social selling, raising brand awareness, and generating leads.
Did you know: You can now plan, schedule, and publish your LinkedIn posts with Later — for free!
How to Use LinkedIn for Sales
LinkedIn Sales Tip #1: Optimize Your Business’s Profile
The first step to social selling on LinkedIn? Create and optimize your business page.
Your business page acts as a virtual store-front for your products or services, so it’s a good idea to make it as informative as possible.
Craft a clear and compelling “About” summary that showcases your brand’s values, and use a branded profile image and cover photo.
For extra discoverability, use relevant keywords in your business profile — especially in key fields such as your company description.
Ready to improve your LinkedIn content strategy? Check out our complete guide to using LinkedIn for business here.
LinkedIn Sales Tip #2: Share Relevant and Valuable Content
A highly effective way to spark and develop connections with prospective leads is by posting content they find relevant and valuable.
By sharing industry insights and conversation-starting topics, you’ll position your business as an industry authority — which can make all the difference when it comes to generating leads.
Research shows that 92% of B2B customers are happy to engage with salespeople when they have established themselves as industry thought leaders.
Check out how PR agency Weber Shandwick regularly shares media coverage, speaker lineups, and client campaigns to highlight their work and position themselves as experts:
TIP: Use LinkedIn’s Content Suggestions to find out which topics people in your industry are engaging with.
LinkedIn Sales Tip #3: Optimize Your Posts
In addition to having a consistent posting schedule, it’s a good idea to optimize your posts for reach and engagement.
You can do this by tagging industry experts, using keywords, and including relevant hashtags. In fact, posts with hashtags generate 38% more impressions than posts without them!
Internet company Squarespace does a great job of this. Their use of specific hashtags — sometimes branded — enables their audience to find their content easily, and humanizes their brand:
Over time, you’ll be able to see what type of posts generate the most buzz — which is great insight for tailoring your future content strategy.
TIP: Encourage as much engagement as possible by including a strong CTA (call-to-action) that encourages likes, comments, or shares.
LinkedIn Sales Tip #4: Pinpoint Prospects Using LinkedIn’s Search Feature
For entrepreneurs developing sales leads on a person-to-person basis, LinkedIn offers extensive search features that make it easy to find people who might be interested in your business.
For example, if you’re operating from a personal page as well as a business one, you can search specifically for people who have connections in common with you.
With research indicating that people are 5x more likely to engage with you if you have a mutual connection, this filter can be a great way to find potential leads.
You can also filter by location and industry, and use the words “NOT,” “AND” and “OR” in your queries to create a highly targeted search.
TIP: The LinkedIn Sales Navigator will take your targeted search efforts to the next level. This paid feature for businesses allows you to use additional filters (like company type) and gain insights about a prospect’s sales potential. It will even indicate who in your audience is a warm lead.
LinkedIn Sales Tip #5: Perfect Your Connection Requests
Finding and filtering leads is one thing, but building a rapport with your new connections is essential if you want to hold their attention and encourage social selling.
The best connection requests are those which are polite, to the point, and demonstrate the value of your connection.
TIP: Sign up to LinkedIn InMail to send messages that are longer than 300 characters, letting you share more information in your outreach.
LinkedIn Sales Tip #6: Use LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index
If you’re serious about selling on LinkedIn, you’ll want to understand exactly how your brand measures up.
With LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI), you can get a deeper understanding of your social selling efforts — and discover opportunities for improvement.LinkedIn’s SSI looks at your profile through the lens of the four key pillars of social selling and gives you tailored strategies to improve your offering.
From pinpointing prospective customers to building relationships, there are so many ways to make sales on LinkedIn.
By following these tips and embracing LinkedIn’s latest features, you can build an engaged network of professional followers for your brand or business.
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