Using LinkedIn to Increase Sales
The real powerhouse for business networking and prospecting is the business focused social media site, LinkedIn.
Social media platforms enable you to stay in contact with friends and family and stay current on their life activities. They can also benefit you on the business side, especially for sales. For many people, the top social media networks that come to mind are Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
While these sites have some benefits for sales prospecting, with general consumers, the real powerhouse for business networking and prospecting is the business focused social media site, LinkedIn.
In fact, when it comes to business, LinkedIn with over 360 million members world-wide, is the top social media choice for business networking and sales prospecting.
If you are using the popular social media business platform, LinkedIn, you might find that there are additional ways to reach potential clients or connect through others to increase sales.
For many, LinkedIn has been somewhat thought of as the go to social site when you’re looking for your next job. It certainly has value for this purpose, and it is extensively used by recruitment specialists world-wide to find and contact prospects, but its benefits far exceed that. In the know business people use LinkedIn more and more as a revenue generating, sales prospecting tool.
LinkedIn is a perfect tool to make lead and sales prospecting smoother, quicker, and ultimately, profitable. It is an extremely cost-effective tool for business development.
Modern sales techniques have changed, and LinkedIn allows you to connect directly with and gather information on companies and prospects, as well as develop relationships and contact decision makers directly.
Here are some proactive, easy to implement strategies for using LinkedIn as a tool to effectively increase your sales prospecting and grow revenues.
Optimize your LI Profile
With a couple tweaks, you can turn your LinkedIn profile into a powerful sales asset. The most important thing is that your profile is 100% complete. There is a high chance that your prospects will look you up if they are interested in what you are selling. When they do, your profile should give off a professional impression of you and your company.
Connect and Engage
An important thing to do when beginning to get serious about using LinkedIn for prospecting is to take a long hard look at your contacts. Contacts are the bread and butter on the site. If yours are predominantly family, your college classmates, and friends, you need to do a little work.
Connections spawn more connections. Your primary contacts open a route to a wide range of second and third level connections. This is how to scale up your efforts.
Target and Map Your Leads
LinkedIn users generally put a tremendous amount of information on their profiles. Everything from which teams they work with, what projects they are focusing on, which office they work out of and more.
You can use this information to develop a map of who the decision makers are and how they can be reached and influenced to make the sale. (Start by checking out the “viewers of this profile also viewed…” box on their profile.)
Use Groups to Keep Up To Date and Engage With Prospects
Groups on LinkedIn are collections of people with similar likes, needs, skills and more. They are a great way to learn about the industries you target for sales and can be a great source for new prospects. Engaging with member questions is a great way to build trust and authority while raising your thought leader profile which can lead to sales inquiries. They are also a great “soft” way to make contact with a prospect.
Turn Your Profile Into A Lead Generator
Much of what we’ve touched on so far has been outbound information, where to go to find prospects, how to engage, etc. This is purely inbound. The prospects you’ve engaged with through connections and Groups will most likely seek out your profile to learn more about you. (Information flows both ways on LinkedIn!). So it only makes sense to optimize your profile to drive sales. Make sure you have current links to your company site, your Twitter account and your Facebook page. Include some high-quality recommendations from existing happy customers – think quality, not quantity. This can give visitors a better idea of who you are and what you’re all about. Remember, effective sales is all about building trust and relationships.
Tags: digital marketing, linkedin, marketing strategy