Social Selling on LinkedIn: Strategies for Sales Success

LinkedIn has become the premier platform for sales teams aiming to drive leads and close deals through social media. With a billion members, it offers unparalleled access to professional contacts and key decision makers. And social selling on LinkedIn is one way to make the cash rain!

But simply having a LinkedIn presence isn’t enough. To fully capitalize on LinkedIn’s sales potential, you need an optimized social selling strategy. This covers everything from expanding your network to sharing valuable insights to skillfully managing sales conversations.

Master these essential social selling techniques on LinkedIn, and you’ll be well on your way to sales success:

Establish a Buyer-Centric Profile

Your LinkedIn profile serves as the foundation for all social selling activities. It allows you to put your best professional footprint forward to attract the right prospects.

Your profile is a digital shop window for each one walking past. So rather than a static, resume-style profile, you need one tailored specifically to connect with buyers.

Timothy Hughes, author of “Social Selling Techniques” and LinkedIn sales expert, explains:

“The profile needs to be a profile where someone goes, that’s interesting.

Here are key elements to include in a buyer-centric LinkedIn profile:

• Profile Photo: Choose a high quality, friendly headshot that instills confidence and approachability.
• Header Image: Use a banner that further expresses your personal brand. Display relevant images, awards, press features etc.
• Background Details: Briefly highlight your professional background and core areas of expertise.
• Skills: Populate this section with keywords prospects may search to find an offering like yours.
• Endorsements: Proactively ask colleagues and partners to endorse you for relevant skills. This lends third party validation.
• Recommendations: Well written recommendations build tremendous credibility. Be specific in what you ask contacts to highlight.
• Summary: Craft an overview section that grabs attention and conveys how you can address buyer needs or pain points. Use an intriguing title to draw readers in.

A complete, buyer-focused profile establishes trust and gets prospects interested to learn more about you. Combine that with the other social selling approaches below, and LinkedIn becomes a lead generation machine.

Expand Your Network Strategically

Simply having an attractive profile only gets you so far. To drive conversations that convert prospects into customers, you need to expand your LinkedIn network.

This goes beyond connecting with existing professional contacts from past roles or conferences. Social selling requires actively growing your web of relevant connections to open up new opportunities.

As Timothy emphasizes, casting a wide net is key here:

“You can send about 2200 LinkedIn connection requests every week, and you should do that and what the connection request is about not about your products and services, but the ability to have a conversation, because everything that we do in B2B requires us to have a conversation.”

While sending thousands of connection invites weekly isn’t realistic for most salespeople, the principle holds true. Continually add both key prospects and those who can introduce you to them.

Along with using LinkedIn features like search, alerts and Sales Navigator strategically, also network offline at events or through colleagues. Note promising contacts for later outreach.

When asking new prospects to connect, always customize the invitation with a personal message:

• Mention where you met them, if applicable
• Note something you have in common
• Or simply state you’d like to connect over [shared interest]

This builds goodwill for any future communication. Follow up conversations allow you to provide value, demonstrate expertise, and eventually transition prospects into leads.

Share Valuable Insights

Casting a wide network is critical, but you need compelling bait to reel prospects into a sales discussion with you. This is where consistently sharing valuable insights pays dividends in social selling.

Posting interesting updates shows you understand buyers’ key challenges, positions you as an industry thought leader, and continually keeps you top of mind.

So rather than overt sales pitches or blatant promotional content, provide helpful perspectives. Commentary, links to studies, video explainers, conference recaps, demo offers, and more all provide value.

Timothy suggests thinking of insights that incite action or spark conversation:

“What we want is content that’s going to incite, you know, incite me, entertain me…This is a great example here is a podcast, where you’re entertaining people, you’re giving people information.”

Ideally, share a steady mix across text, image and video based updates to cater to different preferences.

Also comment on and share others’ content when it relates to your solutions or industry expertise. This further strengthens relationships and credibility.

Read next: Using a LinkedIn AI tool to write comments and stand out to prospects

Measure and Refine with Social Selling Index

How can you track progress across these facets and pinpoint any areas needing refinement?

LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI) provides helpful performance benchmarks. The SSI analyzes four categories on a scale of 1-25:

• Establishing your professional brand
• Finding the right people
• Sharing valuable insights
• Building strong relationships

It then gives you an overall score from 1-100 along with historical comparisons.

Regularly checking your SSI helps identify relative strengths to double down on as well as gaps needing attention.

For example, consistently low scores on “finding the right people” signals you should expand connections with more target accounts and prospects. Lagging relationship scores means engaging others’ content more often through likes, shares or comments.

While no metric offers a perfect assessment, monitoring your SSI performance provides a valuable barometer. It can guide adjustments like reallocating more time to network expansion rather than just content creation.

Executing these core social selling pillars in a disciplined fashion is challenging. But doing so positions you for sales success on LinkedIn amid intensifying competition for buyers’ attention.

Now that you’re equipped with a complete game plan, it’s time to put social selling into practice on LinkedIn. Position yourself as an invaluable resource to prospects well before you ever make your sales pitch. Then watch your profits and pipeline grow.

Connect with me on LinkedIn to learn from each other!