4 Common Mistakes Salespeople Make on LinkedIn — And What to Do Instead

Great sellers today know how to use LinkedIn and Sales Navigator.

“LinkedIn is the native habitat of high-performing reps,” Outreach CEO and Cofounder Manny Medina said. “LinkedIn is an ideal venue for reps to share their hard-won insights and information that helps people – including their target customers – do their jobs better.”

The problem – many salespeople aren’t quite sure how to use LinkedIn. And some make mistakes when doing so.

Our goal is to help you avoid those. Here are four of the most common mistakes salespeople make on LinkedIn – and what to do instead.

1. Having a barebones, generic, or pitch-heavy LinkedIn profile.

It all starts here. If your LinkedIn says nothing, is generic, or is a complete sales pitch, it’s very difficult to make any headway on the platform.

Some examples of bad LinkedIn profiles:

• A barebones profile composed of a list of the jobs you had and where you went to college – and nothing else. You are giving people almost no reason to engage with you.
• A generic, written in the third-person profile that uses every buzzword imaginable. Once again, you are giving people almost no reason to engage with you. Or, perhaps, turning them off slightly.
• A profile filled with overpromises and/or a really hard product push. That’ll often lead to mistrust.

What to do instead: This article sums it up nicely.

Here’s the best way to think about crafting your LinkedIn profile. Imagine you were talking to your ideal prospect right now. What would you say to them?

Approach your profile through that lens and prospects will be much more likely to engage with you. Here’s another blog to help, with more tactical tips on creating a strong profile.

2. Sending out generic InMails en mass.

Sending out mass, generic InMails in Sales Navigator simply doesn’t work, as data shows people are far less likely to respond to them. And, they hurt both your company brand and your own personal brand.

What to do instead: This article shares our best InMail data. Here’s the main takeaway: do the research to make your InMails relevant and personalized, and you’ll see much stronger results.

It doesn’t mean you have to create an InMail from scratch for every person you reach out to – templates are great. But ensure you're targeting the right people (Relationship Explorer, for example, can help). And then personalize the template to the person, and you are much more likely to get a response.

3. Never posting on LinkedIn or just posting sales pitches.

I’m not sure what’s worse – not posting on LinkedIn at all or posting content that’s just sales pitches for your company.

Per the former – I get it, it’s scary to post on LinkedIn, and it’s hard to think of posts. Start small and easy – share blogs around topics that your audience will care about. Over time, you’ll build confidence.

This will help you build your personal brand among the exact people you want to connect with.

Per the latter – this is a big mistake. If you’re just posting about how great your product is, you are unlikely to get much engagement. Worse off, you’ll turn off the few people who do see it, and lose trust among your prospects.

What to do instead: A personal story for all the skeptics out there (I'll keep it short).

In 2014, I was working for a startup and was tasked with marketing our hiring product on LinkedIn. At first, I just wrote about how great our product was and how it solved every problem, and I got no engagement. My boss began considering firing me.

In desperation, I just started writing about hiring best practices. My content went viral, I built a massive brand, and we were getting literally hundreds of inbound leads a month from my LinkedIn presence.

The point – write about what your market will care about, not your product, and you are far more likely to build a sales engine.

4. Treating LinkedIn as a one-way conversation.

It’s easy to see LinkedIn as all about you. Your profile. Your InMails. Your posts.

But, of course, it’s anything but – there are 1 billion members on the platform. And today, more than ever, people are posting content, engaging on their feed, and creating their own newsletters.

If you ignore all of that and only focus on your own stuff, you are missing a golden opportunity to connect with your buyers on a deeper level.

What to do instead: When you post something on LinkedIn, what do you want? I'm assuming for people to like and comment on it.

Same with your buyers and prospects. When they post on LinkedIn, they want people to like and engage with that post and are grateful to the people who do.

Of course, be authentic – it’ll be obvious if you're doing it just to gain favor. But engage with your audience. Become part of the community you want to work with. Learn from what they have to say to build your own expertise.

Pro tip: In Sales Navigator, you can be alerted every time one of your most important leads posts on LinkedIn. Use that to stay on top of what's top-of-mind for them, along with giving you an opportunity to engage with it.

The biggest mistake a seller can make on LinkedIn? Not using Sales Navigator when on it. Here are a few posts for getting the absolute most out of the platform:

• The Best Sales Navigator Feature Is... 10 Sellers Share Their Favorites.
• How to Be Great at Reaching Out: What Every InMail Sent in 2022 Told Us
• Meet Account IQ: Our One-Stop Shop For Account Research
• 3 Tips Worth Checking Out When Searching in Sales Navigator
• What is Relationship Explorer – And Why LinkedIn's Sellers Are Excited About It

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