Growing your business with LinkedIn - The Crucial Element You Could be Missing to Build a Solid Sales Pipeline

LinkedIn is a powerful platform for businesses of all sizes, offering endless opportunities for social selling, networking and building relationships with potential customers. But without a systematic sales process and a strategy for using it effectively, it can be difficult to maximise its potential.

My aim is to not only help you understand the power of LinkedIn, but to explain why having a process for using it as part of your prospecting cadence will help accelerate your business growth.

You'll learn how to use LinkedIn as an effective sales tool, such as setting up a profile that attracts prospects, creating engaging content and building relationships with leads.

Finally, we will explore a system that can help you manage the entire sales process from start to finish.

What Is Social Selling?

People often get confused with this concept.

Social selling is a modern sales approach that is active on social media and leverages relationships in order to connect with prospects and increase sales.

Instead of leading with the features of your product or service, it involves being visible and building your brand’s credibility as a problem-solver to your target audience and potential customers.

By optimising your professional profile on platforms such as LinkedIn, you can make those connections quickly and conveniently.

It also involves the use of content to engage potential customers by giving advice, insights and opinions.

By sharing helpful advice, engaging in conversations with potential clients, responding to comments or questions, there's an opportunity for building relationships directly with prospects without directly selling.

Ultimately, successful social selling depends on having a systematic process for using LinkedIn that helps you optimise your time online so you can build meaningful connections with prospects and accelerate your business growth.

How to Manage Your LinkedIn Profile for Social Selling

Your LinkedIn profile is your shop window – what you say and how you present yourself tell your potential customers a lot about you. You need to make sure that it's up to date and fully optimised.

Here are some key points for managing your profile for social selling success:

Have a profile picture

I still encounter so many profiles that still have no image and personally, I engage less with a face-less profile.

As far as other people on LinkedIn are concerned, you are a stranger. As a result, people have no inherent interest in you or your business so, you must earn people's interest by overcoming two survival filters hard-wired into the human brain.

The first assesses if it's safe to know you; the second if it's worth knowing you.

When it comes to LinkedIn profiles - and according to studies by social psychologist Amy Cuddy - having a photo will help to answer those two key questions.

The more people know about you and the more similar to them you appear, the more they'll trust you.

The more competent you appear, the more they'll value you as a connection.

For best results, build likability first then establish competence.?

• Leverage your network to gain warm introductions – leverage the contacts already in your network, who already know and trust you, so that they can introduce you to people in their network that may benefit from what you have to offer.
• Tell a story about who you are, why you do what you do, and how you can help – people buy from people they know, like, and trust.

Think, how can your personal story draw them in?

Building Relationships and Making Connections on LinkedIn

Relationships are key to business success. LinkedIn is a powerful tool when it comes to connecting with people and building meaningful relationships. With 500 connections in LinkedIn, you can quickly grow a healthy network of relationships and leverage those connections to connect with even more people.

When done correctly, establishing relationships through shared connections on LinkedIn can lead to more engaged conversations with the leads you establish.

In fact, studies have shown that sales cycles are shortened and engagement increased by up to 30% when you spend time uncovering and nurturing multiple contacts at organisations.

Plus, when you use LinkedIn’s search feature correctly, you can find the right contact at a company quickly - increasing your chances of developing meaningful relationships with key decision makers in your target companies faster.

Using Content for Engagement on LinkedIn

Meaningful content is king, and that's especially true on LinkedIn. Posting and sharing content is essential for engaging with potential customers, and can be used to establish yourself as an influencer in your sector.

Here are five ways to leverage content on LinkedIn for maximum business growth:

1. Use Videos: Videos are a great way to share insights into your business and personal life exposing potential customers to your brand. Consider creating video content that offers advice, provides industry insight, or explains your products or services in an entertaining and informative way.
2. Leverage Podcasts: A podcast series related to your industry or product offering. This can help you start conversations with potential customers and showcase your expertise.
3. Engage With Your Audience: Ask questions related to your business or sector and engage with those who respond. Not only does this encourage interaction with potential customers, but it also raises awareness of your business as more people become aware of what you have to offer.
4. Share Articles: Post relevant articles from reputable sources so followers can stay up-to-date on the latest news in your field as well as gain insights into topics they may not be familiar with yet.
5. Post Live Events: Share upcoming webinars and industry events that may be of interest to those following you on LinkedIn. This will help spread the word faster while allowing you to connect with new prospects who may not know about you yet!

By leveraging content on LinkedIn in these five ways, businesses can engage potential customers at a deeper level while also establishing themselves as persons of influence within their industries - leading directly to accelerated growth through social selling!

Developing a Systematic Sales Process for Growth

Adopting a systematic sales process that includes the use of LinkedIn can be the key to unlocking business growth. It allows sales professionals to maximise their time and get the most out of LinkedIn while still attending to customer needs.

A well-executed process can help them build their pipeline faster, leading to better leads and more conversions.

Having an effective system in place will help sales reps close more deals - this could be something as simple as creating custom content, being active on groups or making connections with decision-makers who could be potential customers.

Following a repeatable and measurable process also helps ensure that these actions are likely to result in revenue for your business over the long term.

Measuring Your Results and Adjusting Your Strategy

Social selling is an essential tool for businesses of all sizes and industries looking to grow their customer base and sales.

To make sure you are getting the most out of your efforts, it's important to measure your results and adjust your strategy as needed.

To assess the effectiveness of your social selling efforts, you'll need to look at a range of metrics, including:

1. How many potential new customers you aim to find and connect with
2. Number of leads created each month
3. Number of effective conversations from inbound and outbound activities
4. Number of qualified opportunities
5. Number of prospects who become customers

By regularly reviewing these metrics, you can adjust your strategy to ensure that you are making the most of LinkedIn for business growth through social selling and specific sales processes.

This will help you identify any gaps in your efforts, allowing you to quickly course correct as needed - ensuring that your LinkedIn strategy is delivering maximum value for your business goals.

Conclusion

Social selling using LinkedIn is a powerful way for businesses to accelerate their growth.

With a systematic process of targeting and engaging with the right people, building relationships and monitoring key performance indicators, businesses can benefit from increased conversions and a better ROI from social.

Having a reliable process will help your business make better decisions and realise tangible results.

With careful planning, use of analytics and creative ways to engage customers, businesses can become more successful at social selling and leverage LinkedIn’s vast network to further their growth.

Thanks for taking the time out to read this article. Leave a comment as I'd love to hear how you are using social selling and building a strategy for sales and business growth!