How To Create A LinkedIn Profile That Consistently Brings New Business To Your Pipeline

Many salespeople create a LinkedIn profile to bring in new business but are they creating a profile that is attractive to a potential buyer?

Felipe Lodi is a returning guest and he’s back to teach salespeople how they can create a LinkedIn profile to bring in new business. Felipe is based in Ireland and he is helping other expatriates like himself to establish themselves in Europe. By teaching them the social skills needed and building their LinkedIn accounts, he’s helping them market their abilities and attract opportunities. He launched his book, Advanced LinkedIn, last year based on hundreds of workshops he’s done within the public and private sectors throughout Ireland.

Common Mistakes Salespeople Make on LinkedIn

There are many common mistakes made on LinkedIn. Once you know what they are, they can be avoided. The most common mistake is the failure to use headlines creatively. The headline is 120 characters long and can be found underneath your profile picture. Most people just list their titles with a brief job description. Doing this is a waste of characters. The tagline stays visible and can be used to make a value proposition. As an alternative to your job title, create a sentence that shares your why, how you do what you do, or what you sell.

Another common mistake is that people don’t utilize their Summary or About Me sections effectively. These areas give you a whopping 5,000 characters to really make a statement.

Typical content:

Creating bullet points
Providing your contact number and email address

A better alternative:

Reasons why you’re doing what you’re doing
Tell people why you are the right person for them

Your profile is where you talk about yourself. When you go outside your profile and start engaging with people and creating content for others, talk about your prospects and how you’re going to solve their problems.

Creating your LinkedIn profile

It’s not necessary to spend money on LinkedIn to make money. Use LinkedIn because of its organic reach instead.

There are three ways to enhance your account:

Optimize Your Profile

To better ensure people will get to the information about you you want them to see, make sure your LinkedIn profile is visually appealing.

Many people mistakenly view LinkedIn as a community board where someone can look for a job and get hired. Instead, approach this platform as an opportunity for you to engage potential employers, collaborators, and colleagues in a way that opportunities can present themselves through these relationships. Don’t open a LinkedIn account to just looking for employment, but seek ways for you to find opportunities.#LinkedInSales

If you are in sales, start believing that LinkedIn is your sales platform. It’s the best place to reach out to C level executives because you have direct access. There are no gatekeepers on LinkedIn and salespeople can use this accessibility to their advantage.

It’s important to make your profile visually appealing. People will judge images before they read any information. Have an avatar and profile picture that looks professional. When Felipe changed his profile picture to an image of him holding a mic, the invitations for speaking engagements began to grow. People believed he had the ability to speak because of the image of him already doing the job. Use your photo to tell people what you do without them ever having to go to your profile.

The people who invited Felipe to speak were the people who already had him on their radar because they already had a relationship through previous engagements on LinkedIn. Every little detail counts - the picture, the tagline, and the summary need to support the story you want to tell and what you want potential clients to know.

Start Creating Content

Unlike Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn’s algorithm doesn’t downgrade content that looks like an advertisement. You can take advantage of the organic reach by posting ads for free. In doing so, you reach people with whom you’re connected without paying any additional fees. LinkedIn’s ad platform is still fairly young compared to Facebook. For example, LinkedIn doesn’t have a feature to target a specific demographic but it can still be used to publish compelling content to attract business.

The second part of Felipe’s methodology is to create a LinkedIn profile to bring in new business by including compelling content. Your content is your vehicle to attract more people to your profile. If offers an opportunity to include information about your products and services in a way that’s appealing. For example, create educational content and allow people to have access at no charge. Include some components that talk about the items or services you offer.

How to build your content:

In the first paragraph, talk about what you do.
In the second paragraph, tell them a story about how you’ve helped someone in the past.

Content on LinkedIn needs to be there at all times. Utilize automation to repurpose your content for different time zones. Automating your content gives you more time to execute the third part of Felipe’s formula, engagement.

Consider the Cost of Engagement

The cost of engagement includes the time you invest in the activity on your profile, especially with the people who want to connect with you. The more you engage, the more attractive your profile becomes. The relationships you nurture in the present can turn into future selling opportunities. You can show potential buyers how committed you are in your profile presentation and content creation. Don’t let two weeks go by without checking in. You want to let people know you’re accessible and you’re ready to answer their questions. Position yourself as an authority within your niche.

You may not see a lot of results, such as “likes” on your posts, but that’s fine. The number of “likes” isn’t a reflection of whether or not your engagement is working. To LinkedIn, it’s the number of views that matter. Your post might have zero likes but gets 230 views. That means 230 people have stopped for at least three seconds to check your content.

Even when people don’t like or share your post, they have been exposed to your profile, your tagline, and the type of content you want them to see.

LinkedIn also ties the number of views on your post to the companies that were represented by the people who viewed that entry..

As a salesperson, you can follow up with the people who have seen your post to start a conversation. They may have not “liked” but they keep seeing your posts and make the association with your content. There is something there that you can explore.

Don’t just focus on content creation. Make it a priority to create opportunities for engagement and place importance on how you can repurpose your content.

“How To Create A LinkedIn Profiles That Consistent(ly) Bring New Business In Your Pipeline” episode resources

Catch up with Felipe Lodi via his LinkedIn account. You can also check on his book, Advanced LinkedIn.

You can also reach out to Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for any sales concerns.

This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Sign up now and get the first two modules for free! You can also call us at (561) 570-5077.

This podcast is also brought to you in part by Reveal the Revenue Intelligence podcast. It’s about utilizing data to make business decisions instead of just guessing your way through major sales decisions. Visit gong.io for their podcast.

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Mentioned in this episode:

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

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