LinkedIn is a powerful social network for professionals and a great place to create a sales strategy that brings results.
Did you know that about ⅓ of sellers have closed deals over $500,000 over LinkedIn without ever meeting buyers face to face?
However, many companies overlook or underestimate the potential of this platform for their sales initiatives.
But we don’t blame you, it’s usually because there is a lot of misinformation on the internet that doesn’t bring any answer to your questions.
If you’re struggling to understand why your LinkedIn Sales Strategy isn’t bringing in conversions and, more importantly, revenue, we got a solution.
To help you start using LinkedIn to boost your sales team’s performance, here are some steps on how to create an effective LinkedIn Sales Strategy.
Let’s begin!
1. Identify Buyer Personas
Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers, based on real information about them as well as assumptions about their needs and wants.
They’re used to inform everything from product development to marketing campaigns.
So, to create a successful LinkedIn Sales Strategy, you need to know who your target audience is.
If you don’t have buyer personas in mind already, it’s time to start thinking about who those people are and how they behave online.
This will help you create a more targeted approach to reaching out to potential customers.
To help you define your buyer personas, make sure to answer these questions in detail:
- What’s your customer’s age?
- Where do they live?
- What is their educational level?
- What are their roles?
- Where do they work?
- What is the industry they work in?
- What skills do they have?
- What are their top 3 pain points?
- What are their challenges?
- Where they’re spending their time?
The best way is to send those questions to your existing customers to identify your ideal personas better.
What’s great about LinkedIn is that it gives you a lot of options to research and find potential customers based on your answers to these questions.
Pro tip:
By analyzing your potential customer’s profile, you can find some insights into your potential customer’s pain points to see if you can help them.
You can also use advanced LinkedIn or a boolean search to find relevant people using their job roles, companies, living places, skills, and so on.
2. Decide on Your KPIs
After identifying your ideal ICPs, it’s up to you to decide on your key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you measure your LinkedIn Sales strategy success.
Your KPIs will tell you whether or not your LinkedIn marketing campaign is successful, and they should be directly linked to your business goals.
For example, if your goal is to increase leads by 20 percent over this year, then your KPI should be “Increase sales leads by 20%.”
Once you have decided on your KPIs, you can set up an automated report that shows these numbers for each month of the year.
This will allow you to track the effectiveness of your sales process over time and make necessary adjustments as needed.
Also, make sure that your KPIs are aligned with your activities, financial goals, etc.
Here are some metrics you can use to track whether your LinkedIn Sales Strategy is successful or you should improve it:
- Messages and InMails Open Rate
- Response Rate
- Conversion Rate
- Revenue
- CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
- Customer retention
- ROI
3. Define Your Approach & Activities
Before you start blasting out messages and inviting people to connect, it’s important to define your approach strategy.
This step will help you identify which audience segments are more likely to convert into leads or customers and focus on them while creating content on the platform.
For instance, if you want to target marketing executives, don’t just post content about marketing trends.
But instead, write about topics such as marketing automation software, lead generation tools, and other relevant topics for this audience segment.
So make sure to get the answers to the following questions:
1. Are you going to focus on industry verticals with large audiences, or do you want to be more targeted and go after specific companies?
Note: Be realistic about what you can accomplish within your time constraints and resources.
2. Also, you need to define what channels you’re going to focus on LinkedIn.
For example, if you’re selling B2B software, the best would be to use the benefits of LinkedIn Sales Navigator in your favor.
3. Define how many leads per week or month are realistic for you based on your team size and budget.
For example, if your team consists of five people, then it may make sense to get 10-20 leads per week from LinkedIn Sales Navigator alone.
Having those things clearly defined will help you plan your resources in order to get a predictable
4. Create an Irresistible Offer
A good offer is not the number of items your customers are getting.
But how do they perceive it, and if they are getting their money’s worth.
Your offer needs to be something that your target audience wants or needs.
It needs to be something they can’t live without, but it also needs to be something they can afford.
And it has to give them value for money, so they make this decision every time they buy from you instead of going elsewhere.
To help you sell better, planning your offer as a part of your strategy will help you drastically improve its effectiveness.
Here are some ideas on how to do it:
1) Write a compelling headline that captures attention
2) Offer something valuable for free (content, e-book, etc.)
3) Use videos in your offers (it works better than any other multimedia format)
4) Use images in your offers (they increase engagement by 80%)
5) Create high-quality content with lots of value (don’t just send sales pitches!)
6) Add a call-to-action at the end of every message and make it actionable (something like “click here,” “download now,” or ”let me know your thoughts,” etc.)
For example, if your target audience is small business owners who need help with their marketing, you might offer them a free consultation session.
This way, not only you’re not selling anything at first, but you’re offering your time for free, and you can learn more about their needs and how you could help them in the future.
5. Create a Communication Framework
LinkedIn offers many ways to communicate with potential clients: InMail, Direct Messages, and Group Discussions are all great ways to connect with people in your industry and build relationships.
But if you’re using these tools only sporadically, it’s unlikely that your message will reach the right person at the right time.
Instead, create an ongoing communication framework that outlines when and how you’ll use each channel so that your efforts are more efficient and effective.
Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator
The best way to get leads from LinkedIn is by using LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps you make better decisions when it comes to prospecting because it provides in-depth insights into companies and their employees.
You can also use it to find the right prospects, nurture them, and convert them into customers.
[Linkedin Sales Navigator Image]
If you haven’t already created an account on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, we advise you to do so!
It’s easy and free.
Connect With Your Potential Customers
In order to build trust with potential buyers and make sure that they know who you are and what value you offer them, start engaging those who are interested in your product or service.
Connect strategically with decision-makers at target companies who work in different departments or divisions within those companies (e.g., marketing).
These connections will help open doors later on down the road when it comes time.
You can use advanced search filters to filter out users based on location, job title, etc., but one of the best ways is by using InMails.
InMail lets you send messages directly to other professionals without having them as connections first, which means that they’ll see your messages even before accepting you.
To create an effective LinkedIn InMail, you can use some free predefined templates or some of the Proven LinkedIn messages that best fit your needs.
Pro tip:
You can make notes regarding the responses you got from prospects and use them to your benefit by mentioning something you discussed in the past.
People love when you remember things they care about.
To make these smart notes regarding your prospects, all you have to do is, install LeadDelta Chrome extension, sync your contacts, and after they appear – find the one you’re looking for and hit the “Note” icon.
Enter your note and click “Save changes.”
Reach Out Directly
LinkedIn provides many ways to reach out directly to people through their inboxes and other features.
You can send messages directly to people who belong to groups you’re part of or who have similar job titles or skill sets.
If someone has commented on something you’ve posted on LinkedIn, there’s a good chance they’d be interested in hearing from you.
You can also send personalized messages via email by finding someone’s contact information and clicking on the “Send Message” button at the bottom of their profile page.
Think about your message when reaching out via InMail, email, or LinkedIn message.
TIP: An email finder can help you find a person’s email address in case it’s not visible in their profile.
Don’t just ask for a meeting — provide value first, so the recipient wants to meet with you.
This could mean sending an article that relates to their business or offering research insights into their industry.
This lets you send an individualized message instead of sending an automated one, like when someone joins a group or attends an event on LinkedIn.
You can also use LeadDelta to segment your prospects and reach out to the group of them easily.
Just select the ones you want to segment, and hit the “Apply Tag” button.
Enter the name of the Tag – for example, “Interested in a product” or “Founders” choose the color and then hit “Apply Tag.”
To contact them, navigate to the “Tags” segment, choose the tag that you’re looking for, select all those connections, and hit “Message.”
Choose the template you want to use, or write your message, and after you’re done, hit “Send.”
To Wrap Up
To create a successful LinkedIn Sales Strategy, you need to invest time in researching, learning about your prospects, and adapting it until it performs according to your goals.
And engaging with your prospects is the key here which LinkedIn tools can help you with.
So choosing the one that best fits your needs is important to increase your LinkedIn Sales Strategy success.
With a LeadDelta capital manager, you’ll be more productive by viewing and organizing your network in the best way it suits your needs.
Whether you’re looking to get in touch and engage with your prospect or simply organize your personal connections, LeadDelta can help you improve your connection overview and make the most out of your network.
LeadDelta’s CRM view is fully customizable and allows you to tag your connections, hide and unhide them, apply filters, and sort your connections to easily find the contacts you need.
Download LeadDelta extension and improve your LinkedIn sales game.
