The document discusses how to leverage LinkedIn as a powerful sales tool, presenting 15 strategies to effectively connect with prospects and enhance sales opportunities. It emphasizes the importance of a complete profile, regular engagement on the platform, and the creation of meaningful relationships rather than spamming users. The key takeaway is to utilize LinkedIn to position oneself and one's company as thought leaders and to approach prospecting through relationship-building and knowledgeable engagement.

1. OPEN NEW DOORS
Meet Your New Sales Assistant…

2. The prospecting landscape has changed drastically in the past few years. The
cost, in terms of time, has risen sharply while the rate of cold calling success
has dropped. Buyers use the Internet to research your products and services,
voice mail to screen your calls and filters to block your emails. Yet, when they
begin thinking about buying, they want to talk to an expert. How can you be the
top of mind expert in your field? Are you connected to your buyers when they
are most ready to talk?
With more than 300 million registered users, LinkedIn is the undisputed king of
business networking. It is the modern-day business card. This eBook offers 15
ways you can use LinkedIn to master the process of finding the right prospects
and converting connections into sales opportunities to improve your sales
results.
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3.  Thoroughly Complete Your Profile
 Prioritize Your News Feed Everyday
 Post Daily Status Updates
 Connect with People You Know
 Join at least 10 Groups
 Follow Companies of Interest
BEFORE YOU
BEGIN PROSPECTING
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4. COMPLETE YOUR
BUSINESS CARD
PROFILE
What makes LinkedIn so powerful is that both
individuals and companies have a unique identity.
For individuals, it’s our profile. For companies, it’s the
Is your photo still missing?
Take a selfie with your most
engaging smile against a
neutral background, crop it
to just your head and resize
it to 200x200 pixels and
upload it.
company page. As individual members, optimizing your profile is the place to start. Be
sure to have a recent headshot photo, preferably smiling. Use keywords in your
headline that represent your professional specialty. Complete the summary in an easy
to read manner. Be sure to include your achievements. There are many other ways to
optimize your profile. Be sure to have these basics covered before going much further
with your LinkedIn activities.
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5. LINK TO YOUR COMPANY PAGE
Be sure to add your company name in your profile. LinkedIn will recognize the name
and ask you to click it so that your individual profile is linked to your company page.
Follow company pages of those companies that interest you. You can also follow their
Showcase page. For example, if you sell into the Microsoft Dynamics community, you
can follow the Dynamics Showcase Page. Microsoft has more than 10 Showcase
pages, allowing you to follow or “subscribe” to the products that are relevant for you
to follow.
Review your company page. Does it showcase your products and services? Have all
your work colleagues linked to the company page? Team up with your marketing
department to become a brand ambassador.
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6. PRIORITIZE YOUR NEWS
FEED WITH PULSE
Schedule 10 minutes per day (at least) to review your news feed to keep up
with your network’s activity. It’s a great way to find and share articles that
others in your network have posted. It’s also a great way to discover other
people to add to your network. Join groups that align with your professional
interests. Don’t overlook the opportunity to engage with people in your news
feed by liking or commenting on their status updates. One simple way to
engage is by sharing other people’s status updates. Another way to engage with
people in your news feed is to add comments to other people’s status updates,
or congratulate people on job changes. You can also tag
other people in your network by typing their name in a
an update or comment. LinkedIn recognizes the name and will notify
the person of your mention. If you have not been in the
habit of engaging in your news feed, this tip alone will
begin to show you the power of LinkedIn by transforming
you from a passive user to an active user of LinkedIn.
Try this early in the morning before 8am. No matter your
time zone, you might be surprised by how many people
are active on LinkedIn before 8am.
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7. DAILY STATUS UPDATES
If you actively follow your network in your news feed, you’ll probably get
inspired to create your own status updates. The status update field is at the top
of your Home screen on the desktop version of LinkedIn, or in the top right on
the mobile version. The easiest way to power up with status updates is to share
links to articles that are relevant to your professional interests. Be sure to make
a comment to engage with your individual thoughts about the article.
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8. CONNECT WITH PEOPLE
YOU KNOW
There are many LinkedIn features not known by infrequent users. One such feature is
the ability to save someone to your “contacts” and organize people using tags. As you
reach out to people that you know and connect with them, you can create a custom tag
to organize contacts for future follow up. You can also add notes about your
conversation(s). Of course, your approach should be focused on ways to connect and
engage with people in a meaningful way. That takes times. Using the tag feature in
contacts allows you to stay organized. You’ll notice that LinkedIn also tracks your email
correspondence provided you use the email address associated with your LinkedIn
login.
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9. MOBILE APPS
As a sales professional, you are probably connected to your mobile device more than a
gun-slinger’s six-shooter from the old wild west. LinkedIn is predicting 50% of users will
be using LinkedIn on mobile devices by the end of 2014.
LinkedIn is available for mobile users on smartphones and tablet devices. You can do
nearly everything you do on LinkedIn desktop on the mobile versions. Through LinkedIn’s
multi apps strategy, you will see more specialty mobile apps rolled out across all devices.
One of the popular ways to use the mobile version is to skim your news feed and engage
with other people’s status updates. You can use LinkedIn mobile anytime, anywhere while
moving about including while standing in line at Starbucks.
If you have not yet done so, download the mobile version that suits you:
• Mobile for Phones (Available for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows)
• Mobile for iPad
• Contacts for iPad
• Pulse News Feed (Available for iPhone and Android)
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10. ENGAGE
WITH INFLUENCERS
The LinkedIn Professional Publishing Platform had previously been available only to an
exclusive list of approximately 500 business influencers who publish unique content there.
Anyone can subscribe to their content. To do so, either click under the “share an update”
field on the home page of your profile (Pulse recommends this news for you) or go directly
to Pulse under your Interests tab.
For example, you can subscribe to read articles written by people like Bill Gates, Arianna
Huffington, Jack Welch, Richard Branson, Guy Kawasaki, Joe Pulizzi, Jeff Weiner, Tom
Peters….It’s tempting to list all 500 influencers but I won’t. You get the idea. Once you
read an article from any of these influencers, you can leave a comment and share it.
Influencer posts average more than 80 comments each. You can gain valuable insights and
expand your own network by engaging with people who engage with these influencers.
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11. EMBRACE EMPLOYEE AND
CORPORATE BRAND
CONVERGENCE
LinkedIn is so much more than an online resume. It has become a content marketing
platform. In fact it is the definitive publishing platform for professionals. What does
publishing have to do with sales? Everything. It creates an opportunity for you to share
your expertise in a non-direct selling way that resonates with today’s savvy buyers.
On some social networks you spend time.
Whereas on LinkedIn, you invest time,
(via Jason Miller). Your activity on LinkedIn
reflects on you individually and on your
employer or your business. The results
professionals produce for their employer /
business speak for themselves. In 2013
65% of B2B marketers and 51% of B2C
marketers respectively acquired a customer
through LinkedIn.
Source, page 6 of The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn.
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12. CURATE CONTENT
WITH PULSE
Pulse is a news aggregator application which was acquired by LinkedIn. Pulse
aggregates content as a real time news feed of articles that interest you by topic or by
media outlet or by influencers you follow. Pulse is available on LinkedIn desktop as well
as mobile. Pulse is also a dedicated mobile app. You can customize the content you want
to see. As you consume content, you can share it on LinkedIn and Twitter through a
status update. Pulse and LinkedIn are separate (yet integrated) apps you might want to
have on your mobile phone’s home screen.
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13. FIND YOUR VOICE
People see your activity on LinkedIn and form impressions of you by what you share,
what you say, where you say it and how you say it. Think about how you want people
to think of you as a professional. LinkedIn is not the social networking platform to
share your cat or dog pictures. Be authentic, and consider the image you are building
for yourself. Be consistent and professional in your conversations.
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14. SPONSOR COMPANY
STATUS UPDATES
Sponsored updates on company pages are one of the best ways to reach your target
audience. LinkedIn provides many options for targeting including by geography, industry,
title, seniority and more. Another targeting option is by company. Identify companies you
want to get in front of and select them as your target audience in your sponsored
updates. According to Jason Miller of LinkedIn, there are three common use cases for
sponsored updates:
1) lead generation
2) brand awareness
3) event registration.
Does your company page display status updates with relevant content that
demonstrates thought leadership? If not, get with your marketing team and let them
know what the sales team needs to strengthen your sales efforts through a strong
brand.
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15. BECOME A GROUPEE
LinkedIn provides anyone the ability to create a group. If you create a group, be
sure to be committed leading it. Successful groups call for daily monitoring to
ensure the community you build gets value from your group. A strong group has
people who help each other. Of course, you don’t have to create a group. You
can join up to 50 groups. Most of us don’t have time to participate in 50 groups.
Select the groups that will be time well spent for you and become a valuable
member of those groups. Look for groups that are relevant to your industry and
also verticals where your product and services intersect with your target
audiences.
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16. WARNING: LINKEDIN IS NOT
A SPAMMING TOOL
LinkedIn is a networking tool that allows you to build connections and
relationships outside your immediate network. If you try to use LinkedIn as a
direct sales or spamming tool, you will get restricted
forever. At a cocktail party, you would not jump up
on a table and shout “listen to me – I am going
to sell you something.” Instead, you would
mingle, listen to what people are saying
and share in the conversation when
appropriate.
LinkedIn Don’t Rules:
 Act dishonestly or unprofessionally
 Publish inaccurate information in the
designated fields on the profile
 Create a Member profile for anyone other than
a natural person;
 Harass, abuse or harm another person, including sending unwelcomed
communications to others using LinkedIn;
 Invite people you do not know to join your network;
 Upload a profile image that is not your likeness or a head-shot photo;
 Use or attempt to use another's account or create a false identity on LinkedIn.
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17. PROSPECTING
By following the tips we have covered so far, you have already been “prospecting” in a
social selling paradigm through your engagement! If you are doing the activities listed
below on a daily basis, you are ready to take prospecting to the next level:
• Posting Daily Status Updates
• Connecting with People you know
• Engaging in conversations through groups, Pulse, comments
• Sharing content
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18. FOLLOWING THROUGH ON
SEARCH RESULTS
As you find prospective buyers, your goal should be to build relationships. Discover
their interests, engage in conversations within groups that they participate. Learn about
their company and where and how they use LinkedIn.
Send people a personal message with your request to connect with them. Your note
should demonstrate that you understand something about them.
Use LinkedIn as a prospecting tool, but do it through thought leadership and
relationships. Get to know people. Understand who they are and what motivates them.
Solve their problems.
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19. LinkedIn FREE VS PAID
Up to this point, everything we have covered is available with LinkedIn’s Free Account.
In order to use LinkedIn’s advanced features, you might want to consider an upgrade to
a paid subscription. Under the Upgrade menu, select For Sales Professionals. Consider
upgrading to SalesPlus first. Spend some time using the SalesPlus features before
deciding if you need the Sales Executive features.
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20. WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU?
We help professional sales teams find the right prospects and convert them into
sales opportunities through advanced coaching and social selling software used
by sales teams at companies like KPMG, Prudential, Comcast, Lexis Nexus and
others…
Yes, I want to convert my
sales team to thought
leaders, brand ambassadors
and lead generators through
LinkedIn.
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21. FIND, ENGAGE, CONVERT
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We help B2B companies find the right people, engage with them and
convert them into opportunities through digital and social business
strategies.