LinkedIn for Sales Leaders:
5 Strategies for Results

My research tells me that leveraging LinkedIn yields significant sales results. I am working with Kristina Jaramillo and her partner Eric Gruber of  GetLinkedInHelp.com to help me execute a focused plan for LinkedIn. Their approach is strategic and that’s what resonated with me. This guest post written by Kristina speaks to the importance of having a strategy for social selling.

Guest Post By Kristina Jaramillo

I’m sorry to say – but most sales leaders on LinkedIn do not have a strategy. They have a shopping list of tactics that need to be completed. But there’s no cohesive strategy. If you really want to use LinkedIn for sales, you’ve got to be strategical.

Instead, there’s no thought behind the connections they’re making. There’s no thought on what happens after that connection is made – how are they’re going to turn that prospect into a client? There’s no thought about the content they’re posting and how it’s going to position them (if they did, they wouldn’t be posting reminders on the LinkedIn content platform that do not differentiate them.)

There’s no thought about the discussions they’re creating and how they’re going to get prospects to move from the discussions to their blog to learn more – and there’s no thought about what happens next once they get prospects to their blog. There is no strategy for integrating LinkedIn into their everyday sales and marketing activities and programs.

Strategy is the biggest difference between a sales organization that merely dabbles on LinkedIn and other social media platforms and one that is wildly successfully.

5 Strategies for Sales Leaders on LinkedIn

#1 – Your Social Media Presence Strategy

Look at your LinkedIn profile. Did you really take a strategic approach to creating your LinkedIn profile? I bet you that your profile is not a case study driven marketing tool and that it’s simply a cover letter and resume that talks about your sales achievements (which only shows that you care about making the sale instead of providing value and building a real relationship). I bet you that you’re not speaking to different targeted audiences with different needs and showing your value to them. It’s because you took a tactical approach rather than a strategic approach.

#2 – Your Thought Leadership Strategy

Many sales professionals are using LinkedIn groups as a newsfeed for their blog posts that are mostly reminders. They’re just using the LinkedIn publishing platform as another place to put their blog posts. So they’re just pushing out content instead of having a strategy to use content to pull prospects in. You need to plan out what type of content you can provide that will have decision makers thinking twice about the approaches they’re taking. You have to think about the discussions that you can create that makes you stand out as a thought leader. You have to think about whether the content inspires prospects to want to take further action and if the content is relevant– and who is it really relevant for.

#3 – An Intelligent Prospecting Strategy

Take a good look at your connections and see how many of them are “long shot hopefuls” that can possibly introduce you to so and so. If you’re like sales leaders that we have helped, then most of your connections are irrelevant to your business because you were focused on quantity instead of quality. Your intelligent prospecting strategy should be defining who your main and secondary prospects and influencers and a strategy to get them to open their closed doors – and keep them open.

#4 – Community Building and Engagement Strategy

It’s not about how many connections you make or followers you have on LinkedIn and other social media platforms. It’s about how many people you reach and engage with. The best way to engage is to create a social media community. Inside my LinkedIn group, Get Help with Linked Strategies, I’m engaging with 470+ sales and marketing leaders through regular content and discussions. Remember, B2B buyers are looking for quick access to trusted experts and relevant content that helps them with their business issues.

So you need a strategy for how you’re going to build your community and how you’re going to keep prospects active in your community so you can build a relationship with them.

#5 – Lead Generation & Lead Engagement Strategy

For most of the prospects you connect with on LinkedIn and other social media platforms, they don’t realize how and why they need you yet. You need to nurture these connections and provide them with relevant content (which gets them to raise their hand. You need a strategy for how you’re going to use case studies, white papers, 3^rd party research that supports your claims, webinars, webcasts and other thought leadership content that piques your prospects curiosity and gets them wanting to talk to you about their options.

You need a strategy for how you’re going to intrigue prospects enough that they are curious on how you achieved results. Then you need a strategy for how you’re going to move them into your pipeline and how are you going to get them to engage further with you.

Now, I just scratched the surface. Start with my ideas and then dig deeper. Really get strategic on how you use LinkedIn and other social media platforms. Stop just completing a list of tasks.

About the Author:

Kristina Jaramillo, Managing Partner and Chief LinkedIn Strategist at GetLinkedInHelp.com has generated more leads and opportunities for tech companies, professional service firms and other B2B organizations using LinkedIn (than all of their other marketing initiatives combined). Her best practices are featured on Forbes, MarketingProfs, RainToday, Website Magazine, Salesforce.com, Business Insider and many other top publications. You can learn more about her prospect development approach with her free webinar at: FreeLinkedInMarketingTraining.com/webinar.