How to Use LinkedIn Premium for Social Selling
Although most people – including those in sales – treat LinkedIn like an online for recruiters to see it while the person is looking for a , it is much more than that. LinkedIn is an excellent resource for the modern seller and anyone involved in social selling. The value multiplies when they upgrade to a .
In this article, I will describe the benefits of the different tiers of being a . I will also share whether a is worth the investment, as well as how modern sales professionals can take full advantage of its features.
Free LinkedIn Account
Salespeople can use LinkedIn to find, engage, and connect with prospects. And then turn those connections into sales conversations.
Starting more sales conversations and expanding existing relationships is what social selling is all about.
Fortunately, a enables sales reps to build their online presence and start connecting with prospects, as they build their professional network. And since we are here, check out how you can boost your visibility with LinkedIn Kudos.
Did you know that 62% of decision-makers look for an informative when considering talking with a sales rep?
In our Selling with LinkedIn digital training program, we teach sellers how to leverage their LinkedIn profiles to become more attractive to potential buyers.
Here’s what your sales reps can do to optimize their profiles:
- Add a banner to their reflecting their business brand
- Use their 220-character headline to explain how they help their customer
- Add a 10-second audio introduction (this is only available on mobile)
- Write using the language of their buyer
- Add content and media in the Featured section that serves as a resource to their buyers
- Share useful and relevant updates to their target buyers
Once your sales team optimizes their profiles and creates a cadence for sharing valuable content, they can start searching for potential buyers and sending personalized connection requests. No sales pitches, though!
But here’s where the basic starts to show its limitations for sellers.
LinkedIn sets a limit on monthly searches for free users. If LinkedIn thinks you are searching the platform to recruit or generate leads, you’ll get a message like this:
Note: Usage for free accounts resets at midnight PST on the 1st of each calendar month.
LinkedIn monitors accounts to determine if a is trying to recruit or hire, and not just searching for connections.
A will become limited if someone:
- Views lots of profiles who are not 1st-degree connections
- Searches for specific companies
- Searches for employees of a specific company
- Searches outside of their network (3rd-degree people searches)
Of course, LinkedIn is right. Your sales reps are prospecting, and need to pay for it! Upgrading to a enables sellers to do more searches, among other benefits.
Another limitation with a is that sellers can only directly message LinkedIn members they are connected to. That’s where InMail comes in.
What is InMail from LinkedIn?
A have a feature, called . InMail allows members to message people they are not connected to within LinkedIn. It’s like having an email address but bypassing someone’s regular inbox. LinkedIn claims that InMail is 2.6x more effective than emails alone.
Note: an can only have up to 200 characters in the subject line and no more than 1,900 characters in the body. Unused expire after 90 days. However, when someone you messaged through InMail responds, you get your credit back.
In the following video, Mario Martinez Jr., Founder and CEO of Vengreso, shows all the things sellers can do with the . He also shares why they should consider upgrading to . Also, be sure to check out our guide on How to Add a Video to your LinkedIn Profile.
Now, let’s look at LinkedIn Premium in more detail.
LinkedIn Premium Membership Types
There are several versions – or tiers – of LinkedIn Premium:
- Premium Career – $29.99 per month
- Premium Business – $59.99 per month
- Sales Navigator – $79.99 per month
- Recruiter Lite – $119.99 per month
Which is the best version of LinkedIn Premium?
It depends. The real question should be: Which version of is best for you?
What are your goals? Why are you using LinkedIn?
- Are you in a or in a new ? Choose .
- Are you expanding your business network? Choose Business.
- Are you using LinkedIn for sales prospecting? Choose .
- Are you hiring salespeople? Choose Recruiting Lite.
Let’s look at the benefits of each tier, and how it relates to sellers. I won’t be discussing Lite in this article, but you can find more information in this link.
Benefits of LinkedIn Premium Career
Whether you are a sales leader or a sales rep looking for your next job, LinkedIn Premium Career offers many useful tools for the job seeker.
This includes 3 InMail credits to reach out directly to recruiters and the ability to see who’s viewed your in the last 90 days. You also receive other insights about opportunities, salaries, and how you compare to other applicants for particular jobs.
This and the other Premium tiers include access to LinkedIn Learning, which offers a variety of video courses. By the way, Vengreso’s co-founder and chief visibility officer Viveka von Rosen has two courses on LinkedIn Learning: B2B Marketing with LinkedIn and Employer Engagement with LinkedIn, and she also explains why use PointDrive.
According to LinkedIn, when you have a Premium account, you get:
- 6x more profile views
- 3x more connection requests
- 2x faster hiring time. When you apply through LinkedIn, you are shown as a top applicant to recruiters, and your application is moved to the top of the pile
Benefits of LinkedIn Premium Business
Premium Business offers unlimited searches on people and 15 InMail messages each month. This is great for your sellers to expand their networks and contact key prospects directly. Below are other features of the LinkedIn LinkedIn Premium Business account.
Trying to decide whether to upgrade from the to Business? Watch the video below to find out.
Is a LinkedIn Premium Account Worth It?
By now you may be wondering if a is worth the cost. Do you – or your sellers – really need all those extra features?
At Vengreso, we believe LinkedIn is a powerful tool to start sales conversations. And the more conversations sales reps have, the greater the chance their pipeline will stay full. And for that to happen, you and your reps may need to go beyond the basic (free) .
For instance, if a prospect has not responded to a personalized , the seller can use InMail to reach out to them. In the , they can’t use InMail.
Another use case relates to the “Who’s Viewed my ” feature. With the , a can only see the last five people who visited their .
In prospecting, sellers must know who they are attracting to their profiles. A visit is like a trigger event; it’s an invitation for the seller to reach out and connect. Since the only allows the last five views, reps will be missing many opportunities.
What is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
If you are serious about using for selling and prospecting through LinkedIn, you must get a for you and your team. is only $20 more per month than Business but has many more features.
Each seller receives 20 InMail messages per month; to narrow down prospects by title, company, region, and more; a lead-builder tool to create custom lists; sales insights for details about the leads generated; and lead recommendations, along with the ability to save them.
Do you need to upgrade to to have success as a modern seller? We answer that question in the following video.
How to Get Started with LinkedIn Premium
Before buying a LinkedIn Premium subscription, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial and test-drive all the benefits first, so you can know if you like any
Once you and your team have Business or LinkedIn accounts, you need to learn how to use them effectively. As we like to say at Vengreso, a fool with a tool is still a fool.
Whether you have all the great sales prospecting features of or the , it will do you no good, if you don’t know how to use them.
That’s why we’ve created the digital training program, where you and your team will learn how to leverage LinkedIn.
- Learn how to create a that’s “attractive” to buyers and post content that builds your reputation, as well as how to discover the most effective connection-practices that will help you reach the right prospects.
- Every module in our training program is designed to guide sellers to a skill level, where they can create more conversations with prospects in order to win more.
Click on the image below for more information.
