Why Your LinkedIn Profile is Foundational in Social Selling

The Vengreso team is reflecting on our first Social Selling Virtual Boot Camp as we prepare for our second Boot Camp starting September 19th.

If you’re not familiar with our Social Selling Boot Camp, it’s a virtual event that takes place four Thursdays in a row delivered live and recorded for attendees to playback on demand.  The first part of the four sessions is focused on your LinkedIn profile. Early in the session, we took a poll to get a sense from the attendees of their most important outcome for the Boot Camp.

Unsurprisingly, the most votes went to “Attracting Customers with Content,” followed closely by “Finding New Prospects.” The least popular outcome was “Upgrade Your Profile.”

I suppose I can acknowledge that it’s not sexy to accomplish an updated LinkedIn profile as compared to finding new prospects and attracting customers with content. I get it….But!

I challenge anyone in sales to find new prospects and/or attract customers on LinkedIn with a weak profile. It’s not gonna happen!

As Vengreso Chief Learning Officer, Brynne Tillman often says, a strong LinkedIn profile is one that attracts, teaches and engages our prospects to increase the chance of starting sales conversations.

Before I give you the 101 on how to build a strong Linkedin profile, let me introduce you to the four pillars of the Vengreso digital sales transformation platform.

Alignment

You want to align your unique value proposition with the wants and needs of your prospect. Your profile should clearly convey this through the lens of your buyer.

Mindset

You want your profile to clearly communicate that you understand your buyer’s business needs. In other words, you and your buyer should be of the same mindset about the business issues you address. The fact that you’re a great negotiator or you’ve made President’s Club five years in a row are not an indicator of similar mindset with your buyer.

Skillset

To be more effective and time efficient, It’s important to have the skills to engage in digital channels. I’ve often heard “I didn’t know what I didn’t know,” from a seasoned sales professional who has acquired valuable digital selling skills.

Toolset

You want to know which digital tools to use to be effective and time-efficient; however, don’t invest in a toolset unless you already have an optimized Linkedin profile.

LinkedIn Profile is Foundational

Your profile is the foundation of your social selling strategy on LinkedIn. Consider that your profile is essentially your individual website. Ask yourself these questions when a prospective buyer visits your profile:

• Does my profile read like a resume or a resource?
• Does my profile convey subject matter expertise?
• Does my profile tell a compelling story that has potential to lead to my offerings?
• Does my profile give the visitor a reason to want to engage with me?
• Is it easy for people to engage or contact me through my profile?
• Is my LinkedIn profile discoverable in a keyword search?

Just like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques for websites, your Linkedin profile can also be optimized for search. You want to make sure that your profile will be discovered when a prospective buyer searches using a relevant keyword phrase.

If you sell supply chain software, your headline should not be: Account Executive at (Company Name)

Consider a headline that communicates what you do and whom you do it for such as: Helping Manufacturing Executives Lower Supply Chain Costs | Company Name

In this example, you have a good chance of being discovered for the keyword phrase “lower supply chain costs.”

Your LinkedIn Summary

Once you have your headline mastered, the next key area on your profile is your summary. We also covered this in our Social Selling Boot Camp. The main point is that your summary provides up to 2000 characters of narrative, providing the opportunity for you to tell your story in a way that makes a buyer desire to speak to you. How you do this depends on many factors including your experience and accomplishments. Share your achievements through the lens of your customers so they’ll see the value in conversing or connecting with you.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

There are two places on your profile where you can show a picture. Your profile picture should be a recent headshot from the chest-up dressed in your usual business wardrobe, and you should be smiling. Don’t look grumpy in your profile picture. Your header background image is your opportunity to communicate something about your offering in a creative way. If your marketing department isn’t available to design something for you, use a service such as Fiverr, or for sales teams of 10 or more, we can take care of that for you.

There are other important details in improving your LinkedIn profile. I can’t cover them all in one post. I want to leave you with these two thoughts…

If your LinkedIn profile reads like a resume, your buyer will have no interest in you. Your LinkedIn profile should be a resource to your buyer.