Felipe Lodi is a returning guest and he’s back to teach salespeople how they can create a LinkedIn profile to bring in new business. Felipe is based in Ireland and he is helping other expatriates like himself to establish themselves in Europe. By teaching them the social skills needed and building their LinkedIn accounts, he’s helping them market their abilities and attract opportunities. He launched his book, Advanced LinkedIn, last year and now, he holds hundreds of workshops within the public and private sectors throughout Ireland.
Common Mistakes Salespeople Make on LinkedIn
There are many common mistakes made on LinkedIn. Once you know what they are, they can be avoided. The most common mistake is the failure to use their headlines creatively. The headline is 120 characters long and can be found underneath your profile picture. Most people just list their titles with a brief job description. Doing this is a waste of characters. The tagline stay visible and can be used to make a value proposition. As an alternative to your title, create a sentence that shares your why, how you do what you do, and what you sell.
Another common mistake is that people don’t utilize their Summary or About Me sections effectively. These areas give you a whopping 5,000 characters to really make a statement.
Common content:
- Creating bullet points
- Providing your contact number and email address
A better alternative:
- Reasons why you’re doing what you’re doing
- Tell people why you are the right person for them
Your profile is where you talk about yourself. When you go outside your profile and start engaging with people and creating content for others, talk about your prospects and how you’re going to solve their problems.
Creating your LinkedIn profile
It’s not necessary to spend money on LinkedIn to make money. Use LinkedIn because of its organic reach instead.
There are three ways to enhance your account:
Optimize Your Profile
Profile Optimization is to better ensure people will get to the information about you you want them to see, make sure your LinkedIn profile is visually appealing.
If you are looking for a job, don’t open a LinkedIn account to just looking for employment, but seek ways for you to find opportunities.
If you are in sales, start believing that LinkedIn is your sales platform. It’s the best place to reach out to C level executives because you have direct access. There are no gatekeepers on LinkedIn and salespeople can use this accessibility to their advantage.
It’s important to make your profile visually appealing. People will judge images before they read any information. It’s important to have an avatar and profile picture that looks professional. When Felipe changed his profile picture to an image of him holding a mic, the invitations for speaking engagements began to grow. People believed he had the ability to speak because of the image of him already doing the job. Use your photo to tell people what you do without them ever having to go to your profile.
The people who invited Felipe to speak were the people who already had him on their radar because they already had a relationship through engaging on LinkedIn. Every little detail counts – the picture, the tagline, and the summary need to support the story you want to tell and what you want potential clients to know.
Start Creating Content
LinkedIn’s algorithm doesn’t downgrade content that looks like an advertisement, unlike Facebook and Instagram. You can take advantage of the organic reach by posting free ads. In doing so, you reach people with whom you’re connected without paying any additional fees. LinkedIn’s ad platform is still fairly young compared to Facebook. For example, LinkedIn doesn’t have a feature to target a specific demographic but it can still be used to publish compelling content to attract business.
The second part of Felipe’s methodology is to create a LinkedIn profile to bring in new business through the content you’re offering. Your content is your vehicle to attract more people to your profile. If offers an opportunity to inject your products and services in a way that is appealing. For example, create educational content and allow people to have access at no charge. Include some components that talk about the items or services you offer.
How to build your content:
- In the first paragraph, talk about what you do.
- In the second paragraph, tell them a story about how you’ve helped someone in the past.
Content on LinkedIn needs to be there at all times. Utilize automation to repurpose your content for different time zones. Automating your content gives you more time to do the third part which is engagement.
Consider the Cost of Engagement
The last method you can use on how to use the LinkedIn profile to bring in new business is the cost of engagement which includes the time you invest in the activity on your profile, especially with the people who want to connect with you. The more you engage, the more attractive your profile becomes. The relationships you nurture in the present can turn into future selling opportunities. You can show potential buyers how committed you are in your profile presentation and content creation. Don’t let two weeks go by without checking in. You want to let people know you’re accessible and you’re ready to answer their questions. Position yourself as an authority within your niche.
You may not see a lot of results such as likes from your posts but that’s fine. Even when you don’t see the number of likes, it doesn’t mean that it’s not working. LinkedIn only chases the number of views that matters. Your post might have zero likes but gets 230 that means, 230 people have stopped for at least three seconds to check your content.
Even when people didn’t like or share your post, they have come to associate your face, your compelling tagline, and the type of content that you are pushing.
LinkedIn also breaks down the number of views of your post such as the names of the companies that viewed your post.
As a salesperson, you can follow up with the people who have seen your post to start the conversation. They may have not liked but they keep seeing your posts and make the association with your content. There is something there that you can explore. Don’t be stuck in content creation, make sure to have time to create engagement. Try not to be anxious about the spellings and other menial things, put more importance on how you can repurpose your content.
“How To Create A LinkedIn Profiles That Consistent Bring New Business In Your Pipeline” episode resources
Catch up with Felipe Lodi via his LinkedIn account. You can also check on his book, Advanced LinkedIn.
You can also reach out to Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for any sales concerns.
This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Sign up now and get the first two modules for free! You can also call us at (561) 570-5077.
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