From Zero to Hero: a Step-by-Step Guide on LinkedIn Sales for Emerging Companies

Forget about the old days of making cold calls to close deals.

If you’re serious about boosting your company’s sales, social selling on LinkedIn is THE WAY to connect with your potential customers by getting to know the leads and engaging with them in a way that really grabs their attention.

But before you become a LinkedIn sales pro, you need to get the basics down. Now, let's dive into that!

Step 1: Set the foundation

We live in a digital world where having a strong online presence, including an appealing website, good search engine visibility (SEO), and active social media engagement, is important for reaching and connecting with potential clients.

We recommend kickstarting this process by leveraging LinkedIn, as it serves as the digital storefront for your brand. It's crucial to make the profiles of the company's representatives look professional and polished – a clear headshot, a captivating headline, and a well-crafted summary can significantly impact the first impression LinkedIn users get by visiting your profile.

🚀 We have prepared an ultimate checklist that will help you optimize your LinkedIn profile to attract more opportunities and stand out on the world's largest professional network!

What else to remember? Well, do the same with your company’s page too! Share valuable content, testimonials, and case studies on LinkedIn to demonstrate the value your business offers. A robust presence on LinkedIn not only attracts leads but also establishes credibility!

Dovydas Radavičius, Business Development Manager at Teltonika Australia, shares his key strategies when boosting sales on LinkedIn for companies:

1. Start with profile optimizations, both company and personal ones.

2. Create and share valuable content. This shows the professionalism and experience of the company and its employees to the potential customer. It could be empowering strategic collaborations.

3. Be proactive. Your job is to show yourself as much as possible; therefore, interacting with potential customers is crucial. It can be just checking the profile, engaging with their content, or sending a personalized message.

There's no doubt that you need to be proactive and intentional about reaching out to people, offering value, and building relationships when building connections on LinkedIn.

For starters, make connections with your current customers on LinkedIn and check out their friends in the same business. These connections could be helpful for you. If you're already pals with your clients on LinkedIn, you can ask them to introduce you to others who might be interested in your services!

Always remember LinkedIn is a place for professionals, so it's less intrusive than randomly calling people or sending spammy messages. When you send a connection request, people can check your profile and see that you have mutual connections, which builds trust.

Step 2: Find the right people and network

There’s still a question on what new ways of personal branding LinkedIn will introduce in 2024. However, it still comes down to a fact – strong, authentic personal brand presence is making a difference in how the audiences interact with our content, especially on LinkedIn.

Laura Erdem, Sales Leader at Dreamdata, shares the TOP networking tips for potential clients, partners, and industry influencers on LinkedIn.

🎯 Define your ICP (Ideal Client Profile) and connect with them.
🎯 Understand which influencers your ICPs follow and react to their content, comment on it.
🎯 Post content that is inspired by your ICPs and give credit to them.
🎯 Invite your ICPs to meet or attend your podcasts.

“Those people want to build their brand too, so try to give something they appreciate in exchange for a conversation. They’re all humans, too – the more down-to-earth you are, the easier it will be to reach them!”

If you’re interested to read more about how to network at LinkedIn on its full potential, we have a blog for that!

To make the most of LinkedIn, more than optimizing your profile or connecting to people is needed. You've got to use the right tools!

Let's look at some simple and powerful tools on LinkedIn that can help you sell more and do it better!

🎯LinkedIn Sales Navigator is like having a magic wand for your sales team. It's a premium tool provided by LinkedIn that can help small businesses supercharge their efforts in finding and connecting with potential clients. It offers advanced search filters, real-time updates, lead recommendations, saved leads and accounts, InMail credits, customized sales alerts, and so much more!

🎯When you're not connected with someone on LinkedIn, InMail feature lets you send them a direct message. It's like having a unique way to talk to important people. Make your messages stand out and start conversations that can turn into great business relationships.

🎯Keeping track of customers is really important. LinkedIn plays nice with other tools called CRMs that help you manage your customer info. When you link them together, you can see all your customer details in one place. It's like having a super organized notebook for your sales.

🎯Getting people interested in what you're selling can take time and effort. Lead Gen Forms make it easier. They let you collect info from people interested in what you offer right on LinkedIn. No need for extra web pages. It's like making it super easy for people to tell you they want to learn more.

🎯Numbers and data might sound boring, but they're like your secret weapon. LinkedIn Analytics shows you how well your posts and activities are doing. It helps you figure out what people like and what works best. Use these numbers to make your selling strategy even better.

LinkedIn is an excellent place for selling things, and these tools make it even cooler. Whether it's Sales Navigator, InMail, CRM Integration, Lead Gen Forms, or Analytics, each tool helps you sell more and do it smartly!

Step 3: Utilize additional tools

Building connections, finding potential customers, and promoting your products or services on LinkedIn may seem like a challenging job, but the effort is worth it. Just make sure to be genuine to your brand and connect with new individuals to make your brand more visible!

And, if you need more help or knowledge on how to leverage LinkedIn to enhance sales conversions and lead generation, visit our Linkedist Courses page because we have an online course on that!

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