Why Most Salespeople SUCK At Using LinkedIn

After analysing over 1,500 global salespeople I can honestly say…

Most salespeople SUCK at using LinkedIn!

Now please don’t take this offensively, I’m going to share some top tips to help you start using it properly.

Sometimes though a bit of brutal honesty is what’s needed.

There are a lot of people shaming salespeople on LinkedIn, and whilst I want to raise the fact that many aren’t using it properly, I also want to try and help you and your sales team start to leverage it like the truly powerful sales platform that it is.

Let’s have a virtual hug and let me dig into why I believe most salespeople aren’t using LinkedIn properly.

1) Most of their profiles are EMPTY

When a company hires me to train or coach their sales team or employees, around 90% of the team have empty mis-matched LinkedIn profiles. This is a much bigger problem than most people realise…

Let me explain why:

Think of it like this, if you were to go and see a prospect or customer face to face, you would dress up as smart and professional as possible. Why? To make the best possible impression!

Well guess what, your prospects and customers are also looking at your LinkedIn profile.

The problem is that when they do, most of the profiles are empty and mis-matched. It’s the equivalent of going to meet a customer dressed in your pyjamas! It scares customers away. Each salesperson will have prospects and customers viewing their profile, but if it’s an empty profile it’s like a bucket full of holes, those prospects and customers just wash away.

Salespeople who have good LinkedIn profiles achieve the opposite though, their profile GENERATES them leads and sales opportunities!

Here are a few of my LinkedIn profile top tips:

– Get or take a good profile photo. If you are working remotely, just get someone in your house to take a photo with your phone against a plain wall. Shoulders and above with good lighting if possible.

– Find or create a good background image for your profile. It’s like a mini billboard, use it to show your prospects and customers what you offer.

– Make your profile CUSTOMER focused, not focused on you. It shouldn’t tell them what you do, it should tell them how you can help THEM.

2) Most salespeople are only RE-SHARING the companies blog

Now most of the time this is because the marketing team have told them to this, but either way it is a very damaging activity that generates minimal to zero engagement and is basically like an anchor holding the team back from utilising LinkedIn properly.

It’s just the same thing every day, clicking share on the company blog…

Every…single…day

I hate to break it to you, but your prospects and customers are NOT interested in that.

The reality, unfortunately, is that it offers ZERO value to them.

And that’s the important part when it comes to content on LinkedIn, value.

If you want to generate engagement, if you want to generate leads, if you want to generate sales opportunities, you need to be giving value through your content.

Here are some of my top tips around creating value-giving content on LinkedIn:

– The majority of your content should be valuable to your prospects and customers. Share tips that will benefit them, latest news, insights, stories, knowledge etc

– Share content about you, your knowledge, your experiences, your stories. People buy from people, so show them you.

– Aim to try and share at least 2-3 pieces of content per week, building up to one per day

– Use multiple forms of content (photos, stories, quotes, polls, articles, videos etc)

3) They’re sending TERRIBLE sales-pitch spammy LinkedIn Messages

I get these every day, terribly written, copy and pasted, un-personalised LinkedIn messages trying to sell me anything and everything.

Guess what…

THEY DO NOT WORK!

So many salespeople and sales teams are doing this and it’s a huge waste of time. Yes you might hit an activity KPI of sending 100’s of messages each day, but you’ll struggle to get replies and actually generate leads and sales opportunities.

Let’s stop this right now!

Instead of sending spammy messages that don’t work, send CONVERSATION-STARTING messages that do work.

Here are some of my top LinkedIn messaging tips:

– RESEARCH first, spend -30 seconds on their profile and find relevant information that you can reference in the message to show that you’ve done your homework.

– Don’t make it about YOUR product, make it about how you believe you can help THEM

– Keep them light and conversational, not heavy and sales focused

– Leverage audio and video messaging on LinkedIn to stand out from the crowd

There you go…

Why most salespeople SUCK at using LinkedIn, but a few top tips on how you and your sales teams can change all of that!

Do you or your team want to start using LinkedIn to its FULL POTENTIAL?

Well on the 6th October I am running a 2-hour LIVE virtual LinkedIn Masterclass for salespeople, sales teams and businesses all over the world.

On Tuesday 6th October I will be running the first-ever LIVE online LinkedIn Masterclass!!

This 2-hour webinar will cover everything you need to know to start generating more from LinkedIn from as little as just 15-minutes per day.

It will include:

  • How to build the ultimate lead-generating LinkedIn profile
  • How to find any prospect you want (and connect with them)
  • How to send effective LinkedIn messages that get replies
  • How to create engaging content that generates leads and sales
  • Which tools and tactics are delivering HUGE results in 2020
  • How to leverage video for content and messaging
  • and LOTS more

For more details and to secure your place, head to the event page right here.

If you’re interested in generating better results from LinkedIn messaging please also take a few minutes to check out my book, “The Million-Pound LinkedIn Message” which is available on Amazon on paperback and Kindle.

The book shares the story of how one well-written LinkedIn message opened the door to what became a sale worth over £1,000,000. The book also includes 25 tried, tested, and proven LinkedIn messages and InMail sales templates to help you and your sales team send better messages and achieve far better results.

Thank you again for taking the time to read this blog! If you enjoyed this post please click LIKE and click SHARE to share it with your network. If you enjoyed it please do take time to read some of my other recent posts:

Just Pick Up The Phone and Call!

The ABC Of Social Selling

The Modern-Day Sales Prospecting Stack

The 10 Things That Will NEVER Change In Sales

About the author:

Daniel Disney is one of the world’s leading Sales, Social Selling, and LinkedIn experts and is the author of the #1 Amazon Best Selling book, “The Million-Pound LinkedIn Message“.

Daniel is currently delivering LIVE LinkedIn Social Selling virtual training sessions for businesses and salespeople around the world. For more information please email contact@thedailysales.net