Social Selling LinkedIn: COMPLETE guide

#BtoB : comment #prospecter et #vendre socialement avec #LinkedIn ? #Proinfluent #SocialSelling Share on X

Definition before you start: what is social selling?

Every second, dozens of people sign up on LinkedIn, hundreds of thousands of searches are done on Google, thousands of videos are watched on YouTube, and more.

Today, all of our western countries use the web. As a result, a professional with no online presence will be marginalized.

Why ? Because professionals who limit themselves to standard marketing and only face-to-face exchanges are overwhelmed by those who find thousands of potential prospects on the web and who manage to promote their business through social networks.

In the digital age, new tools have been born to allow you to prospect effectively online. Social selling is none other than the use of social networks and professional tools to interact with potential prospects throughout the sales process.

Direct prospecting doesn’t work as well as it once did. Today, calling 100 prospects will get you, on average, only one opportunity.

Conversely, if your strategy is to develop your online presence through self-marketing and use social networks to create an audience , the conversion rate will be much higher .

Social selling is about developing your personal brand and promoting it in order to generate more business opportunities.

To read: the worst mistakes in LinkedIn prospecting .

How to go about prospecting and doing social selling with LinkedIn?

While a few progress-blockers still look only to the in-store salesperson, today most shoppers are online and can, in a matter of minutes, compare any one product or service to another.

Whether it’s LinkedIn for B2B, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook for B2C, social networks are a real area of influence for professionals . However, many of them are reluctant to develop a BtoB strategy on LinkedIn due to lack of time.

Les #RéseauxSociaux sont un véritable territoire d’#influence #Proinfluent Share on X

Of course, doing your social selling takes time and patience. However, the returns can be much greater in the long run by putting his personal branding at the service of its business.

To succeed with your LinkedIn social selling strategy, it is advisable to connect to LinkedIn for a few minutes a day, at least, and to publish content regularly, at least every week!

The more visible you are, the more audience you have, the more likely you are to sell and grow your organization.

To begin with, you must have a perfect LinkedIn profile . It should reflect your professional identity with a LinkedIn profile picture and an LinkedIn banner adapted to your sector of activity, a complete summary detailing your experiences, your training, your skills and your expertise in order to convince those who read your profile.

Respecting the fundamentals of an effective LinkedIn profile is already part of your social selling strategy. Not having a complete and impactful profile can cause you to lose credibility and visibility before you even start prospecting.

To help you, I invite you to download my influential LinkedIn profile checklist and take my online training to build a brand image and a LinkedIn profile that converts.

Thanks to this checklist, your LinkedIn profile 40 times more seller !

What is important when doing social selling on LinkedIn?

• Don’t be intrusive

Traditional prospecting is being overtaken by new digital tools. Now, it may seem intrusive to make a call or send an email directly to offer its services.

La #prospection traditionnelle est dépassée par les nouveaux outils digitaux. #Proinfluent Share on X

Today, it is common to have a phone call with a professional without trying to sell. The primary goal is first of all to create or expand its business network.

You should not put the sale of your services at the center of your exchanges . The more you try to sell, the less you will sell. It might sound silly, but people don’t like to be pressured into selling.

Plus vous chercherez à #vendre, moins vous vendrez. #SocialSelling #Proinfluent Share on X

A prospect is more likely to become a customer if they feel like you are the right person to solve their problem.

• The initiation of a relationship and the first impression are essential

It’s not enough to invite someone to join your network to connect.

It is advisable to send a personalized message explaining the reason for this addition. In addition to showing a real interest in this person, you allow you to directly engage in conversation with them.

The first impression is essential, because it is this which will set the tone for your discussions. If you can’t engage someone who reads you or looks at your profile the first time, they may never come back to you. So be sure to take care of the first impression you give.

• Establish a relationship

LinkedIn was founded with the goal of helping professionals, not to sell directly, but to grow their network by making connections with other members.

Selling is often the conclusion of a successful B2B strategy. In this, LinkedIn is the ideal social network, because it allows you to generate leads in the long term.

To establish a relationship, you must be active on the network : by sharing or liking the content of your peers, by commenting, by participating in topic groups, etc. The conversion rate often depends on the engagement rate. Investing in your network will bring you more results in the long run.

• Be human and attentive

We live in an individualistic age where we race to keep our personal interests. However, this strategy never worked.

Little by little, emotional intelligence is beginning to take its place in the business world. You must put people at the center of your strategy.

Vous devez placer l’#Humain au centre de votre #stratégie #SocialSelling. #Proinfluent Share on X

As the saying goes, the customer is king. Before serving your interests, you must first serve them and show active listening.

Showing empathy, respectful of the needs of the other can be beneficial to you in your business, as in your personal life. The former CEO of Danone, Antoine Riboud, sums up this thought perfectly: “ Let us lead our businesses as much with the heart as with the head, and let us not forget that if the energy resources of the earth have limits, those of the Man are infinite if he feels motivated. ”

• Do not sell a product, but provide a solution to a problem

Usually, if a potential prospect feels that your one and only goal is to sell them a product or service, they won’t turn into a customer.

When you want to do content marketing to sell your products / services, you should always put the prospect at the center of your process.

Your primary goal should be to bring added value to others by responding to a problem they encounter. This is the only way to create engagement and interest in your products if at all.

Don’t try to sell, try to help others.

Ne cherchez pas à #vendre, cherchez à #aider les autres. #Proinfluent Share on X

• Bring relevant content

Content marketers understand that not all content is of equal value. There is a difference between good content and good content. The content will not necessarily provide value or an answer to a problem, the right content will be relevant content focused on solving a problem or providing added value .

Sharing relevant content gives you credibility and positions you as an expert in the eyes of your community.

What’s more, good content will usually have a high engagement rate. The more popular your content, the more visibility it will gain. You will thus have the opportunity to reach more and more prospects.

When a piece of content is shared a certain number of times, you enter a virtuous circle.

The step-by-step guide to the different steps to social selling with LinkedIn

Le #guide des différentes étapes pour faire du #SocialSelling. avec #LinkedIn #Proinfluent Share on X

Selling with LinkedIn may seem difficult at first, but when you master the different stages of the process, you realize that LinkedIn is an exceptionally powerful tool for finding clients .

#LinkedIn est un outil exceptionnellement puissant pour trouver des #clients. #Proinfluent Share on X

I offer two different methods to boost your business by making LinkedIn a machine for generating leads.

The personalized, qualitative and slow LinkedIn social selling method

Target your prospects

Before wanting to sell on LinkedIn, it is essential to specify your target of prospects. Thus, you will be able to define what type of strategy to adopt to solve their problems. However, it is necessary to ask yourself a few questions beforehand in order to determine what your social selling strategy will be.

In order of importance :

• Who needs your product or service?
• What is its function ?
• What is its geographical area?
• What is the sector of activity of your target?
• What is the size of the company?
• What problem (s) does my product solve?
• Why are they buying?
• What challenges do they want to solve?

The important thing is to be precise in your answers. The more specific you are, the more you can niche your business, and the less competition there will be.

In addition, you will be surprised to see the favorable response rate when you address a prospect with a personalized message, especially if you are used to doing BtoB otherwise.

Obtain information about the prospect (s) and listen to their concerns

Once you have found your target, you will need to obtain information about your prospects in order to offer them a service or a product tailored to address their concerns.

For that, there are simple methods to learn more about your prospects …

• Follow their news feed

To know your target, you must study their habits, their way of thinking and of seeing the world. Thus, it is strategic to follow your news feed in order to better understand your concerns by the type of post or information shared.

• Consult their LinkedIn profiles

In the same way, to know your target, you must consult the LinkedIn profile of your prospects. Do you mainly deal with employers, employees, traders, freelancers? Consulting their LinkedIn profile will allow you to know what your target works in, what their skills are, and to better understand their personality.

• Browse newsgroups

To find out what problems your potential prospects are encountering, LinkedIn provides you with groups by topic. Joining one of these groups can be useful to better understand your prospects, their needs and thus know what added value you can bring them.

• Discover their company, their industry and their challenges

Browsing their LinkedIn profile will let you know what company they work for, study that company to better understand the challenges they face. This will help you find out if you can help them and, if so, how you can do it.

• What topics are relevant to them?

It is obvious that bakers are not interested in the same subjects as an industrialist in the building sector. You must therefore know the subjects that interest your target. Especially if you are into content marketing. For content to interest your target, it must be relevant to their profile.

• What questions do they ask?

To be able to respond to their problems, you still need to be aware of their questions. Since the prospect must be at the center of your process, you must direct your strategy towards adding value for them, not for you. The best place to find out about their questions is to join one or more discussion groups on LinkedIn. In addition to knowing their concerns, you will be able to provide them with a first element of response.

• What issues do they have?

To find out what issues they are having, you can join groups on LinkedIn, but you can also browse forums, Google searches, etc. in order to better understand which problem (s) you can answer.

Connect with the target on Linkedin

Once you’ve determined your target, you can start prospecting by adding them to LinkedIn.

To have a chance that they accept you in their network, you will have to be able to show your expertise and prove to them that you are able to answer their problems.

Always remember to send a personalized message when adding, this will increase your chances of being accepted.

This is the most important step in the process. Because the first interactions will remain in the memory of your target. You need to add value, show that you understand the issues or take an interest in their business or industry.

There are different ways to connect with your target on LinkedIn:

• Interact, comment on their publication while providing value.
• Show off your expertise by posting content.
• Send an invitation to join your network (with a personalized message!).
• If they’ve visited your profile, invite them!
• Develop confidence.

If someone new comes to your network, don’t forget to thank them. This allows you to start the conversation and make the transition to the next step.

Get in touch with prospects on LinkedIn

You need to hook your prospects around the problem they are having in a non-intrusive, humane, and expert way.

To appear less intrusive, do not send an invitation message directly offering your products or services. This is one of the worst ways to prospect!

Start the conversation in a more subtle way, including asking questions about the person and their project. You can also bounce on the news or on a shared publication.

By bringing your point of view, you will be able to engage in a constructive conversation with this person while proving that you are able to answer their questions.

Once you have determined what issue she is facing, why not offer to help?

If contact has been made, you can take it to the next level by offering a phone call to explore the topic further.

Continue the human exchange outside LinkedIn

While online exchanges have taken on more and more space, seeing a person in real life remains just as important.

Once contact is established on LinkedIn, you can offer your prospect to discuss your career plans in a phone call or in a face-to-face meeting.

Meeting a prospect in real life is powerful because it creates a real relationship of trust and real commitment.

Nobody can develop their business, especially in BtoB, by staying only in LinkedIn! LinkedIn is only there to help grow your network. It allows your prospects to make a first impression on you and set the tone for your discussions.

However, a long-term relationship cannot be built if you stay within the framework of LinkedIn.

Meeting a person face-to-face brings significant advantages:

• The human exchange is much more enriching and allows to establish a relationship of trust
• Progress in your sales process
• Continue to publish relevant content for your target in line with its problem and your product
• Provide solutions to their problem
• Connect with influencers in this market
• Bring value to your network and this market

Exchange value = prospect on LinkedIn

On the web, you cannot seek to sell directly, because your credibility and expertise are essentially based on the added value that you can bring to your prospects. This step is essential and essential for successful content marketing.

Once the relationship is created through LinkedIn, you can seek to meet the person in real life and discuss your project. This is when you can switch to your usual sales process.

This exchange will therefore be decisive in determining whether your prospect will convert into a customer.

It is therefore essential to know how to sell yourself during this interaction with your prospect, and to show him how you can respond to the problems he encounters.

The sale is then, not a product offered to a customer, but a solution to a problem that brings him value.

Your customer, with your solution, will also be able to bring value to their customers. It is an exchange of knowledge, of tools that solve a problem.

Your product must be a help for your target.

Look at selling this way and you’ll never sell the same way to your customers again.

Capitalize on this customer experience

If you have managed to meet your prospect and have convinced them with your expertise, they are now part of your client portfolio.

In order to capitalize on this customer experience, why not ask him to you recommend on LinkedIn?

Recommendations carry a lot of weight on LinkedIn because they allow you to build your credibility and attract more potential customers. There too, it is a virtuous circle!

However, the recommendation on LinkedIn can be supplemented by another equally effective means: word of mouth.

Without sounding too intrusive, you can ask them to recommend you to their own network.

The important thing is to tell people about yourself who are likely to have the same problems as your main target.

Indeed, the more your customers will talk about you, the more it will benefit you, in many ways, for your business.

Now imagine doing this in an industrialized and human way

When you want to develop your business, it is normal to want to take action and be present on all fronts.

Between the development of your site and the optimization of your LinkedIn profile, the practice of your content marketing , and prospecting as such, difficult to know how to optimize your time to be able to do everything optimally.

Yet time is our most precious resource. It is therefore essential to consider it as such and to lose as little as possible in tasks that bring you nothing, or very little.

What if you made certain tasks automatic to devote more time to prospecting and interacting with your prospects?

Of course, you might be skeptical and dread the loss of quality and lack of personalization in your marketing process. Nevertheless, it is not the case.

Do you think it’s too good? Me too, however, it is the technique that I have developed and that I use.

However, this technique works with a few prerequisites …

1. It is necessary have an effective and influential Linkedin profile , which I call a profile Proinfluent

You should not see LinkedIn as a classic CV, but as a breeding ground for the development of your business.

Have an effective LinkedIn profile cannot be improvised. You need to be regular and devote a minimum of time to LinkedIn to develop your marketing strategy and apply the methods that work.

This is what I reveal in my influential LinkedIn profile checklist .

If you want to save time, but also money by being accompanied by a LinkedIn specialist, it’s here: LinkedIn support .

2. You have to want to make money by bringing value to your customers.

Money is just a bonus. No, seriously it’s important, but that doesn’t have to be your goal. Your main goal is to bring value to your customers. Money pays you for the added value you give to others.

The methods I’m talking about work. You’ll need to tailor them to your business to get the most out of LinkedIn.

They will show you how powerful LinkedIn can be for your business.

By effectively harnessing the full power of this rich network of approximately 546 million users, you will be able to effectively target your prospects.

The Proinfluent © method: a mix of intelligent © and human prospecting to generate human and financial value

This method is simple, it uses the cogs presented above of social selling or social selling but automates tasks to leave you the care of exchanging with your hottest prospects.

I reveal 80% of my content, tips and strategies for free, in particular thanks to my blog and my LinkedIn influential profile checklist .

However, for motivated professionals able to go further, I unveil new strategies and techniques to have an influential LinkedIn profile in my LinkedIn trainings or my LinkedIn social selling coaching .

This training is intended for those who want, above all, to generate value and exchange for their customers.

It is intended for companies, salespeople or entrepreneurs who want to use the full power of LinkedIn to develop their offer and provide a solution to their customers.

Several people trusted me and were completely satisfied.

To get an idea of the potential of this method, you can read testimonials from satisfied customers.

Successful prospecting on LinkedIn: the 4 emails strategy

So as not to be intrusive, I recommend getting in touch with your prospects in four stages.

1. Invite your prospect to join your network by personalizing the invitation message

2. Send a thank you message

3. Send a message in which you will bring value, a solution to his problem.

This will position you as an expert …

4. Send a slightly more direct message.

All excuses are good to get in touch with a prospect.

The important thing is to jump on the opportunities that present themselves to you: an element of the profile of your interlocutor who spoke to you, a news that he published recently, an article that he shared, a promotion, etc.

To increase your response rate, do not hesitate to contextualize this initial contact.

Time management is very important for professionals. Most people are reluctant to waste time. And that’s quite normal!

Therefore, if you want to get their attention, you must provide a way to help them solve their problem through a call-to-action, a call, an appointment or an external link to your product.

However, it is necessary to space these messages by at least 3 days so as not to appear too intrusive in the eyes of your interlocutor.

If you are less comfortable with this approach and want to be noticed by your prospects, do like me: bring free and relevant content to your news feed.

If you publish on a regular basis, your prospects will identify you as an expert in this topic and will be required to contact you directly.

This method is called “inbound selling”: no longer go looking for your customers, bring them to you!

However, this method only works if you have patience and consistency and can deliver relevant, high-value content.

Unless you opt for my faster, time-saving method … check it out here.

Inbound marketing and social selling on LinkedIn: mistakes to avoid

This strategy can be a shocking alliance for your business when it is well mastered and you are able to avoid certain mistakes. I suggest you discover them together:

1. Not having a clear strategy e

To do social selling or inboud marketing, you need to establish a specific content marketing strategy. Conversely, customers will not come to you.

2. Not knowing your target

If you haven’t investigated your target first, you won’t be able to establish an adequate strategy. Therefore, you can join LinkedIn groups or study the profile of your prospects so that you know what need (s) you can meet.

3. Don’t write relevant content

Once you have researched your target, you should be able to meet their needs with effective and relevant content. Content marketing doesn’t mean writing content to write content. This content must be researched and aim to help your target in his problem.

4. Do not optimize your content for conversion

Even if your main goal is to help your target to solve their problems, you should not lose in mind the development of your business. Your content should also aim to convert your prospects into customers. You must therefore put call-to-action or encourage the prospect to become a customer by purchasing your services or your products.

To read:

• inbound marketing THE method to generate leads sustainably
• STOP! Stop Making Those LinkedIn ™ Prospecting Mistakes

Sell effectively on LinkedIn: develop your relationship marketing

To develop your social selling strategy and sell on LinkedIn, you need to be able to showcase your expertise.

There are several ways to do this on LinkedIn. The first thing is to interact!

• You have to be regular on LinkedIn and spend at least 15 minutes a day
• Comment on the publications and posts of your prospects by offering your opinion on the subject
• Participate in groups by theme
• Develop your own content marketing by publishing videos, articles, posts with high added value

Multiply your broadcast channels to attract attention and highlight your expertise in order to increase your conversion rate.

Relationship marketing teaches you to see others as beneficial resources in order to develop your network of contacts. It consists of retaining your prospects and customers and creating a strong commitment.

Do you need to invest in a LinkedIn Sales Navigator account to sell and canvass with LinkedIn?

You can use LinkedIn completely free to grow your business. But you can also go faster and access new features by opting for one of the four premium subscriptions offered by LinkedIn.

• Linkedin Premium Career

• Linkedin Premium Business (business)

• Linkedin Sales Navigator Professional (sales)

• Linkedin Recruiter Lite (recruiting)

You will choose the right subscription according to your profile and your goals.

The Sales Navigator account allows you to sort your prospects among your network or allows you to find new prospects thanks to the “Lead Builder”. With the Lead Builder, you can save up to 15 keyword searches and get notified whenever a new profile matches your search. Not bad is not it ?

You also have access to features common to premium subscriptions such as receiving the complete list of people who have visited your profile, Inmails, etc.

The only downside may be the price, but if you want to move faster, this is a good investment.

To read also: the comparison of LinkedIn Premium subscriptions.

Social selling LinkedIn: one final recommendation

If you want to take a step further and apply all of the strategies outlined above, you can go to my online training. A real booster, it will help you achieve your goals.

Remember that the foundation of your success is your LinkedIn profile which must be impactful and incisive, follow this free checklist to build a profile that is 50 times more effective and influential :)!

Do you want to be supported in a social selling or BtoB prospecting process? Contact me . Or make an appointment directly in my agenda .