Social media has changed a lot over the years.

Social media platforms realized the potential for business early on and started making changes accordingly to accommodate businesses. This has enabled sales professionals to better utilize these platforms to increase sales.

LinkedIn is one such social media platform that was intended for professionals to begin with and has substantially changed the playing field for B2B businesses.

We have come up with a few strategies to boost sales with LinkedIn social selling so you too can take advantage of social media to meet and exceed your B2B sales targets.

Share Customer Content with Your Network

This is an obvious one but we will speak about it regardless because it helps spark and elevate conversations with prospects. If your leads are creating original content, they have worked hard on it and by sharing it with your network, you display that you support their efforts.

This helps build better relationships and makes for easy selling when the time comes. Reach out and connect with leads through invitation messages that sound personal, instead of generic sales messages, to show your appreciation of their efforts.

This will enable you to grow your network and find more lead opportunities when these connections share or like similar content from relevant people on LinkedIn.

Get Warm Introductions

Once you have access to their profiles, LinkedIn will display your mutual connections on their profiles, which makes it easy for you to get a warm introduction instead of connecting cold. Find a mutual connection and ask for them to introduce you to your lead.

Use Sales Navigator for Targeting Leads

Going premium on LinkedIn has many benefits and one of them is the Sales Navigator, which allows you to get up-to-date information on companies. This helps you stay in the loop with what those companies are sharing and what your leads care for.

You can use this information as conversation starters that are more effective than any cold or generic approach. Moreover, Advanced Search in Sales Navigator allows you to use filters like location, keywords, current company and seniority level to dive deeper to better target leads.

Export to CRM

Manually updating CRM with leads is a painstakingly boring job for sales reps. You can use an 'Export to CRM' extension to create contacts in your CRM using LinkedIn profiles. This benefits you by saving time and even benefits your marketing team, who are always on the lookout for new leads.

They can then help sales teams by using these contacts in various campaigns.

Social Selling Index (SSI) for Measurement

You can measure your social selling through LinkedIn by using the Social Selling Index (SSI). This is a score, or rating, that measures your social selling success based on 4 factors.

·         Number of connections with target audience

·         Amount of shared content

·         Number of interactions

·         Clicks on insights on your feed

Companies can even hold incentivized competitions as to who has the best SSI score every month to increase sales and get more brand exposure.

Conclusion

These are all tried and tested strategies to boost B2B sales with LinkedIn social selling. LinkedIn has always been an excellent platform for leads and sales but with their premium tools, they take it a step further. Sales reps should take full advantage to increase their B2B sales through social media.

If you want to learn more about B2B sales with LinkedIn social selling, or B2B sales in general, please visit our website today.