aiko

Sr. Account Executive

The purpose of LinkedIn

IMO, LinkedIn is meant to "show off" your achievements and show that you are a real person behind your emails. As a sales rep, it's hard to build relationships by directly reaching out and asking for a demo.

Where I do find success, is, by posting monthly about good things that effect your life, personally. While you are prospecting, send a request to connect so they can see your history and that you are a real human being.

For example:

Post about a personal achievement, like completing a book and what you learned from it.

A company achievement and why you are proud to work at your company.

A promotion and how hard you have worked towards it.

Your background and where you hope to see yourself in 5-10 years.

Let me know if you do this too or if you disagree :).

🤝 Networking

🚀 Career Goals

👨‍💻 LinkedIn

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adrienmc

Good Citizen

Founder @LaGrowthMachine

« By directly reaching out and asking for a demo »

This is where you’re doing it 100% wrong.

Linkedin is the worst place to go for a demo first. It’s where you can have a great conversational approach (because people kill time there and you can catch them live in their slacking off time) to have a convo building into a interest call.

For context, I built and sell a multichannel sales automation (LinkedIn + Twitter + email automated outreach). And for entreprise clients, we review their outreach strategy. So we have a good understanding of what works/doesn’t work depending on ICP and channels used.

If there is a single insight that you must take home, it is this : what works via email doesn’t work via LinkedIn!!

Via email, it is generally accepted to be pitched + calendar link. The format of emails allow for you to be pitchy (bullets points, hyperlinks etc..)

Linkedin doesn’t at all.

You have to adapt to the channel’s constraints you’re using.
LinkedIn is a chat first and foremost. What you want to do there is to start a conversation, and be there LIVE whenever your leads reply.

This is the key!

Why? Because that’s what convos are about: that live, unfiltered, honest exchange.

You want to catch your prospect on LinkedIn while their slacking off, procrastinating. That 20minutes window during which, if you reply to their reply, they’ll engage.

Not asynchronous. Live!

For it to work, your copywriting/approach cannot push for a call, but an open ended question that will result in opening a conversation. And you deep-diving in that convo.

Linkedin prospecting is a subtle art, that requires a lot of free time to be available there whenever your many prospects reply. But done right, you can built relationship to a whole other level that emails will never allow you to!

aiko

Politicker

Sr. Account Executive

Hi, nice to meet you!

I agree, you cannot find success by reaching out on LI and asking for a demo. The point of my post is to use LI as a place where your prospects can see that you're a person, with real goals and achievements, and that they can trust you when they go to make a deal with ya.

Gasty

Notable Contributor

War Room Community Manager

@aiko : truthfully and unequivocally and shamelessly, YES !

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

yeah i think linked in has 2 purposes for me.

1. post my resume
2. have any potential customer that sees my profile to think "oh he knows what he is talking about"

So i never post about things like mentioned but I do think
"what is something about my product my target audience would like to know"
"what is my opinion on certain things going on in my industry that I sell into.

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

Sales Rep

The picture to put a face to the name for customers and finding jobs

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

cant get much simpler than that!

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

LI for me is an online resume first of all.

When I signed up many (many) years ago, it started as a great way for me to keep in touch with former colleagues for networking, so that I wasn't cross referencing into my personal social media networks, which are for friends and family. I realize that lines are blurring constantly, but honestly, my business contacts don't want to know about my kids' first day of school or game ball, and my friends don't want to know about a trend in digital marketing. About 6-7 years ago, those lines really blurred and I was shocked at the amount of personal political viewpoints that leached into the platform, so I basically stopped using it for anything but connecting to business people I want to stay in touch with for networking purposes. I mostly stay off the feed; it became far too unprofessional.

Now it's all full of "influencers" and humblebrags.

Anyway, I may be a bad example, but I really do just use it to validate someone and their position at their company, do use it for inmail from time to time, but I don't think most executives I want to talk to spend time on LI validating that I'm real. :)

antiASKHOLE

Tycoon

Bravado's Resident Asshole

I LinkedIn for connection purposes and job options for the most part. Not for a source of booking meetings.

Cabbie

Good Citizen

AE (Account Executive)

LinkedIn serves a different purpose for everyone, I think.

I personally think of LinkedIn like a networking mixer - real casual & conversational.

You can absolutely book demos and build strong customer relationships through it, but you can't be salesy.

For example, I sell recruitment martech.It's a shit recruitment environment. I reach out to heads of dept. occasionally following significant news events and tell them I noticed they're having a bad time and can help if they're interested. No pressure.

Alternatively, it'd fucking stun you how many people are willing to offer career advice if you want it - just genuinely ask for help.

AnchorPoint

Politicker

Business Coach

Business connections and growth.

GDO

Politicker

BDM

I’m not a fan of the whole personal branding. I keep all the communication professional

BitcoinAddict

Opinionated

LinkedIn is Instagram for ugly people

aiko

Politicker

Sr. Account Executive

Lmao

Mr.Floaty

Politicker

BDR

I would have taken time off before starting my new job if external factors hadn't gotten involved.

Cyberjarre

Politicker

BDR

I would have taken time off before starting my new job if external factors hadn't gotten involved.

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aiko

The purpose of LinkedIn

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