Selling Corona-Era Benefits: 5 Ways to Use LinkedIn
November 18, 2020
LinkedIn is the social media platform for business professionals uninterested in sites like Facebook and Instagram. It may not get the same amount of traffic as those other social media portals, but it gets the kind of traffic you are looking for as a sales professional. Believe it or not, you can use LinkedIn to boost your sales even in the coronavirus era.
Let's face it, selling benefits is going to be tough for the foreseeable future. Until the economy rebounds, companies will limit what they spend on benefits packages. You are going to need all the help you can get to sell. LinkedIn offers some of that help. To that end, below are five suggestions for using LinkedIn to boost sales in the coronavirus era.
Our first suggestion is to use the paid LinkedIn Sales Navigator tool. It is a dedicated sales tool designed to produce qualified leads and the means of connecting with them. You can visit the LinkedIn site to learn all the details, including how much it costs.
A number of useful features make it a must-have for selling Corona-era benefits:
The strength of LinkedIn's sales tool is its algorithms. It helps you find qualified leads a lot more easily than combing through LinkedIn and contacting people at random.
An obvious extension of using the sales tool is to make new contacts. In sales, contacts are everything. Some contacts you will sell to while others will point you to qualified leads. Remember that you need new contacts if you hope to expand your book of business. LinkedIn is the perfect place to find them because it is social media for business professionals.
LinkedIn has a nice little feature that allows your existing contacts to recommend you for particular services. Make use of that. If you are not already connected with clients in your book of business, get connected. Then ask them to provide a referral. You might even reciprocate by referring them for whatever products or services they offer. Do not ever underestimate the value of referrals in the LinkedIn universe. They are gold.
Far too many LinkedIn users treat their profiles as extended resumes. Doing so makes sense if you are looking for a job, but not if you're trying to sell benefits. Your prospective clients do not care that you have a business degree. They do not care about your accomplishments on the university debate team. What they care about is how you can help them score the right benefits for their employees.
Modify your profile so it speaks more to what you have to offer. Emphasize your experience as a broker. Talk about your relationship with your general agency. Your profile should explain why prospects should choose you over other brokers.
Finally, you can create and publish content on LinkedIn. Do it. Write informational articles that demonstrate your expertise as a benefits pro. Write them in such a way that they instantly become shareable when published. If you create content that is relevant, informative, and answers questions your clients routinely ask, sharing will happen.
LinkedIn can be an amazingly effective tool for sales professionals. At a time when selling benefits is more challenging than it has ever been, it makes sense to use every available resource – including LinkedIn.