Three Ways To Use LinkedIn To Enhance B2B Sales Processes

Sales has always been an evolving discipline, however social media has transformed sales and the way that businesses identify, nurture and convert potential customers.

As business owners or sales managers, it is important to understand the impact that this transformation has had and how social media can be integrated into your sales processes.

One platform in particular that has transformed B2B sales is LinkedIn, here are three ways that it can be used to enhance your company’s sales tactics and processes.

Research Tool

LinkedIn is an effective tool for identifying potential customers and researching them, their interests and their business objectives. By understanding these it is possible to effectively profile prospects and identify the most appropriate sales journey for each customer.

Building Relationships

By building connections and developing them over time on LinkedIn your business is able to reach people and audiences that may have previously been hidden behind a gatekeeper such as a receptionist or personal assistant.

This can create sales opportunities directly, but can also greatly enhance telesales or offline sales activities such as networking.

Just remember to set out effective social media policies to ensure that LinkedIn activity is covered within your salesperson non-compete clauses within their contracts.

Spreading Your Brand Message

An effective LinkedIn strategy can turn employees from the admin assistant to the director of sales into effective advocates for your business.

Make sure that employees like and share your company posts. By doing so your company’s updates will be seen not just by those that follow your company page but also those that the individual is connected to. If you have 10 employees with 100 connections each this can give one update the potential to be seen by 1,000 fresh pairs of eyes.

This is a guest blog by Kristian Downer a LinkedIn Training Provider based in Peterborough