Make The Most Of Social Selling With Linkedin Automation
With more than 500 million users in over 220 countries, LinkedIn is perhaps the most powerful social selling tool for the business owner. Not only is it a massive platform, but there is incredible opportunity: 80% of B2B social media leads come from LinkedIn.
No matter the job title, from coworkers to clients, LinkedIn is the ideal way to reach out in a professional setting.
In order to get the best use out of LinkedIn and reach more potential clients, harnessing automation is essential. Although there are some sources that warn against using too much automation, as long as it is used correctly LinkedIn automation can be a powerful tool for you, your business and brand. With the correct knowledge and tools, your sales team can become more productive than ever.
Automating manual, repetitive tasks so you can focus on real conversations.
Here are the 3 ways that your sales team can use Linkedin:
Save time
As the largest social network, LinkedIn can become an intimidating place. By automating at least part of the process, many sales teams and leaders find that they have more time to spend on more important work.
Finding any way to save time in sales translates into more profit for your company. In fact, wasting time is a huge problem when it comes to sales: only 36% of the average salesperson’s day is spent actively selling. This means that they waste 64% of their day performing tasks other than selling.
Automation, then, is extremely important for getting ahead of the competition. It is no wonder that 63% of companies outgrow their competition by using automated practices. Any time that you save means that your sales can continue to grow.
Most of a salesperson’s day is wasted in front of a computer, churning out emails. Because response rates to cold emails are so low, they try to make them sound as unique as possible. This is a complete waste of time: with a completely personalized email, the response rate is still only a dismal 17%.
Likewise, LinkedIn messages have replaced discovery calls for getting to know your customer and their needs. As phones are used less and less for making actual calls, clients are far more comfortable chatting through messages instead. Sales teams are more successful when they contact clients via their preferred method of communication. Over the past few years, messaging has exploded and has quickly become the preferred method of communication for many clients. LinkedIn messages allow your sales team to contact clients through messages in a professional space. That is why salespeople who use social selling automation tools increase their win rates and deal size by 5% and 35%, respectively.
Linkedin messages out perform cold emails and calls.
Instead of wasting time on cold emails or calls, using Linkedin automation tools means that your sales team will have more time to concentrate on actually selling. Your sales team will be spending their time chatting with people and building relationships instead of desperately trying to reach out to potential leads.
Find the Right Prospects
Cold emails are not a sustainable model for most companies. Companies too often find themselves wasting their resources trying to talk with leads that have no interest in talking to them. Instead, harnessing Linkedin automation allows you to reach out to customers in a way that makes them more receptive to your message.
Cold emails do not create much of a response because they are too invasive. Just as door-to-door salesmen invade too much personal space to actually sell to the modern client, cold emails is a much too intimate a medium and many people do not feel comfortable communicating through it.
LinkedIn, on the other hand, is just the sort of public place that makes for a better selling medium. LinkedIn profile visits, connects and messages are all much more public and potential customers are more likely to engage. These behaviors all trigger a behavioral response that makes makes them more likely to look back and visit your profile. Connect rate is higher than 30%, while the average email open rates are anywhere from 15- 28%, depending on the industry,
Social selling allows you to avoid cold emailing and jump right into a warm outreach. You can and should use LinkedIn to interact with strangers and connect without a disruptive call or email. Automating the behaviors that engage potential clients allows you to concentrate on the important part of social selling: creating great content.
Create Great Personalized Content
Automation is extremely helpful to take the front work of finding prospects and lead generation off of your plate. This allows you to spend time where it counts: with clients and creating content that moves your brand. Beyond growing your network, there are various ways that you can go viral and expand your influence on LinkedIn.
Your Linkedin profile page is really a landing page.
YourLinkedin profile page should be a landing page for potential clients. Because of automation, your profile page may be your only chance to catch their attention. Create a good first impression with potential clients by creating an effective page. Make sure that your LinkedIn profile page conveys the right message to your target audience and moves them to do something:
- Visit your website
- Connect with you
- Schedule a call
- View your posts/articles
Next, creating viral content is not a mysterious process. LinkedIn has algorithms to help decide what your potential clients will see when they search through LinkedIn. By automating other portions of your presence there, you can spend more time creating this content. Some ways to grow your presence include:
- Use images that pop
- Publish regularly with a set schedule
- Learn basic SEO to see where you can rank well
- Keep titles short
- Use ads to drive traffic
- Repost content with different titles and images
- Politely ask to be featured by tweeting to @LinkedInPulse
- Get featured on LinkedIn Channels
- Promote from other places, such as your website and Twitter
- Syndicate your content that performs well
All of these tips take time, but if you automate the more of the redundant parts of growing your audience you can better spend your time in ways that will most benefit your company and brand.
Social selling is less about selling, and more about providing relevant, value-driven content.
Likewise, you can also create a much more effective sales strategy by using the time you save to create a much more personalized outreach to the prospects that respond to you. This is key to creating a successful company with the current marketplace. Personalization is no longer a way to simply stand out amongst the competition, businesses expect it. In fact, 65% of businesses stated they would switch brands if their company did not personalize their communications.
Automation allows you to create a LinkedIn outreach that matters on a platform that leads are more comfortable responding to. By automating much of the process, you can have better conversations with warm prospects and create the better overarching content that will propel your brand to success instead of causing you to constantly churn out emails that never get opened.
LinkedIn Automation: Using Your Time Where It Matters
Traditional sales is a numbers game: social selling is not. With cold emailing, about 15% prospects will even open your email. Of those, 2% will respond and half of them will be a rejections. It is a waste of time and potential.
In contrast, social selling is not about quantity because it is much more effective. Response rate is an impressive 30–40%. By automating this process, your sales team will have more time to take these opportunities to chat with potential clients and less time doing the repetitive tasks that can be handed over to robots. Use your sales team where it counts: building relationships with potential clients. Only a human can do that.
Linkedin connect rates are much higer than email open and replies.
If you need help automating social selling workflows on your LinkedIn account, feel free to reach out to us.
