Why LinkedIn Is Key To Navigating A Changing Sales Landscape

A fresh-off-the-press 2023 sales trend report from HubSpot and Aircall reinforces why LinkedIn can be such a useful tool for customer liaison, education and support, which more often than not encourages people you engage with to use your goods or services.

Using data from more than 1000 global sales leaders, the report analyses sales trends and strategies and offers evidenced-based insights that will increase your understanding of how and where to sell, and about activities that help to cultivate a loyal customer base. Notably, using social media, including B2B platforms such as LinkedIn, helps a lot.

The report emphasises the importance of the troubled past few years (thanks Covid!) in terms of what they have taught us and suggests that we learn more when things go wrong than when everything is going to plan.

We’ve learnt:

🔷 Resilience

🔷 New ways of buying and selling

🔷 To focus on building up deep relationships with audiences

🔷 To prioritise how we sell over what we sell

It identifies digital technology as the key to a seamless customer experience and emphasises that expectations of personalisation are higher than ever. When you engage effectively, you win more business and help your customers succeed.  With repeat business, they then become brand promoters.

Consumers increasingly expect:

🔷 Hyper-localised content

🔷 Targeted communication via a variety of multimedia touchpoints and channels

🔷 Strategic consultation at every stage

🔷 To receive real-time answers to queries

🔷 To do business with companies that are tech-savvy

In addition, people are doing more of their own research than ever, so if businesses can integrate technology into their marketing and sales processes, this will enable them to answer questions, guide the user, and provide learning resources. Businesses able to do this are leading the way.

Considering consumers’ evolving expectations, LinkedIn is an ideal way to meet them because you can post, comment and respond in ways that give your customers excellent, targeted (and localised) content and educational resources, and you can stay in touch with them regularly, answering any queries or providing information they need promptly.

You can also take the time to find out exactly what problems your audience may have and how to solve them. If you can offer solutions to problems, sales usually follow.

The report poses the question: How do you stand out from the competition given the exponential rise in volume of virtual messaging?

You do this by building trust in new ways. This is because it’s critical to know your buyer and to develop a thorough understanding of their needs and challenges. Hard selling just doesn’t cut it any more.

Instead, you need to build a relationship with your existing and potential customers. This should be a gradual, but rewarding process, and if done in a genuine and authentic way, develops trust. People want to do business with people they trust and enjoy working with.

LinkedIn is the ideal forum for connecting with customers and building relationships with them, whether they purchase your products or services now or further down the track. The priority is to connect with people before you can expect to transact with them.

When those surveyed were asked about the most effective strategies for upselling to their customers, the top two strategies identified were understanding their customers’ needs and goals (66%) and establishing trust and rapport with them (58%), both of which can be successfully achieved on LinkedIn.

The platform’s value was further underscored in a discussion about sales challenges, such as:

🔷 finding quality leads

🔷 getting in touch with decision-makers (a particular difficulty now so many of them work remotely)

🔷 keeping prospects engaged

🔷 building rapport

LinkedIn offers ample opportunities to answer all of these challenges.

The report suggests building a personal branding strategy and goes on to say:

‘The #1 channel for getting in touch with decision-makers is LinkedIn, making it a great place to share useful content about the industry. Video content is one of the most popular forms of marketing, and sees great engagement on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. When prospects develop a relationship with you via social media first, they’re more likely to feel ready to purchase from you when the time is right.’

Another plus for LinkedIn is that it is the perfect place to post educational content and host educational events, another way the report suggests can help you stand out from the competition.

The need to be comfortable with virtual networking and establishing a presence on social media is more or less a no-brainer now and LinkedIn’s value in this regard was emphasised in the report by more of its survey results.

For example:

🔷 Almost three-quarters (74%) of sales professionals said LinkedIn was the most effective platform for researching prospects.

🔷 When asked which tools were the most effective at helping to get leads, the top answer was LinkedIn Sales Navigator (72.1%).

🔷 In 2021, the top marketing channels for lead generation were social media, SEO, and account-based marketing. In 2022, influencer marketing and short-form video became priority channels for marketing growth, along with virtual events and mobile-focused web strategy.

🔷 In 2023, B2B sales reps plan to use LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram to find new prospects and leads. B2C sales reps are more likely to use Facebook and Instagram, and more than half are also on LinkedIn.

Because there has been such a shift in the way people engage online and research solutions to their problems or ways to answer their purchasing needs, the report says sales and marketing teams should focus on:  

🔷 referral programmes

🔷 social media

🔷 encouraging user-generated content

🔷 virtual events

This is driven by the fact that 66% of high-quality leads are referrals from existing customers and 47% are from social media.

It is easy to see why LinkedIn is such a valuable resource when it comes to ticking all those boxes, especially when it comes to lead generation.

A number of sales and marketing experts are quoted in the report, but two insights in particular stand out:

‘Staying connected to our customers is extremely important because ultimately we’re a relationship-driven business. It’s very important for us to make sure we’re providing a great experience for them even before they become a customer . . .’ Thomas Jeng, Head of Sales, Aspire App

‘Keeping prospects engaged throughout the sales process can be challenging for a sales executive. The key here is really understanding your prospect . . . This will help you tailor and personalise your communications. Keep bringing relevant new insights, valuable articles, and high-value CTAs. By sharing regular, tailored and insightful content, you’ll ensure a prospect that’s motivated to stay engaged throughout the buyer journey.’ Crevan O’Malley, Senior Director of EMEA Sales, HubSpot

What those observations underline is that connection, relationship-building, getting to know your prospects, and keeping them motivated and engaged with high-quality and regular content are precisely how you build a loyal customer base. Where better to achieve all of those things but LinkedIn?

As the sales and marketing landscape has evolved, with accelerated speed over the past few years, how you need to approach selling has changed rapidly with it. Social selling and relationship building online is now key to engaging with your existing and potential customers, so knowing your way round digital platforms is essential.

LinkedIn is tailor-made for this, so maximising its potential will put you ahead of the competition. As experts in how to use the platform, we can help if you have any questions about how to enhance your presence on LinkedIn.

Reach out to us by sending me a DM.

The full report can be downloaded here.

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