The State of Digital Selling with LinkedIn in 2019

Modern Marketing Engine podcast hosted by Bernie Borges

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5+ y ago 37:16

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Vengreso recently published an original report titled The State of Digital Selling with LinkedIn in 2019. We surveyed 862 B2B sales reps across five industries: professional services, technology, manufacturing, healthcare, and financial services to assess their digital selling skills. The sales reps were asked 10 multiple-choice questions about how they use LinkedIn in their sales activities to assess how their use of LinkedIn impacts their digital selling results.

Tune into today’s episode as Bernie and his guest Kurt Shaver, Co-founder and CSO at Vengreso, summarize the key findings that are published in the 20-page report. Get the full report on the Vengreso website or at stateofdigitalselling.com. Don’t miss out on the full report’s finding to understand how reps are being effective in digital selling through LinkedIn.

How Has LinkedIn Impacted Digital Selling?

One of the key takeaways from The State of Digital Selling with LinkedIn in 2019 report is that LinkedIn has been severely under-utilized by sales and marketing professionals. Despite being the largest publicly available B2B database in the world, the number of professionals using the platform for sales engagement is disappointing.

LinkedIn is a comprehensive tool sales professionals should use to find, engage, connect with, and foster relationships with potential customers. The scope and depth of information housed in the LinkedIn platform are enough to keep most sales professionals’ digital Rolodex full of prime prospects for years. It has already revolutionized digital selling among those sales and marketing teams who use it appropriately.

Your LinkedIn Profile Is More Than A Resume

Most LinkedIn users recognize the platform as a way to present a professional face to the business world. However, beyond uploading a professional picture and completing the resume portion of the bio, most salespeople fail to optimize their profiles. Sales professionals need to move beyond using LinkedIn solely as a resume and instead focus on presenting a profile written through the eyes of their target customer.

The report shows that most sales professionals are unaware that LinkedIn allows you to upload a variety of media files to include documents, PDFs, videos, and reports. The backbone of digital selling is creating and maintaining credibility with your target customer. The percentage of salespeople using LinkedIn to repurpose existing content and spread new content is surprisingly low considering the power such information has in generating trust.

Are Your Connections Referring You Business?

It’s true that the quality of your connections is more important than the quantity, but approximately half of the sales professionals surveyed had fewer than 500 connections. The salespeople who generate the most revenue are those with the biggest network. Having a net of just anyone is not effective, but when you focus on connecting with large numbers of people in your area of focus, you enhance your ability to sell more effectively and consistently.

When you have a large network, you have more people from whom to gain referrals. However, the number of individuals in sales who are not using their network for referrals is astounding. 93 percent of those surveyed in The State of Digital Selling with LinkedIn in 2019 report have not or are not sure if they have ever asked for a referral from their connections. Considering the networking opportunities on LinkedIn, this is a huge area of improvement needed by sales professionals.

Why Aren’t Sales Professionals Using The Advanced Search Feature?

Not only are sales professionals not using their connections often enough to generate referrals and leads, but they are also not using the Advanced Search feature within LinkedIn. Perhaps most salespeople are unaware that this feature exists since 40 percent of those surveyed indicated they have never used the Advanced Search tool.

This feature provides sales professionals the ability to create and save searches to find people they want to connect with and create Search Alerts that notify the user of new contacts matching the search criteria. Those who know how to use the Advanced Search feature are more effective at prospecting on LinkedIn.

Bernie and Kurt closed this episode with an invitation to get the full report to read key insights on how to use the findings gained from this survey. To get the full 20-page report just go to www.stateofdigitalselling.com.

Featured on This Episode

Kurt on LinkedIn
Kurt on Twitter: @KurtShaver

Outline of This Episode

[1:04] Bernie introduces today’s guest Kurt Shaver, CSO, and co-founder of Vengreso
[2:16] Bernie reveals the purpose behind The State of Digital Selling with LinkedIn in 2019 report and how the data was obtained.
[3:40] Which version of LinkedIn are most sales teams using?
[5:34] The version doesn’t matter so much as the training supplied to the reps.
[6:33] How does the profile picture affect the efficacy of the profile as a whole?
[9:03] Media takes your LinkedIn profile from a digital resume to a digital resource.
[14:19] What the number of LinkedIn connections say about profile optimization?
[17:01] Referrals through LinkedIn are tremendously underutilized.
[18:55] LinkedIn’s least used resource? The Advanced Search feature.
[21:08] How often are individual reps sharing content with their LinkedIn network?
[25:28] Better sales calls are made when the sales rep does research.
[26:29] Are salespeople using personal video messages in their digital selling tactics?
[30:04] What does your LinkedIn SSI score say about your LinkedIn profile?
[31:56] Download the report at stateofdigitalselling.com for additional insights.
[32:35] Kurt’s final thoughts on the insights gained from The State of Digital Selling with LinkedIn in 2019 report.

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