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We have looked at over 30,000 LinkedIn sales profiles over the past couple of months and what should be a great resource for helping people solve their business problems is nothing more than a self-serving, self-centered employment website. I am talking salespeople and I am talking about myself, I don't know what everybody else is doing. It was shocking. Reading a sales profile once in a while you just don't notice it but when you read 30,000 it's in your face obvious. LinkedIn might as well be monster.com with a twitter feed, a constant stream of noise with little significance. Our customers must think we are useless. And according to recent research by Forrester, 39% of our customers say we don't add value. We need to change and we need to change fast or we are going to be replaced, by robots.
We share an update about a story with no comments or insights and most of the stories are old news anyway, our customers have already read them. But if we had an opinion, a different perspective, a new insight our customers might respect us more and listen to us when we sell. Write a long form post, it doesn't have to be long it just has to be something you care about. I just started writing and posting and I have no idea if it's good writing or not and I don't care. What I care about is when one of my customers messages me and says they love doing business with me. I care about them, I will worry about myself later. Write a story how you helped a customer, I think prospects would love that kind of story.
I want you to pause for a moment and I want you to open up a new tab in your browser and Google your name. What was the first website that came up when you typed in your name? I bet it was LinkedIn. When you send a prospect a cold email or make a cold call if you wrote something or said something worth reading or listening to chances are your prospect Googled your name and the first result is a link to your LinkedIn profile. Once they clicked on the link to your profile what is the first thing they see? You’re a quota crusher, an accomplished sales professional and the stats to back it up. LinkedIn is a trophy case for our sales accomplishments.
It makes total sense that all of us in sales have created a profile like a baseball card. Our sales stats. We use LinkedIn for our achievements, to level up for our next job, it’s what we have used LinkedIn for since its’ inception. But what does our profile say to a prospect? Does our LinkedIn profile match what our cold call or email communicated to a prospect? We don’t lead a call or email with our sales accomplishments, you communicated something compelling enough on your call or email to interest the prospect to Google you, and they found you on LinkedIn but your profile isn’t helping your prospect understand your value to them.
Your LinkedIn profile clearly indicates you have sold products or services so you have plenty of victories in your win column which means you have helped customers and made their lives better. You could probably tell many stories about your customers whose lives were a living hell before you helped them solve a problem. Doesn’t it make sense to change your LinkedIn profile from quota crusher to how you’ve helped a customer just like the prospect you called or emailed? Shift your mindset from selling to serving, focus on your buyer not your quota. Your prospects are finding you on LinkedIn; give them another reason to return your call or respond to your email.
Match.com is the world's first and largest dating company. They are responsible for more dates, relationships, and marriages than any other site. 1 in 6 new marriages are a result of an online dating site. It's been widely published and a well-known trend in sales that our customers are more than 70% through their purchasing decision before they speak to a salesperson. They are online searching for the best product or service to solve their problem.
Think about this opportunity for a minute. I have read over 30,000 profiles and less than 1% talk about how they help their customers. If our summary and our profiles are filled with customer stories and our competition doesn't. We just gained a competitive advantage, it might be short lived but that will give us some time to come up with something new to help our customers and ourselves.
Bryan Colyer has been consulting athletes,
