How to utilise LinkedIn to promote yourself as a salesperson

For many salespeople, LinkedIn is a hugely helpful tool when it comes to social selling as it enables you to connect with new prospects, develop a connection with them as well as retain current customers and clients by showing an interest in their online activities.

But when it comes to progressing in your career and finding a new sales job, LinkedIn can also be a very powerful tool for you to utilise in order to sell yourself as a top candidate and make sure you stand out from the crowd.

Why is LinkedIn important for salespeople?

Just as you may use LinkedIn to research a company, or find out more information about a hiring manager, they're also looking at your profile to judge if they'd think you’d be a good fit for their business and sales team.

Potential hiring managers are looking for a few things:

• Are you an active user who uses LinkedIn to promote the businesses you work for?
• What are some of your most relevant sales techniques, experiences, and successes?
• Do you have a strong online presence and connection base you could tap into in your new role?

This is just the beginning of what potential employers can find and are looking for on your LinkedIn profile. So, if you're going to start looking for a new sales job this year, it’s important to make sure your account is just as updated as your CV and that you’re regularly using this social media tool to increase your online presence and personal brand.

Here are a few of our top tips to help you better utilise LinkedIn and promote yourself as a top salesperson for perspective new businesses. 

1. Check your LinkedIn activity

Your LinkedIn connections have the ability to see all of your activities, including your most recent comments, likes, and shared content. This means that if a potential hiring manager asks you to connect ahead of an interview, they’ll gain access to all of these insights. Are you offering advice or support to your connections.

Recommending the products you sell to potential customers? Congratulating a friend on a promotion?

With that in mind, make sure you think about exactly what content you engage with on LinkedIn and how often you engage with it. This part of your profile can be an authentic way of showing the type of sales professional you are, and how you interact with both your colleagues and prospects. 

2. Add core skills to your summary

Be sure to highlight your main goals as a salesperson as well as your key skills. In our Guide to Sales Salary and Skills in 2022, we discussed some of the most in-demand skills in the sales sector. This included collaboration, great customer service, strong negotiation techniques and a data-driven mindset. Although a good LinkedIn summary only needs to be around 2-3 paragraphs long, it’s good to include these kind of keywords to help your profile stand out.

The summary section of your LinkedIn is also a great place to get more specific about your work. Giving businesses details on previous projects and the key metrics or results will give them a better idea of your experiences and your skillsets when it comes to working in sales.

3. Provide extra detail in your experience section

The experience section of your LinkedIn profile most closely resembles a CV. In this area of your profile, make sure you list your professional positions and titles as well as including a few sentences to summarise your role at each job.

We would suggest highlighting a few different responsibilities you had under each role and highlight the results you helped clients achieve. You could also include some of the methods and tactics you used along the way. Another key statistic that’s a good idea to include is your performance against targets. Under certain positions, look at adding a few brief bullet points that highlight your key targets. For example: 

📈 2021: 108% above target
📈 2020: 103% above target
📈 2019: 125% above target

This is particularly good for those in individual contributor positions and can really help attract attention from businesses looking to hire.

4. Add education and qualifications

You want to ensure all your educational qualifications are included on your LinkedIn. Unlike a CV, you don’t need to worry about running out of room and having to scrap older educational accolades aside. So, include as much as you can in this section. It’s also important to include any additional certifications or awards – even if they’re not work related.

These additions to your profile can help hiring managers get a better understanding of how ambitious you are to develop in your career. It can also help to start more natural conversations with hiring managers at the interview stage and lend credibility to your experience as a sales professional.

Top tip: On a recent LinkedIn update, you can now enter any career breaks including travel, bereavement, caregiving, professional development, relocation and many more. If you have taken a career break, we would recommend reflecting this on your LinkedIn so that hiring managers get the full picture of your experience.

What’s next?

Now your LinkedIn profile is up to scratch, you want to find a recruitment partner who can help get your name in front of the right people. That’s where Michael Page Sales comes in. We work with a huge range of businesses across a wide number of different sectors, including FMCG and consumer, technology, business services, construction products, industrial, and more.

Our dedicated team of recruitment experts will help you secure interviews with organisations that will align with your wider career goals. Submit your CV today to become discoverable to all our live roles and one of our consultants will be in touch.