The Key Skill For Your LinkedIn Success

There’s one key skill that separates the people who generate a lot of business through LinkedIn and the people who do not. It’s a key skill that we believe every person no matter what you do needs to be developed, not only to be successful on LinkedIn, but successful in their lives as a whole.

That skill? Selling. Every day we are selling, if you want to try out a new restaurant with your partner – you’re selling the idea of going to that restaurant to them.

When your kids want an ice cream, they’re selling you why you should buy it for them. If you’re in a job interview guess what? You’re selling yourself.

Unfortunately though, selling has always had a negative undertone to it – when people picture salespeople they think of a dodgy used car salesperson trying to sell you a 1980 BMW 318i with an engine that’s about to drop out. Due to this, many people don’t work on their sales skills, in reality though, you just need to change your perception and mindset towards sales. Once you do that, you change the game.

Did you know the word sales actually comes from the Scandinavian word meaning: “To Serve”? Let’s think about that for a second, when you sell something you are really serving someone, you are adding value to their life through a product or service and there is an exchange of value. They give you monetary value and you solve a problem for them.

If you are truly passionate about your product or service and how that can solve a problem for them, you are doing them a disservice if you do not convince them to let you help them. There is nothing sinister in this and if this did not happen the world would not progress exponentially like it has. If that doesn’t convince you that sales is good, it’s time to do some thinking around how selling has positively affected the world so you can see selling in a different light.

Once you’ve done that it’s time to build on this sales muscle because if you want to be Uber successful on LinkedIn, you need to be good. So in this article we’re going to share 3 tips to start building your sales muscles specifically around LinkedIn, so you can be more effective with your LinkedIn marketing efforts and positively impact more people’s lives through your product or service.

1. Get Skilled Up

First things first, if you have never seen yourself as much of a salesperson it’s time to do some training. Now everyone learns differently so this comes down to knowing how you learn most effectively and invest in some skills training.

You may learn best from videos, books, in person training or listening to audio books. Start investing in these.

As well as that, start following some really good sales professionals and absorb their content regularly. Some influential salespeople include: Brian Tracy & Grant Cardone.

They also offer training courses as well so if you resonate with them you may want to look at investing in their training. Watch how these influencers act, how they talk and what they do right. One of the best ways to become good at something is to match and mirror the best.

The reason that we suggested those sales professionals is because they sell in the Business to Business space and if you want to be effective in LinkedIn sales you need to understand B2B sales. That’s why it’s important to follow these influencers so you can start to emulate some of their character traits and bring them into your sales style.

As well as that there are some key books you should look into purchasing that will help you along the way, such as the classic Secrets of Closing The Sale by Zig Ziglar or there is a more recent book by Dan Pink – To Sell Is Human. Even if you are the most introverted character in the world, all sales skills are learned behaviours, you just need to commit to making the effort to learning the concepts of sales, then begin to get out there and put them into practice.

2. Start Selling

Once you have absorbed content and you feel confident enough to begin trying out your new found sales skills, it’s time to get out there and start selling. Many people learn best through experiential learning, meaning when they do it, they understand it.

The problem with selling is that because you are going to experience rejection to start off, it may knock you down a little bit. Most people have a huge fear of rejection and this is what holds most people back, you’ve got to start seeing rejection as a lesson rather than a personal attack which then lowers your confidence.

At the end of the day the person you spoke to might not be in a position to buy, they might not be interested or they might just not be a good fit for your product or service. Here’s a quote from our founder: “Some will, some won’t, so what – someone’s waiting” – Alex Pirouz

Don’t take it personally, think about what you can learn from the situation and implement your learnings for the next person you speak to. And the best way to start is talking to people so you build up your sales experience? Connect with your target market on LinkedIn, build a relationship and get in front of them.

3. Review Your Performance

The final tip revolves around reviewing your performance. When you close a deal reflect on how that went and what you did right. Keep all this information in a CRM, if you don’t have a CRM yet just a simple spreadsheet or journal will do for now.

When you have a deal go bad what happened? Why did it go bad? How can you fix it next time?

Speak to someone in your network who can provide you with some advice based on your performance review that you log. It’s always a great idea to get someone who can look at what you are doing from an outside perspective to see some things that you might have missed.

You’re not going to be an overnight success in sales, it takes understanding persuasion, influence and a solid sales process. Nothing influences people more than being passionate about what you do and your service. So speak with emotion, get out there and start practising. Then obviously when you do sell something you over deliver and make the person’s experience one of the best they have had so they turn into raving fans.

Hope this article has given you some insight into a key skill you need to develop for your LinkedIn success. Now, LinkedIn is a great solution for helping you get in front of the right people, but there’s a lot to it and if you miss doing one thing out of the formula you’re not going to get the results you’re looking for.