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CHAPTER 5 YOUR DIGITAL SUIT OR DRESS…

Sales professionals and sales leaders spend a lot of money to look as professional as possible. In fact, anyone looking to professionally impress someone will make a significant effort to look as smart as possible to make sure they make a good impression.

Men will spend lots of money buying suits, shirts, ties, shoes, accessories, etc., women will spend lots on dresses, blouses, suits, smart wear, shoes, accessories, etc., all to make sure they look as smart as possible in front of their prospects and customers.

They do this to make the strongest possible first impression and to ensure that they build and maintain trust and respect from their prospects and customers alike.

After all, if you were about to meet a valuable prospect, someone you were hoping would buy from you in the near future, would you go dressed in a tracksuit?

The reality for many of you reading this book is that the first impression you'll actually make won't be physical, but digital. For many of you, the first impression that your prospects will have of you is what they see when they visit your LinkedIn profile.

This has been the reality for years and yet most salespeople don't think about this or do anything to control this situation.

You no longer just have to be smart and presentable physically; you now have to do it digitally as well.

The question you need to ask yourself right now is …

If my prospect viewed my LinkedIn profile right now, what would they think?

Would they think, ‘Wow. this person looks smart, professional and trustworthy’, or would they think, ‘Oh, look, it's just another salesperson’?

You want them to be impressed or intrigued. This is what I will help you achieve in this chapter.

The first thing I will do when I'm training a sales team or business on LinkedIn is a full team profile audit. My complete checklist is a bit longer and slightly more complex, but here is a good starting point to see how your profile currently rates in its optimisation:

 Do you have a professionally taken headshot?

 Do you have a professionally created LinkedIn banner that tells people what you do in an engaging way?

 Does your headline tell people what it is that you do?

 Is your profile summary close to the 2,000‐character limit?

 Is your profile summary focused on your ideal customer and not on you?

 Does your profile summary have your contact details included?

 Does your profile summary have strong relevant media attached to it?

 Are your skills listed to include the most relevant ones in your top three?

 Do you have more than five recommendations on your LinkedIn profile?

Seventy to 80% of people that I train have none of those things, with a small percentage having four or five of them. I can count on one hand how many people I've met that have had all of them ticked.

80% THOUGHT THEIR PROFILE WAS ALREADY GOOD ENOUGH

During one of my corporate training sessions recently, before I taught them how to optimise their profiles, I asked the group how many thought their LinkedIn profile was good. Eighty per cent of the group said they thought that theirs was currently good.

After I delivered the profile training, I asked the same group the same question: Do you think your current profile is good enough?

Eighty per cent said no, it wasn't.

By the end of this chapter you'll know exactly what you need to do to fully optimise your LinkedIn profile. When you've applied my advice, you'll be able to tick all of those boxes and more.

Once you've optimised your LinkedIn profile, the next thing you want to start doing is looking at WHO is viewing it …

One of the most amazing features on LinkedIn (and it's one of the free features) is that you can SEE who is viewing your LinkedIn profile.

On a free LinkedIn account you can only see the most recent four people who have viewed your profile.

If you are new to using LinkedIn consistently, this should be more than enough for you for the first few months. However, once you start to grow your audience and connect to people on a larger scale, this is one of the features of LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator that really justifies the cost. With upgraded accounts you can see EVERYONE who has viewed your profile, which holds a lot of business and sales potential.

A percentage of people viewing your profile will be potential prospects. They will be drawn to your profile by searching for your product or service, by hearing your name from someone, by being referred to you, by coming across your content or your personal brand. They may then find you on LinkedIn and read your profile (which is why it is so important that you have the best possible profile!).

STEP 1	Check your profile views two or three times per day. This is only a two to three‐minute task. Go to your profile, click ‘who's viewed my profile’ and look at the most recent people to have viewed it. I'd recommend checking it first thing in the morning when you arrive to work or get to your desk. I'd then recommend checking it before or during lunch, and finally one last check at the end of the day before you're due to finish work.
STEP 2	Qualify those people viewing your profile; if they tick enough boxes and you believe there is potential there, move onto Step 3. If you don't think there is any potential, think about whether they may know anyone who may be a prospect or customer, and whether it is worth reaching out to them and starting a conversation. If not, then just move on. It will become physically impossible to talk to everyone who views your profile and who you're connected with, so make sure your time is invested in people that have the potential to help you get to a sale.
STEP 3	If you're confident or part‐confident that they may be a potential prospect, now is the time to look at the best ways to approach them. Like the example above, one of the best ways is to simply message them, thanking them for viewing your profile and asking them something relevant to their role or the product/service that you offer and how they're currently utilising that.
STEP 4	If there's an interest, GREAT! Well done, now the goal is to get them into a place where you can have a more thorough conversation to identify needs and finally create a sales lead or opportunity. This might be via email, a phone call, a Skype, Zoom or even a face‐to‐face meeting.
STEP 5	Rinse and repeat. Keeping checking those views every single day. Just remember, if you miss a day, you might miss someone viewing your profile who could be your biggest opportunity to date! By missing that view and not acting on it, they may have looked at one of your competitors' profiles and ended up speaking to them instead.

Own your profile views, keep on top of them and make this a solid part of your sales day alongside all your other key sales activities.