LinkedIn has turned into an amazing tool for b2b sales people. However, many sales people miss out on details that matter … and they do matter. Regardless of whether you care about someone’s profile and how it looks and reads, many people do care about these details. LinkedIn geeks will judge you for not having your profile completed properly – and this could damage all the positive work you may be doing with your posts and comments. Remember, one of the most common things potential customers will do is check your LinkedIn profile, and many of these people are very judgmental about the details. How do you feel about that? Does it make you a little nervous? No problem; keep reading …
Below are five critical components of your LinkedIn profile, and tips for each.
- Updated information. If the last job in your experience section ended in 2011, then you’ve got some work to do. Not only is the content of your experience important, but the idea of having it updated is very important to many LinkedIn users. Fair or not, they’ll think that you won’t take care of them as a customer if you don’t update your own LinkedIn profile.
- Professional profile picture. I don’t care how good you look in that picture from your vacation to Tuscany, get a professional headshot taken for LinkedIn. Creative? No. However, it’s a necessary price of admittance for many LinkedIn users that will be viewing your profile. They’ll dismiss you, your sunglasses, and the beautiful sunset behind you.
- Action-oriented background. If you still have the standard LinkedIn background, then you have a killer opportunity to improve your profile. An action-packed profile picture tells a story. If you’re presenting somewhere, helping a customer, or pulling wire on a job – take a picture and add it as your background. If you don’t have a photo of yourself doing anything, then use a picture that represents your company.
- Customer-centric headline. Most headlines I read say something like: “Professional sales person with 12 years of experience in the security industry.” Who cares? What are you doing for your customers? My headline states: “Helping commercial security companies drastically improve their modern-day sales & marketing performance”; not “Sales and marketing expert with over 20 years of experience”. Think about how you help your customers, make it unique, and then make it your headline.
- Conversational summary. Create your summary to be personal and real. When you read it, make sure that the narrative sounds like you when describing yourself to someone while at a cocktail party or ballgame. If a LinkedIn user clicks your summary, they want to know about you the person. They don’t want to read five-syllable words you learned at a weekend Wharton Business School boot camp.
One last thought: Would you allow your resume to be delivered to someone without it being perfectly done? Then why would you allow your LinkedIn profile to go ungroomed for so long.
