Table of contents

Amine is La Growth Machine's content manager. He is responsible for the blog content, covering topics related to prospecting, LinkedIn, growth hacking, and lead generation in general. Apart from writing awesome articles, you can find him creating bizarre cocktails or listening to podcasts while cooking. A psychopath, I know 😱

If you want to be easily found by your potential prospects and optimize your connection acceptance rate, then you’ll want to ensure your LinkedIn profile is complete. With nearly 800 million profiles registered on the professional network, it is essential to be able to stand out from the competition.

The more info you give, the more people will trust your profile and will want to connect and interact with you.

Here are all our tips to know everything about the No. 1 professional social network and make use of its potential.

Why should you optimize your LinkedIn profile as a salesperson?

LinkedIn is not a social network designed to only exchange and share.

It is also an excellent way to apply for jobs, conduct your LinkedIn prospecting, invite prospects to an event, or promote your services and offerings.

It is the ideal social network on which LaGrowthMachine relies to carry out effective growth marketing strategies and quickly reach business objectives.

In fact, at LaGrowthMachine, we see that the quality of your profile has a real impact on the performance of your prospecting campaigns.

More than a resume, LinkedIn is your digital business card. It is the pillar on which lies your credibility and your know-how.

More and more marketers and salespeople are using it to:

  • Showcase their experience
  • Develop their brand identity
  • Tell their professional stories and anecdotes
  • Integrate it into a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy
  • Boost their response rate
  • Generate direct sales
  • Create online or offline events
  • Reinforce the credibility of their company

You can also use your profile as part of their LinkedIn B2B marketing strategy to personalize their outreach and close more deals.

Going through LinkedIn has become an indispensable part of your recruiters’, service providers’, partners’, customers’, or prospects’ habits.

Even looking for your leads’ email adresses or phone numbers on LinkedIn, t is essential to have a great profile that makes you want to connect with you.

The content of your profile should highlight your career path, your professional skills, and your achievements. Better take care of your image in order to close deals.

Here are some of the most invaluable steps to take into account to become an expert on LinkedIn, the professional social network of reference.

Get 3.5X more leads!

Do you want to improve the efficiency of your sales department? With La Growth Machine you can generate on average 3.5x more leads while saving an incredible amount of time on all your processes.

By signing up today, you’ll get a free 14-day trial to test our tool!

Try now for free!

Steps you need to take to optimize your LinkedIn profile

Most professionals simply create their profile and add a profile picture (if even). This is not nearly enough to be visible on LinkedIn.

You must optimize your profile to be easily found by your potential business contacts, customers, or partners and to ensure that they want to connect with you.

Customize your LinkedIn profile’s URL

This has to be one of the most underrated steps you can take. It serves as a way to be properly listed on search engines.

You just have to enter your first and last name in the tag and that’s it. Check out our full guide on why you need to have a custom LinkedIn URL.

It’s a mini SEO trick that will allow someone looking for you to find you quickly on Google or any other search engine.

Quick tip 💡

If your name is already taken or if you want to add keywords related to your business, you can always add a few characters. You can also add a professional title such as “sales director” or even the name of your company.

Choose a good LinkedIn profile picture

LinkedIn is a professional network and you are going to contact people and represent your company. You need to look as professional in your picture as you do when you’re going to work in real life.

  • Show your face and not a picture of you partying.
  • Have a plain and neutral background in a professional environment and/or that matches your professional activities.
  • Smile and be friendly. Professional does not have to mean serious. Being welcoming makes people want to chat with you!

Pay special attention to your LinkedIn cover photo

Your cover photo is one of the determining elements of a contact. More than a visual element, it is a real tool that allows you to assert your value proposition.

Here’s everything your LinkedIn cover photo can be used for:

  • Showcase your brand and its personality
  • Use CTAs that encourage your visitors to download assets needed for their business
  • Your value proposition
  • Clients’ testimonials
  • You at work (discussing business with clients, talking at a webinar/presentation, etc.)

In short, make sure your cover photo is in line with what you want to achieve with your LinkedIn profile, and use it accordingly!

Make sure you fill out all the ‘About’ section

The more information you give in the “About” section, the more likely your profile is to appear in search results.

It should begin with a great LinkedIn Hook.

This is because LinkedIn’s algorithm takes into account all of the information you provide when someone searches for keywords related to your profile.

Therefore, make sure you fill out as much information as possible,

A title that shows expertise

After your name, your title is the piece of information your leads will see when you send an invite. They need to understand your value and how you could collaborate with them.

It must highlight:

  • What you do
  • The company you’re working for
  • Your expertise

Make it 120 characters max! Be short and be impactful 👊

A bio with a little about yourself

In this part, highlight what you want your prospects to know about so they can get to know you better.

Include things like:

  • What drives or motivates you?
  • What’s your role in your company?
  • Your achievements and professional path
  • How can you help them?
  • A Call to Action: An event you’re organizing, you wrote an article, etc. Invite them to participate, read, or follow!

This is your space to shine, so make the most of it. Once you have all this information, group it together by theme to make it easier for visitors to scan quickly.

Detail your experience for people to understand what you do

Here, you want to start with explaining what your current company does/sells, what its USP is, its benefits, etc.

Then, talk about your role and what you do on a daily basis using bullet points to make it easier to read.

Include your responsibilities and what you achieved in each role. Be as specific as possible!

Analyze your sales by quantifying your results with numbers whenever you can to give an idea of the scope of your successes.

Quick tip 💡

You can use CAR (Challenge-Action-Result) statements. Basically, you want to describe the situation you were in (faced with the challenge of…), what you did (I took action by…), and what the result was (As a result, I achieved…). This will demonstrate what you are capable of and how you work in a professional setting.

For example:

“Created a team of 12 sales representatives

is great, but

“Successfully increased sales by 25% in 6 months through effective team headhunting and team management”

is even better!

Connect each experience to the company’s LinkedIn Profile to redirect visitors so they can follow you and your company’s news.

Also, you can add your company website or any other website that is connected to your job.

Try our Sequence Generator (FREE)
Try for free

Skills & Endorsements to build your credibility

Your skills and endorsements are what make you credible in the eyes of your prospects. They allow you to show off your know-how and highlight what makes you unique.

  • Be as specific as possible in the skills section
  • When it comes to endorsements, focus on quality over quantity

This may seem like a no-brainer, but a few powerful endorsements from people in high-level positions will be much more impactful than a ton of endorsements from people who don’t really know your work.

So, ask your boss, your colleagues, or even your clients to endorse you and recommend you to their network!

Although these tips are meant for individuals, a lot of what we talked about can also be applied to companies. After all, a company is made up of individuals!

LinkedIn can also be a powerful tool for companies to increase brand awareness and build thought leadership.

That said, let’s dive into how to optimize your company’s LinkedIn presence.

An optimized company page

The next discovery steps your lead will take is to review your company page. Make sure everything is well set up with as much updated information as possible.

The company description

Here you can go into much more detail about:

  • Why you do what you do: A reminder of the problem you’re solving in one sentence. It should be catchy and make you want to read it.
  • How you do it: Explain how you solve that problem.
  • What value it brings: Show concrete, actionable, and measurable impacts – thanks to LinkedIn KPIs.
  • Social proof: Share information about some of your most prominent/famous clients and how much people trust you.

Or you can also check out ours for inspiration!

Include your website

The next logical step for somebody curious about you/your company is to visit your website. So don’t forget to link it to your company page.

  • Make sure all of your employees have your company in their experience. An important factor of trust is the company size. It’s a good proxy to evaluate your company’s stage. This is why you should make sure your employees are listed by adding their experience and following these profile optimization guidelines.

Miscellaneous tips

Stay active!

Like and comment, post, and even write articles. The more active you are, the more you’ll appear in LinkedIn’s feed. It also is more likely to show up on your prospect’s connection’s feed.

Make your profile public

Perfecting your profile is a waste of time if you haven’t activated some options to make sure you’re as visible as you can be:

  1. Set any profile visit you do to “Public” in the LinkedIn profile viewing options, so people get notified and maybe check out your profile.
  • Step 1: Make sure your profile picture can be seen by people outside of your network. Profile pictures are paramount to building trust. It would be a shame if the people you send a connection request to, don’t see it.
  • Step 2: Go to the profile picture edit option and set it to “Public” or “All LinkedIn Members”.
  • Step 3: Make sure people can see your full name when researching you. Go to the Full name LinkedIn option and adjust your setting.

LaGrowthMachine Corner 🔥

Here you’ll choose the file you want to import and help LaGrowthMachine map out the fields you want to import (First Name, Last Name, Job Title, etc.) If you want to maximize the customization of your LinkedIn messages: think about defining Custom Attributes in your CSV and importing them. You can then select an existing audience or create a new one! (screenshot below)

Get to optimizing your LinkedIn profile now!

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for salespeople. By optimizing your LinkedIn profile, you can increase the chances of making more sales.

We’ve outlined some tips to help get you started

  • Start by filling out your profile completely and accurately.
  • Add keywords that are relevant to your industry or position
  • Make sure your picture is professional and up-to-date. Studies show that people are more likely to trust someone they can see clearly.
  • Think about what makes you unique as a salesperson. What do you have to offer that others don’t? highlight these selling points on your profile
  • Connect with potential clients and colleagues. The more people who know who you are, the better chance

That’s it from our end! Let us know, do you have other tips for optimizing LinkedIn profiles? Share in the comments below!