B2B Sales on LinkedIn: Content, Opportunities, and Tips for 2024

What is B2B Sales on LinkedIn?

First, what is B2B sales?

The term refers to all acquisition and sales activities between businesses or organizations, as opposed to sales for B2C customers, i.e., private end consumers. It involves identifying potential customers, building relationships, generating leads, and ultimately achieving sales closures – all on the business platform.

Why is LinkedIn suitable for B2B sales?

LinkedIn should not be missing in your B2B sales process. Otherwise, you are missing out on a whole range of benefits.

Your Opportunities on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is not just a place for professional networking but also an effective tool for sales. Here, you can find your target audience, increase your reach, identify potential customers, track leads, and build relationships with decision-makers. Thus, LinkedIn is the ideal platform for social selling in the B2B sector – whether you’re looking to expand your established company’s customer base or scale your startup.

Finding Potential Customers

Millions of professionals are on LinkedIn. A large part of them is active and logs in daily. And another significant portion is receptive to attractive B2B services. You shouldn’t miss out on this. LinkedIn offers a variety of search and filter functions, allowing you to target potential customers specifically. This targeted search for potential leads is called LinkedIn Prospecting. A detailed search is possible with the LinkedIn Sales Navigator. With filters like industry, company size, location, and other criteria, you’ll find exactly the right leads.

LinkedIn is not just a place for professional networking but also an effective tool for sales. Here, you can find your target audience, increase your reach, identify potential customers, track leads, and build relationships with decision-makers.

Groups, Events, and Posts

The heart of social media is the exchange. LinkedIn offers you many opportunities for this. You can post to introduce yourself and your offer, present news, share your opinion, and substantiate your expertise. Posting is the basis of visibility. And only if you’re visible will potential customers take notice of you. Ideally, users will like, comment on, and share your posts, increasing your reach. And you should do the same to remain visible and active.

LinkedIn groups and online events offer a good opportunity to connect with potential customers and industry experts. They are a practical alternative to trade fairs and networking events on-site. But you’ll also be the first to hear about relevant live events on LinkedIn.


❗  Tips for Using LinkedIn Groups in B2B Sales

•  Select relevant groups: Join groups that focus on your industry, your area of expertise, or your target customers, so you can interact with people interested in your offer.

•  Be active: Don’t be a passive member. Engage through regular posts, comments, and likes to show your presence and interest in the group’s topics.

•  Deliver value: Ensure your posts and comments are relevant and informative. Offer solutions to problems, ask questions that stimulate discussion, or share interesting articles and resources.

•  Use private messages: Use the opportunity to speak privately to group members to build personal relationships and conduct sales conversations.

Networking, Messaging, InMail

A click is all it takes to make potential customers aware of you. On LinkedIn, you can connect with your target audience and send a personalized message with your request. With LinkedIn Premium, you even have the option to send messages via “InMail” to interesting people who aren’t in your contacts. This makes the market accessible to you. If you make sending contact requests and messages a routine, your network will grow steadily.

Voicenotes, Pictures, or Videos

What content is effective on LinkedIn for B2B sales? When it comes to posts, you can let your creativity run wild. In addition to text posts, you can also use multimedia content like pictures or videos in posts or voicenotes as direct messages to convey your message and capture the attention of potential customers. This way, content can be attractively prepared, and you stand out with exciting videos or appealing pictures in your contacts’ feed.

Additional Notes

Remember that LinkedIn is a professional environment where quality and authenticity count. Be professional, but also personal and authentic in your interactions. Blindly sending hundreds of contact requests and impersonal comments under any posts are the wrong approach to using LinkedIn for yourself.

This is how you too can sell successfully via LinkedIn

How do you become successful on LinkedIn? B2B sales on LinkedIn is not rocket science. With clear goals and the right mix of postings, networking, and messaging, you too can achieve success on the business platform.

If you follow the tips below, you can also be successful on LinkedIn as a founder and CEO.

Decision: Who do you want to address?

The absolute foundation of all actions in sales and marketing is the definition of the target audience. If you don’t know who you’re looking for and want to address, your efforts will become a Sisyphean task. Thus, a target audience analysis should be conducted beforehand. In which industry does your ideal customer work, and what position do they hold? Does the region play a role or not? With the target audience in mind, it becomes clear with whom you should connect and exchange.

Optimizing your LinkedIn Profile

Your LinkedIn profile is your digital business card. Here, users get their first impression of you – and, as is well known, there is no second chance for a first impression.

How do I optimize my LinkedIn profile for B2B sales?

Ensure your LinkedIn profile is professional and appealing. This includes a serious and likable profile picture, complete information about your career, and a meaningful info text. It should be clear who you are, what you do for your customers, and the benefits they have as a result.

Your LinkedIn profile is your digital business card. Here, users get their first impression of you – and, as is well known, there is no second chance for a first impression.

Posts

Content is still king. Share relevant and informative posts regularly to demonstrate your expertise and increase your visibility. If you want to stay in the minds of your target audience, you must participate in the digital exchange with regular posts. Writing good posts is an art in itself. You will be rewarded with likes and engagement, pushing your posts into more and more user feeds by the algorithm.

When is the best time for a LinkedIn post?

Ultimately, it’s trial and error: Over the long term, try posting at different times and discover for yourself which periods generate the most engagement. However, there are a few rules for orientation: Weekdays are better than weekends, mid-week is particularly good, and between 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM is better than in the morning, evening, or even at night.

Targeted Approach

Proactively approach potential customers, whether through personalized messages to contacts, through comments, or through InMail messages. Show genuine interest in their person and their needs. Here, the formulation of your content is crucial – this is where sales psychology comes into play.

Interaction

Social media is about give and take. It’s not enough just to post and wait for likes. Support other LinkedIn members by liking and commenting on their posts. This can always lead to an exciting exchange and even a relevant lead. Be active in LinkedIn groups and discussions to connect with other members and expand your network. However, you shouldn’t focus solely on sales but also provide value.

Time Investment

Preparing relevant content, posting regularly, expanding the network, interacting with contacts, and actively approaching the target audience – all this requires skill and time. If you’re serious about B2B sales on LinkedIn, you can’t approach it half-heartedly. The time investment is not to be underestimated and can affect your obligations as a service provider and founder or CEO.

Differences between LinkedIn B2B Sales & LinkedIn B2B Marketing

LinkedIn B2B marketing includes measures aimed at increasing organic reach. This primarily involves content marketing on LinkedIn, such as the regular creation of posts based on an editorial plan. The goal is LinkedIn lead generation through visibility. Ideally, the target audience then inquires on their own.

LinkedIn B2B sales, on the other hand, is focused on actively contacting the target audience. So, you specifically look for users who belong to the target group and contact them with a direct message. This also actively leads leads through the sales funnel or sales pipeline to ultimately make them customers. An optimized LinkedIn profile filled with relevant posts naturally contributes to being perceived as a professional service provider. B2B marketing thus indirectly supports sales activities on LinkedIn. However, sales lead you to the goal faster than just posting and passively waiting for inquiries.

LinkedIn B2B Sales Tools help you track your developments. The goal is to continuously increase your SSI on LinkedIn. SSI stands for Social Selling Index. This value expresses how strong your personal profile is and how high the basic reach is. This measurable value provides clues to the success of sales activities for your company.

FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions about B2B Sales on LinkedIn

How do I sell successfully on LinkedIn?
To sell successfully on LinkedIn, you need time and know-how. In addition to basics like an optimized profile, clarity about the target audience and a structured sales process are indispensable.

How do I win customers on LinkedIn?
For successful customer acquisition on LinkedIn, you need a well-thought-out strategy based on a target audience analysis. You can win customers on LinkedIn through contact requests, posts on your profile and in groups, and through direct messages. 

When does selling on LinkedIn make sense?
Most people active in the B2B sector use LinkedIn. B2B sales on LinkedIn make sense for almost every B2B company, especially in the tech, SaaS, and generally for all digital services sectors. High-priced offers and care services can also be optimally marketed with LinkedIn sales. 

B2B sales on LinkedIn make sense for almost every B2B company, especially in the tech, SaaS, and generally for all digital services sectors.

How do I find time for LinkedIn sales as a founder?
You don’t have time for B2B sales on LinkedIn; you take it. As a founder, you should allocate a few hours per week for B2B sales on LinkedIn to see success. Actually. But alongside the tasks and duties as a founder, it’s difficult to impossible to invest the necessary time. Time during which you could be processing projects, conducting customer conversations, and optimizing your processes to make your business more successful. Selling on your own is not cheap: Multiply your hourly rate by the unused working hours for sales, and you get an idea of the costs. Moreover, it’s not guaranteed that the invested hours will pay off due to lack of experience. Therefore, outsourcing is the better way.