5 Mistakes to Avoid When Using LinkedIn for Sales

There are many benefits to using LinkedIn for sales. It can help sales reps find good prospects and help people stay connected throughout career moves.

Unfortunately, many salespeople don’t really know what to do when using LinkedIn for sales. And it’s easy to make mistakes. Here are some common mistakes to look out for.

5 Mistakes to Avoid When Using LinkedIn for Sales

1. Going for a sale right away.

If you’re using LinkedIn for sales, you should just start selling, right? Definitely not.

LinkedIn is primarily a tool for building and maintaining business relationships. If you view selling as more important than relationships, people will notice it. Most people don’t like to be sold.

When you are using LinkedIn for sales, focus first on building relationships. Connect to people you know, and if you send requests to people you don’t know, make sure there’s a reason for them to accept the request.

2. Sending requests to everyone under the sun.

If you have a LinkedIn account (and you should!), you know what I’m talking about here. We all get random connection requests from people we’ve never met.

It’s even worse when these requests come without a personal note, and the person isn’t connected to anyone you know.

That’s hardly the way to start a great relationship! As I mentioned in the previous point, it’s best to just send connection requests to people you know, and to only accept requests from people you know.

If you must send requests to people outside your network, include a message explaining why you want to connect. Even better, see if you can find a mutual connection who can introduce you.

3. Over-promoting yourself and your business.

The LinkedIn news feed is a great place to connect with people and share information. But if you use it exclusively to promote yourself, your business, and your content, people will view you as a spammer.

Make sure to post and share valuable content you didn’t produce. Your own content should be no more than a quarter of what you share.

People will value curated content in your area of expertise, and your self-promotion posts will fit in appropriately.

Make sure to also consider how often you are posting – a few times a day is fine.

4. Not engaging with others.

This goes back to my first point. LinkedIn is about relationships. If you’re using it simply to broadcast out, people will be turned off.

Make sure you are setting time aside to engage with your network on LinkedIn. Scroll through your news feed and share links, leave comments, and like posts. You’ll often see posts where people are looking for responses, and it’s always a great idea to reply.

Take this into account with your own posts as well. Rather than just sharing links, ask questions. You can ask for recommendations, stories, or ideas. Just focus on engagement and building relationships.

5. Treating it like Facebook.

LinkedIn is a tool for building and maintaining business relationships. It’s not Facebook.

Avoid posting overly personal or controversial content. You don’t need to stifle your personality, but keep it appropriate.

Make sure your profile picture is professional, and avoid starting or participating in conversations you wouldn’t want your boss or your clients to see.

Remember the purpose of LinkedIn, and keep it in mind when you are using LinkedIn for sales.

Keep an eye out, and if you find yourself making one of these mistakes, change your approach. LinkedIn can be a powerful tool for selling, but these mistakes will slow you down.

If you have any other ideas for mistakes to avoid when using LinkedIn for sales, I’d love to see them in the comments!

And for a best-practice guide for using LinkedIn for sales, check out our eBook How to Generate Sales Leads Using LinkedIn.