Episode #397: Mark White
Meet
Mark White
Join us on today’s podcast as we welcome Mark White, known widely as “The LinkedIn Professional.” With a robust history of unlocking LinkedIn’s potential for professionals and businesses alike, Mark specializes in custom team training, both face-to-face and virtual, as well as one-on-one coaching. Since 2009, he’s been dedicated to matching LinkedIn’s capabilities with business needs, providing tailored workshops nationwide and public courses across the UK. Mark’s approach goes beyond mere theory; he brings over 14 years of hands-on experience in sales and marketing to his LinkedIn strategies, ensuring his clients not only understand LinkedIn’s power but can effectively implement it to achieve their business goals. Whether it’s sales, marketing, or recruitment, Mark has helped over 490 companies and thousands of individuals harness LinkedIn to its fullest. Today, he’s here to share his insights and strategies with us.
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Until you meet someone, the only thing(s) you have to go off of is what you’ve learned about them online. When you create a LinkedIn profile, it’s indexed by search engines. It’s usually the first result when you Google someone’s name. It’s also a great place to learn about someone. You want your profile to give them the right information. Learn how to leverage your LinkedIn profile as a pre-sales tool in this episode of Sales Reinvented with special guest Mark White.
Outline of This Episode
- [1:26] Why a compelling LinkedIn profile is key
- [2:55] The elements that have the greatest impact
- [6:02] How to tell your professional story on LinkedIn
- [7:45] Build “know” and “like” before “trust”
- [10:31] How often to update your LinkedIn profile
- [12:18] Use your customers to build a better LinkedIn profile
- [14:01] Mark’s top LinkedIn profile dos and don’ts
- [16:56] Leverage your LinkedIn profile as a pre-sales tool
The elements that have the greatest impact
Potential customers aren’t going to look through your whole profile. You need to focus on your banner, photo, and headline. Use your banner to give people the right information. Secondly, your headline plays a key role. You have 220 characters to make an impact. The first 65–80 characters “follow” you around LinkedIn. When people come across you they see your name, photo, and the first characters of your headline. That’s why optimizing these areas is key.
You have 2,000 characters to play with in your “about” section. You can’t just talk about yourself or your product. Put yourself in your reader’s shoes. What will capture their attention? Mark recommends sharing examples of where your product or service has made an impact through storytelling.
Build “know” and “like” before “trust”
If someone who doesn’t know you looks at your #LinkedIn profile, you can’t assume you’ve earned their trust. You have to build “know” and “like” before “trust.” Mark recommends building trust in the product and service. That comes through in your photo, banner, etc. Use your featured area to build awareness about what you do. If you come across as cheesy, people switch off. You want to come across as real and understanding.
Mark’s top LinkedIn profile dos and don’ts
What can you do to build a better profile? Mark offers up some dos and don’ts:
- Your profile should reflect who you are; make it as natural and engaging as possible.
- Use the right visuals in your banner, photo, and featured area.
- Make your about section about your customer and you. Break up the paragraphs and use bullet points to control where people look.
- Don’t make it a CV, make it a sales brochure.
- Don’t be salesy or corporate.
- Don’t over-sell. Don’t over-promise something you can’t deliver.
Leverage your LinkedIn profile as a pre-sales tool
Mark worked with a salesperson who couldn’t get their foot in the door with a prospect. So they changed this person’s profile to focus on that particular industry. They changed their banner, headline, and about/featured section to be more impactful.
They looked at content created by key people in their target organization and started commenting on it. They laid out the benefits these people would be looking for throughout their page. Their headline sparked enough interest to get those people to their profile. Their profile spoke to the individuals.
They used their profile as a tool to connect with particular prospects. The more specific you can make your profile in response to the pain points and requirements of your customers, the more likely the conversation will be started with customers who weren’t interested previously.
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Are there any definitive guides or resources you recommend for crafting an effective LinkedIn profile?
There is a whole range of information out there but because the site is constantly changing, it’s difficult to consider a definitive guide – there is also the fact that no two people are exactly the same and nor are the audiences they serve, so advice for one group will be different to that for another.
Having said that, there are a whole hosts of guides and webinars out there, but I’d also recommend checking LinkedIn’s own guides – they don’t show all of the changes that are being made but can keep you up to date with some of the newer features being rolled out – their sales and marketing blog is a good place for that too.
In the realm of LinkedIn branding and sales, who do you most admire and why?
I admire any profile which has focused their message to the target audience that they are looking to address. Some do so in a very succinct way – others will use every ounce of the profile to communicate it effectively. For me any profile that grabs my attention with their banner and then maintains that “eye contact” by getting people to scroll down the rest will get my vote!
What are your top ten tips for someone looking to optimize their LinkedIn profile for sales – your golden set?
- Have a clear audience in mind when you write your Profile and then make sure you are ‘speaking’ to that audience throughout.
- Build the Profile not just in terms of text but also the visuals which support and push it.
- Remember the 2nd audience you want to appeal to is the LinkedIn search engine, if that is one of the routes you want to use to be found. Key words in the right places ad main ones repeated throughout the different areas.
- Deliver a clear message in the Introduction Card area – if you don’t grab their attention there, then they’re unlikely to read the rest of your Profile.
- Make the ‘About’ section engaging and something that they want to read. It is looks like everyone else’s then they will skim and forget.
- Ensure that you format the About section in a way that allows it to be skim read.
- Use the Featured area as a mixture of Social Proof and a Call to Action
- Recommendations are a great boost to any Profile – do you look at reviews before booking a hotel? Probably. These are the equivalent for your Profile so well worth asking for.
- Use all of the different elements of your Profile – Add Profile section at the top will allow you to expend those you already have
- Keep it up dated – not on a daily basis but whenever the key information you wish to share with your target audience changes
What are the primary considerations that companies should be aware of regarding their employees’ representation on LinkedIn?
That the profiles are the property of the individual but that they have a profound impact on how the brand is viewed , so therefore really important to work with their employees to get the best for both. Having a policy to ensure what they post conforms to the company’s commitments to their clients, partners and stakeholders is really important too.
Do you believe companies should provide specific training for employees to utilize LinkedIn effectively?
I’m going to be somewhat biased here, but there is certainly a huge amount of value that can be gained from using tools such as LinkedIn effectively. The more aware the sales team members are of the opportunities it offers (free account or Sales Navigator) that can speed up the sales process and help them sell has to be of value, I’d say.
Most of the companies and sales leaders that I work with realise that both from a practical and business perspective, getting their new sales people up to speed with the most effective tools is key to ensuring that they hit the ground running.
Can you share some case studies or examples of how a well-crafted LinkedIn profile has significantly impacted a company’s sales or networking capabilities?
More anecdotal than anything else but with buyers looking to do more and more research ahead of making a buying decision, then anything which informs them and starts to create the link, will encourage a smoother choice. People will certainly check out Profiles ahead of meetings – or even to check if they want to have that meeting – so greasing those wheels with a profile that is both information driven and yet still personal can really help.
LinkedIn is constantly evolving. Are there any new features or strategies that you’re currently delving into or recommend sales professionals should explore?
There are a few changes of late including LinkedIn back tracking on the Creator mode facility – giving all account levels the same functionality rather than reserving it for Creators alone. You are able to add 5 top skills to the foot of the About section and 100 skills (up from 50) on the profile as a whole which can help credibility.
One nice one is to use the link option at the top of your profile to point towards an appointment setting app can also really help to move from LinkedIn to ‘Real World’ as seamlessly as possible. If you have a Premium account, then the ‘button’ option it offers in addition is even better.
How do you balance showcasing your hobbies and interests on LinkedIn, ensuring it complements your professional brand?
In many respects, these are two sides of the same coin but they may not be equally distributed – we have to work within our own boundaries and this applies to the content in our posts and profile as well as anything else.
At the same time, we should realise that personal posts will often have greater general appeal, and so work well at the top of the sales funnel in the ‘Awareness ‘ phase. Mixing these in with the other key areas of Branded posts, How to / Functional posts / Thought Leadership posts makes a very powerful mix that should appeal to each phase in the process.
For listeners eager to learn more, what’s the best way to connect with you on LinkedIn or other platforms?
The best way to reach me is almost always going to be via LinkedIn.
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