When it comes to using LinkedIn as a sales tool, it pays to be clever. There are a lot of creative ways to utilize advanced features on Linkedin to stay one step ahead of your competitors. Buyers are pulled in a ton of different directions, and staying top of mind is one of the biggest challenges the modern salesperson faces. Here are five of the best LinkedIn hacks that the DocSend team has in its utility belt:
1) Hide your AEs connections from your competitors
It’s important for your team to cover its tracks on LinkedIn. If any of your AEs or BDRs are connected with any employee of a competitor, your competitor could be mining your employees’ new connections:
All the profiles in the screenshot above recently connected with the head of BD at a large professional services agency with six-figure annual contracts. It wouldn’t be hard to guess their emails and send them a cold pitch if I was a competitor.
This often happens to large organizations when members of a sales team jump ship to competing companies. If your competitors know who your closers are talking to, it’s possible for them to interject and complicate your sales process — this ends now. Here’s how:
- While logged in go to LinkedIn Settings.
- Under Privacy Controls click “Select who can see my connections.”
- Choose “Only You” in the drop down menu in the modal and save your changes.
2) Find connections that recently changed jobs, they’re great leads
When a connection moves to a new company, they bring over the technology solutions and vendors they’ve had success with in the past. Right after they start their new role it’s always beneficial to congratulate them. It’s an opportunity for someone on your team to check in, hear what they’ve been up to and assess if there is a sales opportunity.
Here’s how to see all of your first degree connections that have recently changed jobs:
- Select “Keep in Touch” under the connections tab in the top nav and you’ll get a list of everyone with recent job changes:
This is the perfect time for an AE to reach out, so here’s a handy template to get the convo started:
Hi {First Name},
Saw the you just started at {Company Name}, congrats! Is your new role similar to what you were doing at {Past Company}? Loved working with you over there, so I’m excited to hear about your new role.
This is a powerful tactic, but it’s easy to let this one slip. If you are managing a team of AEs create a 15-30 minute monthly meeting as a placeholder/reminder for them to send these messages. Unless your AEs have their personal email (see hack #6) they won’t be able to email anyone about a job change and will need to send the message via LinkedIn. Your team will have to craft and send these manually since LinkedIn doesn’t support mail merge, which is why it’s beneficial to put this one on their calendars.
3) Disable the “People Also Viewed” profile widget
If your team is working in a niche industry, your competitors can appear in the “people also viewed” widget on their LinkedIn profiles. Here’s how your team can hide the “People Also Viewed” widget:
- While logged in go to LinkedIn Settings.
- Under Privacy Controls click “Show/hide ‘Viewers of this profile also viewed’ box.”
- Uncheck the box in the pop-up modal and save your changes.
4) Reorder your AEs endorsements to show industry expertise
Potential buyers are looking to your sales force to help guide and educate them through the buying process, not just to close them. If I was buying accounting software, I would much rather see this:
Endorsements of someone who understands the accounting industry
Than this:
Endorsements of a career sales professional
Here’s how to edit the order of your endorsements on your Linkedin profile: 
- To rearrange your skills, click Edit Profile.
- Go to the Skills section of your profile and click any skill to edit.
- Click and drag the skills you want to reorder, then click save.
5) Grand Finale: Take the conversation to email by exporting all your connections’ emails via CSV
I don’t like getting or responding to Linkedin messages for biz dev opportunities, and I get the feeling some other people agree with me:
Preferred way to connect with me (ranked most to least): 1. Text 2. Twitter DM 3. Email 4. Phone 5. Climb through my window 6. LinkedIn
— Adam Khan (@Khanoisseur) April 28, 2015
Email is much more personal than a Linkedin message. I read every email that hits my inbox, but I dread cleaning out my Linkedin.
Using this hack, you never have to send another Linkedin message again. Here’s how to export your contacts’ emails from LinkedIn:
Step 1
- Select the connections link in the top navigation.
- Click the gear on the right hand side of the screen.
- Under advanced settings, select, export Linkedin Connections.
- Hit Export.
Step 2
Here’s how to open the CSV:
- In Google Sheets, select the File Menu
- Click Open, and select the file you just exported from Linkedin.
- After you delete a few extra columns, you will have all the data from the screenshot above.
It’s important to remember that although these hacks are useful, there is no replacement for engaging a prospect and making an authentic bond with them during the sales process – but it never hurts to have a few extra Batarangs in your utility belt.
With DocSend, you’ll be able to share files and documents with external business partners while getting real-time, actionable, feedback on document engagement, so you can be in full control of your business outcome. Say goodbye to prospecting with email attachments once and for all, and click here to get started with a free trial of DocSend!
Have any LinkedIn hacks of you own to share? Tell us your favorite in the comments below
Image Credits:JD Hancock, Geoff Parsons
