LinkedIn is now being recognised as an essential tool for B2B sales experts and teams, offering untapped potential for building brand awareness, establishing trust with potential clients and even generating leads. It's not hard to see why, with over 875 million global members across more than 200 countries, LinkedIn is certainly the world's largest professional networking platform, made up primarily of professionals in various industries, including finance, marketing, technology, and healthcare, to name just a few.

With all of this potential sitting within one platform, we believe that 95% of B2B members are not getting the most out of their LinkedIn platform or using its unique features to achieve maximum results. Remember, on LinkedIn you do not have to scroll through dancing videos, engage in hateful, racist, sexist or violent tweets or comment on ridiculous memes. It is a haven of often engaged and driven members who B2B sales professionals can access (if done the right way) to generate more leads, build their brand, and ultimately drive more revenue.

The facts are, LinkedIn can be amazing to build trust and increase your brand awareness. It is stated that 4 out of every 5 people on LinkedIn drive business decisions, meaning that LinkedIn is an ideal platform for sharing your content, establishing thought leadership, and building relationships with potential like minded professionals and clients. Additionally, LinkedIn provides B2B sales professionals with a unique opportunity to reach decision-makers directly with free and paid message and outreach functions.

So, as 40% of B2B marketers describe LinkedIn as the most effective channel for driving high quality leads, we share out top six uncommon sales hacks for B2B salespeople to thrive on the platform and get a piece of the action.

1. Optimize your LinkedIn Profile: Your LinkedIn profile is your digital business card and can be a powerful way to get attention. Ensure that your profile is complete with a professional picture, use a customized background, is up-to-date, and includes keywords that your target audience is likely to search for. This includes having an authentic summary that sells you and your services. Make sure you optimize your skills sections, request endorsements and share regular posts and articles so people who visit your profile are likely to want to contact you or follow you.

2. Use LinkedIn's Social Selling Index: LinkedIn's Social Selling Index (SSI) is a free tool that measure how effectively you’re using LinkedIn for social selling and reveals how you rank against other professionals in your network and industry (very cool for the competitive amongst us). The metrics it provides allow you to tailor your business approach and take advantage of their SSI to measure their success and leverage their position against the competition, leading to better results and a higher reach. It's found within the LinkedIn Sales Naviagtor page is well worth a deep dive into for individuals and businesses that want to tailor their business strategy to improve their approach to social selling and lead generation.

3. Customize your LinkedIn URL: Customizing your LinkedIn URL can help you improve your search rankings and make it easier for potential customers to find you. This is also important for personal branding, as other users may claim your preferred profile URL before you do. It's a relatively straight forward process as click on 'Me' icon on your homepage, select view profile, select the 'Edit Public Profile and URL' option at the top right and click on the blue pencil, allowing you to type your own name or marketing message. Be creative, if you want to stand out then add some flair, a business name, a unique association to you or a brand that you will be aligned with for a long long time.

4. Use LinkedIn Showcase Pages: Do you have something unique to show off or a different side of your business to sell? Well, LinkedIn Showcase Pages allow you to highlight specific products or services that your company offers and sit under an 'affiliated pages' list on your main LinkedIn page. By creating Showcase Pages, you can target specific customer segments and provide them with more detailed information about your offerings. Showcase pages are best for mid-funnel marketing or brand awareness, making them a great tool to promote your company's capabilities or a different side to your brand than customers or clients would normally want to see. It can be all set up in a matter of minutes via your homepage or following this guide.

5. Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator: LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a paid premium tool that provides advanced search and lead recommendations based on your ideal customer profile. Sales Navigator offers improved search capabilities, increased visibility into extended contact networks and personalized algorithms that makes it way easier for sales and marketing teams to reach the right decision-maker at target companies. It starts from around $79.99 per month for an individual subscription but creates a pipeline of leads and opportunities, uses different alerts to keep up to date, saves and expands your search capabilities and is a B2B sales networkers dream machine.

6. Use HRS Ignite for automated outreach and email prospecting: Yes, we can't provide uncommon hacks without promoting the most effective one of them all. HRS Ignite is a powerful sales automation tool that helps you automate your outreach and email prospecting. With HRS Ignite, you can create personalized campaigns in seconds that target people in specific verticals, locations or interests with a variety of pre-prepared messages that also offer unique responses based on their action. Some our our clients tell us they save up to 80 hours a month on sales activities by automating their outreach efforts.

So there you have it, by using these uncommon sales hacks B2B sales professionals can optimize their LinkedIn presence, generate more leads, and close more deals. Becoming more in tune with LinkedIn's unique features allows B2B sales professionals to reach decision-makers directly and build relationships with more potential clients. With its vast network of professionals, unique features, and tools, it offers tremendous potential for building brand awareness, establishing trust, and generating leads. And as LinkedIn continues growth and expansion, it is becoming the must have social selling platform in our eyes for B2B experts globally.