Workshop: LinkedIn Profile Best Practices (+ Examples)

TL;DR:

• LinkedIn profiles should be buyer-centric for outreach and audience building.
• Best profiles have a professional photo, clear tagline, and value prop in the banner.
• To fix your profile, change your headline, cover photo, about section, and featured posts.
• Do not immediately pitch when connecting with buyers on LinkedIn.
• Your LinkedIn profile is your sales page, make sure it showcases the value you offer.

LinkedIn started off as an online resume platform for recruiting. So it’s understandable that you have your resume on there right now.

But if you want to use LinkedIn for outreach and building an audience with your buyers, you’re going to need to have to redo your profile.

Good sales is about the buyer — not you.

Adding “+120% to quota” and “President’s Club” means nothing to your buyers, and in fact probably makes them less willing to talk to you. (BDR and Sr AE will have the same effect — they're expecting the pitch-slap.)

Similarly, a good LinkedIn profile for a seller is buyer-centric (you can still keep the above or change it when you’re on the job market), but for the purpose of hitting quota in your current role, the above type of profile is actively hurting you.

6 Best LinkedIn Profile Examples

Can you spot what the following best-in-class profiles have in common?

• A professional photo
• A banner that directs visitors to a clear value prop or outcome
• A clear tagline that discloses what they do
• An About section that doesn't focus on them, but on what they can help solve

Here are 123 more good profiles to look at across multiple verticals, not just B2B SaaS like these guys.

1. Mark Jung

2. Oliver Johnson

3. Kasey Devine

4. Laura Erdem

5. Parthi Loganathan

How to Fix Your LinkedIn Profile

How can you become someone that your buyer WANTS to connect with, follow, and talk to?

Checklist:

• Change your Headline from “AE/BDR” to something buyer-centric
• Add a Cover Photo that says what problem you solve
• Redo your About to be a short pitch on why a buyer should connect with you
• Set up your Featured Section with posts that show off product or how you’ve helped buyers
• Make sure your Profile Picture and name on LinkedIn matches your profile picture for your sender email - so they can recognize you in their inbox

1. The Headline 

There are two parts to a good headline.

Part 1: A title that isn’t AE/BDR/SDR. Instead, think of a title that your buyer might want to connect with — a good format

Here are some examples:

• “GTM Engineer” if you sell automation tools to RevOps leaders
• “Procurement Advisor” if you sell vendor management solutions to CIOs and CFOs
• “Talent Development Associate” if you sell executive coaching services to HR leaders

Part 2: A 5-10 word description of what you solve.

Here are some examples:

• “Helping salespeople have more conversations with their most-valued prospects”
• “Slashing vendors costs 20% for IT buyers”
• “Streamlining payroll, benefits & business bullsh*t”

Then put them together with a | dividing them like this:

Headline: Part 1 | Part 2

2. The Cover Photo

Your cover photo should have the following:

• a value prop for your buyers
• a clear CTA to follow or connect with you
• company branded - ask your marketing or design team for help or put something together yourself in Canva

3. The About Section

Your about section should contain:

• 1-2 sentence description of who you are
• A sentence on why your buyer should trust you
• Some social proof for your product or service quantified
• How to contact you - let them know your DMs are open or provide your email (I use an @ instead of an at so bots don’t bug me)

4. The Featured Section 

This might require some posting to build up but once you start posting content that seems to be resonating and driving inbound, you should pin the best ones to your featured section.

You know the post has historically piqued buyer interest, so make it easy to access for future buyers. Any posts that are candidates for boosting via thought leadership ads also probably belong here. Add your top 3-4 posts here.

Some ideas for posts to pin:

• Product Demos that are well received
• Customer stories and case studies
• Industry thought leadership that went viral

What Not to Do

Do not connect and immediately send a pitch.

This is the number one rule on how to book more meetings from LinkedIn and LinkedIn DMs.

Instead focus on starting a conversation.

“That last talk was something, right?” or “You’re at PiedPiper? I have a friend, Jared, who works on the Partnerships team there.”

And then that opens up the door for them to ask about you now that their guard is down and tell them what you do in a way that feels natural.

How We Workshopped Kasey Devine's Profile

Remember Kasey from the best profiles list?

He and Parthi workshopped his LinkedIn profile together, and it was awesome.

Here's how we did it.

‎

Your LinkedIn Profile = Your Sales Page

Buyers should be able to qualify themselves and see the value in what you offer from just ten seconds spent on your LinkedIn profile — make it count.

If you're looking for more LinkedIn strategy, why not join the thousands of top sellers on our email list?