How to Build a LinkedIn Profile That Attracts Leads (& Closes Deals)
Find out how to improve your LinkedIn profile to help drive your outreach
Surfing LinkedIn, you’ve probably seen it: low-quality photos, cryptic job titles, and About sections that read like resumes from 1991.
And if you’re not getting profile views or replies to your messages, your problem might not be bad luck.
It might be your profile.
Your LinkedIn profile is your digital handshake. And if you’re using LinkedIn to generate leads or book meetings, it needs to be more than a resume – it needs to be as compelling as a landing page.
Here’s how you can transform your LinkedIn into a lead magnet.
Why optimize your LinkedIn profile?
Before anyone accepts your connection request, responds to your InMail, or reaches out organically, they check one thing first – your profile.
You should think of it as your mini-landing page.
And its goal?
To pass their “gut check” test.
Here’s what helps:
- Professional profile photo
- Compelling headline (not just your job title)
- Description of your role and responsibilities
- Any notable achievements in your niche
- Mutual connections
- Engaging About section
- Your work history
- Recommendations from colleagues and clients
- Tone of voice suitable for your industry
Optimizing your profile does three crucial things:
- Builds trust – It helps you look real and reliable
- Communicates your value – It tells people what you offer clearly and quickly
- Increases conversion – It turns views into leads
Trying to cram all your credentials into one cold email feels boastful.
But if you let your profile tell your story, you spark curiosity and credibility without saying a word.
Building out your profile also supports your LinkedIn sales outreach.
That’s because if your profile is as barren as a desert whose only resident is a lone tumbleweed, leads won’t accept any connection requests you send. And if too many requests get declined, LinkedIn might temporarily restrict your account.
With that said, here’s how you can optimize your LinkedIn account for future lead generation.
Name
Your name is the first thing people see on your LinkedIn profile.
Use the Roman alphabet if you’re aiming for a global audience, and match the spelling you use on other platforms and blogs. This way, people from different countries will easily find you in searches.
If someone sees you mentioned in an interview or reads your blog article, they should be able to copy your name and find you easily on LinkedIn without any confusion.
Profile picture
When it comes to your LinkedIn profile picture, your face is your brand, so make sure your face is easily visible.
Since people will view your picture as a small thumbnail, your face should be centered and take up most of the photo’s space.
Also, try to upload the same photo on all platforms you use for business, like Twitter, Medium, and other networks. This way, people will easily recognize you across different social media sites.
Headline
Your name and photo are key parts of any online profile, but your LinkedIn headline is what directly advertises your professional background.
Often, you’ll come across headlines that simply state a job title and company, like “Co-founder & CEO at AiSDR.” That’s a solid start because it brings clarity.
But you can use more characters here, and it’s best to use them to the fullest. Here’s what a comprehensive headline should consist of:
- Your current role and workplace – Just in case, double-check to confirm you updated your profile’s role and workplace. We’ve seen companies lose deals that had already closed simply because someone on the team didn’t update their role and workplace.
- Primary skills or area of expertise – Highlight what you’re good at. For instance, instead of just “Sales Leader,” you could say “B2B SaaS Sales Leader specializing in enterprise deals.” This not only provides more information; it also makes your page more searchable thanks to relevant keywords.
- Your unique value – What sets you apart from the rest? Maybe you “build high-performing remote sales teams” or “connect startups with Fortune 500 decision-makers.”
- Measurable accomplishments – Instead of vague terms like “world-class” or “guru,” you can emphasize results with numbers, like “Reduced customer acquisition costs by 40%.” This will instill confidence in your skills and professionalism.
- Mission – You can list your services in dry language, or you can explain the impact you want to make, which will help you connect with prospects who share your values or face challenges you aim to solve. For instance, “I help small businesses improve their brand recognition.”
Try this winning formula for a LinkedIn headline:
[Current Role and Workplace] | [Primary Skills and Area of Expertise] | [Unique Value] | [Notable Achievement] | [Mission]
In practice, this is the LinkedIn headline of AiSDR CEO Yuriy Zaremba:
This headline helped Yuriy grow his LinkedIn followers to over 15,000.
Background banner image
Your background banner takes up too much space to leave it empty. Consider adding a banner that showcases your current services or reflects the focus of your LinkedIn outreach campaign.
You can also incorporate your company’s colors into the banner to tie your profile to your brand.
Public profile URL
Why settle for the default LinkedIn profile URL with its random letters and numbers? If you customize it, your link will look more professional and be easier to share on business cards.
Your custom URL can be between 3 and 100 characters. It can’t have spaces, symbols, or the word “LinkedIn.” Most people just use their name, but you can also add your company or job title.
If you want to experiment with a custom URL, you can change your link up to five times in six months. After that, you’ll have to wait another six months to customize it again. You don’t want to change it too frequently anyway, because this will just confuse people, especially when old links stop working.
Identity verification
LinkedIn says that verified members receive, on average, 60% more profile views.
LinkedIn has two verification options:
- Identity verification: Verify your identity with your valid government-issued ID.
- Workplace verification: Confirm your relationship with your company using your work email, Microsoft Entra Verified ID, LinkedIn Learning license, or LinkedIn Recruiter license.
A verification badge next to your name shows others you’re a real person and, thus, quickly builds trust.
Section-specific recommendations
Each section of your LinkedIn profile plays a key role in showing who you are and what you do.
By improving each part – from your About section to Featured content – you can make your profile look more professional and attractive to potential clients.
Here’s how you can make each section stand out.
About
The About section has plenty of room to present your skills and experience. It’s also a perfect place to list your services and mention any big-name companies you’ve worked with.
Although you have lots of space, avoid big blocks of text. Make this section easy to read with bullet points that highlight key aspects of your career growth and your current work. You can follow the same formula you used for your LinkedIn headline, adding more detail for each point.
And make sure the text grabs attention from the first line. Open your About section with your latest achievements and use storytelling techniques to craft a narrative. Guide readers through the journey of your career—the challenges you’ve faced and skills you’ve gained.
We also recommend using relevant keywords throughout this section so your page pops up in searches when LinkedIn users look for someone with your expertise.
Featured
This section comes right after the About section and is ideal for curating links and PDFs you want to highlight.
Here are some suggestions for what to add here:
- Any diplomas and certificates
- A link to your latest product demo
- Links to business magazines that feature you or your articles
- Magazine covers with your picture
- Whitepapers
- Success stories
- Presentation slides from industry conferences
- Industry reports you’ve contributed to
You can also feature your most viewed LinkedIn posts and articles so visitors can quickly view your popular content without having to browse through all your posts.
Activity
Besides static LinkedIn profile sections described above, you may also want to showcase your thoughts, experiences, and interesting stories in the Activity section.
LinkedIn provides users with what it thinks they will find most meaningful. The platform analyzes what they typically engage with—whose posts they like, share, or comment on—and offers them more of such content.
Thus, your loyal followers see your posts first. If they interact with your content, their connections may also see your posts, which creates a snowball effect that can significantly expand your reach.
In our experience, regular posting influences your post visibility, too. Aim to post at least three times a week, but if you can manage more, even better.
People might also notice your comments on others’ posts right in their own feeds, which also increases your visibility to prospects. If they find your perspective valuable, they’ll likely click through to your LinkedIn profile to learn more about you and see what you’ve posted.
Here are some current LinkedIn posting trends:
- Thought-provoking reflections: You can share your point of view on a topic without necessarily taking a firm position. This can prompt others to reflect, too, and, ideally, join the conversation by commenting.
- Visual content: Pictures capture more attention than text-based posts. But make sure your images are high quality. Stock photos of hands on keyboards? Everyone has seen them everywhere. Selfies work great. Or you can create graphics using your corporate colors.
- Video content: Video is getting popular on LinkedIn. You can create a professional ad, but that’s not necessary. Instead, you can just choose a nice setting, sit in front of the camera, and speak about something interesting and relevant to your audience. Or you can spice up your post with an AI-generated video.
- Event coverage: Capture images of your team at a conference, pair it with a post that expresses your excitement about the event, and invite your LinkedIn network to meet up if they’re also attending. This will move your lead generation from the digital space to real life.
- Polls: Polls effectively engage visitors to your page because it’s fun to take part and see how others voted. Plus, you can create a poll to identify potential customers interested in your solution. And voilà, you get a list of inbound leads!
Experience
This section makes it easy to lay out your past work experience. You’ll find separate areas for:
- Role
- Employment type (freelance, part-time, full-time)
- Company
- Start and end dates (or you can just indicate you’re still employed there)
- Description
- Skills
- Content you created associated with your work experience
When you describe your jobs, use bullet points to list your tasks and duties. You can also highlight your achievements at each company while working there.
In the Media section, you can attach various materials that show off what you did at that company, like project presentations, marketing materials you created, product launches you led, or even videos of you speaking at company events.
Skills and skill endorsements
Currently, LinkedIn lets you select up to 100 skills to showcase. This section can list:
- Technical skills – CRM proficiency, sales automation tools, data visualization platforms
- Industry-specific skills – Outbound sales techniques, closing enterprise deals
- Soft skills – Public speaking, team management, negotiation, crisis communication
In addition, LinkedIn allows others to endorse your skills. Your connections might do this on their own. However, many people don’t use LinkedIn features regularly, so it’s perfectly fine to ask a few close colleagues or clients you have good relationships with to endorse your skills.
And of course, you can endorse their skills in return.
Recommendations
In the Recommendations section, you can see who recommended you, their job role, the date, and their comments about you. There’s also a subsection for recommendations you’ve given.
Like with skill endorsements, people might recommend you on their own without being asked. But LinkedIn also lets you ask for recommendations. You can open a request window to include a private message and specify how you know each other—whether you worked together, if they were your client, they mentored you, or you were in school together (it’s visible to others).
Of course, you can also ask people to recommend you during a business lunch if that feels more natural.
Interests
This last section of your LinkedIn profile lets you demonstrate the pages you follow — the sources that shape your views. Therefore, you should try to regularly subscribe to new pages, because who knows, you might gain new connections based on shared interests and, thus, find more high-quality leads.
Remember to keep all parts of your LinkedIn profile fresh.
Whenever something exciting happens, be sure to add it. You can mention major achievements right in your LinkedIn headline or update your About section with a new service. Or you can emphasize your recent whitepaper in your Featured section.
