Sales Trends extensive understanding of it, but I’ ve learned a lot about it in the last year. And first of all, your visibility on a business page on LinkedIn is only 10 % of your visibility on a personal page. What that means is, let’ s say that you have a personal page with 500 followers or 500 connections, and you have a business page with 500 followers.”
Sell Smarter with Enhanced Outreach Strategies
Ideas for better use of social media, overcoming age gaps and selling value
By Jack Morgan
Most consumers— including those seeking laundry services— would rather“ buy” than“ be sold.” With that in mind, how can today’ s laundry salespeople boost their performance by leveraging social media, enhancing intergenerational dialogue and expanding value-based selling? We asked three consultants to weigh in on these issues.
Precision Social
Troy Harrison, an AmeriPride sales veteran and longtime sales trainer / adviser, spoke about LinkedIn, perhaps the most popular social media
PHOTO CREDIT: Tirachard / iStock destination for laundry operators. In many cases, Harrison says, operators are missing out on LinkedIn’ s value by posting self-serving messages that generate scant engagement.“ I’ ve been involved in the industry as a trainer and coach for over 15 years,” Harrison says.“ So, I’ m still well in touch, and most of them( operators) suck at it( LinkedIn).”
For starters, he says, many operators err by running a company’ s LinkedIn profiles rather than personal ones, which are designed to drive more engagement.“ Let’ s understand the LinkedIn algorithm,” Harrison says.“ I don’ t have an
If you, as an individual, post something on your personal page on LinkedIn, LinkedIn will initially show it to 10 % of your followers, he says.“ And that’ s almost like a test market. They’ ll test it, and then if it gets engagement, it gets likes, comments, shares, that kind of thing, they’ ll start showing it to more people. That’ s how you get really broad exposure on your posts.” Conversely, if someone posts something on a company’ s LinkedIn, the site will only show it to 1 % of its followers, he says, noting that“ The reason is that LinkedIn collects most of its money off of memberships, and they don’ t want their platform to be‘ spammy.’” Most laundry people are posting items to their company page and not getting much engagement. These posts typically generate less engagement. So the return on the time and effort spent on LinkedIn is lower than with a personal site.
Another factor is the type of material that laundries post on their sites. The average LinkedIn post either touts a laundry’ s services, talks up a new client, or highlights a customer testimonial, Harrison says. These posts tend not to generate clicks because they don’ t reflect LinkedIn’ s values.“ LinkedIn is a big discussion group,” Harrison says.“ Think of it as a big networking room. You wouldn’ t walk into a networking group and just start screaming from the rooftops about how great your product is. If you do, nobody’ s going to want to talk to you.” Instead, he suggests joining different discussions.“ Then every now and then you are going to work in stuff about how great your company is,” Harrison says.“ Very
34 Textile Services • May 2026