Posted by CV Nation on
LinkedIn is a fantastic tool for account managers at all levels. With over 95% of recruiters using LinkedIn, career opportunities are endless for account managers and sales professionals with a strong professional brand on the platform.
The most important aspect of creating a professional brand on LinkedIn is the summary, along with the headline.
A compelling, punchy LinkedIn summary will make you interesting to recruiters, attract users to your profile and ensure you stand out from the crowd.
In this guide, we’ll introduce you to our unique formula to help you craft a powerful account management summary. We'll also provide you with a great account management LinkedIn summary sample.
Whether you’re an account executive, relationship manager, national account manager or global account manager, this guide will tell you everything you need to know to prepare the best LinkedIn summary.
I got involved in account management because building beneficial relationships with customers is what I’m best at. Through my person-centred approach to sales, I’ve been able to deliver tangible results that move the needle in regards to revenue.
Communication is my bread and butter. I began honing this skill when I was a teenager by competing in public speaking competitions on a national level. Today, I employ my communication acumen and relationship building capabilities to expand customers bases and increase sales for an agricultural machinery manufacturer.
Some of my key successes in this role include:
When I’m not growing accounts, I’m usually either reading non-fiction books or watching old episodes of Friends for the one-millionth time. If you would like to know more, feel free to send me a message. I’d be delighted to hear from you.
Specialities: Account management, customer acquisition, relationship management, sales strategies, agricultural machinery sales, negotiation, staff training and mentoring.
Many people insist that you should choose a specific approach when writing your LinkedIn profile summary. These include the ‘storytelling summary’, in which you focus on your career story, and the ‘factual summary’, focusing on your achievements.
Forget ‘storytelling summaries’ or ‘fact-based’ approaches. Instead, follow our unique formula to craft a summary that focuses on making you authentic, showcasing how you can add value and making people interested in you.
1. Tell the story of your career
2. Be authentic
3. Touch on your accomplishments and successes
4. Use numbers and metrics to bolster your profile
5. Articulate your unique value proposition
6. Convey your key skills and experiences
7. Optimise your summary with keywords
8. End with a clear call to action
Now let’s look at these steps in more detail.
Your LinkedIn summary should tell an engaging story about your career, offering a brief, insightful overview of who you are and what you do.
There are a variety of issues you may want to touch on. For example, how did you get into account management? Why do you love your job? As an account manager, you may want to outline your passion for sales or your proficiency in building new relationships.
Other questions and issues that you may want to touch on in your LinkedIn summary include:
- What are your career objectives?
- Transferable skills and experiences that you utilise in account management
The key to crafting the perfect LinkedIn summary is uniqueness. There are millions of users on LinkedIn, many in the same profession as you.
So in order to achieve your objectives on LinkedIn, it’s important to make yourself stand out.
Focus on what makes you different. Avoid being generic at all costs.
But how do you write a unique LinkedIn summary?
The good news is you don’t need a huge list of major achievements to be unique. In fact, anyone can make their LinkedIn summary unique.
Make it personal. Use engaging writing and include content that isn’t generic. This might involve preparing a one-minute introduction video to add to your summary or uploading photos that show insight into your work.
If possible, identify your unique value proposition (UVP). This is your key selling point that should encourage recruiters to take notice of you.
Examples of UVPs include account management expertise with a specific product or an ability to generate sales increases.
Including accomplishments in your LinkedIn summary can have a strong impact on recruiters and potential employers.
As an account manager, your key achievements will likely be related to sales growth, client retention and so on. Identify your best achievements and draw attention to them in your summary.
When highlighting your key achievements, use succinct writing and don’t go into too much detail. Use bullet points or symbols for ease of reading.
Here is an example:
- In 2020, I generated a 32% increase in revenue by building new relationships with potential clients in untapped markets across Europe.
For account managers and sales professionals, quantifying accomplishments with numbers and metrics is a fantastic way of standing out from the competition.
Numbers and metrics provide tangible evidence of your ability to get results, so ensure to bolster your achievements with numbers in your summary. Whether it be percentages, sales numbers, client numbers or pound/dollar figures, using numbers will make your summary shine.
Your unique value proposition is the key, unique benefit that you offer to employers. It’s what sets you apart from the competition and makes you a valuable asset as an account manager.
The best LinkedIn summaries illustrate users’ unique value propositions in a concise manner, enabling recruiters to see the value in employing them.
How do you identify your unique value proposition?
To identify your unique value proposition, think about your accomplishments, how you have achieved success in recent times or unique skills that you bring to the table.
Take a look at the account management LinkedIn summary sample in this guide. The individual’s unique value proposition is her ability to effectively communicate with people and build beneficial relationships.
Although this isn’t necessarily a unique skill set, the way it is presented makes it unique. By highlighting her public speaking experience and her natural communication acumen, she makes herself stand out as someone who can generate results.
Communicate your key skills in your LinkedIn summary, focusing on your skills that are fundamental to successful account management.
What skills are important for account managers?
As highlighted in Lucidchart’s helpful guide on key account management strategies, creating a comprehensive customer profile is a vital facet of the profession. These are the type of skills that can make your LinkedIn profile summary shine.
Furthermore, ensure to touch on your work experience. This may involve describing your current role, as well as your less recent positions. By highlighting your work experiences, you can show the reader how you achieved success and made an impact.
While the LinkedIn headline is the most important aspect of your LinkedIn profile in terms of optimising it for searches, your summary should also be peppered with strategically placed keywords.
This will help your LinkedIn profile appear in LinkedIn searches, as well as search engine results.
When writing your summary, ensure to include keywords that are relevant to account management. To identify important keywords, study job postings for account management roles. This will help you understand what recruiters may be searching for on LinkedIn.
At the end of your LinkedIn summary, include a specialties section. This should be a list of your key hard skills, which will help you rank for those keywords.
Keywords for account managers include:
- Customer acquisition
- Account management
- Customer relationship management
- Relationship management
- Customer service
- Customer retention
- Account management strategy development
- Sales management
- Product knowledge
- Sales strategies
- Negotiation
Study the account management LinkedIn summary example in this guide to see how we populated the summary with relevant keywords.
Wrap up your LinkedIn profile with a concise call to action. Tell the reader to do whatever it is you want them to do, whether it’s to get in touch with you regarding employment opportunities or to check out your website.
If you’re hoping to secure a new job on LinkedIn, ensure your call to action isn’t too pushy. There’s a common perception in recruitment that the best talent don’t need to pursue work, so be subtle.
Don’t state ‘I am looking for new jobs so please get in touch with me’.
Something along the lines of ‘I am always interested to hear from LinkedIn users regarding potential career opportunities’ would be ideal.
It’s a good idea to be even vaguer if you’re currently employed and you don’t want your employer to know that you’re pursuing new opportunities.
If you’re in such a situation, simply state that you’re open to receiving messages from people who want to know more about you.
Many LinkedIn users are unaware they can add media to their summary. Uploading media offers insight into your life as an account manager and makes your profile unique.
Uploading media to your LinkedIn summary is a great way of making yourself stand out.
But, as an account manager, what type of media would be appropriate to upload to your summary?
- Images related to your account management roles - Make use of free image creating platforms, such as Canva, to create attractive images that showcase your successes as an account manager. This might involve including a brief overview of your sales accomplishments and the products/services you sell.
Video introduction - Record a short video to introduce yourself. Describe your career as an account manager and touch on how you add value to employers. Keep your video professional and short, no more than one minute in length.
Adding videos to your summary makes it more personal and provides you with a stronger platform to build connections.
Articles - Have you appeared in online articles in a professional capacity? If so, upload the articles to your LinkedIn summary. Adding articles you’ve been featured in helps you come across as an authority in your field.
How to add media to your LinkedIn summary
To add media to your summary, click the ‘+’ symbol, then select ‘upload file’ or ‘add a link’. Then add the file that you would like to upload to your summary.
LinkedIn summaries should always be written in first-person. The first-person narrative is the most personal. As such, it will provide you with a greater platform to engage with other LinkedIn users and build new connections.
When preparing your LinkedIn profile, ensure it is consistent with your CV. When you apply for jobs with your CV, recruiters often navigate to your LinkedIn profile. For this reason, it’s important to ensure your CV and LinkedIn profile are sending out the same message.
We hope you’ve found this guide useful in preparing an effective LinkedIn summary that will help you get the most out of your career in account management.
Want to know how to write the perfect LinkedIn headline? Check out our comprehensive guide on the topic, which includes 15 great LinkedIn headline examples.
