What Is a LinkedIn Skill Endorsement?<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n
A LinkedIn skill endorsement is a one-click validation from a connection confirming that you possess a particular skill listed on your profile. It requires no written explanation, no detailed context, and no significant time investment from the person giving it. When someone visits your profile and sees a skill they believe you genuinely have, they can click “Endorse” and your endorsement count for that skill increases by one.<\/p>\n
This simplicity is both its strength and the source of its skepticism. Because endorsements are frictionless, some critics argue they are meaningless. But frictionless does not mean weightless \u2014 especially when the endorsements come from the right people, at the right volume, for the right skills.<\/p>\n
Unlike a written recommendation, which provides narrative depth and context, an endorsement is a signal of breadth and recognition. It answers a different question for a prospect browsing your profile: “Do people who know this person professionally confirm that they have the skills they’re claiming?” The answer, when backed by quality endorsements, is a quiet but powerful “yes.”<\/p>\n
Endorsement vs. Recommendation: Which Carries More Weight in B2B?<\/h3>\n
This is one of the most common questions sales professionals ask when optimizing their LinkedIn profiles, and the honest answer is: they serve different purposes, and you need both.<\/p>\n
A\u00a0written recommendation<\/strong>\u00a0carries narrative authority. When a client writes three paragraphs about how you helped them close a gap in their sales process, reduce churn, or hit a revenue target, that story does something an endorsement cannot \u2014 it provides specific, verifiable proof of impact. Recommendations are your qualitative case studies, embedded directly in your profile.<\/p>\n Endorsements<\/strong>, on the other hand, operate at scale. A profile with 80 endorsements for “B2B Sales Strategy” from actual sales professionals and clients tells a prospect, at a glance, that a lot of relevant people in your field recognize this as a real competency. They don’t need to read a paragraph to absorb that signal \u2014 they see it in seconds. That immediacy matters enormously in B2B, where a prospect might spend 90 seconds scanning your profile before deciding whether to respond to your InMail.<\/p>\n The practical takeaway: prioritize getting written recommendations from clients and senior stakeholders for depth, and build endorsements from industry peers, clients, and collaborators for breadth and discoverability. Neither replaces the other.<\/p>\n Let’s address the skepticism directly. Endorsements have a credibility problem \u2014 not because they don’t work, but because most people use them wrong. Volume-chased, random endorsements from distant connections for loosely related skills do very little. Strategic, quality-sourced endorsements for role-relevant skills from credible people in your industry do quite a lot. The distinction matters enormously.<\/p>\n The most important thing to understand about B2B sales on LinkedIn in 2026 is that trust is built before the conversation starts. According to data from LinkedIn’s own research, 95% of decision-makers say strong thought leadership makes them more receptive to sales outreach. Buyers don’t reply to strangers \u2014 they reply to professionals they recognize, respect, and have already seen add value in their space.<\/p>\n Your profile is the foundation of that pre-conversation trust. When a prospect receives your connection request or InMail, the first thing most of them do is click on your name and scan your profile. In that 60-to-90-second window, they’re making a judgment:\u00a0Is this person credible? Do they actually know what they’re talking about? Are they worth my time?<\/em><\/p>\n A well-endorsed skills section answers that last question passively. According to research on LinkedIn outreach strategy, in B2B, trust decides outcomes \u2014 and when endorsements are built correctly (with quality sources and role-relevant skills), they lift connection acceptance rates, reply rates, and meeting booking rates. Your skills section is not decoration. It is a trust asset that operates while you sleep.<\/p>\n LinkedIn’s search and ranking algorithm is not just about keywords in your headline and About section. Skills endorsements are an explicit part of how LinkedIn ranks profiles in search results. LinkedIn uses multiple ranking signals, including keyword relevance in your headline and About section, profile completeness, connection proximity, engagement activity, skills endorsements, and content quality \u2014 and profiles that match more of these signals rank higher.<\/p>\n The downstream impact on B2B lead generation is significant. Profiles with five or more skills listed get up to 17 times more profile views than those without skills listed. Members who add five or more skills are messaged up to 31 times more \u2014 making skill selection and the endorsements attached to those skills a direct lead generation lever, not just a profile formatting choice.<\/p>\n When a prospect’s colleague or a warm referral searches for someone with your expertise \u2014 say, “enterprise SaaS sales” or “B2B demand generation” \u2014 your profile’s probability of appearing at the top of those results is meaningfully influenced by whether your skills section is populated and endorsed.<\/p>\n This is the insight that most articles about LinkedIn endorsements miss entirely, and it’s the one that matters most for B2B professionals. Not all endorsements carry equal weight. Endorsements from connections in your industry carry more weight than random endorsements from unrelated contacts. A profile with 50 endorsements for “B2B Sales” from actual sales professionals and clients signals more authority than 200 endorsements from personal contacts or distant connections with no relevance to your work.<\/p>\n The implication is clear: your goal should not be to collect as many endorsements as possible. Your goal should be to earn endorsements from people your target audience would recognize and respect \u2014 former clients, industry peers, managers you’ve reported to, and collaborators in your exact field. Ten high-quality endorsements from relevant professionals are more valuable than 100 endorsements from your college acquaintances.<\/p>\n This quality-over-quantity principle is also what makes the strategic approach to endorsements \u2014 covered in detail later in this article \u2014 so different from the spray-and-pray tactics that have given endorsements a bad reputation.<\/p>\n Your LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI) is a score from 0 to 100 that LinkedIn calculates daily based on four pillars: establishing your professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building relationships. Each pillar contributes up to 25 points to your total score. For B2B sales professionals, the SSI is not just a vanity metric \u2014 it has measurable pipeline implications.<\/p>\n According to LinkedIn’s official SSI data, users with a high SSI score above 70 generate 45% more opportunities than those with lower scores and are 51% more likely to hit their sales targets.<\/p>\n The first pillar \u2014 establishing your professional brand \u2014 directly includes endorsements as a factor. LinkedIn’s algorithm especially values third-party validation: recommendations carry more weight than self-written content, and endorsements signal peer recognition. Additionally, following LinkedIn’s Q4 2025 algorithm update, accounts scoring above 70 on SSI now receive 2 to 3 times higher organic reach on posts and approximately 40% better search ranking. Users with SSI above 70 also see 78% more profile views compared to those scoring below 50.<\/p>\n In practical terms: a strategically endorsed skills section strengthens your professional brand pillar, which raises your SSI, which improves your content reach and search visibility, which means more inbound profile visits from the prospects you’re trying to reach. Endorsements are one small but compounding input into a system that directly affects your pipeline.<\/p>\n One development that actually\u00a0increases<\/em>\u00a0the importance of endorsements is LinkedIn’s decision to retire its Skills Assessments feature. LinkedIn retired Skills Assessments in late 2023 and removed all skill badges from profiles in 2024, citing that hiring managers and decision-makers found examples of how candidates applied skills more valuable than quiz results.<\/p>\n What this means for B2B professionals: endorsements are now one of the only remaining forms of third-party skill validation directly embedded in your profile. With skill badges gone, the endorsement count next to each skill has become a more prominent and uncontested signal of peer-recognized competence.<\/p>\n Most LinkedIn advice on skills says something like “add skills relevant to your role.” For a B2B sales professional, this guidance is too vague to be useful. There is a meaningful difference between skills that signal credibility to recruiters and skills that build trust with B2B buyers. Optimizing for the wrong audience leads to a skills section that looks good to HR but does nothing for your pipeline.<\/p>\n When a prospect lands on your LinkedIn profile, they are not evaluating you as a job candidate. They are evaluating you as a potential business partner, advisor, or solution provider. The skills they find credible are the ones that map to the problems they care about, the language their industry uses, and the competencies that prove you understand their world.<\/p>\n Consider the difference between these two sets of skills for an enterprise software sales rep:<\/p>\n Recruiter-facing skills<\/strong>\u00a0(good for job searches, weak for B2B trust):<\/p>\n Buyer-facing skills<\/strong>\u00a0(builds trust with the decision-makers you’re selling to):<\/p>\n The second set tells a CTO, CFO, or VP of Operations that you speak their language and understand their domain \u2014 not just that you know how to dial a phone. When curating your skills section, the test to apply to each skill is:\u00a0Would my ideal customer profile (ICP) see this skill and think, “This person understands our space”?<\/em>\u00a0If yes, include it. If it’s only legible to a recruiter, deprioritize it or remove it.<\/p>\n LinkedIn allows you to add up to 100 skills to your profile, but your top three pinned skills receive the most visibility and endorsement activity. These three skills appear at the top of your skills section, above the fold, and are the first thing anyone sees when they scroll to that part of your profile.<\/p>\n Choosing your top three is not a random exercise. Your pinned skills should be:<\/p>\n For example, if you are a sales consultant targeting mid-market B2B SaaS companies, your top three pinned skills might be “B2B SaaS Sales,” “Go-to-Market Strategy,” and “Revenue Operations” \u2014 not generic terms like “Business Development” that could apply to almost anyone.<\/p>\n One of the most underused features in LinkedIn’s skills system is the ability to tag skills to specific positions in your experience section. This contextual linking matters because tagging skills to experience entries validates your expertise contextually \u2014 LinkedIn’s algorithm evaluates skill clusters alongside your job history for relevance scoring.<\/p>\n What this means in practice: if you list “Account-Based Marketing” as a skill and also tag it to the role where you actually ran ABM campaigns, LinkedIn treats that skill as contextually verified, not just self-asserted. This improves both your search ranking for that skill and the credibility signal it sends to profile visitors who look at your experience in detail.<\/p>\n Go into each position in your experience section, click “Add skills,” and tag the skills that are genuinely relevant to what you did in that role. Doing this for your top 10 to 15 skills across your experience history takes about 15 minutes and meaningfully strengthens the algorithmic and human-credibility value of your skills section.<\/p>\n The standard advice \u2014 “just ask your connections to endorse you” \u2014 produces endorsements of exactly the kind you don’t want: high in volume, low in credibility, from people who have no professional relevance to your target buyers. The goal is not a big number. The goal is the right endorsements from the right people.<\/p>\n A single endorsement from a satisfied client is worth more to a B2B prospect than ten endorsements from your internal colleagues. When a prospect sees that actual customers have endorsed your skills, it closes the credibility loop in a way that peer endorsements simply cannot. It tells them:\u00a0Real buyers have worked with this person and confirmed they have the skills they claim.<\/em><\/p>\n The timing and framing of your ask to clients matters significantly:<\/p>\n This level of specificity increases the chance of getting a quality, meaningful endorsement rather than a vague click on whichever skill appeared first.<\/p>\n The same principle of specificity applies to all endorsement requests, not just those to clients. Whether you’re asking a former manager, a long-term colleague, or a respected peer, naming the exact skill you want endorsed makes the process easier for them and more valuable for you.<\/p>\n A strong endorsement request message for a professional peer might look like:<\/p>\n “Hey [Name] \u2014 I’ve been doing some profile work on LinkedIn and I’d love to strengthen my endorsements for [Skill Name]. Given that we’ve worked together on [relevant context], I think your endorsement would carry a lot of credibility. Happy to return the favor for any skills of yours you’d like strengthened.”<\/em><\/p>\n Note the offer to reciprocate. This is not manipulation \u2014 it is the natural functioning of a professional network where people support each other. It also increases the response rate considerably.<\/p>\n The best endorsement requests are anchored to real, recent evidence of the skill in action. Instead of sending cold endorsement requests out of the blue, build a habit of making targeted asks at natural touchpoints in your client relationships:<\/p>\n These touchpoints produce endorsements with genuine credibility behind them \u2014 the endorser actually witnessed the skill in use, which is exactly what makes them valuable.<\/p>\n A commonly overlooked barrier to getting endorsed is a disorganized or outdated skills section. If the skills you most want to be known for aren’t listed on your profile, no one can endorse you for them. If your skills section is cluttered with outdated or irrelevant skills, the people who want to endorse you might choose the wrong one.<\/p>\n Before making any endorsement asks:<\/p>\n When you send an endorsement request and name a specific skill, the recipient should be able to find that skill immediately and endorse it in under 30 seconds. The easier you make it, the more likely it happens.<\/p>\n One of the most powerful endorsement strategies is indirect: becoming consistently visible on LinkedIn through content means that when people visit your profile \u2014 prospects, former clients, industry peers \u2014 they are more likely to endorse skills they’ve just watched you demonstrate through your posts and articles.<\/p>\n According to LinkedIn’s data, 75% of buyers are influenced by thought leadership content on the platform. When you publish a post that demonstrates your expertise in “Revenue Operations” or “B2B Demand Generation,” people who read it and visit your profile are primed to recognize those skills as real. That recognition translates into organic endorsements from people who found you through content \u2014 often exactly the kind of high-quality, relevant endorsers you want.<\/p>\n This creates a self-reinforcing cycle: strong content drives profile visits from relevant professionals, who endorse your skills, which strengthens your search ranking, which drives more profile visits. Endorsements are not just a one-time setup task \u2014 they benefit from the same consistent activity that drives all LinkedIn results.<\/p>\n The mechanical process of giving an endorsement is simple, but the\u00a0decision<\/em>\u00a0of which skill to endorse someone for deserves more thought than most people give it. A purposeful endorsement is more meaningful \u2014 and more memorable \u2014 than a reflexive click.<\/p>\n Go to the profile of the person you want to endorse. Scroll down past their About section and experience entries until you reach the “Skills” section. On desktop, this section shows their pinned top skills followed by a “Show all skills” option. On mobile, the layout is similar but may require an extra tap to expand.<\/p>\n Before you click anything:<\/strong>\u00a0Take 30 seconds to look at their experience and recent content. What have they actually been doing? What skill have you witnessed them demonstrate in your work together, in their posts, or through their professional reputation? This small step is what separates a meaningful endorsement from a thoughtless click.<\/p>\n Once you’ve identified the right skill \u2014 the one you can genuinely vouch for \u2014 click the “+” or “Endorse” button next to that specific skill. LinkedIn may also proactively suggest skills to endorse when you visit a connection’s profile; these suggestions are worth reviewing, but don’t feel obligated to endorse skills that aren’t within your first-hand knowledge.<\/p>\n Do not endorse skills you have no basis to evaluate.<\/strong>\u00a0This matters both for the integrity of the endorsement and for your own professional credibility. If you endorse someone for “Machine Learning” when you’ve only worked with them on sales strategy, your endorsement carries no weight \u2014 and may actually dilute the credibility of their more legitimate endorsements from people in that field.<\/p>\n After clicking “Endorse,” LinkedIn will confirm the endorsement has been recorded. The person will receive a notification. That notification is a touchpoint \u2014 a small, positive signal that you were thinking of them and took a moment to support their professional presence. It is this touchpoint quality, beyond the profile benefit, that makes endorsements such a powerful B2B relationship tool \u2014 covered in detail in the next section.<\/p>\n Pro tip:<\/strong>\u00a0Before endorsing, take a moment to read the person’s most recent two or three posts or check their current role. The skill you choose to endorse should be genuinely relevant to what they’re doing right now \u2014 not just the most prominent skill on their profile. A targeted endorsement lands differently than a generic one, and the person you’re endorsing will notice the difference.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is the section that separates a strategic LinkedIn approach from a tactical one \u2014 and the angle that virtually no existing content on LinkedIn endorsements covers. Giving endorsements is not just a way to prompt reciprocation. Used intentionally, it is a systematic warm-up tactic that can meaningfully improve outreach results.<\/p>\n When you endorse someone’s skill on LinkedIn, they receive a notification. In a sea of connection requests, InMails, and generic messages, that notification stands out because it is positive, non-transactional, and requires no action from them. It says, implicitly:\u00a0“I looked at your profile, I recognize your expertise, and I took a moment to acknowledge it.”<\/em><\/p>\n This is the beginning of a warm-up sequence \u2014 a structured series of low-friction, value-first interactions that establish familiarity before you ever send a pitch. A high-performing prospecting warm-up sequence might look like:<\/p>\n By the time you send that connection request, you are not a stranger. You are someone who has been visible in their world in a positive, professional way. According to research on LinkedIn outreach, prospects engaging with multiple touchpoints show significantly higher meeting acceptance rates compared to cold outreach, because you are starting conversations based on demonstrated interest rather than interruption.<\/p>\n Client relationships on LinkedIn are often underinvested by sales professionals. The deal closes, the relationship moves to customer success, and the sales rep’s LinkedIn activity with that client goes quiet. This is a missed opportunity.<\/p>\n Periodically endorsing a client’s skills \u2014 specifically skills related to their professional role, their decision-making authority, or their area of expertise \u2014 keeps your relationship warm and visible. The client sees the notification, thinks of you positively, and you remain present in their professional consciousness without sending a single sales message.<\/p>\n This is particularly valuable for referral generation. Clients who are regularly reminded of your existence through positive, non-salesy interactions are more likely to mention your name when a colleague in their network is looking for what you sell. Endorsing a client’s “Business Transformation” or “Digital Strategy” skills costs you 30 seconds and keeps you top-of-mind in the accounts that can generate your best future pipeline.<\/p>\n The people who appear in your endorsement activity are visible signals to anyone who looks closely at your professional network. When prospects see that you actively endorse technology partners, channel partners, integration partners, and industry collaborators, it communicates that you operate within a professional ecosystem \u2014 that you are connected, engaged, and reputable enough for other respected professionals to be in your network.<\/p>\n Strategic endorsements of co-sellers, alliance partners, and joint venture collaborators strengthen your perceived professional stature in ways that are difficult to manufacture through other means. They signal that your network is real, active, and high-quality \u2014 all of which contributes to the baseline credibility that makes a prospect more likely to trust you.<\/p>\n Given the touchpoint value of endorsements, it is tempting to automate the process \u2014 to use tools that bulk-endorse dozens or hundreds of connections at once in hopes of triggering a wave of reciprocal endorsements. This approach is counterproductive and potentially damaging to your professional reputation.<\/p>\n The quality-over-quantity principle applies in both directions. When you spray endorsements indiscriminately across your network, you train your connections to see your endorsements as meaningless automated actions rather than genuine professional acknowledgments. The notification loses its warmth. The touchpoint loses its value. And if a prospect or client notices that you endorsed 50 people in one day for skills you couldn’t possibly have first-hand knowledge of, it undermines the credibility of your entire profile.<\/p>\n Prioritize source quality over raw counts. Endorse purposefully \u2014 when you have genuine professional basis to validate a skill, when the timing creates a natural touchpoint, or when it is part of a deliberate warm-up sequence. The 30 seconds spent on a thoughtful endorsement produces better outcomes than 30 automated endorsements produced by a tool.<\/p>\n The underlying message of this entire guide is a reframe: LinkedIn skill endorsements are not a job-seeker feature that occasionally benefits sales professionals. For B2B sales reps, account executives, and sales leaders, they are a pre-sales trust infrastructure \u2014 a quiet, always-on layer of credibility that works on your behalf every time a prospect visits your profile, runs a search, or evaluates whether you’re worth their time.<\/p>\n The sales professionals who understand this are not the ones with the most endorsements. They are the ones with the\u00a0right<\/em>\u00a0endorsements \u2014 sourced from clients, industry peers, and collaborators who carry genuine credibility in the eyes of the buyers they’re trying to reach. They treat giving endorsements as a prospecting warm-up tactic, not just a gesture of goodwill. And they maintain their skills section as a living part of their professional brand, not a static form they filled out once years ago.<\/p>\n Your action item from this article is simple: audit your top three pinned skills today. Ask yourself whether they reflect the expertise your ideal customer needs to see. Then identify three past or current clients who could genuinely endorse those skills \u2014 and send them a targeted, specific, private request this week. That is the beginning of a more strategic approach to one of LinkedIn’s most underutilized B2B trust tools.<\/p>\n Yes. LinkedIn’s search algorithm uses skills endorsements as one of multiple ranking signals alongside headline keywords, profile completeness, connection proximity, and engagement activity. Profiles that satisfy more of these signals rank higher in search results. The key is that endorsements from relevant, industry-appropriate connections carry more algorithmic weight than random endorsements from unrelated contacts.<\/p>\n LinkedIn has not published a specific threshold. However, the research consensus suggests that quality matters more than a specific number. Focusing on earning endorsements from professionals in your industry and from actual clients produces better search ranking and profile credibility outcomes than chasing a specific count. Concentrating endorsements on your top pinned skills \u2014 rather than spreading them thinly across 50 or 100 skills \u2014 also improves ranking performance for the skills that matter most to your ICP.<\/p>\n Yes. Go to your profile, scroll to the Skills section, click the pencil (edit) icon, and manage the visibility of specific endorsements. You can hide endorsements from connections whose validation is not relevant or credible for your current professional positioning. This is worth doing periodically \u2014 removing irrelevant endorsements helps concentrate the credibility signal on the ones that matter.<\/p>\n Only if you have genuine, first-hand basis to validate the specific skill you’re endorsing. Endorsing a skill you’ve seen demonstrated through someone’s LinkedIn content or through industry reputation \u2014 rather than direct collaboration \u2014 is acceptable if your knowledge is real and specific. What you should avoid is endorsing skills you have absolutely no basis to evaluate, as this erodes the integrity of the endorsement for both you and the recipient.<\/p>\n LinkedIn’s Skills Assessments were timed quizzes that tested knowledge of specific skills, with passing scores displayed as badges on profiles. LinkedIn retired these assessments in late 2023 and removed all skill badges from profiles in 2024, noting that decision-makers found demonstrated examples of skill application more valuable than quiz scores. Endorsements remain as the primary peer-validated skill signal directly embedded in LinkedIn profiles, making them more prominent in the post-Assessments landscape than they were before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you’ve ever dismissed LinkedIn skill endorsements as a meaningless vanity metric \u2014 a relic from 2012 that people click […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linkedin-guides"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dealsflow.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dealsflow.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dealsflow.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dealsflow.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dealsflow.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2224"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dealsflow.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2246,"href":"https:\/\/dealsflow.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224\/revisions\/2246"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dealsflow.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dealsflow.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dealsflow.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dealsflow.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Why LinkedIn Endorsements Still Matter for B2B Sales in 2026<\/h2>\n
![\"Why](\"https:\/\/dealsflow.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Why-LinkedIn-Endorsements-Still-Matter-for-B2B-Sales-in-2026-scaled.webp\")
<\/p>\nThey’re a Trust Signal Before You Ever Send a Message<\/h3>\n
They Feed the LinkedIn Algorithm and Improve Your Search Visibility<\/h3>\n
Endorsement Quality Beats Endorsement Quantity<\/h3>\n
The SSI Connection: How Endorsements Support Your Social Selling Index<\/h3>\n
A Note on LinkedIn’s Removal of Skills Assessments in 2024<\/h3>\n
Which Skills Should B2B Sales Pros Actually List (And Get Endorsed For)?<\/h2>\n
![\"Which](\"https:\/\/dealsflow.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Which-Skills-Should-B2B-Sales-Pros-Actually-List-And-Get-Endorsed-For-scaled.webp\")
<\/p>\nSkills That Signal Credibility to B2B Buyers (Not Just Recruiters)<\/h3>\n
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How to Pin Your Top 3 Skills Strategically<\/h3>\n
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Tagging Skills to Specific Job Experiences<\/h3>\n
How to Get LinkedIn Endorsements That Actually Build B2B Credibility<\/h2>\n
1. Ask Clients and Customers First (Not Just Colleagues)<\/h3>\n
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2. Make a Targeted Private Ask (With a Specific Skill in Mind)<\/h3>\n
3. Use a Post-Project or Post-Call Touchpoint<\/h3>\n
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4. Optimize Your Profile So Endorsements Are Easy to Give<\/h3>\n
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5. Build Visibility Through Content So Endorsements Come Organically<\/h3>\n
How to Endorse Someone on LinkedIn (Step-by-Step)<\/h2>\n
Step 1 \u2014 Go to Their Profile and Navigate to the Skills Section<\/h3>\n
Step 2 \u2014 Select the Skill Most Relevant to Their Work<\/h3>\n
Step 3 \u2014 Confirm the Endorsement<\/h3>\n
How B2B Sales Reps Can Use Giving Endorsements as a Prospecting Warm-Up<\/h2>\n
Endorsing a Prospect Opens a Warm Touchpoint<\/h3>\n
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Endorse Existing Clients to Strengthen Retention and Referral Relationships<\/h3>\n
Endorse Partners and Collaborators to Build Ecosystem Credibility<\/h3>\n
What NOT to Do: Avoid Endorsement Sprays and Automation<\/h3>\n
Start Treating Endorsements as a Sales Asset, Not a Profile Afterthought<\/h2>\n
Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n
Do LinkedIn endorsements still help with search ranking?<\/h3>\n
How many endorsements do you need to rank for a skill?<\/h3>\n
Can you remove an endorsement you’ve received?<\/h3>\n
Should you endorse people you haven’t worked with directly?<\/h3>\n
How are endorsements different from the now-removed Skills Assessments?<\/h3>\n