Sales prospecting on LinkedIn is preferred by most salespeople. According to 89% of top-performing salespeople, social networking sites like LinkedIn are critical for closing deals. They keep their profiles up to date, research their prospects’ profiles before contacting or emailing, and monitor what prospective customers share in groups.
Sales reps also understand how to conduct prospect searches and narrow outcomes by sector, business, venue, and other criteria. However, what if these tactics aren’t bringing in enough new opportunities to fill your sales pipeline?
Why LinkedIn Prospecting Holds Significance
LinkedIn boasts a vast user base exceeding 810 million individuals globally, offering a rich source of both B2C and B2B clientele.
Given its professional nature, LinkedIn primarily serves as a platform for networking and fostering professional relationships, rendering it conducive for sales professionals to initiate contact with potential clients via connection requests or InMail messages to discuss offerings.
Nevertheless, the ability to connect with unfamiliar individuals doesn’t warrant mass outreach efforts.
LinkedIn’s utility in sales prospecting is manifold:
- Facilitating the collection of valuable prospect information such as employment history, interests, and contact details.
- Enabling communication with a broad audience.
- Providing insights into competitors’ customer bases and prospecting strategies.
- Serving as a platform for staying abreast of developments in the prospecting domain.
LinkedIn Sales Prospecting vs. Traditional Prospecting
Understanding the nuances between LinkedIn and traditional methods is crucial for optimizing outreach strategies.
Traditional prospecting typically involves reaching out through conventional channels such as emails or cold calls. While effective, these methods often prioritize direct sales pitches to convert leads into customers.
LinkedIn, however, offers a unique platform for sales professionals. Rather than simply “reaching out,” the focus shifts towards “connecting” with leads within a social media context.
This shift in approach necessitates a more nuanced strategy for LinkedIn sales prospecting. Instead of bombarding leads with aggressive sales messages, the emphasis is cultivating genuine connections through friendly, non-sales interactions.
By leveraging LinkedIn’s unique features and dynamics, sales professionals can foster meaningful relationships with prospects, ultimately driving sales success more organically and effectively.
InMail: A Limited Approach to LinkedIn Sales Prospecting
Relying solely on InMail for initiating conversations with prospects on LinkedIn can be ineffective for several reasons:
1. Obscure Engagement Metrics:
InMail lacks transparency regarding whether your message has been opened or engaged with. This ambiguity makes it challenging to accurately assess the impact of your outreach.
2. Constrained Sending Capabilities:
LinkedIn limits the number of InMails you can send, particularly for users without premium subscriptions. These constraints can impede your ability to reach many prospects efficiently.
3. Financial Considerations:
Exceeding the free InMail limit can incur significant costs. Depending solely on this feature may require additional investment, which may not align with everyone’s budgetary constraints.
4. Limited Follow-Up Functionality:
InMails may not offer robust tools for effective follow-up. Compared to dedicated email or CRM systems, managing and tracking interactions within the platform may be less comprehensive.
Diversify Your Approach: Maximizing LinkedIn Sales Prospecting Success
Given these limitations, it’s crucial to diversify your outreach strategy beyond InMail. Here are actionable steps to enhance your B2B lead generation efforts on LinkedIn:
1. Utilize Contact Information Extraction:
Leverage tools to extract contact details from LinkedIn profiles, enabling outreach via email or phone. Expanding communication channels increases the likelihood of connecting with prospects.
2. Embrace Multi-Channel Outreach:
Combine InMail with other communication mediums such as email, phone calls, or social media messaging. By diversifying your outreach efforts, you enhance engagement opportunities and response rates.
3. Efficient Resource Allocation:
Optimize time and resources by prioritizing strategies offering better visibility and scalability. Avoid crafting InMails by focusing on approaches with higher potential returns.
While InMail is a valuable tool for initiating conversations on LinkedIn, relying solely on this feature may limit your outreach effectiveness. By embracing a diversified approach and leveraging alternative communication channels, you can enhance your B2B lead generation efforts and achieve success in sales prospecting on LinkedIn.
Here are ten fresh ways to use LinkedIn for sales prospecting.
1. Use a LinkedIn Email Extractor
LinkedIn email extractors allow you to export emails from ANY LinkedIn account, whether or not you are associated with them. Through this workflow, you can visit every LinkedIn profile and not only see their contact information but also export human-verified data from a trustworthy data source directly to your CRM.
With email extractors such as RevDriver (SalesIntel’s free Chrome extension), you can instantly access 95% accurate data for your prospects’ companies and contact details from their LinkedIn profile. Visit your prospects’ LinkedIn profile and then click the RevDriver icon in the toolbar. It will then display SalesIntel’s contact data and a list of all possible contacts connected with the page, which can then be filtered to get the specific information you need such as phone number or email address.
To see how it works, watch this short video:
You can unlock the full potential of sales prospecting with SalesIntel.
2. Use Internal Resources for LinkedIn Prospecting and Content Creation
The consideration that marketing and sales are two separate teams with two different goals is over. You need to enhance the synergy between them because the objective is always the same: to reach leads and win customers. This is where your smarketing plays a vital role.
If the marketing team is posting and creating content for your company’s LinkedIn page, it is always a good idea to share it on your profile and ask your peers to share the same on their profiles. Given that you have an experienced sales team, they always have good connections with the decision-makers. This can help you widen your post reach, and it might reach the prospect that fits your ideal customer profile
3. Use Search Filters
Most salespeople are unaware of how sophisticated LinkedIn’s search feature is. An elegant search engine is hidden behind the tiny white field at the top of your profile, allowing you to refine your search using simple filters.
For instance, if you’re looking for a “Sales Manager” you’d type it into the search feature and then select “People.” You will then narrow down the opportunities through filtering by:
- Connection (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
- # of Connections
- Locations
- Current companies
- Past companies
- Industries
- And even first and last name
If you want to target a sales manager from IBM, simply use the “existing companies” filter and choose IBM as the company.
If you want to go advanced, you can sign up for a Premium account to filter searches based on prospects’ business size, classes, years of experience, and seniority status.
4. Sync With a CRM
LinkedIn will give you prospects that may not immediately turn into leads or customers but might with a bit of nurturing. If you have found your LinkedIn rhythm, you likely have seen a spike in the number of warm leads coming from the network. Rather than letting these leads fizzle or vanish, make sure you have a mechanism in place to catch and process them.
Many official LinkedIn/CRM syncs need a LinkedIn Sales Navigator account, but you can add a large range of CRM systems to the network once you have one. If you don’t have a Premium account, you’ll have to manually track the link, which is time-consuming but doable. In any case, it’s more than worth it to make sure your hard work on LinkedIn is successfully contributing to your current client funnel.
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5. Scroll through “People Also Viewed”
This trick is often overlooked by business professionals. When it comes to LinkedIn prospecting, it is important to take advantage of the chance to make new contacts. A day does not go by without you adding anyone back or checking for opportunities on LinkedIn.
The “people also viewed” feature on the prospects’ profiles is the GOLD MINE you should be using. Some people have been marked as being near identical to the target demographic or are being perceived for similar purposes.
Use the free analysis to your benefit and start adding.
6. Utilize LinkedIn Endorsements
This is a little secret that few people are aware of or use. When you’re looking at a prospect’s profile, scroll down to their LinkedIn endorsements and read them.
You will see that people in a particular field are always the ones offering praise. For example, content writers often recommend other content writers. Health practitioners also recommend other medical professionals, and so on. This opens the way for you to find and engage with comparable prospects.
7. LinkedIn Pulse
Articles, which can be posted on your profile or LinkedIn Pulse, links to your website, slideshows, and video are among the most popular types of content on LinkedIn. Most of the professionals use LinkedIn Pulse to develop thought leadership on LinkedIn.
If you are familiar with this in-network tool or are unaware of its portfolio-building opportunities, using this blogging platform within LinkedIn can be critical to your progress.
This will bring appeal, breadth, and tangible expertise to your profile, which is something that many business professionals and experts, regardless of the target demographic or industry, are searching for.
It’s a great way to highlight your professional integrity, skills, and talent without “tooting your own horn,” as it will appear in your profile.
8. Don’t Put Any Limits When it Comes to Outreach
Nobody insists you have to choose between cold outreach and value sharing. In reality, a good balance of both will be just what your company wants to create a stronger, more trustworthy network while still closing deals with conventional sales tactics on the side.
However, you would most likely want to develop your own distinct “look.” This may involve reaching out with a free tool or blog, or a free phone call, or reaching out and first asking where the contacts’ experience exists.
9. Investigate Your Competitors’ Networks
Selling to a competitor’s client saves more time than finding a whole new client who has little familiarity with your style of product. You have formulated content and documents to convince the competitor’s client why they should switch to your product. What you need now is a client list.
Fortunately for you, other LinkedIn participants’ networks are searchable (provided they don’t want to cover them) – even that of competitors. Your competitors are likely connected with their prospects and customers. So, referring to their network to reach potential clients is a smart way of prospecting on LinkedIn.
You can also use SalesIntel’s technographic data to identify prospects that are currently using your competitors’ products.
10. Reach Out to Prospects in New Roles
Changing jobs is one of the most powerful sales trigger events. When someone takes on a new job, they are more willing to shake things up by introducing new processes, new products, or services to drive improvement. If you come in at the right time, you could just get a new client.
To find which of your contacts has newly entered a new venture, go to the “Notifications” tab. Check it regularly for information about who has a new job, a birthday, or a new blog post that will act as a prompt for reaching out.
And there you have it! You can add a few potential prospects to the list; just make sure to contact them as soon as possible.
Use Linkedin to Its Fullest
LinkedIn presents a golden opportunity for salespeople – to prospect better and raise their sales game to a higher level.
However, most salespeople tend to barely scratch the surface of this potential social platform, resulting in negligible performance.
The sales prospecting ways that we discussed above are just a few new techniques. LinkedIn, when used correctly, can be an excellent source of prospecting and lead generation. All that is needed is finding innovative ways to reach your prospects using LinkedIn.
