How to Use LinkedIn for Sales Prospecting

What is Linkedin Sales Navigator?

Sales Navigator is one of the primary tools I would recommend using. With this feature, users can segment the population based on surgical criteria and make sure that the target audience is composed only of people they know will be interested in the offering (and can afford it).

Once you have configured the population, it’s time to write at least 2 types of approaches and connect with the selected target audience. The goal is to find clients and build relationships, but it’s important not to forget about your own learning curve.

That is why it’s recommended to do AB tests. When redacting the same message but from 2 different approaches to study how the users respond to each of them, this is one of the best ways to learn from past efforts and improve to gain the attention of high-quality business prospects.

How to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

Refine Your LinkedIn Searches

If you’re serious about LinkedIn sales, you might want to consider using LinkedIn Premium. LinkedIn offers four premium tier options: Premium Career, Premium Business, Sales Navigator Professional, and Recruiter Lite. Both Business and Sales options include more refined search features and more InMail messages, and some other lead management tools.

If you’re using LinkedIn’s premium services, you can still refine searches for prospects by utilizing Boolean strings. Boolean strings combine keywords with connector words like AND, NOT, and OR.

Using AND in a search will provide a list of only those who meet all search terms, so a search of “IT consulting AND project management” will only provide prospects for IT consultants and project managers.

Using NOT in your search also provides refinement. A Boolean search of “IT consultants, NOT project managers” will generate a list of prospects who are only IT consultants.

Using OR will expand your search. A search for “IT consultant OR project manager” will create a list of people in either field, if not directly related.

Utilize LinkedIn’s Alumni Search

An alumni search can generate sales prospects by searching for people you have not yet met but who share values in line with what you offer.

To search for any university’s alumni, first search for the university, click on the university’s profile, and at the top of the profile, click on the tab labeled “alumni.” This will bring up a new tab that will allow you to search any university’s alumni by title, keyword, or company.

Be sure to pay attention to the groups that your university’s alumni have joined. Alumni searches can also lead to groups in which you can effectively promote your professional presence.

Click on Profiles in Your Industry

Did you know that you can increase your own profile views by clicking on profiles in your industry? It works with simple reverse psychology.

What happens when you see that someone has viewed your profile? The most common reaction is to click on that profile and determine why that person viewed your profile. Using reverse psychology, this can be a LinkedIn sales strategy. If you have a compelling profile that is optimized to sell, you have a chance to show your pitch to anyone coming to your profile, and this becomes an opportunity to close.

Make a habit of searching profiles in your target industry every couple of days and viewing them. You don’t need to reach out to anyone; you just have to click on the profile. Viewing numerous profiles in your target industry will, in turn, drive up your profile views, and hopefully, lead to sales on LinkedIn.

Keep Your LinkedIn Profile Optimized for Sales

Optimizing your profile to be a sales asset is a simple strategy to get ahead. Professionals miss key opportunities with their LinkedIn profile by having an ineffective headline or writing their profile as if it were a resume.

When it comes to optimizing your LinkedIn profile for sales, there are many aspects to consider, but the first thing that needs to be optimized is the first thing your prospects will see: your headline.

LinkedIn’s default setting uses your current job title as your headline. Successful LinkedIn salespeople, however, use this as an opportunity to create a custom, attention-grabbing tagline.

Great taglines often involve value-grabbing propositions. The easiest formula for making the most of your headline is, after your job title, to write: “helping [prospect demographic] to [outcome].”

For example, if you sell copy machines to small businesses, a good tagline could be “I help small businesses reduce their copying costs by 25% or more yearly.”

Don’t shy away from putting “sales” in your headline. You want your prospect to know you are the person to come to for their specific needs.

If you’re looking for inspiration on what to write, look at your company’s value proposition. Customer testimonials are also a great resource for learning about your company’s main selling points.

Approaching Prospects on Linkedin

Do you remember that email from the shoe brand that wanted to share their sales campaign two weeks ago? Of course not. Because it most likely went to spam. 

On LinkedIn, there’s the same problem. Too many people are trying to approach everyone (even people who are not relevant to their goals). So, how to engage prospects on LinkedIn? How do we make sure that the user we want to connect with reads our full message? I will write down some tips:

1. Make sure you are writing to the right person

We have limited invites per week (100, to be exact). So we don’t want to waste any bullets by reaching out for a Jr. when we need to talk to the head division of a company. Also, if they are not qualified enough they may not read the whole message either.

2. Remember, it is social prospecting

We are trying to make it seem as if you were writing specifically to that person. Try to engage with them by adding personal details to the invitation so that they feel connected to the not-so-cold message.

3. Understand the difference between a connection request message and an impersonal approach

The first key to prospecting on LinkedIn.

When connecting with another person on LinkedIn, it is very important to write as much detail about the target user as possible. Use their names, talk about their company, and present the offering (what can you do specifically for them?).

The power of a personalized message to get attention is key to warming up the cold messaging. Make sure to be writing for each possible client. 

4. Be direct, be sincere, add value by focusing on the offering, and spice it up with a touch of personalized details.

5. Remember: LinkedIn connection request messages can only have 300 characters.

Creating some templates for guidance may help in taking the first steps.

Sample:

• Say hi and use the prospect’s name.
• Say something about their company. Show that you did the research. 
• Mention your company and be clear with your intentions.
• ADD VALUE TO THE OFFER.
• Follow with a question or a CTA (call to action).
• Finish the connection request with a polite and formal farewell. 

Putting it all together, it should look something like this:

Hi {first.name}*,

I looked at your company (insert prospect’s company name*), and I find it very interesting that you are working on ______. 

At ( your company’s name), we are ( what you are working on and might interest the prospect), and I believe we could be a great match

by (added value to the offer). 

Would you be interested in talking further about this matter?

Best,

{user.name}*

*possible to automate with Growth-X

Were you able to identify each structure point within the message? Share your thoughts in the comments.

6. Ask for help/referral

As much effort we put into audience segmentation, there is always going to be a percentage of people who are less relevant than the other prospects on the list. 

Most often, we address the right company but the wrong person so when that happens, it’s very important to find a way around so that the connection invitation doesn’t go to waste. 

By asking for someone who could be interested in what you are offering, it automatically makes the receiver think about a person who could be a match. 

Sometimes we write to the right person at the right company but at the wrong time. But that doesn’t mean they can’t refer to a colleague. 

7. Try not to take a no for an answer

People may be having a bad day and want to know nothing about anything, or possibly it’s a bad time for the company at the moment we approach. 

These are things we can’t know before starting to send invites but we can always try to drive the user through our sales funnel.

Ask why they are not interested if they are having a similar service or product being delivered by a competitor (it’s always good to know where your rivals are working), if he is happy with it, if it’s just bad timing, and wants to get back to them in a couple of months. 

There is always something else to say but keep it polite. An annoyed prospect is a lost sale. 

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Know Your Audience

Whether you are a cola factory, a bank, an energy supplier, or an ice cream shop, it’s imperative to know the kind of people you are talking to to understand how to approach them. 

It’s not the same when talking to the director of a software company in the United Kingdom, or when writing to the director of a book publisher in Chicago. Culture, language, levels of politeness, and even the use of a specific word can change the result of an invitation to connect on LinkedIn.

Suggestion: Try reading the prospect’s profile and learn about his company. Check their last posts and news on their websites. It may give insight or a hint to know exactly what they need and what you can provide them with. 

Lead follow up best practices

• Follow-up message: if they don’t answer, it doesn’t always mean they are not interested.

  If you’re prospecting on LinkedIn, remember: people have lives and are usually very busy. Especially if they are into business. So don’t get discouraged for not getting replies at first. Build a follow-up message that adds value to the connection request. 

  (Sometimes it’s better to leave some information behind to save material for the next steps of the sales funnel.)

• Second follow-up message: as this is the third message we are sending (first being the connection request) you may want to say something like “sorry to bother again” or “xx, I hope you find this message of your liking” before going to the point. Add any kind of information that may have been left behind and reinforce the fact that you can make their lives easier or better with your offering.

• Make a spreadsheet and take notes of the status of each client. Schedule follow-ups and keep track of each opportunity to find business prospects. This is called a CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

Secure Contact Email Addresses Using LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great tool for tracking down potential leads. If you are looking for a specific individual, their LinkedIn profile is often produced with a quick Google search. If you are targeting people based on their profession and geographical area, LinkedIn is a goldmine.

But when it comes to making contacts, you will want to take the connections you have made on LinkedIn out of the platform and integrate it into your CRM, Advertise to these contacts on Facebook and in email campaigns. This means that you need to find a way to export the name, job title, and crucial email information locked in the LinkedIn platform.

Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.

While you can export all of your connections from LinkedIn to a spreadsheet easily enough, when you open the spreadsheet, you will notice that the column marked for email addresses is empty.

Why? Since 2018, by default, LinkedIn has given all of its users the strongest privacy settings, which, among other things, mark their email as private. As a result, their email address is not exportable. To make their emails exportable, they need to go into their settings and actively choose to make their email public. Most users won’t do this or even be aware that it is something that they could do.

However, that doesn’t mean that you have to resort to managing your LinkedIn leads separately. Other tools out there interact with LinkedIn differently and will let you export those important contact details. For example, Growth-X, a lead-generating tool, will allow you to scrape contact information, including email addresses, out of LinkedIn, which you can then export to Excel or send directly to your CRM for integration.

This can be used to make initial connections through email and be used for Facebook advertising campaigns or email marketing campaigns.

Create Your LinkedIn Outreach Strategy

Let’s summarize everything we have learned so far and make a simulation. Let’s imagine we are a large group of ranchers that live in the USA. We figured out that when we sell all our livestock, there is a lot of leather that goes to the waist. So what kind of businesses could be interested in recycling these materials? 

Targeting your audience

First of all, we have to think about all the relevant industries. In this case, we could find valuable leads by approaching people who produce:

• Shoes
• Cars
• Jackets
• Furniture 
• Bags/ purses

Writing the connection request

We could create a connection request that involves all of them but when using Sales Navigator, we learn that there are more than 500 possible clients per industry. So why would we take the risk of wasting the leads when we could write a specific message per type of producer? 

Remember, when prospecting on LinkedIn, it’s better to have a personalized, detailed approach so that our prospect feels important to us, rather than being cold-called.

Let’s make a mock-up test for the furniture manufacturers:

Dear {first.name}. I hope my message finds you well.

I’m reaching out to furniture manufacturers such as ______ to offer my ranch as a leather supplier. I’m aware that most of your products are made of such material, and I believe we could take great profit from this relationship.

Does it sound interesting enough? 

Best,

{user.name}

Did the prospect reply? Great! Now it’s time to aim to schedule a meeting.

He connected but did not reply? Good thing we have a follow-up message

Hi {first.name},

Regarding my first message, I’d like to make use of our connection and try and see if there is a match here. My livestock has the best quality leather there is to offer and as I’m just starting to sell it for furniture, I’m not peaky with the pricing. You’ll find it interesting that here at (my company’s name) we have experience working with car factories, providing for their seats. So this should be a familiar field to work on.

Hope to hear from you soon,

{user.name}

Now that we have our first follow-up message we have to prepare a second one. This timeless more aggressive style

Hi {first.name}, sorry to bother you again.

I just wanted to make sure you are getting my messages. If there is a chance of having a conversation and discussing business shortly, I’d like to schedule a meeting very much.

Best wishes,

{user.name}

Find the Groups with Potential Customers

Finding the LinkedIn groups your prospects belong to and joining them is a great way to connect with your prospects before sending them a message. Here’s how to find effective groups for networking:

• Find your list of prospects and their LinkedIn profiles
• Scroll to the bottom of their profile, where it says “Interests.”
• Under “Interests,” click “see all” and a window will pop up displaying influencers, companies, groups, and schools
• Click on “groups,” and take note of groups that customers have in common
• Assess the groups: number of members, level of group engagement, and number of current prospects in the group
• Based on the assessment, select two or three groups and become an active member

Groups are a great tool for finding prospects and conducting market research on prospects’ linguistic patterns and values. Understanding how your prospects speak to each other is crucial knowledge for creating effective LinkedIn sales messages.

Don’t underestimate the power of group engagement as part of the sales funnel and one of LinkedIn’s most effective LinkedIn sales solutions. Once you have joined a group, do not squander this opportunity to build professional relationships and engage with prospects.

Ineffective salespeople make the mistake of posting only promotional material. This comes across as spammy. Groups are only a viable LinkedIn sales strategy if you genuinely engage with the community, so people can get to know your professional identity.

LinkedIn group community engagement can be as simple as:

• Commenting on a community member’s post
• Answering questions members post to the group
• Asking the community questions
• Asking the group for help
• Posting promotional content
• Posting group-related content from other people

While this is a LinkedIn sales strategy, you don’t want to focus on selling in the groups. People generally view sales as an “untrustworthy” profession, and 88% of people buy only when they view the salesperson as an advisor they can trust. And how do you build trust? By engaging with the community.

Remember that group engagement is less about closing a sale and building the foundation of professional relationships necessary for the successful LinkedIn sales message to be sent.

Like publishing articles on LinkedIn, you can set up a schedule to engage consistently. Theme-related days can help you keep the perfect schedule. Choose specific days for leaving comments, answering questions, and sharing content useful to the group.

Utilize LinkedIn Publishing to Showcase Your Abilities

If you’re not using LinkedIn’s publishing platform, you’re missing out. For anyone using LinkedIn for sales, this is an opportunity to create brand recognition for potential prospects.

With the publishing app’s initial launch in 2010 as LinkedIn Pulse, only certain influencers were granted access to publish content. In 2014, however, Pulse was opened up to all LinkedIn users, and the now-integrated platform is an excellent tool for salespeople to share insights and showcase their professional knowledge.

LinkedIn publishing allows you to build an audience of prospects, build brand recall, and cement professional relationships to use LinkedIn for B2B sales.

All of your LinkedIn connections get an alert in their notifications when you publish an article. If you want to stay on prospects’ radar, publishing on LinkedIn is a great way to non-invasively promote yourself and get noticed by people in your industry.

Maintaining a cadence of both regular posts three times a week and publishing an article biweekly is an excellent way to build recognition and engage with prospects. Don’t forget to turn on the comments!

Click on “Write an Article” at the top of your LinkedIn feed to compose and publish your first article.

LinkedIn vs Other Social Media

Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube are some of the most popular social media sites around the globe. They offer entertainment, various types of content to self-produce and share with loved ones, be part of communities and they can keep you scrolling, no matter what time it is.

So why would I choose to create an outreach strategy on LinkedIn over all of them?

Depending on the type of business, there are some social media sites with better environments for your company’s growth. 

Instagram & Facebook

Pros

• Targeting by interest and keywords
• Builds manageable community
• Several types of formats for communication pieces
• Tools to interact live with other users
• Ideal for B2C businesses and influencers.
• Both have e-commerce that offers you merch by interests
• Both social media’s ad campaigns can be configured on the Business Manager

Cons

• Cold calling is not acceptable.
• Can’t segment by studies, profession, or company.
• People are there to consume, not to build.
• Not suitable for B2B business.
• The short period of attention span

Youtube

Pros

• Easy ROI generation on content.
• Allows longer videos with a longer attention span.
• Ad campaigns configured by interests and keywords.
• Tools to interact live with other users.
• Able to organize content on Playlists.

Cons

• No e-commerce support on the platform.
• There is no private way to interact with viewers.
• Ads are mostly skipped.
• Ads interrupt content the user wants to watch, making it annoying.
• More suitable for awareness than sales on B2B or B2C businesses.

LinkedIn

Pros

• People choose to be on Linkedin for professional purposes
• Someone who is connected, it’s likely to provide value to your work life.
• Offers to build a network and find all the contacts needed for any project.
• Groups with niche themes to stay connected with the news in relevant fields.
• Possible to find decision-makers in big companies and approach them.
• A most suitable environment for B2B businesses.

Cons

• Content should only be shared for professional means.
• Less creative tools for communication than in other social media.
• Not advisable to build brand communities for final consumers.
• Not suitable for B2C business growth.

So depending on your social media campaign’s goals, there is one of them that is a better match to achieve the desired KPIs. If managing a B2B business and want to grow lead generation to feed the sales funnels and sign some new clients, then prospecting on LinkedIn is what I recommend.

Nurture And Convert Prospects In Clients

Building relationships and gaining customer trust will help you prospect for sales. Prospects are more likely to become customers if they trust and feel comfortable with the seller. Therefore, it is important to focus on the success of the potential customer rather than just making a sale.

In addition, it is essential to establish a relationship with the prospect by actively listening to their needs and concerns. By doing so, the seller can build a relationship based on trust and mutual understanding, which can lead to a successful conversion.

Another important aspect of using LinkedIn for sales prospecting is qualifying and prioritizing prospects. Not all leads are alike, so, it is important to prioritize those who have the highest conversion potential.

This can be accomplished by asking intelligent questions that allow the prospect to feel in control of the conversation while giving the seller valuable insight into the prospect’s needs and priorities.

By qualifying and prioritizing leads, sellers can direct their efforts on those who are most likely to become customers, which leads to a more efficient and effective sales process.

Closing the deal and converting prospects into customers is the ultimate goal of sales prospecting. This requires a combination of effective communication, negotiation skills, and a deep understanding of the prospect’s needs and priorities.

In short, by applying these best practices when prospecting on LinkedIn for sales, companies can increase their customer base and boost revenue growth.

Learn how to boost your efforts on Linkedin Sales Navigator

You have learned how to find prospects on LinkedIn and about targeting and messaging. But there is a small issue to attend to now. 

Imagine sending 20 connection requests per day for a week on working days, meaning 100 invitations per day, got 30% of those connections, and now 30 people want your attention and FAST!

Imagine these numbers for the entire month! Now there are 120 people to address. 

It may sound impossible to track so many conversations, but luckily, there’s a solution. Growth-X offers an automation tool to generate leads, making it perfect for prospecting on LinkedIn. 

Be coached by a customer success manager to ensure accomplishments by growing your network with relevant, high-quality leads and turning them into clients for B2B business. 

Set up a campaign with surgical measurement, prepare an AB test with your messages, and try them out. 

With Growth-X, you will not only be prospecting on Linkedin you will also learn about the kind of people that the business needs. Because many times we think we know who needs our services or products but on the run, we learn from experience and find out there are several groups of consumers and professionals that are in need of us, only that we haven’t thought about them. 

So by targeting outside the comfort zone with the assistance of Growth-X’s customer success manager there is a guarantee in having a fast learning curve and achieving great results earlier.

It’s important to have in account that both LinkedIn and Growth-X work with B2B business (business to business). 

Why? As explained above Linkedin has the best environment for these kinds of companies because everyone who has a profile and participates actively on this social media does it for professional purposes. 

That means that every connection, reaction, comment, and private chat has an objective that if achieved, will boost the user’s career somehow. It could be showing interest as an employee for its own company for my boss and colleagues to see, growing a network to build professional relationships, or finding partners and clients for an ongoing company (or brand new start-up).

So what are you waiting for? Is there a B2B business that needs growth? Contact Growth-X right now and schedule a demo call.

Some of Growth-X’s clients are:

• WeWork
• PayPal
• Kodak
• Dell
• Merck
• Check Point

We have learned about what is to prospect, how to use Linkedin to do so, the pros and cons of several social media, how to approach prospects on Linkedin, the difference between a connection request and follow-ups, the power of a personalized message vs cold calling, tips for lead follow up best practices, the importance of knowing your audience, we made message examples for a leather supplier and last but not least, we learned about Growth-X and it’s an amazing tool to make sure you’re prospecting on Linkedin the right way.

The only thing left is to schedule a demo call with them and start your journey for business growth. And it all begins with a simple click HERE.