LinkedIn prospecting is a highly effective way to find future customers and connect with them. So, how can you do this? To help you get the most out of your prospecting efforts, here a short guide on the best methods to use when prospecting on LinkedIn.
Why Prospect on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is one of the most popular social media and connecting platforms. Moreover, LinkedIn is the ideal platform for B2B companies seeking qualified prospects.
LinkedIn is the perfect business-to-business prospecting platform because no other platform offers as much reach as LinkedIn.
Looking for prospects on LinkedIn is a straightforward yet effective task, mainly since the social media platform operates as a search engine. LinkedIn categorizes sorts, analyzes, tags, and saves all relevant information to help you find the ideal prospects.
For instance, LinkedIn leverages its pre-saved data to enable you to find an exhaustive list of CEOs in LA in the gaming sphere. As long as you know what you have to say, LinkedIn lets you enjoy real-time engagements with your target audience through messages, status updates, and even comment sections.
Writing a Client-Facing LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn users typically use their profiles as resumes and discuss their achievements and works in the third person. But here’s the harsh truth: your ideal prospects and buyers don’t want to know about your last job; they want to see how you can solve their problems.
Thus, consider writing a client-facing profile. Focus on things your prospects will want to see and how they’ll react when you connect with them on LinkedIn. When curating your LinkedIn profile, keeping your client in mind enables you to create a homepage that intrigues your target audience.
How to Find Prospects on LinkedIn?
No matter your prospects’ job title or education, you can easily find them on LinkedIn. Here we discuss eight straightforward yet effective ways of pinpointing qualified candidates on LinkedIn:
Writing a Short and Sweet Bio
Optimizing your headline and tailoring your bio to your audience is an excellent way of attracting potential customers.
When tailoring a LinkedIn profile to your audience, keep the following crucial points in mind:
- What makes you passionate?
- What is your current role?
- What does your company do?
- What brought you to your existing business?
Meeting 2nd-Degree Connections by Increasing Your Connections
The LinkedIn profiles you share a direct connection with are your 1st-degree connections. Your first-degree connections and contacts lay the groundwork of your network.
An excellent way to connect with qualified prospects and expand your network is by selecting the ‘Add Connections’ button. Consider giving LinkedIn temporary access to your emails to make connecting with you an easier task.
Warming up to your first-degree connections improves your chances of meeting 2nd-degree contacts. Here’s how you can foster deep relationships with your LinkedIn connections:
- Messaging them to solve an inquiry;
- Requesting expert advice or recommendation via InMail;
- Creating a LinkedIn Question and sending it various first-degree connections;
- Connecting with them on Twitter;
- Meeting with them for lunch or coffee.
Investigating Your Competitor’s Networks
Selling to competitor’s customers is typically easier than finding a new prospect who doesn’t know your brand and product.
Start by creating a compelling argument for why a competitor’s buyer should transition to your product/services. Next, create a comprehensive customer list.
Plus, since LinkedIn allows you to explore other members’ networks, finding and connecting with their prospects and consumers becomes an easy task.
Keeping Track of Your Newsfeed for Warm Relationship
Your LinkedIn newsfeed is an undiscovered gold mine for filtering potential customers by surfing through the newsfeed of your new connections. Here’s how you can view the newsfeed of your contacts:
- Click on your LinkedIn profile;
- Select the ‘Newsfeed’ option located on the ‘Home’ button;
- Scroll down until you find the ‘All Updates’ icon;
- Choose the ‘Connections’ button from the drop-down menu.
Check your newsfeed to identify whether your contacts recently connected with a LinkedIn profile that catches your interest. If so, consider asking for an introduction.
Checking Who’s Commenting on Your Prospects’ Posts
When browsing your newsfeed or notifications, remember to read the comments in your connections’ posts.
In most cases, the LinkedIn members interacting with your customers and prospects are a perfect fit for your brand and products. Their comments are ideal jumping-off points for InMail. Start by praising their perspective and provide a related insight or share a relevant article.
Joining LinkedIn Groups or LinkedIn Answers
Becoming a LinkedIn Group member or answering inquiries in ‘LinkedIn Answers’ is an excellent way of fostering deep relationships with LinkedIn members.
Surf through ‘LinkedIn Answers’ to pinpoint questions from LinkedIn profiles that match your target audience persona. Answering their queries helps demonstrate your company’s relevance, expertise, and value.
You may even leverage ‘LinkedIn Answers’ to ask questions that help you draw out the ideal prospects. Consider asking the following:
- Asking their pain points;
- Questing their frustrations;
- Asking them what’s holding them back from pursuing your solution.
Start fostering deep relationships with your ideal customers by engaging with LinkedIn members who reply to your questions.
Using Advanced Search Options to Find Prospects
LinkedIn’s advanced search options enable you to search specific members for one or criteria. Start leveraging the platform’s ‘Advanced Search’ feature by defining what a high-quality lead means for your company:
- Who is your company’s target audience?
- What’s their job title? And their seniority level?
- How big is their company?
- What is their specific industry?
Publishing Original Content to Your Profile
Attract prospects and customers to your profile by updating it with attention-grabbing, fresh, and informative content.
If you’re unsure which topics you should cover, determine which questions your prospects typically ask. Next, write answers in a helpful and informative way to establish brand authority.
What are the Steps of LinkedIn Prospecting?
When you’re prospecting your LinkedIn contacts, there are a number of steps you can take to get a better response:
We’ll be showing you how you can use these strategies on LinkedIn to get the best results.
Improve Your LinkedIn profile
When you’re prospecting, a lot of the recipients of your messages will visit your profile. This is how they will learn more about you.
This means that it’s essential your profile is optimized. It needs to stand out and impress if you want strong LinkedIn prospect reviews.
Here’s how you can do this:
Your headline is the first thing most people will read. So, if you want to create a good first impression, you need to make sure it’s well crafted. It needs to be clear and concise. Try and show exactly what you can offer and who you can help.
Your summary should be like a mini USP (unique selling proposition). You should aim to write a few paragraphs of key information about what you offer. Be specific – mention companies or people you’ve worked for and results you’ve delivered for them. Also, try and include keywords, as this will make your profile more searchable.
You should always include a profile picture on your LinkedIn profile. This will greatly increase the chances of getting a positive response – if they can see you’re a real person, it makes you seem more approachable and they’re more likely to engage with you. For the best results, the photo should be a high-quality, professional looking headshot. + add a background image to your LinkedIn profile.
Automate Your LinkedIn Prospecting
Automating your LinkedIn prospecting can save time. It also allows you to reach out to more prospects, increasing your end results.
To do this, you will need Octopus CRM LinkedIn automation tool and LinkedIn Sales Navigator LinkedIn prospecting tool. Then, follow our easy-to-use strategy for top results!
Here’s our recommended strategy:
To find your ideal prospects, go to search in Sales Navigator and filter by your target audience. You can select up to 2500 LinkedIn users.
- Transfer to Octopus CRM
Next, transfer these to Octopus using the “Connect” tab on your Chrome extension.
- Send connection requests
After transferring your prospects to Octopus, you can start sending connection requests. To do this, open the campaign in Octopus CRM, input your note, and hit send. You can safely send up to 100 connection requests per day using this method.
Related article: how to send connection requests by email with Octopus (and bypass weekly invite limit!)
- Send messages to prospects
Once your connection requests are accepted, you can send an automated message to connect on LinkedIn to follow up your leads.
On Octopus, you can create personalized sales funnels to do this.
We would recommend the following:
Send thank you message > send sales message > send message if no response > send final message if no response.
Continue with this process until you’re out of leads. This is a highly effective strategy – for more information, take a look at our professional prospecting systems reviews.
But, to maximize results, you can do the following:
- Use personalization as much as you can in messages – always change variables like first and last name, company, and position;
- A/B test your campaigns, for example, you could try using different criteria in your searches or use different messaging templates;
- Auto endorse and auto view prospects after they accept your connection requests. This will warm them up before sending a message;
- Keep an eye on your analytics to see what’s working and what isn’t.
Send InMail to the Highest Value Prospects
LinkedIn has an internal email system – InMail. This tool lets you send direct prospecting messages to any LinkedIn user. It doesn’t require any introductions and, as you can image, it’s an absolute goldmine for prospecting on LinkedIn. All you need is a Premium LinkedIn account.
However, depending on your subscription level, you only get a limited number of InMail credits each month, so they need to be used strategically. How can you do this? To get the most of your credits, we recommend only sending InMail messages to your highest value prospects.
Once you’ve found high value prospects, make sure your messages are highly personalized and interesting. This will increase your chances of getting a response!
Things to Not do When Prospecting on LinkedIn
Here are some no-no of prospecting on LinkedIn:
Not Being Genuine
When it comes to captivating your ideal audience, your goal should be generating qualified leads and converting them into loyal customers.
Using overused and dull outreach templates in your connection requests and follow-ups is a sure way of losing potential clients. On the other hand, sending a personalized and catchy follow-up message helps foster deep connections.
Here’s a quick guide to features the perfect pitch includes:
- Genuine – Read about your prospect and show that you care about connecting with them;
- Personalized – Discuss something personal and offer insight or appreciate it;
- Valuable – Consider talking about something helpful you can provide your reader with.
Not Being Personalized
LinkedIn’s automation tools significantly decrease your brand’s authenticity and trust. Essentially, marketers should create personalized requests and follow-up messages.
Leverage LinkedIn’s automation tool to extract the following info:
- First Name;
- Last Name;
- Job Title;
- Company Name;
- Location.
Next, send your new connection a personalized message that includes:
- Sending free yet relevant PDF, article, or e-book;
- Mentioning their geographic location.
Not Creating Content
An excellent way of contacting new prospects is by creating relatable and valuable content. It’s also an effective way of establishing brand authority within your industry and sub-niche.
LinkedIn enables you to share the following forms of content:
- Long-form content;
- Industry-adjacent content;
- Videos and presentations;
- Comments in LinkedIn groups and answers.
Not Optimizing Your Profile
First impressions are integral for attracting qualified leads. So, you must curate a profile page that provides your target audience with the necessary information and benefits.
Focus on posting relevant articles, adding a professional profile and banner photo, writing an attention-grabbing tagline, and a captivating profile bio.
Conclusion
When using LinkedIn for sales prospecting, it’s important to have an efficient strategy to maximize results, get more leads, and make more sales.
By following these tips, you can find your ideal customers and connect with them in the right way. LinkedIn is about building new professional relationships. By following our advice, you can do that.