Are you trying to make more sales on LinkedIn?
If you are, you’re probably searching for effective techniques to do this.
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social media platform. You can use it to build a large network of high-value prospects, and to grow your business.
If this is something you want to do, here are our tips on how to use prospecting on LinkedIn successfully.
What is Sales Prospecting?
Prospecting refers to initiating, establishing, and developing a new business by seeking clients, potential customers, and buyers to boost sales.
Sales prospecting aims to curate a robust database of potential customers and communicate with them until they convert to revenue-generating customers.
Why is Sales Prospecting Important?
Sales prospecting enables you to pinpoint the ideal customers for your business. Thus, digital marketers must focus on identifying leads who match perfectly with your product/service and solving their pain points.
According to research, 7 out of 10 buyers prefer hearing from salespeople during the early stages of the buying process. Moreover, 82% of consumers accept a meeting when a seller contacts first.
Thus, sales prospecting enables you to connect with leads who better fit your product/services.
LinkedIn for Sales Prospecting
LinkedIn is a perfect social media platform for sales prospecting. Following are the most common methods of sales prospecting on LinkedIn.
Use search filters to locate your target audience.
- Cold outreach
- Social media selling campaigns
- Sending InMail messages
- Sending personalized connection requests
- Joining LinkedIn groups
- Engaging in meaningful comments
- LinkedIn outreach automation
LinkedIn is the most powerful platform for companies and businesses to sell their products, services, experiences or more.
LinkedIn search allows companies and businesses to locate their target audience through geographic location, making it easier to reach the targeted audience. Outreach is an essential element for businesses as it helps them expand their network and get the right audience. Many people often mess it up. However, if done right, companies can enjoy innumerable benefits. Some of these benefits are as follows:
- Highly relevant leads
- Improved social engagement
- Higher reach
- LinkedIn automation saves time
- Being able to brand yourself
To sum up, LinkedIn allows businesses to reach a wider audience and increase online visibility.
Sales Prospecting Techniques
Prospecting is undoubtedly the essential part of sales because a lot of time and energy goes into searching for the right audience. If businesses do their research thoroughly, they will spend less time locating their target audience and increasing their sales prospects.
Here, we have some effective sales prospecting techniques for businesses and companies.
Design an attractive profile
Since businesses actively use social media to boost their business, it is essential to create a profile that attracts an audience. Your profile must reflect your business values and principles. Moreover, the profile must highlight the objectives of your business from the beginning. It helps the audience to understand your business.
Your professional profile indicates your business role and presents your products resulting in increased sales. In addition, brands can use background photos, profile pictures, and summaries to convey their message.
Engage in the proper communication
LinkedIn offers multiple ways of communication methods for sales prospecting. Businesses can use InMail or LinkedIn messages to send meaningful messages to their clients and customers. Ordinary messages are a great way to start a meaningful conversation. Moreover, emails received by marketers from LinkedIn are best to promote products and services.
Build a solid personal brand
Building a solid brand shows your company as an active participant. It leads to more inquiries and responses from prospects. In an age where sales prospects are essential for the buying process, your brand needs to top the online market to retain potential buyers and boost lead generation.
Businesses need consistent attention because an unattended online presence can lead to severe consequences.
Create an enjoyable buying experience
Brands must enhance their buying experiences to attract potential customers in revisiting their web pages for future shopping. Every brand struggles to attract customers and retain them. Enhancing buying experiences for customers will help them create a memory that the customers would recall every time they make a purchase. Improving customers’ shopping experience will improve lead generation- as they would spread the word about your brand, resulting in improved sales.
Look for Qualified Leads
Reaching out to the target audience is challenging. However, if brands go thorough research, they can easily reach their target audience without spending additional time locating them. Since LinkedIn is full of professionals, reaching them is more manageable if done correctly. LinkedIn allows brands to find the right audience. To do that, they need to search for them to attract potential leads.
How It Affects Your Company’s Sales Prospecting Techniques?
LinkedIn highlights sales organizations’ challenges and adapts sales prospecting techniques to enhance their sales. Here we have some methods that can help companies in improving sales prospecting.
- Create a strong brand
- Join LinkedIn groups
- Be an active participant
- Engage in conversations
- Ask insightful questions
- Connect with prospects to understand LinkedIn activity
- Share interesting industry publication
- Build trusted relationships
- Introduce your brand to referrals
- Follow news about the brands
- Expand your network
The Secret to Successful LinkedIn Prospecting
When people think about prospecting, they often think about cold outreach – basically, sending as many generic messages as possible and hoping for some responses.
This is playing a numbers game. If you send enough messages, chances are, eventually you’ll get a few responses.
But, as a long-term strategy, this isn’t a great way of doing things.
Why?
Simply, it doesn’t generate enough leads to have a strong impact on your business. And the leads you do get will be unlikely to buy from you.
So, how can you generate more high-quality leads and turn them into conversions?
Let’s take a look!
Related article: how to find and connect with future customers on LinkedIn.
What are 6 Aspects of Persuasion?
The method we’re going to look at comes from Dr. Robert Cialdini’s system, called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.
In his book, he shares six simple steps you can take that use the art of persuasion to generate more leads and get more sales.
According to Dr. Cialdini, there are six aspects in the art of persuasion:
- Scarcity
A lot of online sellers use scarcity as a way to make a product more appealing and make more sales. They do this by putting time limits on their deals or offers – this creates FOMO (fear of missing out) and often results in more impulse purchases.
On LinkedIn, you can use this to your advantage by using scarcity to get more leads.
One way you can do this by offering a limited time resource when prospecting. This could be a report, webinar, white paper, or any other content of resources.
- Consistency
People are much more likely to invest money or time in someone if they think they’re reliable, and have a good reputation. Being consistent means you’re more likely to earn someone’s trust.
On LinkedIn, you can achieve this in your prospecting by showing you care about them and are a knowledgeable figure in your industry.
Some of the ways you can do this include sharing regular, thoughtfully created content and status updates, publishing articles on Pulse, communicating with your prospects regularly, and always replying to messages and comments.
- Reciprocity
When people see you giving to others without expecting anything in return, this creates a genuine, long-lasting positive impression.
On LinkedIn, you can do this by sharing valuable information, or through praise. When you make other people feel good, they’re more likely to accept your connection request and reply to your messages.
There are lots of ways you can do this. For instance, you could try sharing a piece of content you think someone would find helpful and would personally benefit them.
- Authority
Establishing yourself as an authority in your niche is an amazing way to attract more high-quality clients.
You can build your authority by creating high-value, quality content that’s interesting and helpful for your ideal client. Your content should show you’re an expert.
This will also make people more likely to want to connect with you. Your content will perform better. you will generate more leads, and you will increase engagement.
- Social proof
People will often base their decisions on social proof. It’s a psychological reflex many of us have – if we’re not sure about something, we will look at the opinions of our peers before making a decision. We might look at a review before watching a movie, for example.
When prospecting with LinkedIn, this is a very effective technique, as people can see who else has connected with you. If you have similar connections, or have lots of endorsements, they might be more likely to accept your invitation.
- Liking
It’s a well-known fact that people are more likely to buy from people they like and trust. This will be a key factor in their decision to work with you or buy from you.
You can be more likeable to prospects on LinkedIn by being authentic and transparent. It’s important to be clear about who you are and what you stand for.
It’s also essential to make people feel good and help them with their problems – especially if they are your ideal clients. This will help you achieve successful prospecting.
Additional Tips on LinkedIn Prospecting
Are you looking for more advice on successful prospecting? To help you further, here are some additional tips to How to use LinkedIn for sales:
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Use automation wisely
If you want to maximize results, it’s important to use automation in the right way. Sending out lots of generic messages is boring and unlikely to impress your prospects.
Octopus CRM is one of the best prospecting tools for LinkedIn for this. It lets you send customized messages in bulk, saving you time whilst maintaining a more personal approach.
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Be persistent (but not desperate!)
When finding prospective sales, it’s important to adopt a confident manner and be persistent. A lot of people won’t be persuaded the first time you talk to them.
However, don’t resort to begging or arguing with potential clients. Instead, send a persuasive message then allow some time before trying again. They might need some time to think.
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Make logical arguments
Lastly, if you want to persuade someone, using highly logical arguments is a great way to do it. It means that, rather than feeling pressured or bullied into something, then genuinely believe it’s a good choice for them.
If someone is unsure about why they should work with you or buy your product/service, explain why it’s in their interests, how it can help them, and the benefits it has.
Conclusion
LinkedIn is a great platform for B2B marketing. But, there’s lots of competition. This means, if you want to get more prospecting sales, you need to find effective techniques.
The tips we’ve shared will help give you the edge. By following them, you can use persuasion to get more leads and make more sales.