LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the world. In fact, there are over 700 million active users! If you were to conduct LinkedIn prospecting and find your next set of customers on the platform, you’d have access to a lot of potential. Most B2B marketers (89%) use Linkedin for lead generation and 62% state that it generates double the leads than their next best social channel.
If you’re reading this post, then you’re most likely interested in growing sales at your company. Linkedin is one of the biggest online business portals in the world. In fact, half of all B2B buyers use Linkedin to make purchase decisions. This means your future customers are on LinkedIn, evaluating, and buying products as we speak. This makes LinkedIn the perfect platform to find prospects for your business.
Grow your business with LinkedIn. We’ll walk you through the basics of B2B sales prospecting. Learning how to use LinkedIn can help you build a strong and enduring pipeline of leads. Let’s dive right in!
Why use Linkedin prospecting for sales lead generation
Linkedin is a social media platform that uses professional connections. It is an important platform to find more prospects and build your business relationships. You will also be able to access your prospect’s profiles data on the platform, which allows you to learn more about your prospects and more meaningfully direct your conversation towards your products.
Linkedin is definitely a great tool for any sales team. Platform offers the ability to search, filter and find potential prospects through their valuable network. It also offers a superb quality of leads. Combining both quality and volume of leads — Linkedin offers a great opportunity for sales teams to conduct prospecting.
In this paragraph, we are going to learn how you can use Linkedin as a sales prospecting tool. Throughout the article you’ll discover how useful Linkedin can be as a source of prospects, let’s dive into the process behind prospecting.
How to make sales prospecting on Linkedin easy
Find the right sales leads
In order to be a successful Linkedin salesperson you need to first find your customers on Linkedin. There are 4 ways you can do this to get started
1. Create All-star profile – stand out
So, how do you become an All-Star Profile on Linkedin? By adding as much details as possible into the relevant sections of your profile. You see, there’s a science behind getting the most out of your LinkedIn experience. That’s why “ All-Star ” users make way for others.
Help youself and stand out from your industry peers! Bring to life your profile and make it a “must view” on LinkedIn.
As per Linkedin, users with All-Star profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities through Linkedin Prospecting. If professionals like you use Linked In to search for people and companies, your profile will appear more often in searches — giving you more opportunities.
You get more visibility in the search results, thus increasing your chances of being viewed by more leads and connecting with those leads.
2. Search Prospect – Linkedin filters
You have to start building your network before you can start generating leads. To find people to connect with, you can search Linkedin users by their title, industry, past companies and more. This feature allows you to start contacting people immediately.
Search for professionals matching your criteria and send them a connection request. (To make this search actionable, you will need to connect to people you know on Linkedin and get their email address or a phone number.)
3. Share relatable content to the large network when prospecting on Linkedin
LinkedIn gives you a platform to share valuable content with your connections. The more popular your posts are (for example, the more shares and likes they get), the more credibility you have. This use of popularity as credibility enables you to reach out to more prospects with a recommendation from an industry leader.
“Once you’re credible enough, it makes it much easier to connect with your prospects on Linkedin. Use that credibility to secure a meeting with your ideal prospects.”
Social media marketing can be an opportunity for marketers to build thought leadership content around feature that are most important on their audience. Further, they can monitor what the audience is saying about competitors and emphasize any advantages to craft content that gives their company the upper hand.
If you are an avid LinkedIn user, know that your words could be valuable content for your brand. Engage with your audience in conversations about their problems and start crafting content that solves the problems they are facing.
4. Find individuals in targeted organizations
Targeting groups and organizations on Linkedin is the fastest way to conduct prospecting. If you want to target specific organizations within an industry vertical, search for their profile. There you’ll find options to view all employees.
Once you open the employees’ page — you’ll find the same filtering options, (title, name, etc.) which can be used to narrow down your search. This approach especially makes sense for account-based marketing or sales.
Similarly, you can join relevant private and public groups for Linkedin prospecting. Groups on Linkedin are communities of users who have shared interests or pain points. Groups can be searched on Linkedin, similar to professionals and organizations. Once you’ve joined these groups, you can participate in ongoing conversations around your expertise or start them yourself. Based on the engagement you generate from your content, you’ll be able to figure out users in the group who’re a great fit for your product, and connect with them individually.
So you have connected with them and you can leverage the large network to conduct your prospecting – let me show you how to engage with your prospects!
1. Engage and chat with new connections
Once you have connected with prospective leads, it is time to start a conversation. Focus on them during your outreach. The time you spend talking to your prospects to genuinely learn about their problems is key. This builds a connection, which ultimately turns leads into Genuity. It also allows you to position yourself and your product better. Eventually, you will have an opening when your conversation has naturally led to talking about your connection’s problems that your product can solve.
If you’re directly connected to your prospects, you can simply search for them and message them on Linkedin. You can also find their email addresses in their profile and start communicating with them directly.
2. Connect with your lead’s on different channels
Once you’ve connected with your prospect through Linkedin messaging, plan to connect with them through other channels as well.This has two implications: first, you canlearn more about your prospect through their content on different platforms.Second, liking, commenting on and sharing their posts on these channels will help you strengthen the relationship with your prospect and keep the conversation going.
3. Check if they share their email address
While LinkedIn allows you to connect with your prospects through InMail and Messages, it isn’t as versatile as email.For prospects you are already connected with, you can find their contact details (including email if you wish) on their profile.
4. Nurture new leads over emails
Once you’ve found your prospect’s email — you can enroll them in sales nurturing sequences. Using various platforms you can fully automate these emails.
The goal of nurturing is to gather more information on your prospects and direct them further down the sales funnel. So eventually, you can generate leads and prospects from Linkedin and have them buy from you.
Search, Connect and sell
Linkedin provides a tremendous opportunity for sales teams to find potential customers on the platform. Most of what you need is already well-formed, and the rest depends on the scalability and efficiency of your prospecting efforts. So, there is no reason to skip LinkedIn audiences. You can find your next bigticket customer on the platform.
With that being said, if you know of any tips and tricks on using LinkedIn for prospecting, let us know in the comments.If you liked this article, please share it with your LinkedIn contacts.