With over 600 million members worldwide, LinkedIn is one of the largest social networks. In fact, for businesses, it's probably the best social network. Marketing experts are increasingly using LinkedIn as their primary source of new leads and tangible revenue. Indeed, they cannot always wait for the marketing department to generate leads. In fact, for B2B businesses, LinkedIn is a tool that can make your prospecting faster, easier and more profitable.
Tip #1: Never Miss an Opportunity to Connect
The first thing we can say to a salesperson who is ready to take advantage of LinkedIn is to take a good look at their contacts. Contacts are like LinkedIn's currency. If your contacts are primarily family, friends, and former classmates, you have a lot of work to do.
Connections create new bonds. Your first-level contacts open up a wide range of second- and third-level connections. This is how you size your network. Enjoy this moment every time you meet someone (online or offline). Always request a connection on LinkedIn, do it while you are still “fresh” in the other person’s mind.
Tip #2: Discover a Better Way to Find Your Prospects
One of the main reasons we use LinkedIn is to find the leaders of the companies we are targeting. When working with multinationals, there may be many people involved in or influencing the purchase. But even for small business-to-business sales, you'll often need to influence multiple people.
You would be surprised how many things people put in their profile, they usually put what department they are in, what office they work in, and even what their projects are. With a little detective work, you can quickly get an idea of who the person you're talking to is, their personality (look at their recommendations), and what they've done before.
Tip #3: Never make a phone call again
Almost no one likes making phone calls. They are often a waste of time and make people feel like they are banging their heads against a brick wall. These days, there's no reason to make a completely cold call.
With LinkedIn, you can almost always know enough about a person to be able to make the call or deliver a sales pitch (if you're further along in the process) in a way that's more relevant to the person you're talking to. This is not digital harassment. Generally, people are always open with people who communicate about having seen their profile on LinkedIn.
When it comes to the profile of your target prospects, you should pay special attention to the changes they make to their profile and anything they post in a group. Also on LinkedIn, with a paid account, you can see the expanded profiles of all people (not just your contacts). This can give you even more useful information that you can use later for effective connection.
Tip #4: Go further with InMail
Ask anyone who works in sales, high-level decision makers are a tough group. This is of course no surprise when you think about it and realize that these are probably people who receive emails and calls absolutely every day and all the time. So here's what these people do to protect their time: they block unwanted calls, ignore most emails they receive, and have a barrier that keeps salespeople from approaching.
Although we try to do everything we can to contact managers through traditional channels, they are often too protected. And this is where “InMail” comes in to do its job.
InMail is LinkedIn's internal email system that allows you to email anyone without having them as a contact. Basically, InMail is a tool that ensures that the email you send will reach the inbox of the person you want to talk to. LinkedIn claims that with InMail you are 30 times more likely to get a response than with a phone call.
READ ALSO: B2B prospecting: Email vs LinkedIn, which channel is more effective?
Tip #5: Find a Smarter Search Method
LinkedIn has an impressive search infrastructure. With advanced search, you can find people by title, company, location, or keyword. And if you have a paid account, you can also search by company size or management level. By mixing filters intelligently, you can perform a thorough search and identify key people.
You can also save your search criteria and get a weekly report in the form of a list of new people who meet the criteria you are looking for. For example, you could save searching for a purchasing manager in the pharmaceutical industry, within a 50 meter radius in your city. And then, with this search saved, you will receive an email from LinkedIn every week with the names of new people who match your search criteria. I can't even mention how powerful this feature is.
Tip #6: Understand what’s going on at your prospect’s business
As any salesperson knows, change creates opportunity. People arrive, others leave, companies make important announcements, etc., any change can be a good reason to contact a company and offer your help.
LinkedIn makes it easy to discover these changes. You can follow any company that has a LinkedIn page. You will be able to see the changes they make directly on your update page. It's an easy way to stay informed and find new opportunities.
Tip #7: Use groups to make tracking easier
Like most people on LinkedIn, groups can also be an important source of new perspectives. Questions from group members can help you better understand their frustrations and needs. Knowing this information can be the perfect reason to contact a prospect.
Groups are also useful for:
- Giving you more information about what's happening at a prospect's company, seeing how active they are, if they're hiring, etc.
- They allow you to see more details about a lead individually, for example their full name. Obtaining the full name is reserved for first-level contacts (which shows the importance of tip #1).
- Joining a group allows you to make more connections and also gives you the opportunity to connect with them (this is one of the criteria you can select when sending connection requests)
Tip #8: Make your profile as attractive as your business
Remember, it's also important not to ignore the inbound part on LinkedIn. If interested, your prospects will invariably take a look at your profile. That's why it's important to make sure it's 100% complete and gives a professional impression of you and your business.
Be sure to include current links from your business website and other social media accounts. It's also important to get high-quality recommendations, especially from happy customers. These recommendations give visitors a better idea of who you are as a person.
Marketing experts have always been impressed by the fact that very few people know that you can see who has viewed your profile. Unless visitors have set their profile to anonymous, you can click the "Who viewed my profile" link and see the list of people who have visited it. Free accounts have a limit on the number of people who can be seen on the list and paid accounts give you the full list. Once you know this, it can become a compulsive activity.
For information, Magileads automates Linkedin commercial prospecting for all employees of the same company. There is no longer any need to install a plug-in and leave your computer on.
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