Fundamentals of LinkedIn Sales Prospecting: Here Are Some Tips And Techniques
LinkedIn is a powerful tool for networking and finding a job. It’s also a great way to prospect for sales. Here are some basics for prospecting with LinkedIn:
1. Use LinkedIn to stay connected with people you know
LinkedIn is a social network, so stay connected with people you know. You can connect with people you know from your previous jobs, schools, and social circles.
2. Leverage LinkedIn’s search features
One of the great things about LinkedIn is that you can search for people by their name, title, company, or location. This is a great way to find people who are likely to be interested in what you have to say.
3. Use LinkedIn’s message boards
LinkedIn message boards are a great way to start a conversation with someone. You can post a message asking if they’d be interested in talking or exchanging ideas.
4. Use LinkedIn’s groups
LinkedIn groups are a great way to connect with people who share your interests. You can find groups related to your job, industry, or company.
5. Use LinkedIn’s lead generation tools
LinkedIn has several lead-generation tools that you can use to reach out to potential customers. You can use LinkedIn’s email merge feature to create a customized email message that you can send to your target audience. You can also use LinkedIn’s contact form to reach potential customers.
6. Use LinkedIn’s messaging features
You can use LinkedIn’s messaging features to keep in touch with your target audience. You can send them messages to ask if they’d be interested in talking or exchanging ideas.
7. Use LinkedIn’s video features
LinkedIn has a great video feature that you can use to create a video message that you can send to your target audience. You can use LinkedIn’s video editor to create a custom message you can send to your target audience.
8. Use LinkedIn’s live chat features
LinkedIn has live chat features that you can use to connect with your target audience. You can use live chat to ask them questions and get their feedback.
9. Use LinkedIn’s blog features
You can use LinkedIn’s blog features to share your ideas and experiences with your target audience. You can also use LinkedIn’s blog features to connect with other bloggers interested in what you say.
10. Use LinkedIn’s event features
You can use LinkedIn’s event features to connect with potential customers interested in what you have to say. You can use LinkedIn’s event features to find upcoming events related to your target audience.
Like other social networks, LinkedIn has this unique feature valuable for sales and marketing teams: a user can select the audience to target.
But how to connect and engage with the right audience?
Connecting with prospects on LinkedIn is like a cocktail party — you can’t just say ‘Hi’ to someone and start a conversation with a sales pitch. It would be best if you kept things slow and smooth and built trust before you could talk about your product or services.
However, prospecting on LinkedIn is more challenging than it seems. It’s because there are more than 870 million active users, and finding the right ones is challenging. You can’t spend hundreds of hours finding the right prospects.
Before we dig out how to find the best prospects, it’s important to understand sales prospecting.
What is sales prospecting?
Sales prospecting is searching through a mountain of millions of profiles to sift out the right prospects who are more likely to convert into customers. Like mining gold, finding the right prospects might take a lot of time. Some people spend a lot of time finding prospects manually, and many B2B marketers, sales professionals, and other businesses also use LinkedIn automation to speed up their prospecting efforts.
In the past, marketers relied on cold calling for sales prospecting. However, those days are over now.
In the modern digital landscape, where B2B buyers have thousands of options to buy from, the rules of sales prospecting have changed.
Why?
“The modern sales process has changed as The Age of the Seller has Changed into The Age of the Seller.” -Forbes.
Sales Prospects Tips & Techniques
Here is the list of proven sales prospecting techniques and approaches:
1. Build a Solid Profile
Building a strong personal brand means giving your brand an identity that people start trusting you right away. When you have built a strong profile, it will lead to more queries as well as responses from prospects.
In an age where your customers can find out about your products or services, you can’t afford to get disqualified or rejected by prospects just because your profile wasn’t strong enough to attract them.
Your connection is wasted if you don’t have relevant information or content on your profile, and your prospects see nothing of relevance.
2. Connect and engage meaningfully
Networking is fundamental to sale prospecting. In today’s marketing landscape, networking is essential to finding the right prospects and adding more value to the buying process.
Remember: People like to buy from people they know, like, and trust. And there is no easier way to get liked, trusted, or build a relationship than having a mutual connection with the right prospects.
You can easily find and connect with the right prospects using safe automation tools like LinkedCamp. If you want to expand your network or engage with a key connection, such tools can warm up your path.
3. Don’t forget personalization
Today, prospects expect highly personalized treatment from sales reps. As many sellers might send the same templated messages with sales pitches, you can stand out by giving them a personalized experience.
The best way to capture the attention of the prospects is by sending them messages or posting content they want to read.
Don’t just throw sales-y pitches in every prospect’s inbox. Give your prospects a compelling reason to connect and build relationships with you. You have only one chance to make an impression, so do your homework first.
Research and collect useful insights about the prospects. One easy way to do that is using the best LinkedIn automation tools. These tools will collect all the useful information related to the niche-specific prospects.
4. Use cloud-based LinkedIn automation
As mentioned earlier, many businesses use advanced LinkedIn automation tools to speed up their sales prospecting efforts. These tools help you to find, engage, connect, and send personalized messages on auto-pilot, saving you a lot of time and energy.
If you’re thinking of automating your LinkedIn, know that many unsafe bots, chrome extensions, and browser tools can block your account.
Using cloud based LinkedIn automation tools is the best way to do safe prospecting without getting your account blocked. These tools run from the web, not from the browsers, and provide IP addresses that are difficult to get detected by LinkedIn.
Conclusion
There you go, just four simple practices to do successful prospecting.
Once you have mastered these practices, you can easily establish a strategic foundation for future outbound sales. With this strategy, you can target only the right prospects and shorten your time on all the sales prospecting and lead generation efforts.