Using LinkedIn for sales? Well, we are here to guide you on the basic outreach process to ensure you engage with potential prospects and have a higher successful conversion rate.
The LinkedIn outreach campaign is one of the most important parts of a social selling plan for any salesperson. However, it may be confusing for someone new to social selling to figure out how to best utilize the platform to build their outreach. LinkedIn outreach strategy is concerned with finding and reaching out to new prospects on LinkedIn who may have an interest in your products or services. In the most basic of explanations, the process is:
Find prospects. Introduce yourself and your brand. Pitch your product to the prospects.
It may sound simple but, there are many nuances that one needs to be aware of to make good decisions and execute a successful outreach strategy. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s dive right into understanding the LinkedIn outreach process on the most effective B2B communication platform.
Step-By-Step Guide on LinkedIn Outreach
LinkedIn outreach deals with multiple stages that have to be followed in order to have the most impact. Any salesperson before starting their outreach campaign needs to be aware of who their target audience is. This information makes the whole process smoother and more aligned. Through a targeted advanced search on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can directly engage with your target audience. Knowing the search parameters, you can search for keywords to find relevant profiles and actively start your outreach.
Step 1: Examine Prospects’ Profiles
It is a given to research on your prospect before you go on to try to connect with them. The profiles give you insights about who the prospect is and their interests.
Examining the profile is important because it enables you to determine if you are connecting to a quality prospect or not. The titles, place of employment, and geographic location of the prospect should be paid special attention to see if they match your qualifications. It also gives you information about the prospect that you can use to personalize the message that you send to them when connecting with them in the future. The information on their LinkedIn profiles is a gateway to understanding their interests and seeing how they are relevant to your product or service.
Tip: Their profile activity and skills/experiences section can help you understand the pain points of the prospect and build a lucrative business relationship with them.
Step 2: Follow Prospects to Get Noticed
You need to familiarize the prospect with you and the brand you represent. The best way to do that is by following them and interacting with their content, popping up in their notifications. In the beginning, you should follow them and build a rapport before officially sending a connection request. This helps in having a successful outreach because the prospect is familiar with you.
Tip: By following a prospect you can get a clear idea of their activities and have their posts come on your feed whenever they post. Making it easier for you to engage with them!
Step 3: Engage With the Prospects
Engagement is a great strategy that is used widely in business processes to familiarize oneself with the client or customer.
When your prospects post on their profiles, engage with the content by liking the posts and commenting on them. Commenting and liking helps for better reach. The comments do not always have to be a thoughtful discussion or analysis of the information they share but can be a simple ‘Thank you’ as well. Congratulating them on their achievements or promotions increases the quality of the connection you build with the prospects.
Tip: Using phrases like ‘Nice’, ‘Thanks for sharing’, ‘Good read’, and ‘Congratulations!’ can get you noticed.
Step 4: Connect With Your Target Prospects
Sending a connection request is a crucial part of the LinkedIn outreach campaign. As it determines the success of the outreach strategy, you need to track and measure the success of your connection requests. Keeping track can help you identify what works and what you need to get rid of as soon as possible.
By doing the preliminary engagement, you create multiple touch points through which the prospect becomes familiar with your name, headline and headshot. This improves connection acceptance rates, which means you will have more leads and ultimately more sales. Another thing to keep in mind when working on connection-building is to personalize your connection request message. This brings forth a quality connection and increases chances of the prospect buying from you in the future.
Tip: Customizing the message before sending the connection request helps the prospect see the human side of you.
Step 5: Endorse Your Prospects and Get Endorsed for Building Credibility
Endorsements are a great plus for your LinkedIn profile. People give value to the endorsements present on someone’s profile when considering connecting with them. It gives credibility to your whole profile and builds trust in your product or services.
To build a mutually beneficial business relationship with your prospects and clients, you can endorse them. On the other hand, you can ask for clients, past customers, and partners etc. who have worked with you to endorse you to build trust in your product and services. By endorsing your clients, you ensure that you have a quality relationship with them. These endorsements can help you tap into potentially new prospects as well!
Tip: LinkedIn members like to endorse other LinkedIn members.
Step 6: Message Your Prospects to Keep the Conversation Going
Messages are a way to reconnect with prospects that you are connected with and to remind them that you are there and you care about their opinions and problems. But one thing that salespeople fail to take into account is how much the personalization of the message matters. There are many who send messages on LinkedIn to their prospects just for the sake of sending a message, with no feelings and no quality content. This type of boring and dry approach is bound to bring you no results.
Want to get ahead of the competition? Focusing on improving your messages by adding personality and personalization in your outreach strategies is the way to go. Tell the customer in an impressive language and communication style, how you can help them and how your product/service can add value to their life.
Tip: Using an outreach automation tool to message prospects helps you save time while also effectively engaging them.
Conclusion
Your LinkedIn outreach strategy and campaign plays a great role in helping you find and connect with potential prospects. By building a lucrative business relationship with the prospects, you can increase your chances of generating quality leads which ultimately produce more sales. By following this 5-step plan you are sure to get ahead of your competition and elevate your LinkedIn outreach strategies.
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