LinkedIn is a real gold mine of potential customers for Business Developers. Prospecting on this network is one of the foundations of their commercial strategy.
LinkedIn is the first professional social network in the world, with more than 756 million people including nearly 22 million registered French people. 840,000 businesses are also listed there. All the Akimbers of the Akimbo Bootcamp are also present on it.
Hence the crucial importance of knowing how to use it intelligently to maximize opportunities and expand your customer base.
This is why prospecting on Linkedin takes up a large part of the training time at Akimbo.
Find qualified and relevant prospects
Approximately 80% of Leads - qualified prospects - in B2B come from LinkedIn, by relating this figure to all social networks.
Venturing onto a network with millions of people who connect with each other every day is the certainty of finding its first or next customers. But, you still need to be able to find them and determine if they correspond to your ideal prospect.
First step, determine what sound is Buyer Persona with as little uncertainty as possible. A Business Developer who always has the Pareto's law in the lead (80% of its results are Derivatives by 20% of its efforts), it will target prospects who can really benefit from its solution. Buyer Persona example: ETiS' HRDs in the transport and logistics sector.
Once this step is completed, one of the interesting tools to use to retrieve commercial data is LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It is a paid but very useful Linkedin option. The best techniques associated with this tool are of course shown on our Business Developer courses. It is a tool that allows:
- to search for people using filters that are more advanced than those offered by default. For example, depending on the number of employees in the company, seniority, etc. We get a very high search “granularity” thanks to these filters;
- to create lists to keep up to date with the news of these prospects. Thus, you have access to a newsfeed of news from your prospects, to bounce back on them;
- to increase the usage limits associated with your account, whether with manual or automated use for fans of PhantomBuster, Lemlist, Salesloft or ProspectIn.
The aim is thus to extract relevant data using the tools mentioned above. A Business Developer will have to decide for himself (according to the depth of his market) how much time he invests in cleaning his data manually. Keep in mind that there are once again methods or tools to automate this process, which are also taught on our Business Developer courses.
In this way, quality takes precedence over quantity and we focus on a relevant sample of prospects.
During your research, you will certainly have the opportunity to come across a point or area of common interest. Do not hesitate to mention it to arouse the interest of your interlocutor. Maybe it will be The little extra that will make a difference.
💡 Are you probably wondering how to contact your prospects without having to go through the Linkedin interface? Today, nothing could be simpler, equip yourself with tools like Kaspr in order to find the emails and phone numbers of your prospects.
Personalize your exchanges and work on your copywriting
It is preferable to personalize your exchanges during your prospecting campaign on LinkedIn. Otherwise, a Business Developer will get an extremely low conversion rate. Hence the usefulness of doing research work beforehand that makes it possible to target your prospects with relevance.
Once a Business Developer finalizes their targeting work, it's time for writing: choosing the right words. The Copywriting, it's the art of manipulating words to convince readers to open your message.
What can you do to avoid coming across as a bad guy and have a gentle approach?
Customization is based always on data. There are several types of data including:
- Demographic data: name/first name, position held, email address, telephone number;
- Firmographic data: business sector of the company, products/services offered, workforce, turnover;
- Opportunity data: fund-raising, successes, company benefits;
- Intent data: participation in an event, areas of interest, activities related to social networks, etc.
This data is an integral part of a Business Developer's prospecting strategy.
Of course, care must be taken to use this data sparingly: so as not to arouse the attention of the interlocutor and let him think that our approach is individualized.
Therefore, prefer formulations such as “I am in contact with several companies in your sector that are facing: (problematic)or “I chat every day with (job titles) who are confronted with the problem of (problematic). Try to position yourself as an expert, who has already supported other customers.
Today, some automation tools allow the personalization of messages. Among them are Evaboot, Lemlist, ProspectIn and Octopus. In June 2021, LinkedIn unfortunately lowered the limit for requesting connections to 100 per week.
These tools make it possible to integrate customization variables. The best known are the variable name and surname. For information, these variables are at the heart of the LinkedIn strategies presented in our Business Developer courses.
Finally, stay concise and get attention right from the start. A Business Developer gets to the point, Air out his message by skipping lines and preferring Bullet Points. The opposite would discourage the reader from going any further.
To capture attention right from the start, engage the reader with a question related to their goals or by raising a specific problem they encounter. That will put you on his side.
As you will have understood, you must above all talk about him and not about you, without getting too involved in “flirting”.
In short, the messages that work are those that are personalized and adapted to the desired target. They persuade without assaulting and informing without overwhelming. To humanize as much as possible is to encourage the interlocutor to respond to you and not to pass for a robot that sends the same message to everyone.
Take care of the presentation of your LinkedIn profile
The more you prospect on the platform, the more you will realize that it is very formative. It is the best place to discover a certain field of possibilities. People who are not in your lead databases may have heard about you and will have the instinct to find out.
Hence the interest ofhave a perfectly optimized profile.
To do this, a few tips:
- Your profile photo should be professional where you can clearly see your smiling face;
- Add an audio message to introduce yourself - even if the function is initially used to show the pronunciation. of your first name;
- Use the description to present your company, its product and/or service as well as your contact details (email, telephone number, appointment link)
- Ask your customers to recommend you in order to reinforce your relevance and to give an overview of the customers you have served.
Stay in the minds of your prospects
When you approach a prospect, call them or send them an email, The timing may not be right.
If you feel that the prospect is relevant to the target for which your product/service is intended, be sure to stay in their mind. The need may not be current at the moment but will probably be later.
For this, as explained above, with LinkedIn Sales Navigator you can create lists of prospects. You will then be up to date with all their news!
Invoking interactions with your prospects and your network is an effective way: likes, comments,... to create your next ones Icebreakers.
Express interest in your prospects, It's receiving that same energy in return. This is the famous “giving and taking” that we emphasize in our Business Developers training courses.
