9 Ways To Get the Most Out of LinkedIn B2B Prospecting Strategies

Did you know LinkedIn is the top social media platform used for social selling?

With so much business coming from LinkedIn B2B prospecting, it’s immediately easy to see why you should be involved, but the benefits don’t end there. Luckily, we’re here to take you through everything you need to know.

Read on to learn nine ways to get the most out of your LinkedIn B2B prospecting.

1. Generate Your Ideal Customer Profile

You don’t want to be caught up in the trouble of contacting the wrong person. This is why creating an ideal customer persona is so important. Also, if you don’t have a specific goal you’re going after, you’re going to end up failing. 

Take some time to sit down and think about what your dream customer looks like. This should be as specific as possible, too. Here are a few ideas to help you:

• Job title
• Industry
• Company revenue
• Their business goals
• Potential pain points or difficulties
• Hobbies
• How established is the company?

The more specific you can get with this step, the better. This is going to give you a clear goal to work towards when it comes to prospecting on LinkedIn.

2. Leverage Social Selling

When you contact prospects over multiple social channels, you give yourself a greater chance of receiving more responses. That’s why making use of leveraging your social channels is essential.

When it comes to B2B prospects, LinkedIn is a hotbed of social networking for professionals. If you use LinkedIn Sales Navigator and social selling index together, you can unlock several insights about your prospecting performance and potential improvements.

The place to be careful on social media, however, is ensuring you’re reaching the right audience. It’s a great tool to help build your reputation and easily display the services that you provide, but it can be tricky to gain the following you want if you’re not creating the proper content.

3. Target Active Users

The most effective way to leverage the LinkedIn Sales Navigator for prospecting is by targeting active users. When you do this, you’re ensuring that they’re ready to enter the buying cycle, or are at least open to having a conversation about it and your services.

A great way to get an idea of their communication style is by taking a look at their headline, summary, and profile. It can give you an idea of how to build your opening message during that initial contact.

It’s smart not to prospect people who haven’t been active in the last 30 days. Also, taking a look at your company‘s LinkedIn page, or sharing certain experiences can let you know who is interested in your business. The more you target potential prospects that have something in common with you, the easier it’s going to be for you to build a solid client base.

4. Join Target Groups

Joining groups is similar to taking advantage of social selling. It gives you access to a larger audience, and it’s going to allow you an easier time targeting potential prospects throughout your search.

Your fellow group members are involved in the same community as you, so you know they’ll be more interested in what you have to offer them. As you become more involved in this community, you might even be able to make one of your own.

You can even conduct advanced sales prospect searches based on your targeted keywords. Using other things like company functions, seniority, and additional filters can also help. Once you’ve exhausted all of your avenues and found a few potential prospects, start conversations with them.

It’s important to foster these relationships, and also to begin new ones, by going back into the same group and interacting with the community at large. The more active you are in these groups, the easier it’s going to be to find prospects as you find success.

5. Maintain Your Relationships

LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes building and maintaining relationships with your customers a lot easier. It can help narrow down your target audience with advanced filters, meaning you’ll have immediate access to sales leads recommendations and updates with prospects.

This process also makes it a lot easier for them to follow up with you and vice versa. Maintaining relationships with your prospects is important to the well-being of your company and the overall quality of your prospects.

6. Make Use of Webinars

Webinars are a quick and easy way not only to educate large audiences but also to find potential prospects along the way. Especially effective when attendants are located in different cities or countries, they also provide businesses with a key tool for business growth and brand recognition boosts that they might not find locally.

Hosting a webinar is going to allow you to engage with customers and prospects on a large scale. It also provides a way for businesses of any size to be themselves and build a true connection with an audience of their own.

You might find that several webinars geared toward a specific niche take a bit of time in research to set up, but the advantages outweigh the disadvantages in the end.

7. Ask Questions to Prequalify Your Leads

After the initial contact, it’s smart to pre-qualify your leads by asking a few easy questions. This can help reduce the number of unqualified leads you have, and it’s going to keep your prospects relevant to you.

Here are a few examples of good questions:

• How relevant are our services to your industry or business?
• Are you interested in purchasing our products or services?
• Are you in contact with any of our competitors?

You can also ask about potential obstacles that lie in the way of them accomplishing their objectives, or about the people who have a role in the outcome of their objectives. Getting a better sense of these ideas is going to help you both figure out what the other is looking to achieve from the collaboration.

Pre-qualifying your leads is a great way to save time and money in the long run.

8. Follow Through With Your Follow-Ups

Remember you’re unlikely to receive a positive response to your pitch on the first try. In the vast majority of situations, you’re likely to receive no answer at all on the first try, but that’s where following up comes into play.

It’s easy to follow up with an email to make sure you’re completely prepared for your next talk when they’re ready to make their move. Developing a follow-up plan for these situations is an easy way to customize your company’s process.  There are plenty of templates available online to help make your approach more consistent and find better results.

9. Invest in the Proper Automation Tools

When you invest in the proper automation tools, you make your sales representative’s job a lot easier. While what they do is already time-consuming, it’s also important to consider the fact that everyone who shows an interest in purchasing your product isn’t necessarily going to do so.

They might be waiting for the right moment or looking for a cheaper alternative, but that shouldn’t stop your sales process or waste any more of your reps’ time. Automation is the perfect way to combat this problem. In some scenarios, it’s perfect for improving the overall effectiveness and impact of your sales cycle.

Where These Tools Come in Handy

The right tools are going to help you or your team with doing things like:

• Sending more invites
• Automating follow-ups
• Creating groups or events
• Staying up-to-date with responses
• Team management

With Salesflow, we make all this possible and more. Our tools even allow you to calculate your return on investment so you can see how much you’re able to earn with LinkedIn automation.

Remember, automation tools are not only going to improve the quality of life your team has at work, but it’s also going to help push your sales levels to new heights. When the process is autonomous, things become a lot easier for everyone.

What Does LinkedIn B2B Prospecting Have in Store for You?

Now that we’ve gone over a few of the best benefits of LinkedIn B2B Prospecting, are you ready to find out what it may have in store for you? Whether you use a few of these tips or all of them, they’re all meant to keep the same goal in mind — helping your business gain new leads.

If you want to consult the professionals before you start the process, though, we’re here to help. Contact us for a free demo today to get started.