What are you waiting for if you haven’t taken your business strategy to the next level by heading to Linkedin? Today, you’ll find around 800 million users across 200 countries worldwide. It’s the ultimate location for LinkedIn prospecting. You might wonder what that is exactly and why it’s powerful. 

That’s why we’ve put together this ultimate guide. Read on to learn how to build your business to business prospects on LinkedIn today successfully! 

Why LinkedIn? 

It’s essential to understand why people use LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a way for businesses and professionals to connect. Whether that’s to bolster their career, find leads, and more. 

It’s not about offering them a sales pitch, but keeping this in mind as you reach out. Think about what you can offer them when you contact them. 

Each message that you send out needs to focus mainly on the prospect. The sales pitch should be a tiny snippet of this.

When you receive a connection request from someone, it’s a good idea to reach out and thank them for their connection. Keep it short at about 1-2 sentences max. Be sure to personalize it in order to stand out. 

Do Cold Messages Work?

Today, you’ll find that over 180 million workers in the United States have a LinkedIn account. To recruit over 38,000 skills, you’ll find 97,000 companies using the platform. This platform allows you to reach out to these corporations to build a B2B relationship. 

Optimize Your Profile

Before you begin to use a LinkedIn prospecting tool or perform your research, you’ll want to optimize your profile. First, make it clear what your business is about on your profile. 

Choose a banner or cover photo that represents your company. Banners and cover photos need to portray the brand and personality you want others to see about your business.

Choose a neutral and professional picture of you with a simple background. Ensure that the title of your profile matches what you do as well. You want people to understand what it is that your business does. 

Have Your Profile Lead To Conversions

When you have leads visit your page, you want them to have an opportunity to turn themselves into a customer. Have an option for them to go to your website. Good places for this include recent updates or your company’s description. 

Have a pitch in your company’s description. Then, invite prospects to join and speak to them directly in your content. 

State what you’ll offer them, whether that’s saving time or money. Once you provide a hook, they’re more likely to click and read more about you. 

Check Out the People Also Viewed Sidebar

As you’re performing LinkedIn lead generation, head to one of the profiles of a customer or prospect. To the right, there will be a people also viewed sidebar. This will display users similar to the current person you’re considering. 

Look at Your Competitors

In business, it’s not just about looking at what your competitors are doing business-wise, but whom they’re connecting with. For example, a little-known fact is reaching out to a competitor’s customers to sell your product. 

It’s much easier to head to leads who are familiar with your niche instead of starting over with someone new. Before you reach out, think about what you can say and why your offer is better. 

When you use LinkedIn B2B prospecting, you can look at other LinkedIn members’ networks. Sometimes, they might protect them, which makes them unsearchable. 

Head to the Alumni Search Tool

Head to the Alumni search tool to find new B2B prospects. It’s a great way to form connections with those you’ve attended school with. This way, it’s not a total cold lead when you reach out; you have that connection to bond over. 

Set Goals

To develop an effective plan, you’ll want to set goals and stick to them, whether that’s likes, comments, shares, or posting a certain amount per week. 

Consider sending out so many targeted invitations each day to increase your network. This is where the age-old saying comes in; it’s whom you know, not what you know. 

Map out what you’ll say to each connection. Then, separate them into cold and warm leads. You’ll want to have a message that you send to cold leads and a message that you send to warm leads. 

Consider different objections that they might have and keep those rebuttals handy. Have a notebook and think about common complaints that you hear and what you can say in return. Consider using LinkedIn outreach automation tools to speed up the process. 

Learn From Your Mistakes

First, if you don’t have social proof, others businesses are less likely to trust you. Whenever possible, place results, have client testimonials and use case studies. Case studies are powerful to show what you offer and that it’s effective. 

Avoid sending messages that are too long. Keep it short and to the point. Potential clients might be viewing your message on their cell phones and won’t be interested in scrolling through a long message. Stick to 1-3 sentences max. 

Lengthen the Conversation

Today, about 51% of those with a Bachelor’s degree or higher can be found on LinkedIn. In sales, it’s not about sending a message and giving up. Instead, it would help if you were persistent and sent out multiple messages to reach and increase interest. 

When you send out connection requests, send a personalized message, make sure that it’s not cookie-cutter. Then, in a few days, follow up with them.

This is crucial so that who you are is still fresh in their mind. Then a few days later, follow-up again. 

Use Search Alerts

Along with white label lead management software, you’ll want to create a search alert. This is useful when you can’t get past the gatekeeper and get to the right person. 

First, head to LinkedIn and pull up a company’s profile. Next, click the Jobs button.

From here, you can click job alert and have it on. In addition, you can choose to manage alerts from here.

This will let you know when new positions are filling up. So, for example, say you need to talk to the head of Marketing, you can save job postings for their Marketing Manager.

After a few weeks, the new hire should have information about their new position on their profile. Work on building rapport. Comment and like their posts. Once this is complete, you can reach out to them by email. 

Use Automation

Use automation management software whenever you can, but don’t overdo it. For example, you’ll still want to send out personalized messages whenever possible. 

LinkedIn automation tools could save you hours each day on repetitive tasks if you’re trying to manually send out invites that can take a large chunk of your day. But, of course, you’ll still be able to personalize messages and increase your open rate for LinkedIn mail. 

Understand Sales Prospecting Techniques 

First, create your professional brand. Then, make sure that your website and LinkedIn both show your brand’s identity and define it. 

For potential business leads, check out what they’re currently doing. Then, join groups on LinkedIn for discussions and growth opportunities. 

Share industry publications with your prospects by posting them on your page. Then, connect with these prospects to better understand them and what they care about. 

Don’t forget about building relationships through people that you already know. Have current connections introduce you to their leads. Remember that it’s about selling a solution, not only a product. 

Get To Know Each Lead

Before you reach out, it’s best to look at their profile, associations, and connections. You want to understand what makes them tick and what will benefit them.

Once you can turn your product into a solution to a pain point, they’ll be more interested in listening. You have an initial shot at making that first impression, so it’s essential to put your best foot forward. Within the first 3 seconds of meeting you, they can decide whether or not they want to do business with you. 

Be Smarter

Instead of working harder, it’s about being more competent in prospecting. This means you want to find the right people and keep track of those leads.

Maintain existing relationships. Keep track of different sales activities, prospects, and companies. 

Use Logical Arguments

Instead of making someone feel bullied into buying something, you want to use logical arguments to convince them that they want it. Explain to them why it’ll benefit them.

Let them know how it’ll help them in their day-to-day life. People want a solution to a problem. 

Be Persistent 

Be confident when you reach out to leads. If you don’t believe in yourself, they’ll have a hard time believing in you.

Never argue or beg them, however. Instead, before you try again, send a persuasive message that’ll give them time to think about it. 

Provide Updates

Post updates to keep your audience engaged. Think about your audience as you go to post updates. 

Whether that’s infographics, blog updates, and more, remember the end goal as you go to create your content.

You’ll want your posts to focus mainly on pain points instead of sales. Talk about different benefits for them (those in your target audience). 

Use Advanced Searches

When you’re in the header menu, click the search people icon and then the “advanced” option. Even if you don’t have an upgraded membership, you can still succeed with this search. 

You can search for a person by their company, location, past company, profile language, nonprofit interests, school, and industry. 

Once you have these results, then you can filter them further. You can look to see how the filters will change the results that appear. It’ll give you a better idea of what area or company to focus on more. 

Search Groups 

Check out different groups on LinkedIn to find leads. Once you join groups, be active in them. Then, when you’re busy, you’re more likely to nurture leads. 

Remember that group searches aren’t the same as a company or people searches. First, you’ll want to find a group that coincides with your target audience. 

LinkedIn will have groups depending on their activity level. Take a look at how active each group is before you join. Try to choose very active groups. 

As far as sizing, this will depend on your business and niche. Avoid larger groups since you might wind up getting lost in the mix. On the other hand, consider medium-sized groups since you don’t want quiet and small groups. 

You can also start groups! First, head to groups and click “Create a new group.” From here, you’ll add the details and information for this group.

Avoid focusing too much on sales. Instead, provide plenty of valuable content in your group. 

Exploring How To Be Successful at LinkedIn Prospecting

After exploring this guide, you should have a better idea of how to succeed at LinkedIn prospecting. Try out these different methods and remember to consider automating the process.

Are you tired of wasting hours trying to secure leads and wish there was a way to speed it up? We’re here to help! 

Our LinkedIn automation tool is created to help you close deals faster and expand your outreach. 6000+ users currently trust it!

If you’re ready to get started to save time and focus more on your business, then contact us today. We’ll go over the entire process, and you’ll be able to see the demo in action.