When clients hop on a consultation call with us, we often ask them if they have tried cold outreach on Linkedin before.
If they say yes, we will then ask if it’s working for them. Many times, these clients say, yes it is working for them, but they need a Linkedin outreach agency, like Salesbread to scale their efforts.
But what we have also noticed is that many clients have not tried Linkedin cold outreach as a strategy and that they have tried outbound methods like cold calling and cold email.
Often these companies are unsure if Linkedin outreach will be a good fit for their businesses, and whether or not it will bring in any high-quality leads.
We tell these clients that there is no point in paying an agency to test if Linkedin outreach will work for them or not.
(Because often many agencies are pricey and lock you into a contract, and if Linkedin doesn’t work, then you lose out on that money.)
So what do we tell them to do instead? We tell these potential customers how to do Linkedin outreach and to test it out themselves for a week. This will give them an indication if
A.) Linkedin outreach will work for their company
B.) If it’s worth hiring an outbound agency, like Salesbread to do Linkedin lead gen for them.
This article will share how you can test Linkedin outreach for more qualified leads in just 7 days.
(And if it works, but you need someone to scale your leads to 1 qualified lead per day, reach out to us for a free 15-minute consultation call.)
Step 1: Find 50 people on Linkedin that would be an ideal fit for your product/service.
You probably have an idea of who your ideal target audience is. But when it comes to finding the perfect 50 prospects to reach out to on Linkedin, you need to have a look at your data.
Who are your current buying customers? What do they all have in common? If you can find patterns, it will make it easier to know who to send LinkedIn messages to.
For example, if your last 6 happy clients were:
- Located in the USA
- Using the same CRM tool
- In a specific industry like wellness
- Businesses with more than 100 employees
You know which companies to go after.
These would be businesses located in America that use Hubspot, which are in the health and wellness industry and have more than 100 employees.
This buyer intent data, can help you build a list of 50 people who would most probably buy your product, why?
Because the last businesses who bought from you had these commonalities.
You can then either use Linkedin Sales Navigator or Crunchbase to filter this list.
See the example below:
You can then check the prospect out on Linkedin.
Do this for at least 50 prospects who you think would be a great fit for your company.
Step 2: Research each prospect to write personalized Linkedin outreach messages
Without personalization, your outreach campaigns won’t be successful. The reason is that all of us are so accustomed to spam, that when we even get the slightest hint of a spammy message, we ignore it.
But when you find something specific about the prospect, and incorporate that into your intro, the chances of them getting curious will be a lot higher.
In psychology, it’s called a pattern interrupt. This means that, when someone receives something unexpected, it breaks their usual reaction. (In the case of spammy sales messages, it’s ignoring the message.)
This is why personalization is key.
Linkedin even shares stats on how personalized cold outreach messages are more effective. Sending just one personalized message will increase your reply rates by at least 30%.
Here is an example:
For the sake of this article, I used the above Linkedin profile as an example.
If you wanted to connect with this person, you could send a connection request similar to the one below:
“Cavan, congrats on Healthie’s Series A funding. Would love to connect with you on Linkedin.”
Step 3: Follow-up
Once a prospect accepts your connection request, you can then send a follow-up message.
At this point, you would like to tell them that you would like to set up a call to learn how they are solving a particular pain point in their business (that you happen to solve, but don’t share your solution in this message.)
Here is a message template that you can adapt for your own “7-day lead generation trial”:
“Michaela, I would like to connect with you outside of Linkedin.
Curious to hear how you are solving XYZ at the moment, given your specific circumstance. When’s a good time to connect during the next week?
Ps: (Add some background about what you do, for transparency.)
I’m especially interested in this right now because our company solves (the prospect’s pain point) by using (insert ONE unique benefit that your company can do to help the prospect.)
Some notes on the follow-up
- It’s important to ask about the prospect’s pain point.
- Do not sell in your messages.
- Keep your messages brief
- Mention only 1 benefit at a time
- Always add a PS that discusses briefly what you do for background and transparency; This also shows the prospect what’s coming. (Ie: A sales meeting.)
- Share a benefit that not many people know that your company offers; Only hint at it.
This is very important:
You want to share context about what you do so that you’re not wasting your time talking to a prospect who might not be interested in what you have to say. The prospect knows what’s around the corner. You are being transparent.
HOWEVER: It is very important that you do not launch into a lengthy sales pitch, because you will most probably frighten them off.
Share just enough background so that their curiosity is piqued because you just hinted at something that they didn’t know was available.
Example:
“I’m especially interested in this because I know many manufacturing companies are tired of investing tens of thousands of dollars on creating infrastructure for 3D printing. We have been working on ways to drop the costs of 3D printing productions by 10X using nanotechnology.”
(NOTE: This is where Salesbread comes in to make your life potentially simpler and better, by building ultra-refined prospecting lists, researching prospects, writing personalized messages, and asking for meetings.)
And this is how you end your Linkedin cold messaging. In this way, the prospect knows what’s around the corner, you’re being open with them. And secondly, if they aren’t interested then you won’t have anyone wasting your time with a call because they know what the meeting is about.
Hopefully, your benefit is compelling enough to pull them into a booked sales call.
If your message is mostly about the prospect and their pain points and you’re not trying to just launch into a sale (like many sales teams do) then you will get booked meetings.
At Salesbread, we believe if you send 100 new Linkedin connection requests, and you’re doing half a decent job, you should get at least 25 prospects to respond to your direct message.
Make sure the messages are personalized for each prospect and don’t launch into a sales pitch.
REMEMBER:
You’re not trying to do this at scale, you are just trying to validate if Linkedin outreach is going to work for you.
Step 4: Follow up 2 – 3 days later
If prospects don’t reply to your message, you are going to wait 2 -3 days and send another follow-up message.
Keep it simple and say for example:
“After reading that you are working on X, (insert the project they are working on, or something very specific to the prospect’s role.) I thought we would have a very interesting conversation around (bring up their pain point again. Perhaps find a different issue they might have. For example in the first message, you mentioned reducing cost, therefore in the second follow-up, you could mention speeding up production. Why? Because perhaps the prospect hasn’t replied because they are concerned the cheaper product might affect the quality.)
Is this a priority for you and your team this quarter? (Your name)
Leave it at that.
Is Linkedin outreach worthwhile for your company? Let’s recap:
- Build a list of 50 – 100 prospects who would be an ideal fit for your product or service.
- Research each prospect and write them a personalized connection request message.
- Follow up by using the cold message template we suggest, but adapt it to your company.
Here it is again:
“Michaela, I would like to connect with you outside of Linkedin.
Curious to hear how you are solving XYZ at the moment, given your specific circumstance. When’s a good time to connect during the next week?
Ps: “I’m especially interested in this because I know many manufacturing companies are tired of investing tens of thousands of dollars on creating infrastructure for 3D printing. We have been working on ways to drop the costs of 3D printing productions by 10X using nanotechnology.”
4. Follow up 2 days later
If you use the above outreach strategy 20-25 times and nobody writes back with interest, you’re probably not going to have a successful campaign with outbound. But if just get one meeting from this approach, then we believe you’ve got a lot of potential for outbound if two things happen:
1. You’ve got at least 1000 prospects that would be a great fit for this. If your prospect list is too small, it wouldn’t make sense to scale outbound with an agency. You could keep your lead generation in-house, by hiring a salesperson, or do it yourself.
2. If your price point is beyond $5000 per sale, then it would be very worthwhile to get this process working at your company. It would be extremely valuable for you to ramp these lead generation efforts up because it can mean many more sales at a faster rate than inbound.
If this sounds like a great idea for your company, we would love to hear from you.
Get on a free 15-minute consultation with us below, or fill out our contact form.