How to Generate High Quality Leads From LinkedIn

By: Jack Reamer |
 September 15, 2022 |
 Linkedin Lead Generation

Linkedin is an excellent platform for generating high-quality b2b leads. 

The only problem is, if you don’t know how to use this social media platform for lead generation, you are not going to get the right kinds of leads, which is going to cause a lot of frustration, time-wasting, and a loss of money.

(So if you aren’t happy with how your sales team is generating leads, this article can help.)

At Salesbread, if our prospect list is spot on, we often manage to bring in 90% of our clients’ first leads within 48 hours after launching the lead gen campaign. 

We will share our step-by-step strategy of how we generate 1 qualified business lead per day from Linkedin.

(One high-quality lead per day, means that many of our clients are seeing 20+ leads per month. If this sounds good to you, hop on a free 15-minute strategy session with us.)  

There is no quick fix to quality lead generation.

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Truth is, you only need to do 3 things to book appointments and fill your pipeline using cold outreach:

  • Find the right prospect that needs what you’re offering.
  • Write a personalized message that offers value (without “pitch-slapping”)
  • Follow-up consistently using LinkedIn and “Warm Email”

When you do this kind of outreach day in and day out, starting with a data-driven strategy for finding hot prospects to target, you’ll get results.”

Some founders or aspiring sales teams might think that it’s a good idea to buy a list of prospects and then just reach out to them on Linkedin.

Or you might think that sending the same message to hundreds of prospects on the platform might work too.

Unfortunately, this approach to lead generation just doesn’t cut it.

Why?

Because firstly, if you buy a list of data, you might have information on that list that’s outdated, or you might have a list of prospects who aren’t interested in what you’re selling.

You need to find your starving crowd and the only way to do this is by building a super targeted, ultra-refined list of prospects.

This takes time and research.

In fact, it normally takes us about a week to refine prospect lists for our clients before we even launch our first campaign.

Besides list building, you have to add personalization to your lead generation strategy.

And it isn’t just adding a first name, it’s actually adding something unique to your message just for your specific prospect.

Something about them that will capture their attention and make them realize that your message isn’t just some generic sales pitch.

You need to do this for each prospect on your list.

Then once you have sent these messages, you will need to follow up consistently with your new leads.

If you do these 3 things, (refined prospect lists of potential customers and personalized messages) your campaign will be successful.

(Don’t waste time and money on companies that use the spray and pray method. Quality lead gen takes time and hard work)

Step 1: Find your ideal target audience

One of the most important parts of any successful lead generation effort is to build an ultra-refined list of prospects. 

How do you do this?

Have a look at which businesses have purchased your product or service within the last 6 months. 

You then need to ask yourself: “What do these businesses have in common?” 

If you can find patterns of current buying customers, then it will make it easier for you to know who to target. (We use 34 different filters to narrow down our lists.)

For example:

  • Do all buyers have the same job title (such as VP of sales, CEO, founder, or campaign manager.)
  • Are they all part of similar demographics?
  • Are all your buyers in the same industry?
  • Have they recently received a recent round of funding?
  • Are they a small business with only 5-10 employees or a larger company with 200+ employees?
  • Do they use the same CRM tools?

When you look for patterns you will see how to narrow down your list. 

Below is a data-driven walk-through of exactly how we find the right target accounts by analyzing current buying customers.

Narrow down your list even further

Once you know who to go after, you can then use various lead generation tools to find companies to contact. 

For example, you could use a tool called Crunchbase to find companies that use a specific tool, or who have just been funded. 

Crunchbase allows you to use various filters to find the exact companies that you would like to go after.  Look at the example below: Let’s say that you have a content marketing service that specializes in SEO. You noticed when looking at the past 6 months of data that the main industries that use your services are:
  • SaaS companies
  • With 100+ employees 
  • Who have recently been funded 
  • In America.
You can then use Crunchbase in the following way:
From here, you could even narrow your list down further.  For example, perhaps the Saas companies who use your SEO services are all in the health and wellness space, or the fintech space. Use Crunchbase to narrow your list down even further.  Once you have narrowed your list down until it is as refined as possible you can grab all the contact info of these companies. 

At this point, you can filter by job title and receive the contact details of the right people. As you will see above, the Linkedin account handles are also available. 

Remember to think outside the box; have a look at all the places you can use to narrow down your lists:

Where to find attributes for list building

  • Company size: LinkedIn, Angel.co, Crunchbase
  • Company revenue: LinkedIn
  • Office location: LinkedIn, Google Maps, Yelp, Foursquare
  • The same CEO for 5 years in a row: LinkedIn.
  • Technology used: BuiltWith, Datanyze, NerdyData, LinkedIn Sales Navigator
  • Website is not optimized for mobile (NerdyData)
  • More than $30k/month spent on ads: SpyFu.com
  • Twitter followers: FollowerWonk
  • Monthly visits: Alexa, SEMRush
  • Webinar attendees: just join one in the middle and see the number of people showing up
  • Podcast downloads: iTunes, iTunescharts.net

Where to find “events” for list building

  • Raised money: Angel.co, Crunchbase
  • Acquired: TechCrunch, Angel.co
  • Hiring: Indeed.com
  • Nominated or won an award: Google Alerts, industry website/directory, company website
  • PR disaster: Google alert for keywords (“Company” AND “Disaster”) OR (“Customer” AND “Outraged”)
  • Just started a new ad campaign: SpyFu.com
  • Just hired a new role: LinkedIn Sales Navigator, company website
  • Entered a new market (know they don’t know everything): SpyFu.com, LinkedIn News, TechCrunch, Google Alert (“Enters New Market”)
  • Holidays (4th July, Anzac day), Google Calendar
  • Seasons – winter/summer: Google Calendar (for cyclical sales events)
  • Company anniversary: LinkedIn, Who. is to see when the website domain was 1st acquired
  • Featured on product hunt: Product Hunt 
  • Just got a really bad employee rating: glassdoor.com

(Note: There are various tools you can use to build lists. Here are our top 5 lead gen tools that we can’t live without.)

Step 2: Plug your list into Linkedin Sales Navigator

Next, you need to plug your list into Linkedin Sales Navigator. 

(If you don’t have this tool, we suggest you invest in it. It will make your life so much easier, and allow you to refine your list even more with various filters on the tool. For $99.99 per month, it’s a no-brainer.)

Once you plug your list into sales nav, filter your list by your second-degree network and by recently posted:

When you do this, you’re reaching out to prospects who have recently used the social media platform. (There is no point in reaching out to prospects who never use Linkedin; you could rather send them a cold email.) And studies have shown that when you reach out to prospects in your second-degree network, the chances of them engaging with you will be higher.  The reason?  Because of shared commonalities.  We have seen that when you refine your list by your 2nd-degree connections you can easily get a 30-55% connection acceptance rate.

PRO TIP: 

Before you start your messaging campaign, be sure to give your Linkedin profile a quick update. Does it look professional? Does it say exactly what you do and how you can help your ideal customers? What does your profile photo look like? Your personal profile is the prospect’s first impression of you.  (Quick note: It’s better to send messages through your personal Linkedin account, instead of your company page. As people enjoy engaging with “actual” people and not just a company.)  Once they receive a message, they will check your profile out. Make sure you optimize it for sales. 

Step 3: Research each prospect for personalization

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If there is no personalization (or very little) in your outreach messages, you’re going to struggle to get good conversion rates.  This is a message I recently received on Linkedin:
  • Firstly… I know that this same message has been sent to hundreds of other people on Linkedin. 
  • Secondly… It took me 3 weeks before I even opened this message because I knew it would be something salesy.
  • Thirdly… I’m a content writer. I don’t need this service. This message held no value for me personally.
And this is one of the major problems with Linkedin outreach. Prospects are getting sent offers they don’t need, and messages are generic.  Many of our clients have told us that many lead generation agencies that they worked with in the past, didn’t use personalization. So they never received quality leads. These lead gen agencies burnt through their money, and our clients received very little ROI.  At Salesbread, we know that personalized messages are imperative for your lead gen success.  So how do we do it? Brace yourself… We actually research each prospect on our list.  We do this to add proper personalization to our messages.  Doesn’t this take time? Yes, it does take time, but remember… Because our prospect lists are ultra-refined, we don’t have thousands of people to wade through.  We might have a couple of hundred prospects who are a perfect fit for your campaign, so this makes personalization research easier.  BUT- You don’t have to personalize the entire message. Just dropping one thing into the message is enough. Have one custom sentence. This will be enough to capture the prospect’s attention.  Salesbread has a full-time personalization expert who does this all day every day. She researches each prospect and writes messages that are engaging specifically for that prospect.  Here’s an example of how we do it… We first need to check out the prospect’s Linkedin page.  On their page, you will find tons of information about them; such as whether or not they belong to any Linkedin groups that they are passionate about or if they have been an employee at a specific company for a number of years.  Sometimes prospects even share what kinds of hobbies they enjoy or whether or not they support certain causes.  If you can’t find anything about the prospect on Linkedin, you could always Google their name.  We also use the CCQ method.  The video below explains it.

Here are some examples of a personalized connection request for your marketing strategy:

  • Hey (Name) Came across your profile and saw you work in real estate. I’m reaching out to connect with other like-minded people. Would be happy to make your acquaintance. Have a good day!

  • Hi (Name) LinkedIn showed me your profile multiple times now, so I checked what you do. I really like your work and as we are both in the creative industry – I thought I’ll reach out. It’s always great to be connected with like-minded individuals, isn’t it?(Your Name)

  • Good to connect (first name). By the way, what are your favorite hiking spots these days? Saw you’re in charge of account management, do you also handle clip reports (to keep clients updated?) Or am I way off

  • {first_name}, good to connect. By the way, happy to give you a referral to anyone in my professional network now that we’re connected. I’ve been doing some research on (XYZ) (We provide (what your company does.)Since we’re newly connected, I’d like to share this post with you: (Share a link that’s helpful from your website.) P.S. It explains (XYZ)

Step 4: Wait 3 days and send a follow-up

If a prospect doesn’t respond to your first message, you will need to wait 3 days and then send a follow-up message.  When this happens, add in some more personalization and share one value prop about your product or service. You could also even ask another question.  We follow up between 3 and 5 times, but always wait a few days between each message. (Note on automation: We like to follow up in real time, with real people.) Automation tools can be helpful, but it’s best not to automate everything. )

Step 5: Ask for a booked meeting 

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Some salespeople are afraid to ask for a booked meeting off the bat. But at Salesbread this is one of the first things we do.

If someone’s interested they will say yes. 

Remember the reason for all of the above (personalization) is to start conversations that lead to sales meetings. You want to just get your foot in the door to be able to ask for that booked meeting. 

Here are some Cta’s that you can use in your messaging:

  • How is your availability for a 10 min call this week?
  • I’d love to share more on why you may need [PRODUCT] and how it can help [BENEFIT]. How’s {{=day}} next week look for a 15-minute call?
  • Are you free for a call this Friday to discuss [MAIN BENEFIT]?
  • Are you available for a quick call in the next days to see if [MY PRODUCT] aligns with your goals?
  • When are you free to connect this week? You can use this link to book directly on my calendar.
  • Can we target {{=bday+2}} afternoon to discuss [BENEFIT/PROBLEM]?
  • What would your thoughts be on a purely exploratory call to determine if [MY COMPANY] can add value?
  • Are you open to learning more about {{prospect.custom.topic}}?
  • Worth a conversation, or no?

A note on pitching a sale in your messages

Don’t do this. There is no faster way than making a prospect run for the hills. You can share how your product or service could be of help. But sleazy sales pitches aren’t going to cut it. (The only time to ever go directly into a sales pitch is if you know the prospect will buy your product or service because you are solving their immediate pain point.  Like it’s a complete no-brainer for them.) Below is a competitor sales pitch that we received in our LinkedIn inbox.

Notice that there is no personalization and they jumped straight into the sales pitch.

“SalesBread does this differently, this is why we start a conversation.

NOT by pitching but by starting a conversation around a common pain point that your prospect is experiencing …

When you do this, prospects are happy to reply because you are helping solve a problem in a way that is not aggressive or slimy.”

Do these steps work for Linkedin lead generation?

Here are some of the replies that we have received recently from Linkedin users; And our average metrics. 

  • “Hi. Nice to meet you. Let’s find a time to chat, I’m very interested to hear more about it.  Below is my calendar.  Pick a day/time that works for a 15-minute virtual coffee and we can chat.  Best – ### 

  • Nice to meet you. Sure thing. Happy to chat next week. Please email me at ch#### to schedule. How about Tues 9/22 at 2:30 pm pacific?

  • I’d be open to talking. You can book some time here: 

  • Hi. We surely can have a chit-chat. I can be reached via zoom at mh####. We have a call either Thursday this week or Tuesday next week.

  • “Hi Sam, Thank you for reaching out. I would love to hop on a call next week to discuss some ideas for creating some educational videos. I would love to hear more about your capabilities and pricing. I am available next Monday around 10am. Feel free to shoot me an email at m#### . I look forward to talking soon.

Qualified Leads Per Day

%

% of Clients Who Get Their First Lead in 48 Hours

Interested in learning more?

If you would like to learn more, hop on a free 15-minute strategy session with the founder of SalesBread, Jack Reamer.

We know that qualified leads are hard to come by, but with the right advice, you could up your conversions in no time at all. 

Book your free 15 minute consultation now
Jack Reamer Lead Generation Specialist

Jack Reamer

CEO of Salesbread.com

Jack Reamer is the CEO of Salesbread. Salesbread helps B2B companies get 1 qualified sales lead per day, by using ultra-personalized outreach messages on LInkedIn. Jack is also the co-host of the Cold Outreach Podcast. Read his articles on Mailshake.com, Reply.io, Quick mail.io, and Salesbread.