With over 600 million members worldwide, LinkedIn is one of the largest social networks. In fact, for businesses, it’s probably the best social network. Marketers are increasingly using LinkedIn as their first source of new leads and tangible revenue. This is because they can’t always wait for the marketing department to generate leads. In fact, for B2B companies, LinkedIn is a tool that can make your prospecting faster, easier, and more profitable.

Tip 1: Never miss an opportunity to connect

The first thing we can say to a salesperson who is ready to take advantage of LinkedIn is to take a good look at their contacts. Contacts are like LinkedIn’s currency. If your contacts are mostly family members, friends, and former classmates, you have a lot of work to do.

Connections create new bonds. Your first-level contacts open up a wide range of second- and third-level connections. This is how you size your network. Enjoy this moment whenever you meet someone (online or offline). Always make a connection request on LinkedIn, do it while you are still « fresh » in the other person’s mind.

Tip 2: Discover a better way to find your prospects

One of the main reasons you use LinkedIn is to find the leaders of the companies you’re targeting. Working with multinationals, there may be many people involved in or influencing the purchase. But even for small business-to-business sales, you’ll often have to influence multiple people.

You’d be surprised how many things people put in their profile, they usually put in which department they belong, what office they work in, and even what their projects are. With a little detective work, you can quickly get an idea of who the other person is, their personality (look at their recommendations) and what they’ve done before.

Tip 3: Never make a phone call again

Almost no one likes to make phone calls. It’s often a waste of time and people feel like they’re banging their heads against a brick wall. Nowadays, there is no reason to make a completely cold call.

With LinkedIn, you can almost always know enough about a person to be able to make the call or offer a sales pitch (if you’re further along in the process) in a more relevant way to your interlocutor. This is not digital harassment. Generally, people are always open with people who communicate about having seen their profile on LinkedIn.

When it comes to the profile of your target prospects, you need to pay close attention to the changes they make to their profile and everything they post in a group. Also on LinkedIn, with a paid account, you can see the expanded profiles of all people (not just your contacts). This can give you even more useful information that you can use later for an efficient connection.

Tip 4: Go further with InMail

Ask everyone who works in sales, high-level decision makers are a tough group. This is of course not a surprise when you think about it and realize that these are probably people who receive emails and calls absolutely every day and all the time. So here’s what these people do to protect their time: they block unwanted calls, ignore most of the emails they receive, and have a barrier that prevents sellers from approaching.

Although we try to do everything possible to contact managers through traditional channels, they are often too protected. And that’s where « InMail » comes in to do its job.

InMail is LinkedIn’s internal email system that allows you to send an email to anyone without having them as a contact. Basically, InMail is a tool that ensures that the email you send will reach the inbox of the person you want to talk to. LinkedIn claims that with InMail, you’re 30 times more likely to get an answer than with a phone call.

Tip 5: Find a smarter search method

LinkedIn has an impressive search infrastructure. With advanced search, you can find people by title, company, location, or keyword. And if you have a paid account, you can also search by business size or management level. By cleverly mixing filters, you can perform a thorough search and identify key people.

You can also save your search criteria and get a weekly report in the form of a list of new people who meet the criteria you’re looking for. For example, you could save the search for a purchasing manager in the pharmaceutical industry, within a radius of 50 meters in your city. And then, with this search saved, you will receive a weekly email from LinkedIn with the names of new people who match your search criteria. I can’t even mention the power of this feature.

Tip 6: Understand what’s going on in your prospect’s business

As any salesperson knows, change creates opportunity. People are coming, others are leaving, companies are making important announcements, etc., any change can be a good reason to contact a company and offer your help.

LinkedIn makes it easy to discover these changes. You can follow any company that has a LinkedIn page. You will be able to see the changes they make directly on your update page. It’s an easy way to stay up to date and find new opportunities.

Tip 7: Use groups to make it easier to keep track

Like most people on LinkedIn, groups can also be an important source of new perspectives. Questions from group members can help you better understand their frustrations and needs. Knowing that this information can be the perfect reason to contact a prospect.

Groups are also useful for:

• Give you more information about what’s going on in a prospect’s business, see how active they are, if they’re hiring, etc.

• They allow you to see more details about a prospect individually, such as their full name. Obtaining the full name is reserved for first-level contacts (which shows the importance of tip 1).

• Joining a group allows you to make more connections and also gives you the option to connect with them (this is one of the criteria you can select when sending connection requests)

Tip 8: Make sure your profile is as attractive as your business

Remember, it’s also important not to ignore the incoming part on LinkedIn. If they are interested, your prospects will invariably take a look at your profile. That’s why it’s important to make sure it’s 100% complete and gives a professional impression of you and your business.

Be sure to include current links from your company’s website and other social media accounts. It’s also important to get high-quality recommendations, especially from satisfied customers. These recommendations give visitors a better idea of who you are as a person.

Marketing experts have always been impressed by the fact that very few people know that you can see who has seen your profile. Unless visitors have set their profile as anonymous, you can click on the « Who has seen my profile » link and see the list of people who have visited it. Free accounts have a limit on the number of people who can be seen on the list and paid accounts give you the full list. Once you know this, it can become a compulsive activity.

For information, Magileads automates Linkedin commercial prospecting for all employees of the same company. There’s no need to install a plug-in and leave your computer on