LinkedIn is a game-changer. If you’re a small business owner or professional looking to make new connections, this platform is the place for you.
It’s especially helpful for salespeople and marketers. Why? Because it has tools specifically to help sales teams generate leads.
Exhibit A: LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
What Is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a premium account that has features to help improve your outreach campaigns. In other words, it helps you generate leads for your business.
Some of its useful features include the Buyer’s Circle, account targeting, and the How You’re Connected tool.
But Sales Navigator’s flagship tool is Advanced Search. It’s sort of like Google but for finding specific people on LinkedIn.
Using this tool, you can find the perfect leads for your business.
How To Generate Leads Using Sales Navigator
Now let’s talk about how you can generate solid leads using Sales Navigator.
1. Create a lead list
A lead list is an organized place to bookmark certain profiles or pages. And you can create a customized one within your Sales Navigator account.
Just go to Lists → Lead Lists and click “Create Lead List.”
Then you’ll have a place to save promising leads in order to contact them later.
You can also set up notifications for when information on your leads’ profiles changes.
2. Use filters in your searches
Filtering your searches helps you find the most relevant leads possible. This is where Sales Navigator shines.
You have a specific niche your business is within. And you have a certain product or service you offer. So when you generate leads, they should easily fit into your specific industry.
The filters available include:
- Industry
- Location
- Professional background
- Keywords
- Who was mentioned in the news recently
- How closely you’re connected
- And many more…
This lets you find people who will be most likely to respond to your outreach. Thanks to filters, you can find people who will actually buy from you.
3. Bookmark your leads
Once you have your filtered search results, you can start adding people to your lead list. You can do this one profile at a time or you can add every profile in your search result at once.
It may be better to look through each profile to ensure they’re a good fit. If so, you can add them individually.
You can then organize that lead list and even export every person’s email address. You can also opt-in to get notifications for when your leads change jobs or view your content on LinkedIn.
4. Write a message or email template
Now that you’ve got relevant leads saved to your lead list, you’re ready to write a template. You’ll use this to contact every lead, preferably through email.
LinkedIn does offer a quick and convenient messaging service called InMail. But you get just 20 messages a month and each message is limited to 300 characters per message.
But email has no limitations. You can send as many emails as you want and they can be as long as you want (but they should be short).
And fortunately, cold emails work. If you do it well, you can get a higher open rate and more responses.
You can use an email scraper tool to collect the addresses based on the info LinkedIn has.
Here are some general tips for writing an email template that gets the results you want:
- Write a short subject line (about 5-10 words)
- Personalize the greeting
- Make the opening line specific to the recipient
- Keep the email short
- End with an obvious call-to-action
- Use one font type and one color
After you’ve written your template, copy and paste it into Grammarly. It will point out grammar errors, punctuation problems, and phrases that sound unnatural.
I want to reiterate how important it is to write a short and catchy subject line. Tell them what’s in your email (but not everything). LinkedIn suggests you try one of these subject lines:
- Join Us
- Exclusive Invitation
- Connect
- Thanks
- Job Opportunities
It may be a good idea to do A/B tests with different headlines in small batches. Then email larger groups of leads with the winning subject line.
5. Start contacting your leads
When sending your cold email, do not include links. Your one goal is to get the recipient to respond, so if you also ask them to click a link, they’ll get overwhelmed. They’ll delete your email right away.
Also try to make the subject line and email body as natural as possible. You can use words like “try,” “free,” “download,” and “reserve,” but don’t make it sound too spammy.
You’re trying to start a conversation in that first email, not sell anything.
Because you started with relevant leads, you created an email template, and you personalize every email, you’ll be able to drive business.
All thanks to LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
