But where do you start?
In this article, I’ll cover the essentials of LinkedIn prospecting.
I’ll explain how you can find prospects on iceland phone number library LinkedIn and build authentic relationships with them. I’ll also highlight four excellent tools that can amp up your LinkedIn sales prospecting efforts.
LinkedIn Prospecting: Table of Contents
(Click on links to jump to specific sections.)
What is LinkedIn Prospecting?
5 Techniques You Can Use to Find LinkedIn Prospects
How to Build Relationships and Nurture Your LinkedIn Prospects
Top 4 Tools for LinkedIn Prospecting
Let’s begin.
What is LinkedIn Prospecting?
LinkedIn prospecting is a form of prospecting that focuses on identifying your ideal clients on LinkedIn and building authentic relationships with them. You sift through LinkedIn to uncover sales leads who can benefit from your offerings and then try to convert them into customers.
Think of it this way:
LinkedIn prospecting is like cold calling, only it’s much less intrusive and a lot more effective.
Why LinkedIn Prospecting Matters
With over 810 million users worldwide, LinkedIn is a gold mine of B2C and B2B buyers.
And since it’s a professional network, people mostly use LinkedIn to build their network and nurture professional relationships.
This makes it an appropriate setting for a sales professional to send out a connection request or an InMail message to a potential client you’re not familiar with to discuss your solutions.
However, just because you can connect with people you don’t know doesn’t mean that you should reach out to hundreds of people at once.
Now, back to why LinkedIn is so helpful.
LinkedIn is perfect for sales prospecting since it helps you:
Gather potential prospect info like employment history, interests and contact details
Communicate with a large audience
Analyze a competitor’s customer base and prospecting strategy
Discover new developments in the prospecting field
Check out my ultimate guide to prospecting for more information about why prospecting is so helpful.
What are the Steps Involved in LinkedIn Prospecting?
Here are the steps involved in LinkedIn prospecting:
A. Develop a Customer Profile and Buyer Personas
Before you can start prospecting on LinkedIn, you’ll first need to define what a good-fit lead is.
A good-fit lead is someone who can benefit from your product or service and can offer long-term value to your company.
Creating an ideal customer profile and detailed buyer personas can help you identify a good-fit lead:
An ideal customer profile specifies the essential qualities that make the person or business a good fit (an “ideal client”) for your product or service.
Buyer personas offer more detailed descriptions of the type of people who make up your target market. The personas can cover the interests, behavioral traits, and challenges individuals or employees face in your target companies.
When used together, the ideal customer profile and buyer personas help a sales professional narrow down prospective buyers based on their:
Industry or niche
Company size and revenue
Job title
Demographics
Age group
Occupation or role
And more
B. Discover Potential Customers on LinkedIn
Using your customer profile and buyer personas, pick out contacts who are most likely to become your customers — a.k.a. your prospects.
