REVERSE LINKEDIN PROSPECTING - LEADGENIUS FORMULAS - COPYRIGHT 2015. LEADGENIUS INC.
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LeadGenius Formulas
Reverse LinkedIn Prospecting
Copyright 2015. LeadGenius Inc.
LeadGenius.com
Table of Contents What do you mean by “reverse” LinkedIn Prospecting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Boost Your Open Rates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Where to start. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 How to execute. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Why Is This Strategy So Effective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Using LEadgenuis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 About LeadGenius. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Inside sales reps commonly use LinkedIn connections as
a point of reference during a cold introduction. It grabs the
prospect’s attention, it’s an easy way to build trust, and it adds
an indirect element of social proof to the conversation.
The problem is, most salespeople are doing it backwards.
What do you mean by “reverse”
LinkedIn prospecting?
In order to leverage a LinkedIn connection in a prospecting email, most
salespeople start with a small list of existing prospects, manually search for
shared connections, then write one-off emails adapted from high performing
templates.
The “reverse” of this strategy is to use your sizable pool of LinkedIn connections
as a data source and then prioritize outreach by identifying ideal prospects that
already lie within your sales reps’ existing network.
Why not directly prospect for higher-performing 2nd degree LinkedIn connections
as opposed to waiting to passively acquire them through other channels?
Along the way, you can build a highly targeted list of prospects that fit your
ideal buyer persona. The LeadGenius inside sales team has used this strategy
to produce some of our highest performing outbound emails.
3
Boost Your Open Rates
The following subject line was used by a LeadGenius Sales Executive in a cold
email prospecting campaign during December 2014.
Subject: “I found you through {{contact_first_name}} {{contact_last_
name}}”
Performance: 86.6% Open Rate, 15.1% Click Through, 26.1% Reply
This email was sent to a list of 300 individuals targeted by industry, company,
job title, and LinkedIn job description.
The body reads,
Hi {{firstname}},
I stumbled onto your LinkedIn page today. It appears we both know
{{contact_firstname}} from {{contact_company}}. I found your email address
and decided to reach out.
I work for a company called LeadGenius. We provide growing companies
with customized, actionable prospect data using a team of skilled
researchers. Zenefits, Indeed, and many more use us to fill the top of their
sales funnels.
Are you open to discuss whether we can help {{company}} in a similar way?
4According to Constant Contact and MailChimp,
the average open rate for business emails hovers
between 14% and 23%. If you approach the 50% mark
for a cold sales email, you’re in elite company.
86% represents a particularly effective example of this email strategy, but
even so, LeadGenius inside sales reps have used this 2 field subject line to
routinely produce open rates ranging from 50-75%.
Where to start
Begin with a keyword search in the right industry vertical.
The LeadGenius inside sales team looks for individuals specifically tasked with
building lead generation programs at their company.
Depending on your business’s needs you can get more granular with location,
seniority level, company size, and more.
5From this search you can identify,
First Name, Last Name, Company, Industry, Shared Connection First Name,
Shared Connection Last Name , Shared Connection Company
Once you capture each of these data points in a spreadsheet column, you
have all the information you need to to build a high performing outbound
email campaign.
How to Execute
From a high-level, there are three ways to capture the data you need
for Reverse LinkedIn Prospecting: in-house research, web-scraping, and
outsourcing.
In-house
If you’re selling a niche product, it might be practical to have SDRs or
sales reps manually perform this type of research. If your market is luxury
wristwatch repair shops or MRI machine manufacturers, you could potentially
capture all the decision makers in your network in just a few days.
However, even for amply staffed companies in small markets, LinkedIn
prospecting can be a challenge to execute at scale. It requires lots of diligence
and data entry.
Web Scrapers
Using a web scraper such as Kimono, Helium, or Import.io to gather profile
information has pros and cons.
6On the plus side, it web scraping services are generally affordable and
fairly easy to use. On the down side web crawling produces static data sets.
Because employee hire/separation rate can be as high as 6% a month is some
industries, you have to continually re-crawl to get accurate information.
Data Scraping Tools
Also, be aware that LinkedIn also takes steps to thwart this type of behavior
and, in extreme cases, has sued companies for scraping on a large scale. Web
scraping alone is simply not enough provide you with a list of intelligently
segmented prospects. The inherent limitations of even the best written data
scraping software ensure that your team will have lots of sorting to do on the
back end. More often than not, small but critical differences that separate a
high value leads from a worthless lead can only be identified by humans.
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is a viable option for combining LinkedIn and email research,
but is also challenging for a number of reasons. Companies such as
oDesk, Elance, and TaskUs can match you up with an overseas data-entry
freelancer for around $3/hour. No doubt there are some talented and hard-
working individuals on these networks, but since anyone can sign up, it can
be difficult to identify good workers versus the second-rate. Since you hire
individual workers on these networks (as opposed to a team), you always
run the risk incomplete work if the freelancer gets sick, experiences internet
connectivity problems in his town, or just abandons the project. Even if you
7find a worker you trust enough to hand over your sales rep’s LinkedIn login
information, outsourcing done right still requires a significant level of in-
house management. An existing employee needs to be able to write detailed
instructions for a non-native English speaking worker, manage the project, sort
out hang-ups, and assure the quality of the data.
Outsourcing Services
Why Is This Strategy So Effective
Your total LinkedIn network numbers in the millions.
843 Connections
612,800 Professionals in your Network
8Your 2nd degree network (which also includes group members) contains
hundreds of thousands of professionals.
The 2nd degree network of a sales rep is thick.
49.7% of LinkedIn users have over 300 1st degree
connections. Your average sales rep likely falls into
the 3.1% of LinkedIn uses that have over 1000 1st
degree connections.
In just about every industry, sales reps are only a single connection away
from hundreds of decision makers. Depending on your average deal size, or
the lifetime value of a customer, a few hundred of the right individuals can
represent millions in revenue.
Depending on the product, perhaps only a few hundred customers in a list of
30,000 will be the right fit for your company. With some simple targeting in
LinkedIn’s advanced search, these decision makers can quickly come into focus.
9Using LeadGenius
Sales teams traditionally compromise when it comes to the information they
want versus the resources and time they have to acquire the data they need.
At LeadGenius, we eliminate that compromise by taking formerly manual,
time-consuming lead generation processes and automating them in a cost-
effective way. In other words, LeadGenius allows sales teams to operate
with all the data they need without having to locate it themselves. Great
prospecting strategies become counter effective as soon as they take away
from the time a team needs to make quota.
Every sales team should audit their own prospecting and ask two questions:
1. Are my sales reps able to locate all the data points the need to
effectively pitch and close?
2. H
ow much time are my sales reps spending searching for and entering
the data they need?
The results are often shocking. Companies report that 67% of salespeople’s
time is spent on non-selling activities - research, data entry, and busy work.
Imagine how much more you could sell if you had that time back.
10About LeadGenius
LeadGenius is the most efficient way to equip sales and marketing teams with
custom B2B lead data at scale. Our data experts conduct ongoing research
to automatically supply teams with accurate contact information and hard-to-
acquire data points that fit a business’s most valuable buyer personas.
Learn more about how LeadGenius makes sales and marketing teams more
efficient at the top of the funnel.
LEARN MORE
LeadGenius
www.leadgenius.com
Berkeley, CA
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