The BIG Secret To Prospecting on LinkedIn

Whilst LinkedIn IS great for helping to keep you front of mind with those you know, in my view it’s not the real jewel in LinkedIn’s crown.

For me, the jewel is LinkedIn’s ability to enable you to find and connect with your ideal prospect (even if you don’t know their name!) within seconds.

Find people you don’t yet know, but would like to, in an instant by using LinkedIn’s advanced search feature to connect you to leads.

The Awesome Power of Advanced Search!

Located in the top right hand corner of your account, advanced search means you can apply powerful filters, such as job title, sector, regionality etc.

As an example, below you can see the fields I’ve populated.

This search found 485 managing directors located within just 25 miles of our B5 postcode in the accounting and financial services sectors only and took me just 2 seconds!

Just before you get understandably excited when you see the results the advanced search generates and fire off lots of connection requests, STOP!

There are certain processes you need to follow to maximise your connection rates and ensure you don’t get an ‘IDK’ or ‘I don’t know’ restriction.

‘I Don’t Know’ (IDK) Restriction

An IDK restriction from LinkedIn limits your ability to connect by requiring you to add the invitee’s email address.

Issue more than 20 invitations a day and/or you don’t invite prospects in a way that encourages connection AND discourages them pressing the ‘I don’t know you’ button.

5 Key Steps To Connecting With People You Don't Yet Know (But Would Like To)

Here are the 5 key steps to achieve this:

Step 1 - Optimise Your Personal Profile To +++ Connection Rates

Here are just a few of the ways:

?  Upload a professional and approachable head and shoulders pic

?  In the headline write the benefit of what you offer. You can include keywords too

?  Ensure you’ve a personal summary that isn’t too sales-y and discusses who you help, how and why.

Step 2 - Create Your Advanced Search

?  When searching here's a great tip for you: put a + symbol between words to create a phrase e.g. instead of managing director, use managing+director

?  This means that LinkedIn only searches for that phrase instead of managing and/or director. It will MASSIVELY increase the efficiency of the search

?  When you create your advanced search, you can save it (you get 3 saved searches as a free member)

?  The saved search is a live database so it automatically updates and sends you alerts when more people join LinkedIn who meet your criteria

?  HOWEVER, if you're serious about building your business, you need to upgrade to LinkedIn's Sales Navigator.

Step 3 - Invite Your Hottest Prospects To Connect

?  Whilst there are a number of ways to do this, it's vital to send a personalised message, which says why you’d like to connect, including for example, what you have in common

?  Avoid the temptation to use the LinkedIn mobile app and just press ‘connect’ without sending a personalised message!

?  Limit invitations to connect to 10-15 a day to avoid the IDK restriction

?  My tip is to upgrade to LinkedIn's Sales Navigator platform. 

Here are just a few of the reasons why:

?  Save more searches and access the full saved search results (as a free member, LinkedIn will only let you see the first two to three pages)

?  Access extra search filters, such as size of company, targeting within 10 miles of a zipcode or postcode

?  See all of the people that have viewed your profile (subject to the viewers’ privacy settings)

?  THE VERY BEST THING you can do is to book a Lead Finder session - this is a free 1:1 session where we find your next customers live on LinkedIn.

Step 4 - Say "Thank You"

?  When the prospect connects, send a ‘thanks for connecting’ message, where you offer your assistance

?  It might be difficult, but resist the urge to sell! 

Step 5 - Relationship-Build With A View To Appointment-Setting

?  No one likes to be sold to. And the very worst thing you can do is immediately try to sell to your new connection!

?  Until you've relationship-built (does the prospect know, like, trust you?), you haven't yet equipped the prospect to buy from you

?  You can continue the relationship-building inside or outside of LinkedIn with a 5-step 'give forward' process

?  There’s a whole separate strategy of how to do this! Message me or add a comment below if you'd like to know more about how to do this. What's more we can do it all for you too.

Useful? Hope So!

All of the advice I give is totally practical, so it would be great to get your feedback via the comments box below.

As a thank you for reading this post, if you'd like a free copy of my guide, '7 Ways To Magnetise Your LinkedIn Personal Profile' ask via the comment box below.

And please feel free to like and share this post if you've found it useful!

"This method of finding, connecting and relationship-building using LinkedIn generates leads for me everyday."

Whilst this method works, make no mistake, you need to put the time and effort in to achieve results.

Once you've optimised your profile, I suggest you allocate 1-2 hours everyday to implement this level of finding, connecting and relationship-building.

Remember, if lead generation is on your mind right now, THE VERY BEST THING you can do is to book a Lead Finder session.

This is a free 1:1 session where we find your next customers live on LinkedIn, click here to instantly book.

About Sarah Hughes

An award-winning marketer and business growth expert, Sarah is regarded as "The LinkedIn Lead Generation Expert."

She speaks internationally on LinkedIn and provides workshops as well as bespoke LinkedIn strategies for organisations.

In response to demand, Sarah has also recently launched Prospect Booster, a 'Lead Generation Done For You' service.

She has sold more than 3,000 of one of her LinkedIn e-learning courses alone.

Sarah is also the founder of Boost Business Growth which gives business owners more focus, more sales, more profit.

Check out Sarah's LinkedIn profile for case studies of the results she delivers for clients.

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If B2B Lead Generation is a pressing concern for you right now, let's talk:

? +44(0)121 363 0077 or +44 (0)7712 784 859

@ [email protected]

?? Schedule a 15-min chat.

NEW! Lead Finder - The FREE Service That Reveals Your Total Universe of Prospects within 15 Mins: watch the 1-min video ??.

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