Transcription
How can you possibly book meetings on LinkedIn when the average buyer inbox looks like this, and the average sales DM looks like this? I mean, is it even worth trying to book meetings on LinkedIn anymore? It definitely is. The problem isn't that the LinkedIn channel is broke; it's the fact that most people's approaches suck. They do a horrible job choosing who they should be reaching out to. Their profile is a big red walking flag that says, "Hey, I'm going to pitch you," so no one wants to connect with them. Their DMs are literally copied and pasted, repurposed, code emails that are way too long and way too self-serving. And even when they do get connected with someone, their DMs and their follow-ups are so bad that they end up getting ignored or worse, blocked.
So in this video, we're going to be talking about how you can use LinkedIn to find the right people to reach out to, give yourself the best chances of getting connected with them, and then walk through a DM framework and a follow-up cadence that you can use to actually book meetings with your ideal customers on LinkedIn.
If you don't know who I am, my name is Will Aken. I'm a sales trainer who's generated over $5 million in pipeline from LinkedIn, and this year alone, I've worked with 30 different B2B sales teams to help them refine their outreach messaging, including their LinkedIn DMs and follow-up. So let's talk about how to use LinkedIn for lead generation and booking meetings.
But before we jump in, I want to tell you a little bit about what it's like to be a buyer on LinkedIn. For the past year or so, my title on LinkedIn has been the Chief Vice President Director of Managing Things at will.com. And what that means is I get a lot of people targeting me who think I'm like the actual chief of something or whatever, and they send me tons and tons of messages. To give you an idea of what this is like, imagine walking through Times Square. You're just trying to get from point A to point B, but you have to walk through Times Square. The way there are billboards flashing ads telling you to buy Coca-Cola products or whatever it may be, there are people walking up to you trying to get you to buy their mixtape, sell you a fake iPad, or some dude dressed as Spider-Man trying to take a photo of you so he can ask for $10, $20, or whatever it is. But the thing is, you didn't come to Times Square to buy anything; you're just trying to get from point A to point B, and all these people are getting in the way. So you have to just say no, ignore, brush off, goodbye—it's not what you're there for. You are just trying to get to where you want to go, and you don't feel like you want to have any conversations or buy anything along the way.
However, let's say you're in a rush and you're falling behind, and at that point, a taxi pulls up and says, "Hey, need a ride?" Then you might actually take interest in grabbing a taxi and talking to that person because it aligns with your goals of trying to get to that place on time. You might be thinking, "Well, what has this got to do with prospecting and reaching out to people on LinkedIn?" Well, the same kind of thing happens. Most people are on LinkedIn not to be sold to, not to receive pitches—they're there for other reasons. They might be consuming some incredible thought leaders' posts, or they might be posting their own stuff. They might be trying to sell their own product on LinkedIn; they might be applying for jobs, or they might be trying to hire the next candidate for an open position on their team. Almost no one is logging on to LinkedIn thinking, "Gee whiz, I hope someone pitches me something today." So if we want to get their attention, it's not about being the loudest, most persistent, or most creative person in their inbox; it's about figuring out how we align with what their goals and their problems might be and then talking to them about that, similar to that taxi driver who's just going to help them get where they're already trying to go.
Now, with that little analogy out of the way, let's assume that you already know who you're trying to reach out to on LinkedIn. You have a good idea of who your ICP, your ideal client profile, is. You know what their title is; you know what type of company they work with. You might have even done some segmentation on your list to layer on triggers and different changes at that company, and you might have already done some research on them to figure out why they might be a potential good fit for whatever it is you sell. If you do need help with that part, then we've done a ton of videos on how you can build lead lists using LinkedIn Sales Navigator and LinkedIn core. Go check them out on our channel and be sure to subscribe while you're over there.
So now you might have this list of potential buyers that you want to connect with and try and sell to, reach out to on LinkedIn. This is where people make two big mistakes. The first mistake is using InMails. Although LinkedIn pushes these because they get people to pay, InMails are horribly ineffective. The problem with InMails is the only people who use them are salespeople. So the moment someone sees an InMail appear in their inbox, they can ignore it and not really worry about it. Most InMails are actually pretty bad and limited by the number of which you can send because they charge different levels of money depending on what plan on LinkedIn you have to use InMails. And then, finally, a lot of people are sending InMails to people who aren't even active on LinkedIn, which is a total waste. So don't waste your time using those InMails because, frankly, they have horrible response rates, and most of the time they don't work, and you don't even know if the person you're sending them to is active on LinkedIn.
So what you want to do instead of using InMails is connect directly with your buyers because this will allow you to directly message them in multiple different formats and follow up as much as you want. But the problem is, most people don't just accept every single connection request they get, and that's mainly because a lot of people who are trying to connect with them are salespeople. And as I mentioned before, people aren't on LinkedIn to try and get sold to. To in fact, no one ever really wants to be sold to, even if what you sell might be helpful to them because they're busy. It's the same reason that people stick these types of signs on their house: "No soliciting." People don't want to be sold to, or even stick one of these to their office door. Most people feel like they've got everything covered, and they do not have time because they are too busy to consider every single sales pitch they get. So when we hold up a big red flashing sign saying we're a salesperson, they immediately ignore it, regardless of what we're selling. They just assume that they don't need whatever you have. They have hundreds of people trying to get their attention; they cannot consider every single product pitch that people are sending them, and most of the time they assume that if they needed what you're selling, they would already be looking for it.
So when we're connecting with our buyers, we need to be careful not to alert them that we are potentially going to try and sell them something if they accept our connection request. And when we connect with someone, there are only really two factors that people have to go on on whether or not we're going to try and sell them something or be a worthwhile connection. Those two factors are: number one, our connection request and if it has a note; and the second one is our LinkedIn profile—most importantly, our picture, our name, and our headline—because these are the things they're going to see in a connection request if they don't click onto your profile to learn more about who you are and why you might be trying to connect with them.
So for that first piece, the connection note, a lot of people say that you should include a note with your connection requests, but there is so much data, data, data—if you're Australian out there—that says a blank connection request is actually more effective than one that includes a note. And this kind of makes sense. As someone who's got 60,000 followers on LinkedIn, a lot of people are constantly trying to connect with me, and I've noticed that only people who include notes are generally salespeople trying to sell me something—something especially given that the note is normally quite generic, like, "I'd like to add you to my network," or, "You have an interesting background," or, "We swim in similar circles"—because that is just something generic that salespeople tend to write when they're trying to connect with someone. So unless you're going to write a highly personalized—and I mean really highly personalized—note, I'd skip it altogether, save yourself some time, and let your profile do the talking.
And that's where we get onto your LinkedIn profile. Like I mentioned before, people are looking out for the warning signs that you're going to try and pitch them something. The biggest mistake I see people make here is that their headline literally is their job title: "Sales at so-and-so," or, "Sales Business Development at this company," "Sales Business Development Agency Owner at company"—all of those immediately tell them that you're a salesperson, and most of the time when a salesperson is trying to connect with you, they're trying to sell you something. So instead, what I recommend you do with your headline is, instead of talking about your job title or what you offer, I would literally just talk about how you tend to help people or the type of networking that you tend to do. So instead of writing, "Sales at company," you might write, "Helping X do this," or you might just write, "Hey social media managers," or, "Hey business owners," or, "Making sure you don't get ignored online." Be creative with it; be fun with it; maybe even include a little bit about yourself, your hobbies, your passions, or why you do what you do. Just make sure that you don't immediately tip people off that you're about to pitch them something with your headline.
The other really important thing is your photo. You want to make sure that, one, you 100% do have a photo, and number two, it's a professionally done photo of you smiling. Smiles make people happy. When someone's smiling, we're more likely to want to connect with them, be friends with them, whatever it may be. So get a high-quality photo in there of you looking professional and smiling. Just having a nice photo of you smiling and an optimized headline is going to mean that more people accept your connection requests. Either take a selfie, use a tripod, or have a friend take a photo of you with a nice plain background with a big old smile, and that'll do the trick.
Now, some people are still going to want to click on your profile to understand what it is you do and if they should connect with you. This is where you're going to want to make sure you have a nice, built-out profile. You might be slightly active on the platform, either creating posts yourself or resharing other people's posts or just commenting on people's posts. You're also going to want to have a nice banner—something nice and colorful that's eye-catching that tells them more about what you do or more about what you're interested in as a person. I'm going to show you just a handful of profiles from salespeople that you can use as inspiration for your own profile. So this first profile is Gabby Sidle. She's an ex-colleague of mine; we worked on a sales team together a little while ago. She sells to social media managers. Her profile picture is smiling; it's happy; it's professional; and her headline doesn't say, "I'm a salesperson." It says, "Hey social media managers," which is her target audience. On her profile itself, we have a banner image which tells people what her company, Slate, does, and then she's filled out all the different sections on her profile—well, her About section, her work history—and we can see that Gabby is actually someone who's semi-active on the LinkedIn platform, creating her own posts, engaging with other people's posts. It's important that you look like an active member of the LinkedIn platform. And if you're looking to get started or look for some good content that's actually worth engaging with on LinkedIn that isn't cringe, give me a follow or connect with me. I'm happy to give you feedback on your profile. My name again is Will Atkin.
Here's another good profile from a seller called Hunter Thompson. He's got his headline; it doesn't say he's a salesperson; it actually talks about how he helps people drive more revenue by converting your happy customers into advocates. Gives me an idea of what he's offering without putting my guard up because he didn't just say, "Sales at [company]." His profile picture has some color in the background, so it's striking and stands out, and then his banner image again shares a little bit more details about what his company offers. Once again, he's someone who's active on the platform; he's posting; he's engaging; he's liking; he's got some featured images and links and whatnot on there as well. So well worth doing this just to make sure your profile is optimized so you get connected with more people than otherwise.
All right, so that's three things: Do not use InMails; connect directly with your buyers without a connection request note; and make sure your profile isn't just a massive red flag that says you're about to pitch them something. Now it's time to actually reach out to the buyer. Before we get into the DM frameworks, LinkedIn obviously isn't the only way to connect with buyers. You also want to be using cold emails, cold calls, maybe even referrals. And once you've got them in your pipeline, you need to know how to close them. And if you're looking for more ways to do that, then good news: SalesFeed sends out a weekly sales newsletter with tactical tips, frameworks, and templates that you can use to directly reach out to your buyers. Head on over to salesfeedmedia.com and subscribe for actual weekly selling tips.
Okay, so now you're connected with the person—that's good news because it also means that you know that person is active on LinkedIn and they're a frequent user of the platform. So now you're going to be spending your time reaching out to people who are actually using the platform, whereas if you're using InMails, you might be reaching out to people who only log into LinkedIn once every six months and don't look at their messages. Now it's time to slide into those DMs. The problem is, the LinkedIn inbox is not like an email inbox. The mistake a lot of people make at this stage is just copying and pasting their cold emails or whatever they might say in a cold email and send it to someone on LinkedIn. But LinkedIn is not the same as an email inbox; it's much more like all the other social media and DM platforms like WhatsApp, text messages, Instagram, Facebook Messenger. And because of that, you have much less space to work with, and you're going to want to try and make sure that your message is formatted like a text message to a friend or acquaintance or someone like that—unforgivably short. And the goal of that message isn't to get them to try and book a meeting with you; it's just to start a nice conversation because, as I mentioned before, the LinkedIn inbox is made more for conversations than things that people can get back to a few days later. Any longer than 50 words or two paragraphs, and you have to scroll to see the entire message, which makes that message so much easier for any potential buyer to ignore.
So what you're going to want to do instead is use my one-sentence message framework. It starts with something about them: "I saw this about you," "It looks like this is the case of your company," "Sounds like this is a new priority for you," "Seems like you might be thinking about this right now," "Notice this post that you made." And then it moves on to a question that is designed to prompt a conversation: "Have you ever thought about this?" "Have you ever tried out this?" "Have you considered doing things this way?" "Have you seen this be a problem?" "Is that causing this challenge to happen?" So to give you some examples, if you're selling website design services, you might say, "Hey, looks like your website is hosted on Shopify. Are you happy with the conversions over there? Are you happy with its conversion rate?" Or if you're a recruiter, you might say, "Looks like you're hiring for a senior business development manager. Are you finding the applicants for that role are qualified?" If you're a video editor, you might say, "Hey, it looks like you're doing a lot of text posts right now. Have you ever considered doing videos?" If you sell some kind of employee benefits or insurance solution to HR people, you might say, "Hey, it looks like your company's almost doubled in size in the past year. With all that growth, have you taken a look at if your employee benefits provider is still the best fit for your size of company?" It's literally just an observation about them: "I saw this thing about you," "Saw this thing about your website," "Your product launches," "Your team," "Your post," and then a super short question that's designed to really just get them replying to you. Because once they start replying to you, you can ask a few more questions and figure out if it is really a problem that they might want to take a look at how you can solve it. The goal here is not to book a meeting with that very first message; the goal here is to get a response because once you got a response, you can determine if that meeting is actually helpful to them. The entire thing should feel more like a conversation on a dating app than a full-on corporate back-and-forth via email.
Now let's say you do that—you say something you've seen about them, and then you ask them a question that's going to start a conversation related to what you help them with—but they don't respond, and you don't manage to start a conversation. Well, at this point, you're going to want to try and follow up, and I found the best way to do this is add more context to why you asked the question in the first place. However, you don't want to be a massive pain in the ass with your follow-ups, because that's where you're going to get blocked or reported or removed from their inbox. So you're going to want to follow up in a new medium—by sharing a PDF, an image—LinkedIn even has built-in GIFs that you can use to add more like flavor to your follow-up message. My personal favorite way to do this is either by sending a voice note or a video, and the reason for this is that it's really hard to automate videos and voice notes on LinkedIn, and people do not receive anywhere near as many videos and voice notes as they do normal messages. So you're immediately going to stand out through all the other follow-ups they're getting in their inbox, and because it's a video or voice note, they're going to know it's not automated and give them the ability to get to know you a little bit, a little bit.
Now, worth noting that you can only send videos and voice notes on the LinkedIn mobile app, so I like to do these when I'm out walking the dog or when I have a spare minute or during my lunch break. And I like to try and keep this as casual as possible; be sure to smile while you're recording—same applies for a voice note because you can hear smiles coming through in the tone of someone's voice—and aim for around 30 seconds. I like to record these when I'm out walking my dog because being outside and walking is another visual pattern interrupt that makes someone more curious to watch your video. So, for example, if I want to reach out to Salman Muhin—I hope I'm saying that right—he's a sales trainer who posts a lot on LinkedIn, and I've seen he's posted a few videos recently. However, the videos aren't very well edited. So after I send Salman a message saying, "Hey, looks like you're posting a lot on LinkedIn to attract clients. Have you tried using video yet? Is there a reason you're not doing more videos?" I might send a video or a voice note that sounds or looks a bit like this: Go to attachments, tap there, and then take a vot, and then click take a photo or video. I'm going to say something a little bit like this: I'm going to write the framework on here so you can adapt it to whatever it is you sell. "Hey Salman, just some context on that last message. The reason I want to have a chat with you about that was because I spotted you've been doing some posting on LinkedIn. Looks like you're a..."
Sales trainer? So I imagine you're doing that to try to attract new clients, businesses, students, and that type of thing.
I've been chatting to a lot of creators lately, and they tell me that video is blowing up and can be a great way for their potential clients to connect with them or get to know them on a deeper level. I did spot you've done some videos recently, but one thing I'm hearing from people is that it can be really uncomfortable just hitting the record button, uh, recording a video, and then actually getting the thing edited in a polished format that you can actually send out.
I've been working with a handful of creators to interview them and then edit their videos for them, so they can post high-quality videos that are going to get their attention—their buyer's attention—on LinkedIn. Let me know if this is worth chatting about. Keep it real.
Now, I'm going to send that video to Salmon. I'm going to write a little message below that saying, "Video for some more context." And although recording that video was a little bit more time-consuming than just copying and pasting a message in, that it's probably one of the only videos that Salmon's going to receive on LinkedIn all month, potentially. So it's going to get his attention, definitely get a watch, and he's probably going to do me the decency of responding because you can see that I put my effort into it. That tactic alone has gotten me more responses on LinkedIn than anything else.
If you don't feel comfortable in video, then practice makes perfect. You are not aiming for perfection here. I started and messed up a little bit in that message, but doing it over and over again, you get better at it, and then it's just as easy as going out walking your dog and recording 30 messages in 30 minutes.
If you really don't feel comfortable in video, then that's where you can make use of a voice note, because again, not many people are making use of voice notes on LinkedIn, so it's a great way to stand out, especially in your follow-up.
Now, if Salmon doesn't respond to that, I'm probably not going to send any more follow-up via LinkedIn because I don't want to get blocked, and I don't want to be annoying, and I want to keep that channel open so I can reach out to Salmon again in the future, maybe a little bit further down the line, in 3 months when there might be new changes, new things I can observe about him, or different problems that I could talk to him about. In that time, I can engage with his content, comment on it, like it when he posts, and I'm going to be a much more familiar name by the time I reach out again further down the line.
That's as much outreach as I do on LinkedIn. Obviously, I'm going to pair that with cold emails and cold calls, so I have my best chance of getting in front of Salmon and getting a response from him. So that's how you can go about connecting with people on LinkedIn, reaching out in a meaningful way that's going to start a conversation, and then following up in a really unique way that's going to increase the chance of them getting back to you.
Of course, we don't want to just depend on LinkedIn as our only outreach channel, so we can combine that with cold emails, cold calls, and all those types of things. Now, luckily for you, we've done a ton of different videos on how to cold call, how to cold email, right here on this channel. So I'm going to put up some videos just over here that you can watch after this if you want to sharpen up your skills on how to find leads and reach out to them on all the different channels that you have available to you. Keep it real. Be sure to subscribe. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.