B2B Sales Experiments with LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Hey Guys,
Monitup.com measures and increases the productivity of your employees. Thanks to MonitUp, you can make data-based decisions. Our target audience is B2B. Right now my biggest client is a law firm and I am trying to reach them so I can sell to more law firms.
I started using Linkedin sales navigator. I am trying to reach CEOs, Founders and Co-founders of law firms with 11 to 500 employees all over the world except Germany.
In the last two weeks, I have sent connection requests from LinkedIn Sales Navigator to a total of 545 people, 340 people have not accepted yet, 205 have accepted and I sent the 2nd message to these people.
7 people said I don't need it, 4 people seemed to be interested, but I couldn't get a response after the 3rd message except for 1 person. We talked to 1 of 6 licensees from Turkey to the point where they decided to make a demo, but I couldn't get an answer.
The message I sent with the first connection request:
"Hi Eleonore,
We know that law firms have a hard time measuring the productivity of their employees. You cannot manage what you cannot measure.
With MonitUp.com, you can report the productivity of your employees and increase your productivity by 30% thanks to AI suggestions.
Try it free for 7 days"
The 2nd message I sent for those who accepted my connection request:
"Hello Eleonore,
Thank you for accepting my connection request.
With MonitUp, you can see when your employees turn on and off their computers, which application they use for how long, which website they visit. It takes a screenshot every 5 minutes for the employees you want.
With this collected data, we offer employee-specific productivity recommendations using artificial intelligence.
If you want to try MonitUp longer, I can define a 1 month free trial for you.
Regards."
Do you think these rates are normal? Should I continue with the same method? How can I increase these rates?
I've said it before and I'll say it again - you're only selling your product but 99% of the people you are reaching aren't actively looking to buy the product you sell.
There's nothing you can do about that.
You've got two options:
a) keep spamming everyone on LinkedIn with your product until you eventually find those that are looking to buy
b) create a message and pitch that can persuade those who aren't in the market to buy right now that they need to buy
My suggestion is option b.
Hey Chris,
Thank you for your suggestions. Option B looks quite interesting, but as a technical guy it seems a bit difficult for me to create such a successful message.
Can you give some details about option B?
Hey Faruk,
Yep. This website (www.thebluntmethod.com) gives you an entire breakdown on that.
Best
Chris
You can expect a positive response rate of 0.3-0.8% on Sales Navigator as a B2B Company. That said, out of the 500-550 connection requests a month, assuming they are all active and up to date profiles, you should be getting 3-5 conversations at most.
So, don't get discouraged. Best you can do is keep getting feedback from these people that made it all the way to demo. Gradually improve your messaging, and whenever you do get a qualified lead - do everything you can to close and KEEP getting feedback from them.
What do you mean by 'conversion'? Could you please elaborate?
I meant "conversation" as in getting responses back from a prospect. One foot in the door. A conversion would represent actually closing, which would mean that you have a 100% close rate if you turned these 3-5 people into fully qualified leads and then paying customers.
Close rates are usually going to be under 30% for a B2B Service. So, say that from 5 conversations you get 3 qualified leads, you might expect to close up to 1 to 2 a month from LinkedIn. Not bad if you ask me.
Thanks Carlos,
After this trial, I tried to reach founders from different sectors. Then the chairman of the board of directors (bosses) of the companies.
However, the result was almost the same, it is very difficult to get a positive or negative answer from people.
I think I should write a few times in a row anyway. For example; Even if I don't get a response, it's like sending at least 4 messages and giving up hope.
What do you think about that?
Yes, exactly. You need an intro message, a follow-up, and if need be, a second/closing follow-up. Needless to say, the messaging has to be different for each given they have different goals. However, its never that simple.
Given how saturated LinkedIn is nowadays (exponentially more than 3-5 years ago) in terms of cold outreach and spam, one tip would be to play hard to get. How? This might seem counter-intuitive but: Once you connect, wait 10-15 days to message prospects and make the message as customized as possible. Basically, do all you can to make it clear to them that you're not a bot and that you are actually targeting them individually or solving a problem they might have.
People respond better to this as they feel more inclined to answer or might even get "tricked" into thinking it was a personal outreach and not cold lead-hunting.
Hope this helps!
Also, check out a featured post by a fellow Indie Hacker, on personal branding for boosting B2B presence @ (IH URL)/post/grow-your-b2b-business-faster-by-establishing-your-personal-brand-and-leveraging-linkedin-d997abdf89
A good profile will win you at least 50% of the battle.
Carlos, thank you very much for your detailed explanation. I'll go through the link you sent and think about what I can do with what you said. I'm sure it will be useful.
Your message looks good, but in my opinion, if you can offer a large discount because one month is not sufficient for such companies. You may know that these companies are already using similar tools, and there are a few people who like the screenshot feature, while some companies prefer the timer feature only!
Try integrating LinkedIn Sales Navigator with something like Wiza.
It will allow you to extract many more emails from targeted searches, and then you can hit them more directly and scientifically with A/B email marketing.
Thanks a lot for the suggestion, I'll look into it.
@Faruk_durak Hi Faruk, I will say 10% to 20% would be potential leads from that list out of the entire list that they recommend and this varies wildly with industries. A big part of that though, does depend on what you’ve put in when you set up your Ideal Customer Profile. The success rate of finding leads on LinkedIn is dependent on how much effort the salesperson puts into their profile and how well they populate it with their Ideal Customer Profile and target prospects. Utilizing the free version of LinkedIn to its fullest potential before upgrading to Sales Navigator is the best approach. Sales Navigator provides expanded filters and the ability to save searches, making it easier to find fresh leads and insights. Sales Navigator's expanded filters and the option to save searches are great features that I appreciate. These options allow for revisiting and refreshing leads and insights on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
InMail's overall effectiveness can be low if the messages sent are copy and paste or not personalized. Therefore, engaging with a prospect's content and building a relationship over a few months before sending a personalized InMail makes a big difference.
There is value in LinkedIn Sales Navigator provided you have a CRM that can integrate with it. There are a lot of CRMs that integrate with Navigator to allow you to then take notes and details even further.
Hello Debajit,
Thanks for your suggestions.
I will try to like and follow the posts of those who accept my link request and write them more personalized messages.
I'm not using a CRM application yet, I've researched a bit but there are many options and my work may be easier if I use one integrated with Sales Navigator. I'm still a single person, but having a CRM app already will be useful in the future.
Which app would you recommend for CRM?
@Faruk_durak I see that quite a few of my clients use Salesforce Essentials and HubSpot CRM.
If you are looking for a CRM that allows targeted email campaigns then you may choose to use MailChimp CRM.