Unlike most (rather annoying) social networks, LinkedIn has carved out a niche that could actually enhance your success. Like many things in business, or even life, who you know can provide you with all you need to succeed, but it’s not just knowing the right customers that can take your company to new heights. Engaging with key decision makers is a must in today’s hyper competitive marketplaces. Targeting the right people can in fact help your business access the best quality prospects in your respective industry sector.
As the largest professional network on the planet, LinkedIn has become an essential tool for not just promoting your wares as a business but establishing the connections and building the relationships that help your brand fly. LinkedIn is home to key decision makers across numerous industry sectors, and connecting with these could provide a route to even better B2B lead generation. But the question is how do you find the right people on a platform swarming with business professionals?
Look back
Taking a closer look at your successful sales is a great place to begin. You can actually learn so much from the sales you’ve closed and the key decision makers that made them possible. Using information from your last closed deals – details from 10 to 20 deals should provide a complete picture – decipher the following:
- The job titles of the decision makers involved
- The size of the company they represented
- The industry in which they resided
- Their experience within the role
- Other attributes shared by each decision maker
Compare all of the data gathered in the areas mentioned above, and use this to identify similar decision makers serving similar sized companies in similar industry sectors.
Get prospecting
Thanks to information from previous sales, you will now know what job titles, company types and company sizes you’ll need to search for to track down your desired decision makers. If you’re serious about prospecting, then have a go of the free trial of LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator tool. This advanced tool allows you to search for decision makers by job title or narrow down companies by size or type. Identified experience, skills and interests that decision makers from closed sales have in common? Try Sales Navigator’s keyword search to use these findings to your advantage.
And then connect
Through the Sales Navigator tool organising the results of your search and acting fast is made possible. You can sync the tool with many customer relationship management (CRM) software you use to not just connect but communicate with the decision makers you’ve so carefully identified.
I hope you’ve found that useful.