What Is The 1st Action On LinkedIn To Help With Lead Generation?

I’ve been a sales rep for 10 years focused purely on outbound activity: cold calling, cold emailing and cold social selling through LinkedIn.

I think of outbound in those 3 channels:

• Call

• Email

• LinkedIn

The main channel I use today to get meetings and convert to commission is via LinkedIn and social selling.

I discovered LinkedIn as a lead gen channel back in 2016 when it had a couple 100 million users and now today over a billion. To put it short, pretty much everyone HAS a LinkedIn, but that does not mean they are active….just like everyone has a mobile device and an email, but that does not mean it’s the best way to get ahold of them. You’ll never know unless you take action and test each channel.

So what’s the 1^st action you should be doing on LinkedIn? Well, it’s actually 2 actions that can be done in parallel.

1. Figure out who’s using LinkedIn within your ICP (ideal customer profile)

2. Create a strong 1^st impression

How to figure out who’s using LinkedIn within your ICP?

• Start with leveraging the filters on LinkedIn and Sales Navigator if you have it (if you don’t…Pro tip: see if someone you know does and they can refer you for a FREE 2 months). Also, understand how to do a Boolean search (using AND, OR, NOT) in the search bar to help with filtering firmographic details (title, geography, companies, etc.) (Pro tip: chatGPT can help you write Booleans). It’s most ideal to have strong filtering and a strong Boolean in your search bar.

• Then start sending connection requests 15-25 daily (you can send up to 25 if you have Sales Navigator, if not, start with 15-20).

• Whoever accepts, is a signal/data point to you that they are using LinkedIn = get more connections to get more data (and thus be able to engage).

How to create a strong 1^st impression?

• Clean up your profile page. I’d start with these 3 first: clear profile photo of your face, clear banner and clear headline.

• What do I mean by clear banner and headline? Your target audience that you are connecting with NEEDS to be able to understand who you are and how you can help in 10 seconds or less. Here’s examples of my profile:

Simple, yet effective: leads land on my profile and in 10 seconds or less know how I can help.

Don’t overthink this, my banner took me 5 mins to make (shout out to Canva) and then have fun with your headline, be specific and descriptive like my headline: “I help burned out sales reps get leads through my cold outreach tactics” (Pro tip: the 1^st 8-12 words from your headline will show up on all your comments too as you’re engaging, which is great for setting impression and piquing curiosity. Example below.)

RECAP:

Connecting with your ICP and cleaning up your profile may seem simple, but they are foundational and will create a ton of momentum for you as you are taking action and leveraging LinkedIn while leveraging cold calling and/or cold emailing. This will compound and give you more signals to where your ICP “lives”. 

More to come!!

 -Mike