5 Must-Knows About LinkedIn & LinkedIn Sales Navigator Before Getting Started In Sales

Hey guys, thanks for stopping by! I set a goal to learn everything that I could about succeeding in sales in one month. I read books, listened to podcasts, did a ton of research, and put what I learned into practice. And I documented my process for it. This is one piece of my project; check out the entire project here!

LinkedIn & LinkedIn Sales Navigator are known as the number one place to find prospects. As part of my learnings, I wanted to understand how to utilize these tools to their full capacities. So, I dove deep into research about LinkedIn & LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s different capabilities and this is what I learned.

Here are the five things every person should understand about getting the most out of these platforms before jumping into any sales role.

1. Finding previous employees on the Sales Navigator

When first starting out with the LinkedIn Sales Navigator, something that might not be obvious to everyone is how to utilize the feature that lets them filter people based on their past experiences. It’s a highly beneficial aspect of the platform that needs to be taken advantage of.

The best way to use this filter is to search for past employees from your current customers. In the example to the left, Lessonly is an existing customer of the company I was finding leads for. The goal here is to find people that used to work at Lessonly who are now in a decision-making role at their current company. This is a great way to find quality leads because these people are most likely already familiar with your product. Or if, for some reason, they aren’t familiar with your product/ service, indicating that you work with someone they used to work for is suitable social proof to get them intrigued.

2. Using affiliate accounts to find new leads on LinkedIn

When you go to a company’s page on LinkedIn, there is a sidebar where you can find “Affiliated pages.” The affiliates page is where you can find any company affiliated with the company you are searching for. It’s important because this feature can be used to find the parent/ holding company of the company you’re searching for.

This strategy can be very beneficial to outbound salespeople because it’s an easy way to find leads that are easy to personalize messages for.

In the example above, I set out to find leads for Drift. I went to their website and found that one of their current customers is a company called Lessonly, which is pictured above. I went to Lessonly’s page on LinkedIn, which led me to their Venture Studio, High Alpha. High Alpha helps build and fund B2B SAAS companies (Drift’s primary customer).

After that, I found the companies that are in their portfolio by simply looking at their LinkedIn bio. Here is a screenshot of the results I found:

After finding a list of accounts on LinkedIn, the next part of the process is simply going to those websites and looking at what kind of chatbox (Drift uses chatboxes to create custom conversations and book demos on their website) they are currently using.

In my research, I found some of the companies in their portfolio are not using Drift. For example, Pattern89’s, a company in High Alpha’s portfolio, has a chatbox, but it is fundamental and has almost no personalization.

High Alpha plays a significant role in the growth of the companies that it funds and partners with. Because I already know that one of their companies uses Drift, I can easily use that information to personalize my message to them. I can reach out to decision-makers from High Alpha and mention how our company works with Lessonly, which is one of the companies in their portfolio. In addition, I have an entire list of accounts that I can also reach out to. When I reach out to the accounts in their portfolio, I can mention how Lessonly is a current customer and how it’s affiliated to High Alpha.

So, with just a little bit of searching on LinkedIn and understanding the platform, I can have a list of leads that I can very easily personalize. The strategy is to leverage the knowledge I acquired about High Alpha and the companies they work with to personalize outbound messages. Here is an example of the approach I would take if I were reaching out to one of the companies in High Alpha’s portfolio:

“Hey John

We are currently working with Lessonly, where we 27x their MQL’s by helping them improve their buying experience on their website.

Let me know if this sounds interesting.”

In this example, I infer that the company I am reaching out to is familiar with Lessonly. In follow-up emails, I would directly state that we work with companies in High Alpha’s portfolio.

Consumers buy stuff because their favorite influencers post about it, and decision-makers at start-ups are not different.

The information people in sales can gain from the affiliate can be critical to the success of an outbound message. People buy when they believe that similar companies to them have successfully instituted it.

Using affiliate accounts is a great strategy to personalize sales messages and is something all people in business development should be taking advantage of.

3. Build relationships using LinkedIn Sales Navigator

In sales, relationships are vital. So anything that can make the process of building and maintaining those relationships easier is significant. This is where the Home Page on LinkedIn Sales Navigator comes in. Instead of seeing what all of the people you are following on LinkedIn are posting, you can see precisely what your leads are posting.

This capability makes it easier to interact with prospects and makes it easier to find ways to personalize sales messages. If a prospect posts something relevant on LinkedIn, you can add what you learned to your sales cadence.

In the start-up world, people tend to move around to different organizations often. So putting current customers on a list and utilizing this tool to stay up to date and interact with their content is an amazing way to form relationships for the long term. So when they do move to another organization, and you want to sell to them again, it will be a way easier meeting to set up because of all the previous interactions between the two of you.

4. Take advantage of the personalization tools the Sales Navigator provides

Sending out mass cold emails is not and never was an optimal strategy when it comes to sales. Personalization is the name of the game.

Luckily for sales reps, LinkedIn makes personalization easy if you utilize the tools the right way. All the different categories pictured below can come in handy when writing an email or coming up with a cold call script.

Time is money in sales, so any way you can scale a process, the better it is. There are three specific ones pictured above that can make personalization at scale easier.

“Mentioned in the news in the past 30 days” or “Posted on LinkedIn in the past 30 days” aren’t the easiest to scale because you would have to go and research to see if you can find anything that’s relevant to use in your cold outreach attempt.

But the other three are scalable. Here are some examples:

Shared experiences with you

“As someone who has previously worked as BDR, I know that you have experience with cold calls and having to do the menial task of taking notes for those cold calls. I was wondering, having software that automatically took notes when you were selling, would that have made your life easier?”

Leads that follow your company on LinkedIn

“I saw that you follow us on LinkedIn. I was wondering, do your account executives complain that the sales reps don’t book enough meetings for them? Well, if that’s the case, we help companies set up demos on autopilot. Let me know if that’s moderately interesting.”

Changed jobs in past 90 days

“Congrats on the new role. I’m sure you’re working on getting the most of your marketing budget in your new role. We help sales teams book demos on autopilot without development representatives. Does that sound like something that makes sense for us to talk more about?”

In all of these cases, I can use these messages for every one of the leads I find in a specific category. This ability to personalize at scale will ultimately save reps a bunch of time.

5. Build a personal brand

LinkedIn is one of the primary ways salespeople reach out and interact with prospects. They send connection requests; they view prospects’ profiles (When someone views your profile on LinkedIn, you get an alert indicating that they viewed it), and they send messages through LinkedIn. Almost every sales process involves LinkedIn in some way.

Salespeople are constantly trying to find better ways to get potential prospects to answer their cold messages/calls. Getting a response is not always easy, but understanding how to use LinkedIn to its fullest capabilities can substantially help get a response.

Just like salespeople view prospects’ profiles, prospects view salespeople profiles. Prospects aren’t going to waste their time setting up a meeting with someone who didn’t even take the time to create a good LinkedIn profile. Having a good profile is critical because it’s, in most cases, their first impression of you.

In addition to having a professional profile, the content they post, the following they have, and the types of interactions they have on LinkedIn are all critical. Like any other form of social media, when people post more often and have a bigger following, they earn more respect and credibility from their followers. Prospects want to know that the person they might set up a meeting with is worth their time.

So using LinkedIn to consistently post about relevant stuff, interacting with others’ posts, and connecting with like-minded individuals are good ways to build a following, gain credibility, and get more replies.

That’s a wrap

I hope you enjoyed these tips! If you have any more tips or tricks, reach out and let me know! This is a part of my month-long project to learn everything I can about sales; check out the entire project here!