LinkedIn For Lead Generation
75% of all new business enquiries we received between July-Sept came from senior level decision makers who believed that we would generate our leads through telemarketing alone.
Sure, telemarketing remains at the heart of sales lead generation and what we do at Sales Accelerant, but the reality is that increasingly our leads are being generated through use of LinkedIn and lead scoring following the execution of content sharing based email marketing campaigns/analytics. We use a multi-channel approach to generate leads globally and these key channels are telemarketing, email marketing and LinkedIn. 
Using these channels side by side provides us with a fantastic opportunity to identify, engage and nurture new business prospects on multiple levels. LinkedIn has been at the heart of the Sales Accelerant (sales lead generation specialists) sales lead generation and nurturing process since the company was launched in 2009 and has been largely responsible for 30-40% of international leads generated and the resulting smiles on our customers’ faces.
One of the greatest challenges we face during these testing economic times is actually reaching decision makers. Gatekeeper defences rarely pose a real challenge thankfully, but instead we have desensitised decision makers to contend with, who are each subjected to on average 10-15 sales calls per day plus a barrage of emails.
The challenge of reaching people has very much to do with the fact that decision makers are being swamped day in, day out with sales calls and emails. Decision makers are becoming tired of the traditional periodic follow up calls/emails from sales people, designed to keep suppliers on the radar screens of the decision makers/budget holders, which means they often ignore emails (no matter how good the title) from unrecognised callers/email senders and re-direct an ever increasing percentage of their calls to voicemail.
What LinkedIn enables us to do is ‘stand out from the crowd’ and in doing so increase share of voice for our customers. While most of our competitors are busy sticking with the same traditional sales lead generation channels of telemarketing/email we are trebling our chances of success through using a less exploited channel. It is paying dividends but it’s not free to achieve maximum impact. To maximise LinkedIn potential we’ve found that it’s important to upgrade to the ‘Sales Navigator’ package. This allows membership of more groups; more refined segmentation of prospect company/employee profiles; provides powerful ‘inmail’ access and more besides.
It’s fair to say that responsiveness to telemarketing, email and/or LinkedIn as individual channels varies according to the B2B sector and decision maker profile being targeted (e.g. financial services – telemarketing appears to remain the most highly effective sales lead generation channel / pharmaceutical – LinkedIn/telemarketing combination works best), but across the board, LinkedIn really has opened up many new doors and of equal importance, helped ‘keep them open’ through nurturing capabilities.
Nurturing of leads/prospects over a period between initial identification and qualification and eventual conversion is becoming increasingly vital. We must add value at every touch! Using LinkedIn to share engaging and motivating content, which successfully positions a supplier in the mind of the target decision makers, is highly effective. Content can include white papers, blogs, video, survey findings reports and much, much more.
For tips on how to use LinkedIn for cold approaches; how to develop and share content for successful lead nurturing and/or for LinkedIn training support for your sales team why not get in touch for an exploratory discussion. Call today on 0845 3058145 or email us info@salesaccelerant.co.uk
Sales Accelerant specialises in generating domestic and international B2B sales leads for SME’s and corporate organisations. Core sectors of specialty are: Software/IT, HR services and Medical Marketing Communications.
