Terms like “LinkedIn outreach” may sound confusing and intimidating to some people and with perfect validity.
I remember when I was a part of the team that was supposed to begin their first LinkedIn outreach campaign, and I remember how stressed I was during that time.
But, you don’t have to be as stressed as the majority of people are when they first come into contact with this term.
LinkedIn is one of the best networks to launch a phenomenal outreach campaign that will help you down the line in your sales career and bring in some amazing results.
That’s why I’ve decided to make this ultimate outreach guide for beginners, to make it as easy as possible for you to get into outreach and everything else that comes with it.
If you’re interested in learning more about this and mastering all the skills necessary for a good sales rep in this field, I highly suggest you take a few minutes and read through this article.
Let’s dive right in!
LinkedIn Outreach – The Basics
As I’ve mentioned above, I know how confusing and intimidating these terms may be, but I assure you that there’s nothing unlearnable about this, and you’re going to realize that pretty soon!
First of all, what is LinkedIn outreach, and what is it used for?
| LinkedIn outreach is the process of reaching out to potential leads on LinkedIn. Since direct messages are LinkedIn’s primary one-to-one communication method, the LinkedIn outreach process often revolves around messaging. |
Just from the definition, you can see that this process called “LinkedIn outreach” isn’t that complicated and doesn’t involve much.
Now, I have to tell you that there are free Linkedin automation tools that offer you quite a helping hand in this process, but I feel obliged to advise you to do thorough research before investing your time and money into using one of these tools since not every company holds to certain standards.
Those LinkedIn prospecting tools may seem appealing since they promise to save you massive amounts of time while doing a great job for you, business-wise.
In addition to that, I have to say that that doesn’t have to be and often isn’t true. So keep your distance if you haven’t done your research.
But, I digress, let’s get back to the main topic of LinkedIn outreach campaigns. The main focus and goal of doing so are contacting potential leads that will, later on, be turned into regular customers by either you or your senior sales reps.
This all depends on the company that you’re working for. There is a position called SDR that is mainly focused on contacting and generating new leads that will further on be forwarded to sales reps that specialize in closing deals.
Outreach is in basics that – reaching out to new people and interesting them in what you’re trying to sell, be it a product or a service.
Its main use is exactly to generate people that will become one-time clients or recurring clients that will further bring profit to the company you’re working for.
How Do You Outreach On Linkedin? – Step By Step
Now that you know what is outreach on LinkedIn, and what its main purpose is, I can start talking about how to outreach and how to do that effectively.
LinkedIn outreach is usually done by messaging, as it’s explained in the definition of the term. This means that you’ll most likely write to your leads instead of talking on the phone which is a plus to some and a minus to some others.
But one thing is certain – you will have more time to think about what you’ll write, and have time to adjust that to any new ideas or pieces of advice you might get.
Some of you that have used LinkedIn before know that there may be some further contact information in some cases like an email or a phone number.
I generally don’t recommend using those at first, but instead going with the safe route and reaching out through LinkedIn’s built-in messaging platform.
There’s only one downside to doing so, and that’s pending requests that you’ve sent somebody that wasn’t accepted nor denied.
This may be frustrating from time to time, but you have to learn to move on and not mind those requests that you’ve sent.
But, enough of the chit-chat, let’s get to some of the most important things when it comes to LinkedIn outreach.
The first, and probably strategically the most important thing is to identify your targeted group. A big majority of products or services are best sold to a group of people that will have the most use of that product or service in order to maximize your chances of success.
That’s why you should first identify a group of people that might be more interested in what you’re selling than the rest of the people on LinkedIn.
Doing so may be done in a few ways, but there is one that I highly recommend before trying anything else.
That thing is LinkedIn “groups” that people form about a specific topic.
Not using those groups is quite an oversight. If people group themselves according to what they like, you should take full benefits from it and start being active in groups that revolve around a topic close to what you’re selling or that exact thing that you’re selling.
By doing so, you put yourself in a position where you’ll have a higher chance of talking to someone who may already be interested in what you’re going to offer them.
The next important thing is to do is to actually message those people that may be interested in what you’re selling.
Now, the way that you should go about messaging those people is very important. In case you send a message that is too generic – rejected. If you send something that’s hard to read – rejected. If you send a message that takes too long to read – rejected.
That’s why you have to be very careful about how you approach this, but not in the sense that you overthink everything you are about to write because that doesn’t exactly help.
How I recommend you write your outreach messages on LinkedIn:
- Make it so your messages are easy to respond to
- Have a cheerful tone with a semi-serious undertone
- Be decisive and clear about why you’re messaging them
- Leave room for the discussion to develop
All of these may seem silly to you at first, but let’s break them down and see why you shouldn’t overlook any of these four main principles of outreach messaging on LinkedIn.
Firstly, if you make your messages easy to read, you won’t have a problem with being rejected simply for the reason of people not wanting to waste their time on something they’re not interested in at that moment.
Secondly, your tone is quite important. If you make your messages too serious, it will have a boring vibe and a good number of people won’t respond to you since they don’t like a strictly formal way of communication. You should have a nice semi-serious undertone so you don’t get mistaken for someone who isn’t passionate about their job.
Thirdly, your messages should be easy to understand in the sense of that person that you’re messaging should know what you want from them when they read your message for the first time. This allows you to save time and to interest them more quickly while filtering through people that aren’t your targeted group.
Lastly, developing a discussion is quite important, and if you make your lead think that there is room for only a couple of messages, you’re doing something wrong. A healthy conversation should have a developing process where you’ll exchange messages, constantly getting closer to turning your lead into a customer and closing the deal.
If you’ve gone with these pieces of advice, there should be little room left for failure.
LinkedIn Outreach – My Final Words On The Topic
As you can see, big terms like “LinkedIn outreach” aren’t as scary as they may have seemed to some of you.
Just because something sounds complicated, or even is complicated on paper doesn’t mean that you’ll have a hard time implementing it in your work routine.
Outreaching is one of those skills that every sales rep needs to have in their arsenal, so don’t be afraid to test and develop your skills in that subcategory.
I highly recommend you go through this article as many times as needed in order to get all the little things right since the devil is in the detail.
Allow yourself to learn how to outreach over LinkedIn. Regardless of this being a job that is mainly done by juniors in companies where they aren’t responsible for closing deals, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t possess this skill.
All in all, I wish you all the luck with your outreach!