A cool approach to warm leads

What’s your favourite on-hold music? You must have one by now. Classical muzak? Easy-listening pop? Or perhaps you prefer the soothing crackle as those barely audible notes repeat on their next cycle of torment.

If you do have a favourite, then lucky you; you’re probably listening to more hold music from cold calls than ever before. In fact, according to our 2020 European State of Sales Report, 44% of sellers tell us they now expect to find it more difficult to get buyers to respond to cold outreach¹.

At least in the good old days you could rely on those trusty in-person industry events to generate warm leads – until 2020 decided to hit the big red button. Now, as every business struggles to navigate their way to survival and profit, this approach is less effective than ever. No one has the luxury of patience when their livelihoods are at stake.

Putting the buyer first

So how can you start building relationships in today’s climate? It’s not going to be in person unless you’ve managed to get all of your prospects quarantined with you in the Big Brother house.

But you still need to do the hard graft that forms the foundation of any sale, from creating awareness of your brand to building a complete picture of the buying cycle. And to level up the difficulty just a little bit more, the average buying committee has grown to between 6 and 10 people who are involved in B2B buying decisions. You need to get them on board early, or risk them derailing the deal later when they do get involved.

That complexity means that there’s no such thing as a straight line on the path to purchase – and the deal could go dark at any turn. But some of the most common reasons for a ghosting can be traced back to your first interaction. Did you enter into the relationship through a weak connection? Or worse –  fail to show value quickly enough? Well then, you’re going to see more ghosts than that kid from the Sixth Sense.

As a consequence of boom in remote working, we know that sellers and buyers are more active on LinkedIn, with a 42% increase in posts and 54% increase in engagement year over year. So one of the fastest ways to generate a strong first interaction is through tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

The right sales tools, at the right time

Just like in real life, meaningful engagement in the virtual world starts with common business connections and similar interests. But unlike your average speed networking event (remember them?), you can generate warm introductions through Sales Navigator by learning about your prospect before reaching out.

So while this will be devastating for lovers of hold music, you can reach buyers instantly – no matter where they are – by using InMail. Your messages are delivered only when prospects are online and have a strict frequency limit, which is probably why more than 1 in 2 open them up².

LinkedIn Sales Navigator also integrates with your CRM to ensure that company and buyer data is properly captured in your system and can flow through to your other tools.

We know these activities have an impact on the bottom line, because LinkedIn Sales Navigator users are reporting results that include:

• 18% more pipeline from Sales Navigator-sourced opportunities
• A 7% lift in win rates
• 33% larger deals

Let’s be frank – cold outreach was dying-out long before we were introduced to the joys of quarantine. But along with pretty much every other part of our lives, we now need to be a little smarter in our approach to sales to be able to add the value our prospects deserve. And while there’s no such thing as a straight line when it comes to the labyrinth of a B2B sale, at least with Sales Navigator you’ve got a decent GPS.

^{_{1 Linkedin State of Sales Report, 2020}}

_{^{2 Read Me if you want to improve InMail response rate, 2020}}