The rules of selling have changed.
A formal product presentation days where Sales Representatives would meet face to face with their potential customers are far behind us.
Nowadays, around two-thirds of the B2B buyers make their decision via online content.
And as you're not the only one with an online presence, you need to find a way to stand out in the era of information overflow.
Nowadays, LinkedIn is the platform that provides salespeople with valuable tools for prospecting on LinkedIn, and researching ideal customers. It allows them to get in touch with their perfect leads and send product or service offers directly in their Inbox.
However, just like salespeople put in less time to reach their potential customers, it takes only a few seconds for customers to decide if they have any further interest in what you are presenting.
The age of the customer
The ability to quickly access information about any product or service changed how business is being done.
Furthermore, customers openly talking about their experience with your company and sharing it for everyone to see has had a considerable impact when opting for a product or service.
Customers are tired of random products and services being pushed into their faces.
They want to hear from salespeople who know how to adapt the qualities and properties of what they have to offer to their customers’ needs and expectations.
They want you to know what they lack better than they do.
The salesy lingo doesn’t work anymore. Moreover, it is highly unwelcome.
So, for all of you that use this platform for LinkedIn Lead Generation and other sales activities, here are 5 tips on how to sell without sounding too salesy.
A pitch should never be your first conversation
When you are connecting with someone on LinkedIn, it is highly frowned upon to start a conversation with a pitch.
Moreover, when approaching a potential lead, the Invite to Connect is what in real life is the first impression. You only get a couple of seconds to catch your prospect’s attention or be dismissed for any reason.
That’s why the best way to approach a potential customer is to make a reference to something that you have in common.
It could be a shared interest, you might be members of the same LinkedIn group, work in a similar or adjacent industry, or have attended a specific LinkedIn event, etc.
This type of well-thought approach brings high acceptance and response rates.
Here’s an idea for your Invite to Connect.
[template]
Hello {{firstName}},
I see that you attended the “5 Marketing Strategies for a Post-Covid World” event.
As someone with {{totalYearsInCareer}} experience in the industry, I would love to hear your thoughts on a multi-channel approach to engagement.
After you’ve been accepted, you can proceed following the same “hook”.
[template]
Multi-channel outreach implies so many online and offline channels of communication!
When speaking of LinkedIn, Skylead is an online platform that combines messages, InMails, and Emails with LinkedIn features such as View, Follow, Invite to Connect, etc., to create the highest number of touchpoints with your perfect leads.
It is a very effective way to do multichannel outreach and, with the right targeting, you will be able to generate and get through to leads who are most likely interested in whatever you have to offer.
I would love to tell you more about it. Would you like to join our group Demo Call? By clicking on the link, you will see several dates and times available.
I look forward to hearing from you!
Best,
Joshua
Avoid hyperbolic words & phrases
Avoid hyperbolic words such as “cheap”, “one-in-a-lifetime opportunity”, “incredible”, “amazing”, “promotion”, etc.
Clients take these statements with skepticism.
Instead, show them that you’ve done your research and that you are messaging just because you genuinely believe that what you have to offer will significantly improve the quality of their business.
Be precise where exactly you’ve seen room for improvement and how you can help.
Use words that imply the same.
There is no better selling proposal than the one that is supported with well-researched facts.
[template]
Hello {{firstName}},
I have been following the work of {{currentCompany}} for quite some time now.
Due to your vast experience in the role of {{occupation}} at {{currentCompany}}, I am sure you know the struggle with the timely and accurate flow of critical information during international transport.
I am here to offer a solution.
“OnTheWay” is an application developed in collaboration with over 100 customs worldwide. It provides the most precise, reliable, and real-time information on any type of international shipment. You will be able to give even your biggest customers the exact day and time of their long-awaited purchase.
I would love to schedule a call and further discuss the benefits it could bring to your company.
Best regards,
Evan
Turn your sales into a conversation, not a rehearsed monologue
A genuine back-and-forth conversation will work more to your advantage than just blurting out a rehearsed monologue.
By asking thoughtful and well-aimed questions not only will you keep your leads interested but you will also gain a more thorough understanding of what they exactly need.
This will allow you to position your product or service better in comparison to your competitors that “haven’t done their homework”.
Of course, all of this is on the condition that you have previously targeted your audience well enough to know that most likely there is room for your product or service to help.
Start with something like this.
[template]
Hello {{firstName}},
I can see that you’ve been working in the Manufacturing Industry for quite some time now.
As someone who has been holding the position of {{occupation}}, what is your experience regarding the problem of forecasting demand for products?
Thank you so much for sharing!
Best,
Robert
Once your lead answers back, you can go ahead and investigate further on what they need.
[template]
Thank you {{firstName}} for sharing your insight!
I hear you.
Forecasting demand for products is for sure one of the main challenges of any Manufacturing business.
If you fail the customer demand, your sale will significantly drop. On the other hand, the cost of producing too many items that don’t sell weighs hard on your budget.
Do you mind sharing how you have been handling it so far?
And then, once you’ve come to the root of the problem, try selling your service by showing them how it can apply directly to their particular situation.
[template]
That is quite an interesting way of dealing with it.
What if I told you there was a management system that helps manufacturers analyze consumer behavior, which products they are interested in, when they usually make purchases, how many products they buy at certain times, etc?
Would you be interested in hearing more about it?
If the answer is yes, go ahead and explain why doing business with your company will save them time and money.
Make it all about them
At the end of the day, customers don’t care about the product or service itself. They care about what it can do for them.
And with that being said, it means that they don’t even care about how that product or service worked for YOU. People want to know how it can change THEIR lives and the way THEY have been doing business.
So, when you are reaching out to your potential customers, never start with “Here is how {{product}} helped ME”.
[template]
Hello {{firstName}},
Thank you for taking your time to hear me out!
I am reaching out because I would like to show you how our software could save up to 6 hours a day to your Sales Team while producing 10 times more leads.
- Email Discovery & Verification works perfectly for your cold emailing campaigns. You will be able to discover verified business emails of your LinkedIn leads and expand your prospects list.
- Real-time insights offer detailed analytics so that you can evaluate which campaigns produce the best results.
- Smart Sequences combine LinkedIn with Email Outreach. Would you consider adding LinkedIn outreach to your sales and marketing efforts?
Let’s hop on a Demo Call and discuss how your company can further benefit from it!
Best regards,
Mary J. Luis
It’s OK not to sell
Last but not least, you don’t need to sell at all costs!
Learn how to take no for an answer while still ending on a high note.
Being pushy will not turn a no into a yes. It could just refrain people from ever doing business with you in the future.
You would be surprised how often a genuine interest in customers and in selling them what they really need might result in them coming back or recommending your services to someone else. Even if they have never worked with you before.
Know when to stop, but also how to leave the ending open to a potential collaboration in the future.
[template]
Hello {{firstName}},
It was nice talking to you.
Thank you once again for taking the time to hear about my services.
I appreciate your feedback.
Should you have any questions in the future or simply want to exchange experiences regarding Event Planning, feel free to reach out!
Have a great day and good luck with all your future projects!
Best,
Michelle
Summary
Nowadays customers have access to enough information to make a purchase without ever talking to you.
However, it is usually a personal touch that gives them that extra push.
They want to feel heard and taken care of and not just some random target of the act of selling.
That’s why make sure to narrow down your audience as much as possible, research their needs and room for improvements, and then get through to them with a well-defined offer.
For more effective outreach, consider using a Sales Automation Platform.
Skylead is an excellent choice for those who want to combine LinkedIn with Email Outreach for their sales process. Not only will you have a higher number of available paths to your prospects, but you will also, as seen in the above examples, be able to use their publicly available information on Linkedin to hyper-personalize your outreach.
Long story short - be smart and let Skylead think for you.
What is hyper personalization and why is it so important nowadays?
Explained in a simplified way, hyper-personalization is the use of data to ensure more targeted and meaningful interactions with customers that lead to delivering relevant content, products, and service information to each user.
In a world where automation started to result in generic and impersonal outreach, personalization helps you differentiate from your competitors and connect to your future leads and/or clients on a higher level.
That being said, Skylead goes far beyond mere automation software. It takes personalized marketing a step further and helps humanize one-to-one communication.
Wanna know how?
1. Define who you are trying to communicate with.
Targeting is the first and most crucial step of every personalized outreach, LinkedIn lead generation, and finally a successful campaign.
Skylead is no exception to that rule.
So, define your audience to start with!
LinkedIn, Sales Navigator and Recruiter give you a rather convenient option for filtering your potential leads and perform prospecting on LinkedIn. You can do it by any keyword, geography, postal code, first and/or last name, school, seniority level, years of experience, etc.
However, there is more to it!
Let’s say you have your private lists of contacts and their email addresses and/or LinkedIn profile URLs. These people are your target group and you want to take advantage of the existing files.
No problem!
Skylead supports importing CSV documents and it automatically extracts all the necessary information for your campaigns.
Voilà!
No need to insert that super long list of names and other info manually!
2. Now use Skylead to conquer that personalized mass outreach!
Once you have identified or imported your target audience, it’s time to choose among numerous variables and personalize the first wave of your mass outreach.
How do you do that?
There are 8 basic variables to insert and combine in your messages:
- First name;
- Last name;
- Current company;
- Years in the current company;
- Total Career Position Count;
- Position;
- Total career years;
- College name.
However, if your CSV document contains extra data on your leads, use them as custom variables when reaching out.
You write out a message, insert basic or custom variables where you need them, and information gets automatically pulled from the selected accounts/CSV files.
In case some of them are not available, there is an option of manually filling in the replacement.
See? We have a solution for everything!
3. New emailing feature alert! New emailing feature alert!
Aside from sending connection requests with personalized messages, follow-ups, LinkedIn InMails, Skylead now has the option of reaching out by email in case your contacts don’t reply on LinkedIn!
You can run, but you cannot hide!
Set up one email template, personalize it like you would have done it with LinkedIn messages and InMails, and just like that create workflows for different scenarios!
Plus, if you don’t have your target audience’s emails, thanks to Skylead’s Discovering Emails Feature, there is always an option of automatically extracting their emails and building your own extensive contact list of potential clients.
Let’s sum it up for a moment.
Now you have the option to:
- Discover business emails and collect personal ones;
- Send follow-ups via email;
- Keep in touch with leads and keep them updated via emails;
- Use our Image and GIF personalization feature for fun occasions – wish them a happy holiday season, birthdays, anniversaries, and so on.
4. Unless you want to be taken for a creeper, timing is everything!
Whether you are reaching out to your clients for the first time or you are following up with them, set up a reasonable time in between messages. Not only will it give the impression of manually-performed communication, but you won’t seem pushy and obnoxious. You want your future leads to confide in you and your product/service, not to try running away from it as far as possible.
Extra tip!
Pay attention to your and your client's time zone, work hours, holidays, and similar. It will give that extra touch of manually-performed communication.
Fortunately for you, all of this can be automated on Skylead. Several clicks and you won’t need to keep track of it on the side.
5. Stand out with Image and GIF hyper personalization.
Are you in a creative business? Or do you just want to spice it up and break the monotony of the dull, old-fashioned messaging?
If yes, we, of course, have a solution for that too!
Whether you would like to wish your clients happy holidays or make a fun campaign/job opportunity announcement, your interaction can get more interesting and appealing by adding hyper-personalized Images and GIFs.
Why do we call them “hyper-personalized”, you wonder?
Because it is such a flexible tool that can import and include the previously-mentioned basic and custom variables and place them on Images and GIFs. These appear right after the text and are there to spice up the message, make your recipients smile, feel taken care of.
Show them you went that extra mile for them!
Can you imagine how much you would stand out virtually in the always more competitive world of marketing and communication?
Wanna know more about how Skylead will help your business skyrocket?
Feel free to reach us out on the Support Chat and we can schedule a Success Call to discuss how you can benefit from Skylead the most.
In case you are our new potential user, chat with our Customer Support Team and they will be more than happy to find a solution that fits your needs best.