Are you a sales rep who got your LinkedIn account restricted? Maybe you’re thinking it got into the infamous LinkedIn jail. Don’t worry. Together, we’ll get it back. Have a seat and relax as we go through:
- What is the difference between having your LinkedIn account restricted and ending up in so-called jail;
- 8 reasons why your LinkedIn account got restricted;
- 4 proven steps to regain access to your LinkedIn account;
- How to keep your LinkedIn account safe in the future.
What does it mean when your LinkedIn account is restricted?
Getting your LinkedIn account restricted means that you knowingly or unknowingly acted against their Professional Community Policies. This caused LinkedIn to limit your ability to perform further actions using your account. You know your LinkedIn account is restricted since this notification will appear when you log in.
In some cases, the restriction/suspension is temporary or will have the note with the restriction end date. Under more serious circumstances, you will have to contact LinkedIn support.
Fear not - at this point, you can still get your LinkedIn account back.
What is the difference between getting a LinkedIn account restricted and LinkedIn jail?
Unlike restriction, where you get your LinkedIn account back after a 4-step process, LinkedIn jail is a permanent account ban or an endless loop of review process. It usually happens after you get your LinkedIn account restricted multiple times.
There are 2 ways that indicate you ended up in LinkedIn jail:
- If you receive feedback from LinkedIn support saying that your account restriction is final due to repeated Terms of Service violation. (Permanent)
- Or if you don’t hear from them for weeks-on-end after you got restriction multiple times. (Not permanent but the process takes a long time)
Ending up in permanent LinkedIn jail happens in extreme situations only. So, if you are a sales representative, you don’t need to worry. However, you need to be cautious and aware of your LinkedIn lead generation activity.
Why is my LinkedIn account restricted?
Let’s go through all 8 reasons LinkedIn may restrict your account and identify the root cause.
1. You created an account with a name that isn’t yours or violates User Agreement.
People sometimes create their profile using the name of a company, some other business or entity, which is against the LinkedIn Terms and Conditions. In case you use the platform to represent your company, the better decision would be to create a company page for it.
In addition, creating an account with a false name, and if detected, can be a subject of immediate restriction or a ban, according to LinkedIn User Agreement.
2. You created multiple profiles from the same device.
LinkedIn’s User Agreement states that you cannot have more than one real profile created from a single device or a proxy, especially if one of the accounts is restricted. In case you intend to create multiple profiles, be prepared for getting all those LinkedIn accounts restricted.
3. Your content is spammy or inappropriate.
LinkedIn will definitely ban your account if you publish content that violates their Professional Community Policies. Depending on the level of violation, they can temporarily or permanently restrict your account.
4. You sent too many connection requests.
If you send a lot of connection requests weekly, you can get your LinkedIn account restricted. Consequently, if you overstep your boundaries many times your account will be partially restricted with the following message:
If you exceed the limit and get restricted, you won’t be able to send other connection requests. However, you can access other LinkedIn features.
In general, the number of invitations you can send is between 100 and 200 per week. The catch-22 here is that the LinkedIn limit algorithm often changes. That said, the limit itself is not final and depends on many factors. In other words, it can vary based on:
- whether you are just starting out,
- your account health,
- the number of current connections you have,
- or the connection acceptance rate.
5. Your acceptance rate is too low.
If you send a lot of blank or not personalized requests to 3rd-degree connections, your acceptance rate will be low. In other words, LinkedIn registers this as a suspicious activity and you can get your LinkedIn account restricted.
6. Your invitations have been left pending, ignored or marked with “I don’t know this person”.
LinkedIn considers suspicious behavior when most of your connection requests have been left pending for a long time or have been ignored. So it's best to clear them regularly.
In addition, blank and non-personalized connection requests can make some users click the "I don't know this person" button. If this number of people is high, you can have a restriction on your hands. Also, LinkedIn may ask you to provide a person's email to connect with them from that point forward. Needless to say, they will start to monitor your account as well.
The good news is that LinkedIn lifts most of these restrictions automatically within one week.
7. You viewed too many profiles in a short period of time.
Sometimes, you can get your LinkedIn account restricted if you view too many profiles in a day or view one person’s profile frequently. Consequently, your account might get restricted because LinkedIn can register it as a bot-like activity.
This situation is rare, but it does happen, so watch out for how many profiles you view.
8. Using unsafe LinkedIn automation tools
It’s no secret that LinkedIn doesn’t like the automation of its platform. Some tools meet their guidelines, while some of them do not. So, one of the common reasons people experience restrictions is that they use the wrong LinkedIn tools that reveal bot-like behavior.
Yes, LinkedIn automation tools can help you scale your business if you are a sales professional, founder, agency owner, marketer, or recruiter. And yes, you can do so while keeping the restriction off your hands, having your LinkedIn account healthy, and respecting why LinkedIn was created - because of the authentic interaction. That said, we’ll help you choose the right tool. So keep on reading.
4 proven steps to regain access to your LinkedIn account
#1 Step - Understand why it happened.
When you get your LinkedIn account restricted, you won’t be able to log into your account for several days. Furthermore, it often happens that LinkedIn doesn’t provide any explanation as to why they restricted your LinkedIn account.
So, to understand the reason for getting a LinkedIn account restricted, read the reasons above, or LinkedIn Terms and Conditions and the User Agreement.
#2 Step - Follow the instructions on your account.
Sometimes, when your LinkedIn account is restricted, you will see a notification when you log in. Then LinkedIn will ask you to verify your identity by uploading images of your ID, front and back.
After you do it, someone will review your account. The process is sometimes quick and can last up to 48 hours. However, often, it can take up to 7 days for LinkedIn to respond. You’ll also get an email when LinkedIn lifts the restriction from your account. So, be patient.
#3 Step - Contact LinkedIn customer support.
If you get your LinkedIn account restricted, it is usually temporary, and restrictions are lifted quickly when you verify your identity. However, if there’s no option for you to verify identity, or your appeal has been pending for a long time the next step would be to reach out to the LinkedIn Customer Support directly. You’ll probably need some identification documents to confirm your identity as well.
Here is how to contact LinkedIn customer support:
- Writing them on Twitter – (keep in mind that this doesn’t always work)
- Contacting them here, through the contact form.
In addition, here is what you should include in the appeal:
- Reasons why you need to get your account back;
- Acknowledgment of the violation - it’s best to be honest (if you made a mistake);
- Point out mistake on their part (if LinkedIn wrongly banned your account);
- Assure LinkedIn support that it won’t happen again.
#4 Step - Ask for help
You can also ask around for help in your network. If your connections raise a query and show support for your account, it will help you gain access to your LinkedIn account faster.
Show the real power of your network! 💪
You managed to get your LinkedIn account recovered? Follow these 6 dos & don’ts to avoid being banned again.
1. Know your limits on LinkedIn.
Even though LinkedIn wants you to use their platform, they want you to do it cleverly, as well. There are 5 types of direct interactions with users (if we exclude post likes and comments), and those are:
- Profile visits
- Following
- Connection requests
- Messages
- InMails
Each of these actions has a daily limit you need to follow if you don’t want to risk your profile’s safety. Also, these limits are higher for the premium account users and the old ones with a larger network.
Here are the limits that turned out to be the safest if you’ve been using LinkedIn for some time:
- Profile visits: 80-120 per day
- Follows: 80-120 per day
- Connection requests: 40-60 per day
- Sending messages: 60-100 per day
If you haven’t, keep these limits even lower.
2. Withdraw your pending requests.
Keep your pending invitation request around 400 or 500 and remove those that are 4 weeks old. A higher number will get you on LinkedIn radar. Only, keep in mind that you won’t be able to send an invitation to that person in the next 3 weeks.
In order to cancel a LinkedIn invite, you can use a manual method. However, what makes your life easier in situations like these is using a sales engagement tool. For example, Skylead will send out invitations for you, and to keep it clean and safe. It will also automatically withdraw older ones, so you wouldn’t have to do it manually on your own.
3. Warm up your LinkedIn account.
Let's say your LinkedIn account is relatively new, or you've already got the restriction. The best approach would be to start with a few actions and build your way to the maximum limit.
The thing is that if your LinkedIn account is new, and you start sending a large number of invites right away, LinkedIn will consider it suspicious activity.
Here is what you can do to prevent this:
- Send out as little as 10 connection invites or send 30 messages a day;
- Slowly increase the activity numbers by 5-10 weekly;
- Avoid sending invites on weekends;
- Take a bit more time between performing actions;
- Don't connect with the 3rd-degree connection in the beginning;
- Remove all the pending connection requests if they are not accepted within a few days.
4. Always send friendly and personalized messages.
When connecting with the people you know, always be genuine and include a personal message. For instance, send a personalized invitation including the reason why that person might wish to connect with you. This way, you’ll avoid the label of an unknown person.
If you need inspiration for connecting with new users, we have a lot of LinkedIn connection message templates that might help you. You can also throw in some delicious images or GIF personalization.
5. Don’t sell right away.
Don't try to sell immediately after connecting with the new users. It can only push them away and make them ignore you. Building a relationship and providing value with updates, articles, and messages is important before you try to close a deal.
6. Use the right LinkedIn automation tool.
To understand which LinkedIn automation tool to choose and keep you safe, let's first go over all types.
Extensions
Browser-based LinkedIn tools are extensions in your browser that rely on browser caching, making it much easier to detect. Other downsides of these tools are:
- They do not offer dedicated IP,
- Your PC has to be on to be able to run,
- It automatically injects the code into LinkedIn, placing a big "I am using automation tool" target on your back.
Desktop apps
The second type of LinkedIn automation tools are desktop apps that don’t offer dedicated IP addresses. They don’t have the possibility of running Multiple Accounts, nor do they work in the background. Since it works through the web, it doesn’t inject code into LinkedIn, making it a bit safer than browser-based ones/extensions.
Cloud-based tools
Cloud-based software is the best of them all because:
- it is managed and processed thanks to a dedicated IP address that shields your activity on the internet (proxy);
- All your data is on the internet;
- They do not inject any code into LinkedIn;
- Advanced personalization;
- The software can run even when your computer is off;
- Only cloud-based software can have Multiple Accounts and integrated inboxes.
Due to the above-mentioned, we advise using cloud-based tools because they work online, are much safer than extension-based tools, and are better than desktop apps.
For example, the excellent thing about Skylead, as one of the cloud-based tools, is that it’s entirely safe for use because of its location-based IP addresses. Skylead also has a human-like behavior (for example, clicking and scrolling as a human would do), making it undetectable and reliable.
That makes Skylead a FIVE STARS tool! Plus, it has a lot more features to offer.
The moral of the story: Some of the tools are riskier than others, and it’s not hard for LinkedIn to spot this kind of manipulation and get your LinkedIn account restricted, so choose wisely.
How to use LinkedIn automation tool carefree?
Considering your account's safety and features, we previously stated why Skylead is a perfect choice to outreach on autopilot. So, if you wish to connect with more people every week, here’s how Skylead can help you with that as well.
The thing is you can use free and paid LinkedIn InMails and emails to multichannel your outreach and connect with more people this way. What's best about these methods is that you don't risk getting your LinkedIn account restricted. Moreover, LinkedIn will love you for it as you will use their paid InMails.
How to create outreach campaign with Skylead
First, go to your campaign manager and choose the campaign type. Also, enter the lead URL source or import the CSV file.
Then, fill in the details regarding your campaign setting and move on to the Smart sequence.
From here, you can personalize messages and combine LinkedIn and email actions with if/else conditions to create a coherent outreach flow that Skylead will follow to reach your leads.
To demonstrate an example, we've started with the Follow and Find & verify email steps. Next, we added the Invite to Connect step and the condition to check if Skylead manages to do so. If yes, Skylead can proceed to send a regular LinkedIn message and the follow-up.
However, if it doesn't manage to connect with leads, you can check if Skylead found the publicly available leads' business emails. If yes, Skylead can send them an email. If not, it can send them paid or free InMail.
When you finish creating a coherent outreach flow, hit Start Campaign, sit back and relax.
Frequently asked questions
What happens when your LinkedIn account is restricted?
When your LinkedIn account is restricted, you lose access to certain features or the entire account, depending on the severity of the issue. This can happen for violations of LinkedIn's policies or unusual activity. You'll typically receive a notification explaining the restriction and steps to resolve or appeal it.
Why was my LinkedIn account restricted from sending connection requests?
LinkedIn considers every excessive action, even sending connection requests, a cause for the restriction. If you got your LinkedIn account restricted because of this, wait a few hours, then try again. Also, make sure not to send a lot of connection requests without a note or with the same note.
What to do when LinkedIn account is restricted permanently?
If your LinkedIn account is permanently restricted, review LinkedIn's User Agreement and Community Policies to understand the violation. Next, appeal the decision by contacting LinkedIn support with an explanation to support your case. If the restriction wasn't lifted, create another account with the new email and carefully follow the rules.
Why is my LinkedIn asking for ID when my LinkedIn account is restricted?
LinkedIn may restrict your account and ask for ID due to unusual activity detected by LinkedIn's security systems. The ID requirement helps ensure the safety and integrity of its network by asking you to verify your identity so LinkedIn can prevent unauthorized access or fraudulent activities.
Why does LinkedIn restrict accounts?
LinkedIn restricts accounts for two reasons. Firstly, to keep the platform safe. Secondly, to create an organic and beneficial space for all its users. To achieve this, LinkedIn sets rules to show what is acceptable, what actions are suspicious, and what content is inappropriate.
What to do if you get your LinkedIn account restricted for no reason?
If your account is mistakenly restricted, log into your LinkedIn account, follow the instructions from the notification, and submit your ID. After you do, support will review your account in 24-48 hours and lift the restriction. You’ll also get an email when LinkedIn lifts the restriction from your account.
You’ve got this!
Every social media platform, including LinkedIn, uses policies and rules when monitoring suspicious behavior to protect its users. So, getting your LinkedIn account restricted or ending up in LinkedIn jail due to these restrictions is serious business - especially for sales folks who use LinkedIn as their main LinkedIn prospecting and outreach tool.
But don’t stress; even if you get restricted, it’s not the end, and you can recover from it. Your LinkedIn account will be fine as long as you stick to the advice listed above.
Lastly, LinkedIn automation tools and cold email software can be very helpful with your business. Trust us, we’ve been using it since 2019. However, be careful of which one you use. Many tools are on the market, but the safest bet is to choose cloud-based solutions like our Skylead. If you wish to give it a go, start your 7-day free trial and schedule your onboarding call with one of our customer support representatives.
If you ask yourself how to connect with someone on LinkedIn, you are in the right place. We will go over a couple of methods you can use to add someone to LinkedIn, including the LinkedIn App, so you can grow your network and prepare for LinkedIn lead generation.
However, that is not all. Keep in mind that building your network is all about building relationships. Thus, we will mention what you need to do before adding connections. Moreover, we will get into the core of what is truly important for a successful professional relationship and, therefore, a successful business.
How to connect with someone on LinkedIn?
Building your network is not just about having a large connection number. It is about establishing relationships, getting in touch with the people from your industry, sharing experiences, and growing your business.
Furthermore, 80% of professionals found networking crucial for career success*. For example, salespeople and hiring managers proved this by finding their perfect leads and ideal candidates while growing their network. And with the rise of social selling and word-of-mouth recommendations, networking on LinkedIn really did become essential for professionals in today's world.
So to take full advantage of networking, let’s start from the beginning - how to connect with someone on LinkedIn.
8 ways to connect with someone on LinkedIn
To connect with someone on LinkedIn via your PC, you can use one of these ways:
- Add connections when creating your LinkedIn account
- Send a connection request via their profile
- Connect on LinkedIn via the “People Also Viewed” section
- Send invites to people from Search Results
- From the “People You May Know” section
- Use the “More Suggestions For You” Section
- Connecting with people from events page
- Asking other network members
Add connections when creating your LinkedIn account
First, when you create your LinkedIn account, you can add connections you might know in real life. LinkedIn recommends them from the school you chose as your education or from the company you set to work in.
In addition, you should know that if you add people to your network using this option, you will not be able to write a personalized note. In other words, when you click the + button, the people you sent the invite to, will only get the following LinkedIn’s general message:
Send a connection request via their profile
The easiest way to connect with someone after browsing through their profile on the desktop is to get back to the top of their LinkedIn profile and hit the Connect button.
If you plan to connect with someone on a LinkedIn app, the process is similar to desktop. The slight difference is that you need to go to the More Options button and click Personalize Invite. Otherwise, if you click the Connect button only, your invite will be sent automatically, and you won’t be able to personalize it.
Sometimes you will notice that a LinkedIn user doesn’t have an immediate Connect button on their profile. This can happen because of two reasons:
- The user either has their creator mode on;
- Or they set the Follow button as primary via their Settings & Privacy page.
So you would need to click the More button and then Connect option from the drop-down menu. In addition, this is how to connect on LinkedIn with your favorite creators.
Here is what it looks like in the LinkedIn app. Click on the ··· button and choose if you wish to send a blank or a personalized invite.
Next, if this person is your 2nd-degree connection, you will have the option to type in the personalized message and let it be on its merry way.
To clarify, you need to write a personalized message to increase the chances of the user accepting your invite. However, there are other reasons, as well.
Message personalization
Firstly, we wish to build our network by building true relationships. Secondly, we want to decrease the chances of people ignoring, declining, and checking the “I don’t know this person” box. Too many refusals can result in LinkedIn account restriction, as this will be one of many signals for LinkedIn that you might be a spammer.
If, however, you wish to add a 3rd+ degree connection, you will first need to answer LinkedIn's question about how you know this person.
Should you say you don’t know them, you will see the following alert.
If you have a LinkedIn Premium subscription, you will be able to send a message but you will use up one LinkedIn InMail credit.
Otherwise, you won’t be able to send messages. Instead, you can only write a note for your connection invite.
Connect on LinkedIn via “People Also Viewed” section
While we are still on the user’s profile, let’s show you another way how you can connect with someone on LinkedIn. If you look at the right end of the screen, you will notice the People also viewed section.
LinkedIn will recommend other people you can add to your network based on the user’s profile you are currently viewing. So, all you need to do is to either connect straight from there or visit that person’s profile to decide if you wish to connect with them on LinkedIn or not.
Send invites to people from search results
If you wonder how to connect with someone on LinkedIn without going through their profile, you can do so using a couple of ways. The first one is to do the "LinkedIn prospecting" of your own and add a connection from the Search Results Page. Simply click the Connect button right to their profile information.
Here is how to connect with someone on LinkedIn via search results within the LinkedIn app. Only be aware that this way, you won’t be able to personalize your message.
How to connect with someone on LinkedIn via network page
To send someone a connection request, you can also go to the My Network section at the top of the page.
Once you do, you will see the list of pending invitations and options to manage your network. From here, If you scroll down a bit, you will have two ways on how to connect with someone on LinkedIn.
How to connect on LinkedIn from “People You May Know” section
After you pass Follow suggestions, LinkedIn will present users who have similar roles as yourself and offer you to add them. Simply find the People You May Know With Similar Roles section, browse through and add a few connections by clicking the Connect button below their name.
In addition, you should know that you won’t be able to personalize invites if you send them through this method. So, to personalize your invite messages, it’s best to go to that person’s profile and connect from there.
Use “More Suggestions For You” section to connect with someone on LinkedIn
If you scroll down a bit more, past the Groups you may be interested in, LinkedIn will surprise you with another suggestion section. In this case, LinkedIn will present the list of people you can add based on shared connections, mutual company, industry, or, again, job roles. Just be aware that this method does not support personalized invites as well.
Add people who joined certain events
This is a nifty way on how to connect with someone on LinkedIn from the same event you attended and mingle. Simply go to the event’s page, and join by clicking the Attend button. Once you do, look at the right side of the screen and search for the Networking option.
Lastly, browse the people who attended the event. When you find the one you wish to add to your network, click the ··· button and then Connect.
And here is how to connect with someone on LinkedIn using the LinkedIn app.
Asking other network members
Last, but not least, you can always ask other members of your network if they know anyone from your line of work or industry or if they can introduce you to someone. This is a nice way to get an introduction and connect with other people you otherwise cannot reach.
Moreover, if you are a recruiter or salesperson, this is a nifty way to get to your lead or find an ideal candidate you’d probably miss.
4 things to do before connecting with someone on LinkedIn
1. Set up your LinkedIn profile
Imagine a scenario where you get a connection request from a user with no profile, LinkedIn headline, or displayed experience to learn more about them and what they do. You wouldn’t accept that request, would you? Thus one of the first things you should do is pump up your LinkedIn profile and allow people you don’t know in real life to get to know you.
2. Craft your message carefully
Remember when we said you need to personalize your message to increase the acceptance rate and build your network more efficiently? Well, by structuring your message carefully, you can.
If you are sending the message to a person you don’t know in real life, firstly look them up and personalize your message accordingly. For example, you can research the content they created, what their occupation is, or what company they work in.
Apart from personalization, here are other things you should consider when creating your invite message:
- Clearly state why you want to connect with them;
- Write a compelling copy to catch their attention;
- Include a hook or call-to-action so you can continue the conversation once you are connected;
- Introduce yourself;
- Be polite and professional.
So, for example, you can try emphasizing your mutual connection:
Hi {{firstName}},
I noticed that {{Mutual Connection Name}} is in your network. We worked together at {{Company}}. Nevertheless, as we both work as {{Occupation}} I would love to have you in my network.
Or you can target their expertise and reach them out like this:
Hello {{firstName}},
Love the work you are doing. I followed your advice regarding {{Topic}} that you shared here, on LinkedIn, and it brought me {{Achieved Results}}. I would love to connect!
We have complete blog posts on connection request message templates and using personalization to scale up your business, so be sure to check them out.
3. Prepare to engage
After connecting with someone, it is essential to maintain and build a relationship. Thus, keep engaging with the people on LinkedIn via post engagements, an endorsement, or an occasional message. This can nourish your relationship and can lead to future opportunities.
4. Connect with someone you know first
As we mentioned previously, once you create your profile, LinkedIn will suggest contacts you might know so you can add them first. Thus, it’s better to strengthen your network with your known contacts rather than trying to add unknown people from the beginning. Try finding your coworkers, classmates, or simply your friends.
Is there a solution to send the connection invites for me?
If you plan to use LinkedIn for sales or recruiting and don’t have time to do the outreach, build your network, and personalize messages on a large scale, then meet Skylead, a LinkedIn Automation & Cold Email Software that does the outreach for you.
Let’s dive into the tool itself. We previously explained how to contact people who attended certain events. Thus, here is how Skylead can do it instead of you.
Go to the desired event, and attend it. Once you do, click the Attendees option.
Then copy the attendees search result URL.
Next, go to your Skylead Campaign creator, choose the campaign source, give your campaign a name and paste the URL in the LinkedIn URL field. Don’t forget to select the Connection type.
Go to the next step and choose the Collect Contact Info if you wish to. This is a nifty option as Skylead will scrape all publicly available data such as your lead’s email, phone number, or website. Once you finish with setting up additional campaign settings click next.
Now we are at the Smart Sequence page. From here, you can drag and drop desired actions you wish Skylead to perform.
We will start with the steps such as Follow, Find & Verify Business Email and invite them to connect. Next, we will personalize the invite message via Skylead's variables.
Furthermore, you’d be surprised to hear that Skylead not only sends connection invites but continues to outreach your target audience and perform other actions for you. For example, if the person accepted the invite and didn’t respond to your message, you can instruct Skylead to send a follow-up.
On the other hand, if, after a couple of days, the person doesn't accept the invite, you can check if Skylead found their email address and send them an email to multichannel your outreach.
All you need to do on your end is to determine the steps in the Smart Sequence, and Skylead will do it for you.
Once you set all the sequence steps, click Start Campaign, and Skylead will start to outreach your audience.
In conclusion
There are many ways you can add a person to your LinkedIn network. However, there are only 3 ways to maintain and create a strong network: politeness, honesty, and consistency in building relationships. So, to sum up…
And don’t forget about the top things to do before adding someone to your network:
- Set up your LinkedIn profile;
- Craft your message carefully;
- Prepare to engage;
- Connect with someone you know first.
And if you find yourself with no time to build your network, or you simply wish to find a solution that will do it all for you, then try out Skylead, a sales engagement tool that thinks for you.
See Skylead in action! Start your 7-day Free Trial now.
Webhook? Say what?
CRM software became an essential part of the sales workflow. However, with many benefits to count for, using CRM alone simply won’t be enough if you wish to optimize your sales process.
That’s where Skylead comes in - the #1 LinkedIn Automation & Cold Email Software that helps you streamline your LinkedIn prospecting, LinkedIn lead generation and outreach efforts so you can focus entirely on closing more deals.
Only is it possible to integrate your CRM with Skylead and use them together? Why yes. Yes, it is.
Thus, in this article, we will show you the process of Skylead and CRM integration using webhooks, what data it can send to your CRM, actions you can create and how to set them up.
What is a CRM integration?
CRM integration stands for connecting a CRM with third-party systems, such as sales tools. In other words, by linking your CRM with the other tools, you allow these systems to exchange or transfer data effortlessly. As a result, you will automate and slightly change the sales process. Consequently, this will make your CRM more functional and operational.
By integrating CRM, you will experience multiple benefits. Firstly, you don’t need to navigate between the tools to find the information, as you have all the information you need in one place. Secondly, CRM integration optimizes your productivity by minimizing the time and the need to navigate between the applications. And lastly, it reduces data duplication, making your workflow cleaner.
There are two ways of CRM integration:
- Via Webhooks - triggered by the event;
- Via Open API - native integration, triggered by request.
However, not every integration can be native, as sometimes you will not have API access to your CRM. Thus in this article, we will focus on webhooks as they are a bit easier way to push your data into the CRM rather than using API.
If you haven’t already, check out our "10 best CRM software for the sales" list.
What is a webhook?
A webhook is a type of API that automatically sends the data from one application to another. It is commonly known as HTTP push API, lightweight API, or HTTP callback. Webhook serves as a tool to push data when you do not have the possibility of native integration - aka API.
To clarify, let's go over a couple of main differences between a webhook and an API.
Firstly, the API allows two-way communication between the applications. On the other hand, a webhook is a one-way street, meaning it will send the data only one way.
Also, API is request-based. In other words, one application requests from another to receive a response. However, a webhook will trigger and send the data automatically only when a specific event happens.
Lastly, API allows you to send and receive a large amount of data. Contrary to API, webhook will extract and send a small portion of real-time data.
Here is an example:
Let’s say you wish to automatically create a deal in your CRM when a lead replies to your cold outreach. Instead of CRM asking Skylead if a lead replied all the time, it would be much easier for Skylead to send the data once such an event occurs.
So instead of CRM constantly requesting data from Skylead and spending resources, it can chill out and wait for Skylead to push that information via webhook.
Still, both have their advantages and disadvantages. Nonetheless, since API spends more resources and it is more complicated to use, webhooks are regarded as a more suitable solution for real-time data transfer.
CRM integration with Skylead
Imagine you ran a cold outreach campaign with 1K contacts. In addition, you wish to single out those interested and make a deal in your CRM. How would you do it? Well, manually, and you would spend a ton of time. Not anymore. Let’s get you set up, so the webhook sends this data automatically.
What data can you push from Skylead to a CRM?
Before setting up your webhooks, you should know what data you can actually send to your CRM from Skylead. To clarify, here is the list:
- Business Email;
- Personal Email (which Skylead discovers);
- Full Name;
- Profile Picture;
- Occupation;
- First Name;
- Country;
- Current Company;
- Years In Current Company;
- Total Career Positions Count;
- Total Years In Career;
- College Name;
- Phone;
- Twitter;
- Website;
- Last Name;
- LinkedIn's Public Identifier - last part of the LinkedIn URL;
- Label Tag In Smart Inbox (labels you can use in Skylead’s chat);
- Conversation Text;
- Skylead’s Campaign Name;
- Last Step Execution Date;
- Lead ID From Skylead;
- Lead’s Status In The Skylead Campaign (ex. discovered, replied, connected not replied, etc.);
- LinkedIn Profile URL;
- Conversation Thread URL part.
In addition, you can use part of this data as variables to increase your cold outreach personalization with Skylead. Now, let’s jump to webhook creation.
How to create a webhook?
You can create a webhook in many ways. However, keep in mind that you will need to pay an additional subscription to some webhook providers. Unless you wish to program it by yourself, that is. Thus we will take Zapier as a webhook provider as an example.
Go to the Zapier and click the “Create Zap” button in the sidebar.
For the trigger, choose the Webhook option.
Under the Trigger Event, select “Catch Hook” and the “Continue” buttons.
Now, Zapier has created a custom Webhook URL for you to send the data. Copy it to the clipboard.
Please don’t close this window yet, as we will be back here shortly.
Webhook setup in Skylead
Open the Skylead dashboard and go to the Webhooks page.
Once there, go ahead, and click on the “Create New Webhook” button at the top right of the page.
Here is where it gets interesting. Skylead will ask you what type of event you wish to occur so Skylead can send the data to your CRM. Skylead supports the following events.
Here is what they mean:
- When contact is invited to connect - the webhook will send the data after every single invite to connect is sent.
- When a contact accepts the connection - the webhook will be triggered when the lead accepts the invitation.
- When a contact replies - the webhook will only fire when you receive the first message from your lead. This message is usually a reply to your invite to connect.
- When a message is received from the contact - each time you receive a message from the contact, the webhook will be triggered.
- Sent all connection requests - at the end of the cycle, after all the connection requests have been sent out to targeted leads, the webhook will send out the data.
- When a label is added - This refers to the labels you have available in Skylead’s smart inbox. As soon as you label a conversation with a certain tag, the webhook will fire.
The most useful events to send data to CRM are When a contact replies or When a label is added. This way, you will send data to your CRM with already warmed-up leads.
Webhook setup example
So, say, for example, you wish to create a deal in your CRM when a contact replies. Thus we will choose this option. Also, be sure to paste the Webhook URL in the "Callback URL" field, and don’t forget to test it.
In addition, you can create a webhook for your active Skylead campaigns by choosing Global Webhook. This way, you create the webhook for all past, present and future campaigns, so you don’t have to create new webhooks all over again. Or, if you wish for a webhook to fire only for some active campaigns, choose Let me select individual campaigns.
Once you have everything set up, click the Submit button.
Test your webhook trigger
After you’ve done your work in Skylead, you need to go back to the Zapier to finish the set-up there. To test your trigger, click the Continue button. Next, go ahead and click the Test trigger button.
In addition, if the test ends up unsuccessful, you need to copy and paste the Webhook URL again in Skylead. But if you copied right, to begin with, everything should be good.
Once your test goes through, you will see all the information that Skylead can collect. Here is an example of a successful trigger test.
Creating actions in your CRM
Let's move on. To get to the Action stage click the + button.
Here you can choose the tool where you want to send your information. In other words, choose your CRM of choice. For example, we will use Pipedrive.
Now, to make a deal, you can first set an action to create an organization and person page in your CRM. To clarify, this will help you link them to the deal and add more information on each.
Here is what an example lead page looks like in Pipedrive.
Create an organization page in CRM
Let's start with an organization. For an Action Event, pick Create Organization.
Then, click the Continue button and choose your CRM account. If your account is not listed there, you need to link it to Zapier first, using the +Connect a new account button.
Now, to set up action details. In the Name column, select Current Company under Catch a Hook. Please don’t worry about the name next to the current company. This is just a name drawn from your webhook test. To clarify, this serves as a parameter for any future data that will be sent to your CRM.
Secondly, if you wish to assign this company to a user from your CRM, select their account under Owner.
Furthermore, if you want to label the company in your CRM, you can do so by inserting the label option. After you’ve done it, click on the continue button and perform a test again.
Once you finish the test, go to your CRM and check under Organization, and you will see your test organization there.
Crafting a person page in CRM
Similar to the previous step, you need to choose your CRM and click the Create Person button.
Now define the specifics of your Person page. For the name, choose the first name and/or the last name under the Catch hook from the menu. Secondly, choose the business or personal email address that the webhook caught. To clarify, if you use the Email Discovery feature in Skylead, then webhook will certainly pick this information up, and you will be able to send it to your CRM.
In addition, you can set your CRM label, who of your colleagues should be an owner, or see the Person page and access it.
On the flip side, choosing an organization field is a bit different.
Since you need your Person and Organization page inter-linked in your CRM, you need to click Custom from the menu for this step. Then navigate to find the ID of the previous step under Create Organization in the Pipedrive. This way, the pages will be linked as soon as they are created. In other words, when Skylead sends data to your CRM via webhook.
Now, go ahead and test this action. Then, go to your CRM and find that lead’s page. Here is what a newly created lead page looks like in Pipedrive after we’ve tested the action.
Deal creation
The time has finally come to create a Deal for your CRM. Once again, go through picking your CRM from the drop-down menu. Then, choose to Create Deal from Action event.
Firstly, you can choose the title to contain either a person’s name or company. Secondly, you can define the creation date by selecting the Last step executed parameter under the Catch hook.
Moving on, define the status, stage, and other values you find relevant to you. However, be aware of Organization and Person fields. Once again, you would need to link a Deal with your previous step. Thus choose Custom from the menu, and navigate to find ID both for organization and person.
In addition, you can fill in other fields, as well. These fields are optional and entirely dependant on your business needs.
Now, you are done! The only thing left to do is to test it and see how it looks in your CRM. Voila!
Creating additional actions
If you wish to use webhooks to their fullest, you can try out different actions, apart from creating deals, companies, and persons. Here are a couple of additional actions that you can explore and test.
Note creation
If you wish to pin a specific note to your person page in the CRM automatically, you can choose to create one in your CRM via webhook. For example, let’s say you wish to add a generic note to call every person in 20 days. Here is what the setup should look like.
Firstly, click the + button using the existing webhook flow, and select the CRM of choice. Then under Action select Create Note.
in the Content field, specify what the note should contain. Secondly, to link it to a specific deal, person, and organization, choose their IDs from previous steps accordingly.
Lastly, test the action, and go back to your CRM. You will notice that your note appeared on a specific person's page, as it should.
Update deal
This option is nifty if, for example, you wish to fire a webhook and update a deal in your CRM if you change the lead’s label in Skylead.
Here is how it should go. First, go to Skylead, and under Setup a Webhook, choose When a label is added option. Then, choose a global webhook or specific campaigns, and proceed to test it. After that, continue with creating a webhook as mentioned above.
To update the deal, first, you need to create a webhook in Zapier, as we did before. Then create a Find deal in Pipedrive action.
To clarify, here is what your setup could look like.
Then go ahead and test it. If the test was successful, it means the specific organization has been found. Next, create an Update deal in Pipedrive action.
Here is how the setup of the Update deal should look like.
Now, go ahead and test it again. If successful, go to your CRM. You will notice that the deal has moved to the stage you set.
In summary
From now on, the sky's the limit. Webhooks may be terrifying at first, but once you get to use the first one, every other one gets easier. Luckily webhook providers, like Zapier, are user-friendly and give you a lot of room to experiment and use different options to soothe your business needs. Luckily, there are many options to choose from and play with.
Keep in mind that depending on your CRM and subscription plan, you will have more or fewer options of which data you can automatically import. But we hope this gives you a good understanding of how you can use Skylead or any other tool with your CRM.
Well, that is all, folks. Be sure to give us some love - join our community group, follow our YouTube channel or keep an eye out for our blog page - we publish blog posts every week. And if you are a fresh face to Skylead or have not started using it yet, it would be nice to have a chat. So, come and say hi using the chat on our website. Or, try out Skylead directly by signing up for a 7-day Free Trial.
CRM software and tools are definitely here to stay. There is no doubt that, with the global CRM market growth projection of $128.97 billion worth in 2028, the substantial popularity of the best CRM software is yet to come.
And with the reason. Firstly, CRM offers a wide range of benefits, including centralized data and automation of tedious sales processes. Above all, a well-implemented CRM software can reach ROI up to $45 for each $1 spent.
We all wish to jump on this train. And some of us already did. But in the sea of CRM software, how would you know which one is the best for you? Whether you are starting out or considering changing your CRM software, we’ve got your back.
Therefore, in this article we will cover some of the best CRM software, why they are the best, and how to integrate them with other tools.
Furthermore, we will cover what CRM software is, if you need it and if you should buy it. Let’s get to it!
What is CRM?
Customer Relation Management, aka CRM software, is a tool that helps companies collect, organize and manage data and streamline processes related to customers’ lifecycle.
In other words, sales terms, CRM software helps teams visualize their pipeline and organize or perform tasks related to the buyer journey. Furthermore, it pinpoints the location of specific prospects in the sales funnel, their status, the next activity the sales team needs to perform, and potential value.
CRM software substitutes various spreadsheets and documents companies use to keep up with prospects’ or customers’ data. It stores all information in one place - such as messages, meetings, pain points, buyer persona type, and, in some cases, calls with customers - everything you need to know about specific leads to help you build a relationship and close deals. Lastly, CRM software shows how effective your sales strategy is and if something in your process needs improvement.
Customer-wise, CRM software provides information about each customer, their history, and any pending tasks related to nurturing and upselling.
Why is CRM one of the most valuable assets a company can acquire?
Why CRM? To clarify, let’s check out a couple of statistics first:
59% of companies tested say that CRM helped them improve Customer Retention and Satisfaction Rate by 47% and reduce lead costs by 27%. (FounderJar)
According to Salesforce, 81% of sales representatives emphasize the importance of having a view of data across the complete customer journey.
97% of sales professionals tested think that technology and CRM software are either essential or crucial for business. (LinkedIn)
Looking at the previous statistics and many more across the internet, CRM software is an essential tool for sales teams, and for good reason. To clarify, they are not just any tool on the market - they make building the relationship and social selling easier tasks and help the sales team be more customer-oriented - which is the core point of today’s sales.
Best CRM software can…
1. Centralize and label your data
CRM keeps track of all leads’ data. In other words, CRM’s centralized storage offers salespeople all the information on every individual prospect or customer at hand so they can build relationships and close deals faster.
In addition, since the prospect base can be distinct, the best CRM software also labels and sections your customer data. To clarify, you as a salesperson must know at any given time where your prospects are in the pipeline, on what note you ended the conversation, are they warmed up, or what is the next step towards closing the deal. CRM software does this for you by analyzing and labeling existing data in the system with various parameters you set. Therefore, you can be more customer-oriented by creating different messages depending on the buyer lifecycle and more personalized outreach.
2. Automate the process
With almost every piece of data being actionable, the best CRM software can automate some tedious parts of the process for salespeople, so they can focus on nurturing prospects through the pipeline. For example, appointment scheduling, assigning leads to different sales reps, or updating and importing the prospects’ data.
3. Offer analytics to close more deals and increase customer satisfaction
We can’t stress enough how important it is to conduct data analysis. Luckily, creators of the best CRM software out there share our opinion. Hence, every CRM has an analytics or reports page to help sales teams make data-driven decisions.
In other words, CRM can help you see how many deals you won or lost, what tactic you used, deal value, and much more. Thanks to this, salespeople can adjust their approach, close more deals and improve customer satisfaction and retention.
4. Remind salespeople of pending tasks
Sometimes we as people, amongst other work, forget to write a follow-up email or two, or simply a meeting slips out of our mind. It happens. However, forgetting such tasks can cause a lost prospect or a customer. However, CRM software offers a solution to this problem, and it is an option to alert you of actions needed for every customer in the pipeline to make sure these mistakes never happen.
To buy CRM software or to create a spreadsheet? That is the question.
Our experience says to buy. CRM software offers many useful features that you can use to streamline and automate processes and save you much more time than the spreadsheet one.
However, if you are just starting out, perhaps you don’t have the necessary budget or have a small company, you might want to consider creating a CRM in a spreadsheet for yourself. It can help you understand how CRMs work and how your business can benefit from them.
Additional tip: If you want to level up but are not ready to pay for the CRM itself, try out some CRM software with free plans, such as Bitrix24, Really Simple Systems, or EngageBay.
Nevertheless, if you or the company scales up, do not dwell on these spreadsheets or free plans (unless you want to), as you might miss out on the amazing features that some of the best CRM software have.
In case you wish to buy CRM software, here are the ten best CRM software currently on the market (people’s choice).
10 best CRM software for sales
CRM software is an essential tool for every sales team. However, as prospects differ, so do the salespeople. In other words, not every CRM suits every business's needs. So, how would you know which one is the best for your business needs?
Thus we present you with the top 10 list of highest-rated, best CRM software for the sales team from various listing websites. For this article, we are going to calculate the current average rating from the most popular review sites:
Furthermore, we will list who they are most suited for, advantages, disadvantages, pricing, and additional information to help you find the best CRM software for you. Let’s get started.
Salesmate - Best CRM software for cold calling
This CRM software is great for small and medium businesses who are cold calling. In addition, Salesmate has a relatively easy-to-use interface and quick access to the features you require.
Salesmate can be integrated with Gmail or Outlook. Furthermore, each sales member can centralize prospect data, including email messages, and share them with other team parties.
Salesmate also offers reports that enable business owners and managers to track sales reps’ productivity and achievements. Team leads can also listen to calls by using the call recording option.
Advantages:
Salesmate has an option to generate tasks for you automatically. If, for example, someone fills a form on your website, that lead can directly go into Salesmate, and it automatically creates the task to follow up with that lead.
Secondly, there are calling and texting features so the sales reps can contact leads. Thus, it eliminates the need for adding other tools and saves budget, in a way.
Disadvantages:
A couple of reviewers reported a periodical system lagging. Furthermore, since every text message and call minutes have an additional price, the amount billed each month increases by that sum. This can be a problem for some users, as the amount can escalate if not properly and regularly managed.
Price:
- Starter: $15 per user / month or $144 billed annually
- Growth: $30 per user / month or $288 billed annually
- Boost: $50 per user / month or $480 billed annually
Listings rating: ⭐ 4.64
HubSpot CRM - Best CRM software for teams that are developing
There is no doubt that HubSpot surprised everyone with free access to the CRM software. However, the free version does come with its limitations.
In a free account, you get:
- Contact management
- Deal pipeline
- Quotes
- Meeting scheduling
- Live chat
- Reporting dashboard
If you wish for anything else, you need to upgrade to a paid version.
HubSpot CRM is perfect for individuals or companies that are just getting started with CRM software. Furthermore, it is useful for other medium-sized businesses that outgrew that phase.
Advantages:
HubSpot overall offers various nifty features, including sales playbooks, sequences, workflow automation, and reporting. In addition, this CRM can process up to 1,000,000 contacts and users for free and offers unlimited storage. Their Starters pricing plan is pretty fair and is somewhat beginners friendly, as opposed to other CRMs on the market.
Disadvantages:
If you wish for additional features, pricing for professional and enterprise packages is pretty steep. Furthermore, it does not directly support Dynamics 365, and pipeline and managing deals are not that intuitive.
Pricing:
- Starter: $50 per 2 users / month or $540 yearly
- Professional: $500 per 5 users / month or $5400 yearly
- Enterprise: $1200 per 10 users / month, billed yearly
Listings rating: ⭐4.504
Salesforce Sales Cloud - Best CRM software for sales experts
This is a complex and useful CRM that allows sales professionals to manage and build relationships with their prospects and customers. Salesforce Sales Cloud helps you optimize your workload, maximize your budget, and offers real-time data all in your favor so you can close more deals.
This CRM is not for beginners. In other words, they offer features galore that can be useful to sales experts already using CRMs for a couple of years, but if you are a beginner, you might want to test out and use other systems for a while before jumping to Salesforce.
Advantages:
Salesforce’s various and unique features are actually its advantage. Furthermore, they offer mobile app for Android and iOS to let you do the work on the go.
Salesforce also possesses the visual workflow drag-and-drop feature and lets you create, do and change tasks fast. In addition, Salesforce Sales cloud integrated with Slack so you can engage with prospects and customers in real time.
Disadvantages:
Salesforce is not beginner friendly and it is billed annually.
Pricing:
- Essential: $25 per user / month, billed annually
- Professional:: $75 per user / month, billed annually
- Enterprise: $150 user/month, billed annually
- Unlimited: $300 per user / month, billed annually
Listings rating: ⭐4.5
Zoho CRM - Best CRM software companies interested in contact and pipeline management only
The core functionality of Zoho’s CRM is contact management, pipeline management, and purchase control. Its dashboard is customizable, and it allows users to brand it according to their business brand.
Advantages:
One of Zoho's biggest advantages is that it allows you to reach people who use Twitter and Facebook. Furthermore, Zoho CRM tracks their actions and categorizes them as contacts so you can connect with them.
Disadvantages:
Zoho is a kind of CRM with mixed feelings - its interface is a bit outdated, it doesn't work well with extensive outreach, features are sometimes not communicating between each other, and billing annually are perhaps the reasons why Zoho is so low on the list.
Pricing:
- Free Edition: Free up to 3 Users.
- Standard Edition: 20€ per user / month or 14€ per user / month but paid annually
- Professional Edition: 35€ per user / month or 23€ per user / month but paid annually
- Enterprise Edition: 50€ per user / month or 40€ per user / month but paid annually
- Ultimate Edition: 65€ per user / month or 52€ per user / month but paid annually
Listings rating: ⭐4.292
Monday Sales CRM - Best CRM software for workflow
Before, Monday was a project management software, but now with its product development, it is much more. Now-developed Monday Sale is CRM software that centralizes your entire workflow and customer data. It allows tracking every aspect of the sales cycle, from lead generation to after-sale customer nurturing.
This CRM is best for small and medium-size businesses, and it is completely customizable.
Advantages:
Monday offers various templates that you can use for your workflow. In addition, the Monday.com dashboard is clean and straight-to-the-point, so you can easily spot any issues in your sales cycle.
Disadvantages:
Their pricing plan is confusing since they require a minimum of 3 seats, and you cannot use it as an individual (you can, but you need to pay for 3 seats). Furthermore, Monday Sell has issues with tablet and mobile device apps, and workflow automation needs additional manual work.
Pricing:
- Individual: $0 free forever (up to 2 seats), billed annually
- Basic: $8 / seat / month (3 seats minimum), billed annually
- Standard: $10 seat / month (3 seats minimum), billed annually
- Pro: $16 seat / month (3 seats minimum), billed annually
- Enterprise: Contact Monday.com for a custom quote
Listings rating: ⭐ 4.675
Zendesk Sell - Best CRM software on a budget
Formerly Base, Zendesk Sell is a CRM software perfect for small and medium-sized businesses. It provides access to all channels the sales team uses for communication including SMS, voice calls, and emails.
With Zendesk Sell, it is pretty easy to gain a full insight into the specific lead, thanks to features such as funnel tracking, customizable lists, templates, and conversion rate tracking.
Advantages:
One of the best features Zendesk Sell has is a calendar-reminder system. In addition, Zendesk Sell can be linked with Microsoft Office and possesses one tool that automatically detects duplicate leads and task sequencing.
Disadvantages:
Zendesk users reported problems such as slow loading time, mistakes in automated data entry, and issues with customer support. In addition, subscriptions are billed annually, and users need to pay more for certain features.
Pricing:
- Starter: $19 per user / month, billed annually
- Professional: $49 per user / month, billed annually
- Enterprise: $99 per user / month, billed annually
Listings rating: ⭐4.216
Copper - Best CRM software if you use Google Workspace
This is a CRM software with the main emphasis on Google Workspace. It has a well-designed UX/UI. What’s interesting about this CRM is that it contains in-app voice transcription, allowing you to take bullet points from the call right away.
Like other CRMs, Copper offers detailed reports and suggests improvements in workflow, while alerts keep you focused on the most important tasks. Furthermore, Copper is a nice CRM if you are a beginner or if you wish to change your current CRM.
Advantages:
The main advantage is that Copper integrates completely with Google Workspace - Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Sheets. In addition, the onboarding process is seamless and the system itself is simple to use.
Disadvantages:
Firstly, you are not able to attach files to emails you send in Copper. Secondly, workflow automation is a bit confusing since Copper uses rule-based workflow automation, and it may be time-consuming at first. Furthermore, another thing you might need to spend time with is filtering and extracting data.
Lastly, there is a lack of flexibility outside Google Workspace. To clarify, companies that use different email providers will not be able to integrate them with Copper.
Pricing:
- Basic: $29 per user / month or $300 annually
- Professional: $69 per user / month $708 annually
- Business: $129 per user / month (with annual commitment) $1.428 annually
Listings rating: ⭐4.53
Pipedrive - Best CRM software for multiple pipelines and customization
CRM software, Pipedrive, handles all the essential sales CRM features. It is intuitive, and you can easily separate priority deals and create different strategies for each lead.
Advantages:
Firstly, Pipedrive lets you build multiple sales pipelines and customize stages which are great for sales reps or team leads who manage various pipelines at once.
Secondly, Pipedrive’s star feature is that you can create web forms and LeadBooster chatbot, a custom chatbot to pop up next to a webform. Pipedrive then automates the process and puts lead directly into your pipeline.
In addition, Pipedrive’s powerful AI understands leads’ behavioral patterns and can give you hints on how to close deals with them.
Disadvantages:
Pipedrive can’t send a follow-up message or birthday greetings based on a date at this moment in time. In addition, users noticed some lagging issues and poor mobile app experience. Lastly, customizable reports are not available.
Pricing:
- Essential: $15 per user/month or $12.50 per user / monthly billed annually
- Advanced: $29 per user/month or $ 24.90 per user / monthly billed annually
- Professional: $59 per user/month or $49.90 per user / monthly billed annually
- Enterprise: $119 per user/month or $99 per user / monthly billed annually
Listings rating: ⭐4.446
Salesflare - Best CRM software (people’s choice)
The best CRM software on our list is Salesflare. It is a CRM software primarily for startups and small businesses, but many agencies and enterprises use it. Salesflare is intuitive and easy to use and can be integrated with more than 400 other productivity tools like Trello, thanks to Zapier.
Salesflare offers automation features, such as an automated address book, timelines, file repository, and sending emails based on triggers. It can also provide task suggestions automatically.
Advantages:
The good thing about Salesflare is that they provide dedicated support no matter the plan you choose. In addition, for all technical advice, you can even talk to developers.
Furthermore, they have a mobile app, various team access levels, and a great data gathering system. Lastly, Salesflare will automatically log phone calls or meetings, and gather contact information from email signatures, and even social media profiles.
Disadvantages:
Fortunately, there aren't many disadvantages when we talk about Salesflare - the users seem pretty content. There are, however, a couple of suggestions from them: it would be nice to have email drip functionality, and email reporting needs improvement.
Pricing:
- Growth: $29 per user / month (billed annually) or $35 billed monthly
- Pro: $49 per user / month (billed annually) or $55 billed monthly
- Enterprise: $99 per user / month (billed annually) or contact their support for custom plan
Listings rating: ⭐ 4.73
EngageBay - Best CRM software for enticing your sales team
Cloud-based CRM, EngageBay is a software that integrates sales, marketing, and finances on a single platform. The core function of this software is complete automation. Furthermore, it offers contact management tools specially designed to be simple to use. In addition, it can track web activity, email response, and analytics.
EngageBay easily Integrates with Gmail, Office 365, or any other service, with integration capabilities through Zapier or other similar integrations to further streamline your sales efforts.
Advantages:
The possibility to make a call from this CRM is a big plus, as well as an option for transcripts. In addition, what separates EngageBay from other systems is the possibility to gamify sales processes and thus keep your sales reps motivated.
Disadvantages:
A couple of lesser disadvantages came up with EngageBay. There is less troubleshooting documentation, email templates are limited, and the Chrome plugin doesn’t trigger an event, so automation needs to be done manually.
Pricing:
- A free plan is available, limited to 1,000 contacts emails
- Basic: $12.99 per user / month, $11.69 per user / month annually
- Growth: $24.99 per user / per month, $22.49 per user / month annually
- Pro: $49.99 per user / month, $44.99 per user / month annually
Listings rating: ⭐ 4.636
How to use CRM software with other tools?
We all know that only one tool won’t do if you wish to optimize your sales workflow as much as you can unless that one tool has everything you need, which is pretty rare.
So, in addition to CRM, you might be using sales engagement, meeting scheduling, or LinkedIn prospecting tools. So the question arises - is it possible to integrate them all? Short answer - yes.
Long answer? Let us show you how you can do it.
For example, let’s take our LinkedIn Automation and Cold Email software, Skylead. This tool enables you generate leads on LinkedIn, outreach them and take action depending on their behavior, all on autopilot. As Skylead fills your pipeline, it leaves you more room to concentrate on important matters such as building relationships and closing more deals.
In addition, you can connect Skylead with your CRM of choice by using webhooks. A webhook helps you transfer data to other applications immediately, when certain action happens. For example, as soon as the lead responds in a Skylead campaign, a webhook is triggered, and will automatically send lead’s data to your CRM.
Moreover, webhooks are the most common way to integrate tools directly into your CRM and push data about the leads in one place. You can create them by using tools such as Zapier. Check out our detailed step-by-step guide on integrating your CRM with Skylead using Webhooks here.
Apart from using webhooks, you can also push your prospects’ information to your CRM by using Skylead’s global BCC option. To use it, simply insert the email address you get from your CRM in Skylead’s Global BCC option. This option is available only if your CRM of choice doesn’t offer direct sync with your email but through BCC.
Example
Say, you are using the Pipedrive Essential plan. In this plan, you don’t have an option to sync your email with Pipedrive directly unless you upgrade. However, you can use their Smart BCC function to send all emails to Pipedrive.
Here is how it works: Go to Pipedrive Email Sync settings and find the Smart Email BCC address - your company account’s specific BCC address provided by Pipedrive.
So, to send every email to the Pipedrive inbox, you need to insert this email address in the BCC field of every email manually. However, you can do this automatically if you use Skylead for your outreach.
Firstly, go to your Skylead settings and click on the Integrations tab.
Then, scroll down to the global BCC option, take the email address from Pipedrive, and place it into the field.
In this way, for every outreach campaign you run in Skylead using the email step, you will be able to see separate emails in your Pipedrive inbox. Moreover, Pipedrive will automatically connect them with matching leads and deals in your pipeline.
The best CRM software in conclusion
With so many CRMs on the market, it can be daunting to go through every single one of them. But if we take software listing websites into the account you can more or less see the situation on the market.
So, let our list be your guide to narrow your choices, or figure out what other solutions are out there. Thus, here is the short overview of the best CRM software currently on the market.
CRM Software / Listing Website | G2 | Capterra | GetApp | Software Advice | Software Suggest | Average Rating |
Salesforce | 4.2 | 4.4 | N/A | 4.25 | 4.9 | = 4.5 |
Hubspot CRM | 4.4 | 4.5 | 4.5 | 4.52 | 4.6 | = 4.504 |
Salesmate | 4.6 | 4.7 | 4.7 | 4.7 | 4.5 | = 4.64 |
Zoho CRM | 4.0 | 4.3 | 4.3 | 4.26 | 4.6 | = 4.292 |
Monday | 4.7 | 4.6 | N/A | 4.6 | 4.8 | = 4.675 |
Zendesk Sell | 4.2 | 4.3 | 4.3 | 4.28 | 4 | = 4.216 |
Pipedrive | 4.3 | 4.5 | 4.5 | 4.53 | 4.4 | = 4.446 |
Copper | 4.5 | 4.4 | 4.4 | 4.38 | 5 | = 4.53 |
Salesflare | 4.8 | 4.7 | 4.7 | 4.72 | N/A | = 4.73 |
EngageBay | 4.6 | 4.6 | 4.6 | 4.58 | 4.8 | = 4.636 |
Wish to use an advanced outreach tool in combination with your CRM software and close even more deals? Then, try out Skylead for free - an outreach that thinks for you!
One of the most commonly used LinkedIn prospecting hacks for getting qualified leads is targeting people who attend specific LinkedIn events.
Why is that?
LinkedIn events represent an excellent way to find people from the same or similar industry in one place. Usually, professionals attend webinars and other types of online networking and learning opportunities to expand THEIR knowledge and expertise. However, when it comes to using events for LinkedIn lead generation, you need to think the other way around - what does your target audience want to hear and what kind of topic would gather them in one place?
Furthermore, by attending a LinkedIn event with your ideal leads, you have a direct insight into their concerns, needs, and room for improvement. Use this information to reach out to the attendees, further investigate their pain points, and finally, offer your product as a solution to their problems.
Last, but not least, targeting LinkedIn event attendees turns out to bring high acceptance and response rates, all of which directly influence your conversion. Our Sales Team reports several campaigns in which they reached out to people who were at a specific LinkedIn event with the following results:
- January 2022 - acceptance rate 75% / response rate 41 %
- November 2021 - acceptance rate 66% / response rate 51 %
- September 2021 - acceptance rate 74% / response rate 43%
What are LinkedIn events?
LinkedIn events help organizations and individuals deepen their relationships with the target audience through virtual gatherings around a specific topic. Although LinkedIn started rolling out the events feature in late 2018, the pandemic definitely sped up the entire process of switching from live to virtual webinars, masterclasses, and gatherings of any kind. And LinkedIn turned out to be the perfect platform for it for many reasons.
LinkedIn events are free of charge and available to all LinkedIn users.
Benefits of using LinkedIn events for lead generation
- Find leads from over 200 world countries in one place.
- You can either organize the event with the intent of drawing your ideal customers or simply attend an existing event that gathers your target audience.
- LinkedIn events give you valuable insight into your target audience’s needs, room for improvement, and pain points.
- Referring to a LinkedIn event you and your lead attended in a cold outreach message gets you a step closer to the conversion.
How do I find a LinkedIn event?
There are two ways to find the most suitable LinkedIn event.
- Use LinkedIn Search to find future LinkedIn events.
- Check out past events (whether you attended them or not, all that matters is that you signed up for them).
Find future events
#1 Run a blank search or enter your keyword(s) into the search bar.
#2 Click the “Events” tab and check out all future LinkedIn events.
#3 The list of events looks like this on LinkedIn. Pick the one you wish to attend.
#4 Click the “Attend” button.
This is the only way to see the event attendees.
LinkedIn will give you the option of adding the event reminder to your calendar.
Down below you can find information about the event, speakers, and the organizer too, so you can check them out on LinkedIn before joining.
#5 You have two options to see the attendees.
Click on the link below (where it says the number of attendees) or on the “Networking” section on your right. This is how you see the list of attendees and apply LinkedIn filters to narrow them down as close as possible to your Buyer Persona.
Also, on your right, there is an option of directly messaging any event attendee or sending a Connection Request. This is your opportunity to engage, chat with your attendees and build a community around the event you joined or maybe even created yourself.
However, the practice shows that it is better to engage after the event, as you will have more room for personalization and to be as specific as possible when it comes to making references to something that was said or asked at the event itself.
#6 Let’s say you decided to go with the list of LinkedIn attendees and you clicked one of the two above-mentioned links.
This is how you apply any of the LinkedIn filters to your list of leads.
You can narrow them down by the following filters:
- Connections (whether they are your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd-degree connection)
- Connections of (in case you have a shared connection)
- Locations
- Current Company
- Past Company
- School
- Industry
- Profile Language (what language is their profile in)
- Open To (if they set their profile to be open to “Pro bono consulting and volunteering” or “Joining a non-profit board”
- Service categories
- Keywords (any keywords that you find suitable for your search)
Find a past event
#1 If you wish to target leads from a past LinkedIn event, click here and go to your LinkedIn feed page.
#2 Scroll down and check out your “Events” section on the left.
#3 You’ll see the list of ALL events - future and past.
The rest of the process is the same as above.
How to reach out to LinkedIn event attendees?
Reach out to LinkedIn event attendees:
- Manually
- Using a Sales Engagement Platform such as Skylead
Manually
When we talk about reaching out to leads manually, we refer to either writing to them directly on LinkedIn or exporting their contact information one by one in a .CSV file. Then, you can import the file into a Sales Engagement Platform and make the entire outreach process faster and easier.
Use a sales engagement platform
#1 If you decide to use a Sales Engagement Platform, you can also copy your final search results’ URL.
#2 Paste the link into Skylead.
#3 Choose “Collect Contact Info” (optional). This way, Skylead will download all publicly available data such as your lead’s email, phone number, website, etc., depending on what your leads made public on their LinkedIn profiles.
Go ahead and make your Smart Sequence.
Smart Sequences are based on algorithms that track your lead’s behavior and act accordingly. This way, they assure the highest number of touchpoints with people you wish to reach out to. Smart Sequences work on an “if/else” principle, where if the condition for one path is not fulfilled, the algorithm searches for its alternative.
Here’s an example of a simple Smart Sequence.
If you wish to learn more about how Smart Sequences work check out our solutions page and also get inspired by some ready-to-use Smart Sequence templates.
LinkedIn templates for approaching a LinkedIn event attendee
A LinkedIn event that you organized, attended, or are planning to join or conduct can be used in so many ways in your outreach. Either way, making a reference to it is a huge plus, and people who participated will be more prone to talk to you if you mention it.
Here are 6 situations how to use a LinkedIn event reference in your outreach.
Scenario #1 You attended the same event as your lead
Template
Hello {{firstName}},
I saw that you too attended the {{eventName}} event!
What resonated with me the most is {{somethingThatResonated}}!
It would be awesome to connect with you! 😀
Example
Hello Mario,
I saw that you too attended the “How To Enable Trust Building Skills In Your Sales Team” event!
What resonated with me the most is their Trust Equation and the way Darrel explained it!
It would be awesome to connect with you! 😀
Scenario #2 Ask for feedback on a certain LinkedIn event as a conversation-starter
Template
Hello {{firstName}},
I am curious to hear what resonated with you the most from the {{eventName}} event since I saw you attended it too!
Would love to keep in touch!
Example
Hello Sonya,
I am curious to hear what resonated with you the most from the “How To Enable Trust Building Skills In Your Sales Team” event since I saw you attended it too!
Would love to keep in touch!
Scenario #3 You are the event organizer and want to hear feedback from people who attended it
Connection request template
Hey {{firstName}},
I just wanted to thank you in person for attending the {{eventName}} event! It was truly a pleasure having you there.
Let’s stay in touch!
Connection request example
Hey Jenny,
I just wanted to thank you in person for attending the “How To Enable Trust Building Skills In Your Sales Team” event!
It was truly a pleasure having you there.
Let’s stay in touch!
LinkedIn message #1
Once you get accepted on LinkedIn, use personalized Images or GIFs to improve engagement. Since we started using this feature, our response rates went up by 63%.
This is one example to get inspired by, but the more creative you get the better.
Scenario #4 Use a LinkedIn event that has to do with your product/service and ask for feedback on your product/service
Connection request template
Hey {{firstName}},
I saw that you attended {{eventName}} on LinkedIn!
Would love to hear the most useful tips you got from it!
Let’s connect 😀
Connection request example
Hey Tom,
I saw that you attended “How To Enable Trust Building Skills In Your Sales Team” on LinkedIn!
Would love to hear the most useful tips you got from it!
Let’s connect 😀
LinkedIn message #1 template
Hey {{firstName}},
Thank you for accepting my connection request!
I am still super-curious to hear your most valuable takeaways from the {{eventName}} event. For example, I personally found {{takeawayThatStoodOut}} surprising!
Anyways, I {{yourOccupationExplained}}. I would love to share the solution we have and hear your feedback on it too!
LinkedIn message #1 example
Hey Tom,
Thank you for accepting my connection request!
I am still super-curious to hear your most valuable takeaways from the “How To Enable Trust Building Skills In Your Sales Team” event. For example, I personally found the fact that they never mentioned how this process works during the onboarding period surprising!
Anyways, I help small-to-medium-sized Sales Teams optimize their schedules. I would love to share the solution we have and hear your feedback on it too!
Scenario #5 You want to network before the LinkedIn event
Template
Hello {{firstName}},
I saw that you also signed up for the {{eventName}} event.
I already attended an event {{organizer’sName}} organized on {{topic}}. {{yourFeedback}}.
Let’s keep in touch!
Example
Hello Angela,
I saw that you also signed up for the “How To Enable Trust Building Skills In Your Sales Team” event.
I already attended an event Darrel organized on the time-management of medium-sized Sales Teams. He was amazing!
Let’s keep in touch!
Scenario #6 Promote your LinkedIn event by targeting people who are attending an event similar to yours
Suggestion: Use LinkedIn InMails to reach out to your leads if you don’t have any more Connection Requests available, you wish to reach out to people who are generally getting lots of requests, or who are your 3rd-degree connections.
Also, LinkedIn InMails work well if you need more characters for your message or your lead doesn’t accept your Connection Request in a timely manner. Aside from paid InMails included in your premium LinkedIn plan, you can also take advantage of free InMails (800 for each paid LinkedIn profile) for users who set their profiles to “open to free InMails”.
We have 13 additional InMail examples you can check out.
LinkedIn InMail template
Subject line: {{company}} + {{yourEventName}} = {{benefit}}
Hey {{firstName}},
I saw that you attended the {{eventName}} event. Did you find it to be useful for the {{lead’sIndustry}} industry?
Hopefully yes, because I have something even more specific for you! We are organizing {{yourEventName}}, a LinkedIn event that will give you {{uniqueSellingProposition}} specifically for your industry. We would really love to have you there!
Would you be interested in hearing more?
LinkedIn InMail example
Subject Line: FlyHigh + SaaSEnMasse = 20+ additional calls in 3x less time
Hey Nicolas,
I saw that you attended the “How To Enable Trust Building Skills In Your Sales Team” event. Did you find it to be useful for the SaaS industry?
Hopefully yes, because I have something even more specific for you! We are organizing “SaaS en masse”, a LinkedIn event that will give you a step-by-step guide on 5 prospecting hacks specifically for your industry. We would really love to have you there!
Would you be interested in hearing more?
Summary
In the sea of professionals using the platform, it is getting harder and harder to find qualified leads. Sales reps are trying to get as creative as possible and to think strategically about where their target audience gathers. Reaching out to people who attended specific LinkedIn events is sure one of the best places to start.
Have in mind that you can always target a future event, a past event, or even create one of your own that will attract your potential customers.
And if you decide to speed up annoying sales processes, and put more focus on building meaningful relationships and closing the deal, sign up for Skylead's 7-day free trial!
If you are asking yourself "How can I use Buyer Persona to boost sales?" or "What is a B2B Buyer Persona, at all?" then you are in the right place.
Buyer persona became a popular term that got tossed around in marketing teams, but then it landed in the sales lap and made them question their entire existence. Well, it wasn’t that dramatic, but it did make the sales teams think twice about who they should target when doing outreach.
Did you know that 56% of the companies that used buyer personas generated higher-quality leads?
Yes, Buyer Persona is that useful. Therefore, if showing you how to make an ideal customer profile was like taking your blindfold off while playing darts, going through how to create a B2B buyer persona for sales will be like placing the laser on your dart to make sure you hit the bull’s eye.
What is a B2B buyer persona?
Let’s start with the definition. A Buyer Persona is a description of a person who is your ideal customer with all behavioral, demographic, firmographic, and psychographic characteristics. In other words, a buyer persona mirrors who your perfect buyers are, from age, location, their likes and dislikes, goals, and wishes to challenges and motivations.
Buyer Persona is based on existing customer research and other data that might help you define your ideal buyer persona in detail.
There is a common misconception that Buyer Persona and Ideal Customer Profile are the same. However, there is a big difference between them. In short, ICP represents the company profile, and Buyer Persona focuses on the particular type of person’s profile only. Similar to Ideal Customer Profile, Buyer Persona is a perfect representation of the customer who has the shortest buying cycle, highest LTV and is a preacher for your product.
Did you know that 3 to 4 Buyer Personas usually represent 90% of the company’s sales?
If various customers use your product for different aspects of their business, or they simply differ in their position, you might want to think about creating multiple personas. Whatsmore, it is pretty common to have a couple of buyer personas for the sales team.
Example:
Let’s say you have project management software. Your software could be used both by programmers, sales, marketing managers, and alike. Each of these managers presents an individual buyer persona with different wishes, goals, and challenges.
Benefits of having buyer persona for sales
Do not think that Buyer Persona is the document you are going to create, look at it a couple of times and never use it again. Buyer Persona is a powerful document, and it is of great help when you are doing outreach. Why? Because of all the benefits listed below.
Provides details for prospecting and outreach
Buyer Persona provides context for your sales team to zero in on who exactly they should outreach to while outreaching. It will provide you with information such as age, position, industry, education, and consumer patterns to use for prospecting to your fullest.
Personalized approach
Once you have identified Buyer Persona, you will have access to information such as their pain points, challenges, and what type of person they are, so you will know exactly how to personalize your approach and present your product or service in the most alluring way to the prospect. Maybe you can throw in additional personalized images or GIFs according to their liking to improve the response rate.
Improves productivity
Having a Buyer Persona means that the sales team will ultimately ease up their process, improve productivity, results, and lower the time spent on their efforts. In addition, they will attract high-quality leads with more ease, who will ultimately have a higher retention rate.
Addressing customer’s problems
We all know that the core outreach rule is focusing on customers and addressing their problems instead of your own. B2B Buyer Persona will keep you on the right path to doing just that. Whenever you create your outreach message, ask yourself if it addresses the challenges or emphasizes how to reach goals listed in Buyer Persona documents. If it does not, get back to the drawing board.
How to create a B2B buyer persona?
Buyer Persona isn’t hard to create. However, it does take a little bit of time to get it right with all the information you need for the outreach. Luckily, we are here to explain six easy steps to create this useful piece of documentation.
1. Customers breakdown
Before jumping into the details of your B2B Buyer Persona, you need to break down your current customer database into groups. To do this, you need to decide on the broader criteria by which you will break them down and then move on to more narrow criteria.
Example (part 1):
Let's say your broader criteria is the length of the buying cycle. We can agree that some buying cycles are longer than others. Since you are looking for a shorter cycle for your future customers, this is a nifty point to start at.
The following step is to define your second and third criteria to deepen the breakdown.
Example (part 2):
Let’s say from this short-buying-cycle group you have different industries. Naturally, your following criteria would be to break the customers down by industry and then by decision-making role.
If, however, you do not have current customers, you can start with an industry breakdown and proceed to the decision-maker division.
2. Demographic parameters
Now you have a rough draft of B2B Buyer Persona. So, it is time to assign them demographic attributes. The key is to notice the pattern these customers have - their age range, interests, or location. If you are unable to pinpoint these patterns, here is the list that will help you out:
- Age
- Location
- Company type
- Function
- Seniority Level
- Job position
- Industry
- Years of experience
- Education
- Role in Buying process
- Recent life event
In case you do not have your current customers or customer insight, fear not. You can use the combination of Google Analytics and LinkedIn to gather this kind of information. If you are using Google Analytics, simply jump to your existing Audience Insights section (or ask your marketing team to do it for you :).
For LinkedIn, simple filter options will do the trick.
3. Psychographic parameters
To fill in the picture, you would need additional personal information. Psychographic characteristics are a great way to do it, as it will help you perceive your B2B Buyer Persona as more human, which will also humanize your approach.
Dedicate your Buyer Persona a name to start with, and then proceed on with:
- Likes And Dislikes: It is far easier to talk to someone whose general preferences you know, rather than hope that you won’t mess up if you mention something they do not like.
- Character type: This will give you an insight into how you should approach the person and construct your social selling. You can use 16 Personalities or similar to determine character type.
- Brand and influencers: You can choose the general ones or narrow them down. In addition, choose brands or influencers similar to your business to adjust your sales pitch.
- Work motivation: Information such as what drives them to go to work every day and what they like to do the most.
- Story Behind Buyer Persona: You can write a short description of what led them to a current position, what is their main trait, how many years they’ve been doing business, and so on.
- Preferred means of communication and Social Channel use: It’s also a good idea to find out where the ideal buyer spends time online and how they like to communicate so you know whether you should use multichannel outreach.
How to come by this kind of information?
If you have current customers, the best way to gather this kind of information is by simply talking to them. Here are a few key points to talk about with your customers:
- Means of communication they prefer;
- Social Media they consume the most;
- What is considered to be an achievement in their job role;
- Their motivations;
- What tools do you use as part of your daily routine? Why?
- What they like and dislike most about the job and communication with people;
- How they would describe a product’s purchasing journey;
- How would they describe their working persona;
Through these questions, the idea is to understand your potential customers’ true behavioral patterns and motivations. The more qualitative and quantitative detail you gather from this conversation, the better you will be prepared for these types of B2B Buyer Personas.
If you do not have your customer base or someone from your buyer persona to talk to, you can use LinkedIn to search for this kind of person and see what they write about in their post and gather information from there.
4. Identify buyer personas’ goals and pain points
In most cases, your prospects’ goals will be your own. Keep in mind, you are not just a salesperson, but the helping hand, a friend in need for their business efforts.
That is why you need to identify their goals, priorities, challenges, and pain points. Furthermore, depending on their pain point, you can adjust and personalize your outreach more to pinpoint and present what your prospects are looking for.
This is where conversation with your current customers comes into play once more. What you need to keep an eye out for is what are...
- your challenges?
- long-term and short-term goals?
- technology and tools used to achieve your goals?
- your work priorities?
- the influences of your purchasing decision?
Additional Note: If you do not have current customers, reach out to your leads anyway. You would be surprised how many people on LinkedIn will be willing to help by just telling them that you are doing the research.
5. Common objections and value proposition
Sometimes when you talk with customers, they will speak about your product or service. Let them, because they will reveal much about your product itself, and the problems it solves for them.
Furthermore, ask them about what they dislike about your product. It is important to understand negative viewpoints to bulletproof your outreach message. The message with this information will be a valid and irresistible value proposition for the B2B Buyer Persona.
Now is the time to ask one last tricky question: What do they usually say when they try to decline the offer from a salesperson? This is perhaps the most valuable information since they will list of objection handling situations that you can prepare for when you outreach this type of B2B Buyer Persona.
6. Assemble your B2B buyer personas
Gather your findings in one place and start building your B2B Buyer Persona. Keep in mind that every piece of information we mentioned above is applicable in practice, be it for outreach or prospecting. You can always go into even more details when defining a B2B Buyer Persona, such as marital status and so on, but the information mentioned above should be your core guide.
With this information, you have a specific description of your potential customer. Give your Buyer Persona name and surname, a picture, and you are done - at least with this one 🙂 Remember to repeat the process in the first step to create a couple more Buyer Personas for the outreach.
B2B buyer persona example and template
Here is an example of how it looks when you sift through the information and present them neatly in the document. A sight for sore eyes, isn’t it?
We’ve even created the template for you. You can download this buyer persona by clicking here. Click on the “Make a copy” button, and it shall be done.
How to use B2B buyer persona in lead generation?
Creating a Buyer Persona can be challenging, but now the real fun begins - it is time to put it into practice.
Remember that these are your IDEAL Buyers. However, if the person outside of your Buyer Persona is interested in your product or a service, do not discard them and proceed with the sales process.
Here is how you can use your Buyer Persona to find leads, create personalized messages and outreach them with more ease.
1. Find leads matching buyer persona using LinkedIn
There are two ways to find leads: by LinkedIn basic account search or Sales Navigator Search.
Find leads using LinkedIn basic search
Go to your LinkedIn account and research the position defined in your Buyer Persona document. Once you do, use additional filters available to narrow down the search according to your Buyer Persona, such as location, industry, and so on.
When the search is complete, create a CSV file with every prospects’ first name, last name, profile URL, and email if you can find it. Additionally, you can import variables such as Value proposition from your B2B Buyer Persona document. Save this file for the next step.
Find leads using Sales Navigator
Go to your Sales Navigator account and click on Lead Filters.
You will see the filters list you can use, so insert all the ones from your Buyer Persona document, such as Education, Years of Experience, Job title, etc.
Once you’ve filtered out the search, hit the “Save Search” button to save leads to the lead list.
Another great way to find leads that are a twin picture of your ideal B2B Buyer Persona is to find that exact person, preferably your current customer, in Sales Navigator and hit the “View Similar” button. Sales Navigator will find leads most similar to the lead profile you select, according to position, age, education, and so on.
Save this list by clicking the “Save” button next to their names, and you are done.
2. Create an outreach campaign
You can outreach the leads you found manually, but to make this process easier, you can use a sales engagement tool to do it for you. Let’s take Skylead as an example. To create a campaign, take the CSV file from LinkedIn results or URL from the Sales Navigator lead’s list, and upload or paste it into Skylead.
3. Create a Smart sequence for outreach
The Smart sequence will allow you to define the steps you need to take for your outreach towards the selected leads. Move and connect the elements, such as actions and conditions, will result in a sequence such as:
4. Personalize your approach
Remember when we mentioned the value proposition, motivation, and type character your B2B Buyer Persona is? This is where you are going to use them. When figuring out the message for the outreach, be sure to personalize it according to all these parameters.
Depending on how many steps your sequence has, you might use these pieces of information sporadically. Here is an example of one type of personalized message for outreach.
Hey {{firstName}},
I couldn't help but notice that working as {{occupation}} brings out different challenges such as {{Challenge1}}.
I know that {{Motivation}} is a huge factor in overcoming this challenge. But did you know that {{ValueProposition}} could be a perfect solution for it?
It would be great to hear more about how you operate in this regard and share some of my tips if you’re up for it.
How does Thursday at 1 PM sound?
And you are done! Relax and enjoy the results Skylead brings to you.
Summary
Buyer Persona helps you bring the right prospects to the table. Furthermore, it provides you with the details which you can use for prospecting and outreach, improving productivity and results. Here are the steps to remember:
- Customers’ Break-Down
- Define Demographic Parameters
- Define Psychographic Parameters
- Identify Goals And Pain Points
- Define Common Objections And Value Proposition
- Assemble The Buyer Persona
Now you go! Create your outreach campaign, use the information you gathered and watch leads convert more efficiently and with ease.
Wish to use Skylead to find and outreach your Buyer Persona with ease? We would be happy to meet! Drop us a message via chat on our website. Or, try out Skylead by signing up for a 7-day Free Trial.
You chose your path and decided to walk towards Social Selling, a valley of flourishing prospecting fields, meaningful connections, and better conversion opportunities. Now we welcome you to the camp - The Ultimate Guide Part 2, where we will be discussing how to create a tailor-made Sales Strategy for your business.
If you haven’t checked out Part 1 yet, be sure to do so here, where we’ve covered:
- What is social selling
- How to measure social selling success
- 10 tips to boost your sales using social selling
Let’s jump to the sequel of our shared storyline and prepare you for the mountain climb.
Benefits of Social Selling
Firstly, let's distinguish why we are all doing this. Social selling is the most effective sales strategy in recent years. Thus, there are many statistics to prove how vast its potential can be:
76% of buyers are ready to have a social media conversation with potential providers.
Social sellers are 51% more likely to achieve sales quotas.
39% of B2B professionals said social selling reduced the amount of time they had to spend researching potential leads.
84% of C-Level executives use social media to make purchasing choices.
To name a few. So what does this mean, and how can your company benefit from it? Well…
1. Social Selling increases brand visibility.
When a sales team shares content and optimizes their social profiles, their networks grow and engage even more. Besides, these actions are free and organic, meaning you do not need to PPC the hell out of them.
2. Attracts more high-quality leads.
As brand visibility improves, so shall the quality of leads. When you have a team of social sellers armed with good quality content, they are educating their network. So, let's take LinkedIn as an example. Firstly, people on this social network are far more interested in education from their field of expertise. Secondly, the more you post valuable and specific content, the more interest you will trigger, and your niche network will grow, aka you will have the opportunity to reach more qualified leads.
3. Improves website traffic.
The more you share content from your company’s website, the more people will click on the link. On the other side, they will also search for more information on the web about your company.
4. Gaining respect as an individual and the company.
If you show you know what you are talking about and constantly offer value to your network, you will gain their respect. In addition, prospects aren’t easily swayed with any content. You need to provide them with what they do not know - constantly. The more you do, the more respect you will have “on the streets”. Consequently, more people will trust you.
5. Building relationships and gaining trust.
Would you rather talk to a real person or a logo? Of course, the real person. That is why social selling works as you get the chance to build relationships with people. We as a human race wish to feel the connection with the people first and foremost. That is why, apart from posting, you should focus on mingling and chatting with other people. The good-quality relationships you have, the more people will trust you, and that is the true benefit of it all. Do not forget to be honest, genuine, and authentic in the process, otherwise, it will not work.
6. Skyrockets conversion.
Due to gaining respect and building relationships, social selling is also a fantastic way to increase the number of meetings per month - meaning more chances to close the deal and more income to the company.
How to create a sales strategy for Social Selling
A sales strategy is a documented plan with activities and metrics for the sales team to follow and enables them to generate income for the company more efficiently. In other words, if you wish to do social selling, you cannot be sloppy - you must be detailed and organized as your main goal is to convert prospects into customers. In short, here are the steps to tailor-make your social selling strategy.
1# Determine which social media platforms are right for you
Most companies use different social media platforms to raise awareness and their presence. When it comes to social selling, you need to do the same. It might be overwhelming, but know this - you do not have to do everything on every platform possible, as you might do with your company’s presence. Think about what platform your prospects use the most and start from there. Once you establish your presence, you can use other platforms to connect with the prospects. For instance, here is what social media networks proved to be the most effective, according to DataBox.
2# Determine your goals and metrics
Social selling doesn't work unless you set goals. Without clear goals and metrics (which we mentioned in Part 1 of the Ultimate Guide), your random acts of social selling will produce uneven results. Hence, to prevent this and prepare a field for the most accurate social selling describe goals using specific words and KPIs.
Social Selling goal examples:
Goal | KPI Metrics |
Increase revenue by 20% | - Number of conversions, CLTV |
Expand network by 350 connections | - Number of invitations sent; Number of connections accepted |
Nurturing existing customers | - Number of conversations with existing customers |
Build closer relationships with leads | - Number of warmed-up leads |
Improve brand awareness by improving website traffic | - Number of webpages visits (UTM them when posting it) |
3# Determine the right ICP
We already mentioned in Part one the importance of the right ideal customer profile. So, be selective of who you interact with. In other words, you cannot expect that just everyone will buy your product or service. When prospecting on LinkedIn, find your niche ideal customer profile and build a relationship with them.
On this mission, you will find out that many tools can help you find who to reach out to.
4# Determine tools to support your sales strategy
Many tools can help out your social selling activities. Some might save you time when you do outreach, such as Skylead, some will help you filter your niche ICP like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, or you simply need to keep all your prospects organized, such as Pipedrive.
5# Determine your unique content strategy and product key benefits
To keep things clean, organized, and as simple as possible, you can create a separate document to join your sales strategy - a Content Strategy. For example, this can be a document that contains:
- Type of content you will be posting
- Posting frequency by days
- Content format
- Content distribution groups or channels
In addition, be careful about the type of content you post, as according to Social Spout, 46% of people may unfollow you if your content is too promotional.
6# Determine Social Selling activities
There are only a handful of social selling main activities you need to perform. You can decide which ones you will use, but you must know that this sales strategy works best if you combine them.
Post
Post your original, educational content, and do it frequently. Consequently, prospects will love it and follow you more.
Share
Sharing other people’s content for a change will eliminate the potential prospect’s perception that you’re self-centered.
Reactions
This is a useful social selling activity for the moments when you are short on time or if you do not have anything to contribute. It shows that you are following the prospect even though you are not engaging more actively.
Comment
Your comment must not be just a sales pitch. Instead, offer your educational 2-cents on the topic in discussion, and link your content or website page ONLY if it can be applied. In addition, comments are a nifty indicator of your genuine interest, as it shows that you are not solely the “distributor” of your own content, but rather a social being. Speaking of nifty - comments are also free publicity on other people’s posts.
Message
Engage with the prospect on a more personal level with DMs. Example:
Hey Bethany,
I’ve just noticed you reached your 2nd anniversary at SaleChart. Just wanted to congratulate you on that. How are things going at SaleChart?
Connection request or a Follow
Social experts say that it is best to wait to make a connection with someone until you’ve had an appropriate reason to. In order to create this “reason” you need to go personal. Therefore, reference their blog post, the content they shared, or mutual connection.
Example of the LinkedIn connection request that will stand out:
Hi Jessie,
Your comment about a couple of sales techniques on Michael's post was quite insightful. So I wanted to add you as my connection. If you are interested, I would like to discuss it further.
Once you determine the activities, you need to keep in mind that they should always be honest, relevant, and hyper-personalized.
7# Determine sales communication funnel
When you create a sales strategy, every activity has to belong to a certain part of the sales funnel. This applies to social selling, as well.
In other words, you need to establish a valid sales communication funnel to know how to engage and warm up the leads, apart from engaging with their content. As people are naturally different and there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to social selling, we cannot give you the precise sales communication funnel. However, what we can do is to provide you with a basis to start with.
Stage | Communication type |
First contact | - Research, - Introduction |
Interaction (Warm-up) | - Commenting - Liking - Sharing - Experience exchange |
Interest | - Value 1 - Value 2 |
Question | - Listening to customers pain points, how they handle the situation |
Discussion | - Tailor-Made Value 1 - Tailor-Made Value 2 - Educational material |
Conversion | - Ask for review or referral |
Nurture | - Communication about product effects - Providing help |
8# Finishing up sales strategy: Activity checklist
Phew! That was a lot, wasn’t it? we’re almost done. Now that you’ve determined this sales strategy, create an activity checklist you need to do daily. Social selling can take a lot of time during the day, especially since sales reps already have a lot on their plate. Trust us because this sheet will help any salesperson organize daily activities and save a lot of time.
Social selling activities will depend on previous steps defined. Since this is the Ultimate Guide, here is an ultimate checklist, which you can use for any platform.
- Firstly, post a content
- Secondly, share relevant content
- Like or comment your prospect’s content
- Take a look at who viewed your profile (if available)
- Send a connection requests to those who did and personalize your approach if they are ICP
- Check out who interacted with your content. Additionally, interact with them
- If people who interacted with your content are not in your network, connect with them
- Review social media notifications for any birthdays, job change etc and act accordingly
- Add new leads to your CRM
- Check on your leads status in CRM and interact with them on social media
- Respond to any messages
- Initiate casual conversation with the leads
- Initiate the connections
- Engage in existing groups
- Find new groups and join
- Lastly, attend events
Once you start doing social selling, you must constantly provide valuable contributions (unless you are on vacation :). Uneven or infrequent social selling can backfire. Every action matters as long as you do not vanish and appear in a month or two.
Sales strategy examples for Social Selling
How does the theory above manifest into reality? Let’s take a look at short-form sales strategy examples.
1# Sales strategy: The one when you become a thought leader
Let’s start with the statistics. According to Hubspot, 92% of buyers are willing to engage with an industry thought leader. For instance, if you learn fast, write faster, and like to mingle, this is a perfect social selling strategy for you.
Thought leaders often use social media to share their experiences. Firstly, their posts are always straight to the point and educational - never promotional. Secondly, they act as a kind of influencer in their niche field.
Scenario: For example, let's say you have B2B software Budgetfy that scans companies' spending and suggests budget optimization.
Goals for 3 months
- Increase revenue by 10% (Metric: Percentage of revenue, profit rate)
- Expand network by 400 connections (Metric: Number of invitations sent, Number of connections accepted)
- Reach 60.000 website visits (Metric: Number of webpages visits)
- Publish a minimum of 36 posts
Social media platform
LinkedIn, Slack groups
ICPs
Chief financial officers, Accountants
Tools to use
- Pipedrive for managing leads
- Sales Navigator for lead search
- Skylead LinkedIn Automation & Cold Email Software to speed up outreach process (outreach campaign, lead discovery, connection requests, view and follow, hyper-personalized cold LinkedIn messaging)
Content strategy and product benefits
- Content format: Text, video, documents, image, link to website, LinkedIn poll
- Content type: content about budget optimization strategy, metrics to follow, business process optimization, finance trends, liquidity management, financial challenges, budget allocation, financial risk management, finance department digitalization…
- Distribution channels: LinkedIn profile, Slack channels, Website communities
- Posting frequency: posting approximately 5 times a week
- Key software benefits: easy control over company’s spending, all invoices in one place, budget optimization recommendations, all-in-one tool, data-driven decisions
Sales communication funnel
Stage | Communication type |
First contact | - Discovering the content that prospect shared, events attended, company, - Personalized outreach based on previous findings |
Interaction (Warm-up) | - Commenting, Liking, Sharing, their content- Asking about the experience with the budgeting |
Interest | - Budget optimization recommendation- All invoices in one place- Data-driven decisions |
Question | - Asking Listening to customers pain points, how they handle the budget spendings (Example: they do not focus on finding the most cost-effective purchasing because they do not have time) |
Discussion | - Offering value in the form of a solution and educational material: Budgetfy can recommend the most cost-effective purchasing options - Offering a call to talk more about their business and provide free trial |
Conversion | - Communication about product effects and providing help |
Nurture | - Ask for review or referral |
Social selling activities outside of direct messaging
- Post content
- Share relevant content
- Like or comment your prospect’s content
- Take a look at who viewed your LinkedIn profile
- Send a connection requests to those who did and personalize your approach if they are ICP
- Check out who interacted with your content and interact with them
- If people who interacted with your content are not in your network, connect with them
- Review social media notifications for any birthdays, job change etc and act accordingly
- Add new leads to Pipedrive
- Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find prospects
- Create Skylead outreach campaign to extend the network
- Check on your leads status in Pipedrive and send them a message
- Respond to any messages
- Initiate casual conversation with the leads that responded to cold outreach
2# Sales strategy: The one with the questions, groups and events
It is completely alright if you are not a content writer type. What you can do instead is to be active on other levels. Joining groups, asking thought-provoking questions, and starting conversations with the right people is also a nice way to go. What's more, well-thought-out questions in groups, you will attract ideal prospects and start a conversation with them.
Scenario
For example, let's say you have a marketing agency, specialized for generating leads.
Goals for 5 months
- Gain 5 new clients
- Expand network by 1000 connections (Metric: Number of invitations sent, Number of connections accepted)
- Build closer relationships with 100 leads (Metric: Number of warmed-up leads)
Social media platform
LinkedIn, Slack, Facebook, Quora
ICPs
Marketing managers, Chief Marketing Officers, CEOs
Tools to use
- Sales Navigator for lead search
- Skylead LinkedIn Automation & Cold Email Software to speed up outreach process (outreach campaign, lead discovery and generation, connection requests, view and follow, hyper-personalized cold LinkedIn messaging, Whitelabel for clients)
Content strategy and product benefits
- Content format: Text, documents, image
- Content type: questions, polls about latest LinkedIn lead generation strategies, asking how people generate leads in specific industries, what they find to be hardest, leads lists etc.
- Distribution channels: Slack channels, Facebook groups, Website communities
- Posting frequency: Approximately 2 times a week
- Key agency benefits: Extension of the company’s team, easy communication, creativity, data transparency, offering tailor-made, unique lead generation strategies, good quality leads
Sales communication funnel
Stage | Communication type |
First contact | - Discovering the content that prospect share - Attend the same events - Personalized outreach based on previous findings |
Interaction (Warm-up) | - Commenting, Liking, Sharing, their content - Asking about the experience with generating leads |
Interest | - Data transparency, good quality leads- easy communication - Good quality leads |
Question | - Asking and listening to prospect’s pain points, how they handle lead generation (Example: they have though time to find good quality leads; listings do not work for them) |
Discussion | - Offering value. For example, marketing agency owns a unique lead generation strategy creation process. Consequently, they gather good quality leads. - Offering a call to talk more about their business |
Conversion | - Work in progress |
Nurture | - Talking about results and asking for a referral |
Social selling activities outside of direct messaging
- Post questions
- Share relevant content
- Like or comment your prospect’s content
- Send LinkedIn connections, follow or add prospects
- Review social media notifications for any birthdays, job change etc and act accordingly
- Organize and document warmed-up leads
- Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find prospects
- Create Skylead outreach campaign to outreach the prospects
Summary
As seen from our examples, sales strategy can help you a great deal with your results, especially if we are talking about social selling. However, keep in mind that we’ve shortened our sales strategy examples, and you need to be as detailed as possible.
Repeating is the mother of learning, therefore here is what you need to determine for your social selling strategy:
- Which Social Media Platforms Are Right For You
- Your Goals And Metrics
- The Right ICP
- Tools To Support Your Sales Strategy
- Your Personal Content Strategy And Product Key Benefits
- Social Selling Activities
- Sales Communication Funnel
- Activity Checklist
Remember, social selling takes a lot of time. Once you see the first results, you will fall in love with them.
Wish to share love, help across the internet, and build relationships with prospects? Try out Skylead free for 7 days!
When doing Lead Generation on LinkedIn or generally networking, a genuine back-and-forth conversation works more to your advantage.
Not only do you show interest in other users and their businesses, but you also find out so much about their needs and preferences. Furthermore, even if you don’t close the deal immediately, you understand better how your target audience perceives you, your brand, and generally the entire industry.
One of the ways to “examine your market” that, if done properly, can be quite engaging is conducting a LinkedIn Survey. Namely, LinkedIn Polls seem to be the new trend that is taking over our LinkedIn feeds.
Not only. This type of content seems to be LinkedIn’s favorite. Therefore, it can push it to reach even ten times more users than you have in connections. Of course, on the condition that it is engaging enough and that the algorithm recognizes it as important to your audience. Long story short, if you make it interesting and valuable enough to your leads, they will reward you with visibility and extensive reach.
In this blog, you will learn:
- How to make a LinkedIn poll;
- What questions incite Lead Generation;
- How to use Data Miner to scrape data from a LinkedIn Poll;
- Tricks and hacks for a fast and effective outreach campaign.
How to make a LinkedIn Poll?
Go to your LinkedIn home page. Click on “Start a Post”.
Then, click on the graphics icon.
Type in the question. Offer a minimum of two and a maximum of four answers. Set up the timeframe. It can last for a day, three days, a week, or a maximum of three weeks.
After you’ve done setting up the LinkedIn poll, the “Done” button takes you to create an accompanying LinkedIn post.
Make a brief appealing introduction to your survey or give an extra explanation, if necessary. This is optional. If you wish, you can post the Poll as it is.
In the bottom right corner, there is the option of allowing comments or customizing who can post on your Survey.
Click on “Anyone”. Then, choose one of the following options.
All set. Now sit back and wait.
What to ask in a LinkedIn survey that benefits lead generation?
First of all, define well what you want to explore through your LinkedIn Poll. Just like A/B testing, examine one aspect at a time. Give precise answers in a multiple-choice form for more accurate results. Then, if you want to investigate further a certain option, conduct another Poll.
Here are several ideas on what to focus on if you want LinkedIn Surveys to benefit your business.
1. Gain knowledge on the market expectations
If you are launching a new product or service or trying to improve the existing one, create a poll to understand what your audience expects from you and the industry in general.
It helps you place your product on the market scale, realize what your customers need, or even pinpoint a unique selling point that you didn't know about.
Effectively listening to your audience is essential for your business. The biggest mistake is not talking to your customers enough and assuming that you know what they need. You would be surprised how much you don't.
2. Build interest in an upcoming product or service
Let’s say you are launching a new Sales Automation platform. Carry out a LinkedIn survey to see how much time your clients spend targeting and reaching out to leads manually. This is your hook.
Maybe this information is not relevant to you, as you already know the answer, but it makes people aware of how convenient it is to use Sales Automation. Consequentially, once you launch the product and use the obtained data in your product description or an intro, many of the LinkedIn poll participants will be interested in what you have to say.
Point out the problem. Build excitement. Offer a solution.
3. Get feedback on your product or service
Nowadays, people are more likely to answer a LinkedIn poll than to fill out a survey.
Let's be honest. The last time you sent out a survey, what was your response rate? When people receive a survey request, they don’t know what to expect and how much time it will take them to complete it. That’s why they rather stay out of it.
On the other hand, when users see a LinkedIn poll, it takes a second to pick an answer. It almost goes by default for some. Additionally, the higher the engagement the bigger the exposure on other users' feeds. This alone instantly boosts your products' online presence. You are getting instant visibility.
How to scrape data from a LinkedIn Poll?
The information gained from the LinkedIn Poll doesn’t need to be limited to the “winning answer”. This type of content is quite a Lead Generation gold mine.
After you’ve tallied all of the votes, you can use any data collection tool to gather the information from all the poll participants.
For example, the tool Data Miner is a free web extension and in this blog, we are showing you how to use it to serve your needs best.
Step #1 Open the LinkedIn Poll you would like to scrape
The LinkedIn Poll must be finished for you to scrape data. Click on “{number} votes”
In this case, since users opted for one of three answers, we have three groups of leads: the ones that said "always", "never", and "it depends". Open the ones that replied with "always". Then, scroll all the way down so that Data Miner can pick up all of them.
Step #2 Open Data Miner
Turn on the Data Miner. Since we will use Skylead for outreach, all we need is their LinkedIn profile URLs. That’s why we move forward and choose the “Make your own recipe” option.
Choose the type of recipe. In this case, we go for “List/Search Page: multiple rows”.
Go to the “4 Rows” tab. Follow the instructions. Select any of the users as "Row #1", and the one below him or her as "Row #2". As long as you have scrolled all the way down, as mentioned at the beginning, Data Miner will scrape everyone from that group of leads.
In the case of the LinkedIn poll, it is better to scrape one answer at a time, so that you can later use it and personalize it in Skylead.
After we selected the rows, let’s move to tab #5 “Columns”.
Name the column “profileUrl” written exactly like this - lowercase and attached.
Click on “Easy Column Finder”.
Choose “URL”. Then, select the entire box just like you did at the beginning and click C. Lastly, once the Data Miner found the profile URL, confirm.
Go ahead and save this recipe as a template for future LinkedIn poll scraping.
We named it “LinkedIn Poll Scraper” and saved it for future use.
After this step, click “Scrape in Data Miner”.
This is how your scraped LinkedIn profile URLs look like.
Download the results in a CSV file.
You’ve made it.
In this case, we are repeating the same process from the beginning till the end for the remaining two answers. We want to use their votes to personalize outreach accordingly.
Skylead: How to personalize outreach based on a LinkedIn Poll?
There are several ways to make outreach campaigns aimed at users who participated in a LinkedIn poll work.
We’ll show you one of them.
Step #1: Prepare for the Skylead outreach campaign?
First, you scraped all the participants and downloaded the data. Copy-paste them in one CSV file. Then, highlight the last link of each group so you know when to change the content of the message. In this case, we divided them into those who replied with “Always”, “Never”, and “It depends”.
Lastly, we added a column “Personalization” which, once uploaded, becomes a variable in Skylead. The content of the column varies based on the participant’s answer in the LinkedIn poll.
Links of users who answered “Always” | I saw that you participated in my poll. I am also always personalizing Invites to Connect! In my opinion, this is a key practice for improving your acceptance and response rates. |
Links of users who answered “Never” | I saw that you voted in my poll. I find it so interesting that you are never personalizing your Invites to Connect! Do you still manage to expand your network or generate leads at the desired pace? |
Links of users who answered “It depends” | Thank you very much for participating in my poll. I saw that sometimes you personalize your Invites to Connect, and sometimes you don’t. I am curious to know how you make that decision! |
This is how it looks in practice.
Step #2 Make your Skylead outreach campaign faster and more effective
Give a name to your campaign and import your CSV file.
Click “Next” and go all the way to the “Create Smart Sequence” section.
We will make a really simple Smart Sequence just for the sake of showing how to use a LinkedIn poll for personalization that won’t go unnoticed.
In this case, users receive the following messages:
Group #1
Hello Adam (varies),
I saw that you participated in my poll. I am also always personalizing Invites to Connect! In my opinion, this is a key practice for improving your acceptance and response rates.
Anyways, I would love to connect!
Group #2
Hello Ivy (varies),
I saw that you voted in my poll. I find it so interesting that you are never personalizing your Invites to Connect! Do you still manage to expand your network or generate leads at the desired pace?
Anyways, I would love to connect!
Group #3
Hello Steve (varies),
Thank you very much for participating in my poll. I saw that sometimes you personalize your Invites to Connect, and sometimes you don’t. I am curious to know how you make that decision!
Anyways, I would love to connect!
Summary
LinkedIn Poll is the new content on the rise.
Therefore, use it wisely. It will not only serve the instant market research, but online promotion, opportunity for prospecting on LinkedIn and lead generation as well.
Finally, if you are new here and want to know more about how Skylead can make your sales (and life) easier, talk to out wonderful Customer Support Team. They will answer all of your questions and show you how to start 7-day free trial. Test it out for yourself and decide. No strings attached!
Oh, hello there and welcome!
We are so glad you joined our community of LinkedIn Lead Generation enthusiasts who are always striving to grow and keep up with the latest business trends.
Now that we are together in this, let us take a moment and introduce you to building your first campaign with Skylead.
You might be stumbling in the dark at the moment, but, trust us, nothing is as complicated as it seems.
When you don’t know where to start…
Choose LinkedIn.
Jokes aside, in this blog we will make a LinkedIn search-based campaign to ease you into the entire Campaign Creation process.
However, you should know that, when it comes to Skylead, options are far more extensive. Aside from LinkedIn, you can target leads from a Sales Navigator regular search, Sales Navigator Leads List, a CSV-imported file, and a LinkedIn post (Post Engagement Campaign).
That being said, let’s open LinkedIn and target our audience first.
Targeting your audience: A step-by-step guide
Start by typing a keyword in the search area.
We went by a job title.
After you clicked on “People”, choose the LinkedIn connection type you want your campaign to be aimed at.
1st-degree connections are members that you are already connected with on LinkedIn. It is perfect for running a LinkedIn Message campaign.
2nd-degree connections are best in case you want to expand your network. Those are leads you need to connect with first or reach out via LinkedIn InMail or Email (if Skylead discovers and verifies it).
The same applies to 3rd-degree connections. They are for expanding your network as well. The only difference is that they are not advisable to be reached out through Connection Requests on LinkedIn, but exclusively via Emails and/or InMails (whether Free or Paid).
Furthermore, you can choose other filters as well to narrow down your audience search as much as possible (see “All Filters” option on the right).
Have in mind that you can include up to 1000 leads in case of a LinkedIn-search-based campaign, therefore it is highly recommended to narrow the list down as much as possible.
First campaign creation - Where to start?
After you've done the prospecting on LinkedIn and chosen your audience successfully, open your Skylead account.
Click on “Create New Campaign”.
Copy - Paste the LinkedIn search URL to Skylead’s Campaign Creator Page.
Insert your Campaign name, paste the LinkedIn Search URL.
Under the LinkedIn URL, there is a type-of-connection button. Skylead automatically recognizes from the pasted URL which degree of connection you are targeting.
Click “Next”.
Campaign settings
By turning on/off the above options, Skylead will automatically:
Premium LinkedIn accounts only - single out only leads that have LinkedIn Premium account;
Open InMail discovery - select only leads whose profiles are open to InMails;
Include People you already talked to - include/exclude leads that you have a chat history with on LinkedIn;
Collect Contact Info - collect all the available information from the lead’s LinkedIn profile. This option implies a “View Step” (which you don’t need to add, it will be executed in the background) so that Skylead can visit the lead’s profile and collect all publicly available data.
Skylead will:
Only unique leads - include/exclude all leads that exist in any other Skylead campaign;
No pending connections - not choose leads that already have a pending LinkedIn connection;
Track link clicks - track if the lead clicked on the link in the email (in case your email contains any);
Track email opens - check if the lead opened an email.
Skylead gives you options of choosing the start date, start time, and your time zone.
NOTE: Take into consideration whose account you are leading - yours or your client’s, who is maybe in another time zone.
If you click on “Only Discover Leads”, Skylead will just export discovered leads in a CSV file.
Click “Next” and choose “Smart Sequence”.
First campaign: How to create a smart sequence
This is what your dashboard will look like at first.
As you may see, on your right there are elements and conditions.
Drag them one by one to the workspace dashboard and connect them in a coherent way to create your flow!
Know that for each personalizable element, there is an option of inserting the message, using all the variables you need, making the most out of the Image and GIF hyper-personalization feature, and of setting up after how many days and/or hours you want a certain element or condition to be executed. All in one place!
As complicated as it may seem, it is actually quite intuitive!
You don’t believe us?
Check out this video tutorial on how to make a Smart Sequence and see for yourself!
Furthermore, take a peek at several examples of Smart Sequences that our team of experts made (and tested) for you. These are templates with real data that you can use immediately.
What is so special about Smart sequences?
As Multichannel Outreach is currently the most effective way of generating leads, Smart Sequences represent a groundbreaking realization of that path! They allow you to create different scenarios for your workflows depending on the prospect’s behavior.
Namely, it is the “if/then (condition)” step that makes the difference.
To explain it in the simplest way possible, check out the type of sequence that other tools use to generate leads.
For example, one (very simple) flow goes this way: Connection Request – LinkedIn Message – (follow-up) LinkedIn Message. If everything goes as “planned”, not a problem. However, in case the prospect doesn’t accept your Connection Request the rest of the flow goes down the drain.
With Smart Sequences, the same flow could be put in the following manner – “If Connection Request Accepted” then “Send Message”, “If Connection Request Not Accepted” then – a whole bunch of other options, such as “Email Discovery & Verification” – “If Email Found” - “Send Email”, etc.
As you may see, your Smart Sequence will not just stop. It will proceed with other available/possible paths to your lead completely bypassing LinkedIn if necessary.
Summary
Hopefully, we demystified a bit the entire process of building a campaign on Skylead!
If we got you interested and you’ve already realized that the campaign creation is far simpler than you thought, what are you waiting for?
Take the leap! ??
If not a user yet, schedule a demo call with a specialist from our team. Discuss how you can make the most out of our tool!
If already our customer, feel free to reach us out on the Support Chat or schedule a Success Call with our Customer Support and Success Manager.
We are waiting for you!
Are you tired of having to sign up to different platforms and then merge them for a successful sales engagement?
Do you get headaches from rarely being sure what step you are at and what your next move should be?
How often do you wish there was one Sales Engagement Software that already has all the necessary features for successful and smoothly operating campaigns?
Well, there is!
Let us show you how Skylead replaces multiple different tools and generates and nurtures leads while saving you time and money.
1. Email outreach feature
Unless you use a Sales Engagement Tool that is as versatile as Skylead, you will most likely need to go through different steps before starting a campaign. Down below we will present different types of platforms as necessary stages to complete the process of outreach.
1a. Phantombuster (Growth Hacker Package, $30/month) + Hunter.io ($49/month) + NeverBounce ($10/month) + lemlist ($59/month) = $148/month
The flow would go as follows:
- Sales Navigator Search
- Paste URL to Phantombuster
- Paste results into a downloadable CSV file
- Subscribe to Hunter.io and upload CSV file to scrape emails
- Upload CSV file to NeverBounce to verify emails
- Send emails through lemlist or any other outreach tool of this kind.
1b. Skylead’s All-in-one plan ($100/month)
With Skylead, not only do you have an Email Discovery Feature, that finds and verifies business email addresses, incorporated but you also need just an URL from LinkedIn Search/Sales Navigator Search to obtain all the necessary data for personalizing your outreach. You have an option of running a campaign through Emails, LinkedIn Messages, and LinkedIn InMails.
2. LinkedIn outreach via image and GIF hyper personalization feature
The majority of Sales Engagement Tools outsources the Image and GIF hyper personalization feature, while Skylead has it integrated.
2a. Expandi ($99/month) + Hyperise ($99/month) = $198/month
Expandi outsources Image and GIF hyper personalization feature to Hyperise that is limited to 10 templates and 10 000 impressions (counted each time an image is viewed).
2b. Skylead’s All-in-one plan ($100/month)
Skylead’s Image and GIF personalization feature offers an unlimited number of templates and impressions as part of its All-in-one plan.
3. Multichannel outreach
3a. Lemlist ($148) + Expandi & Hiperise ($198/month) + Zapier ($39/month) = $385/month
When you use multiple different tools for your outreach, you will need a software, such as Zapier, or any other of its kind, to “glue” them together. This will allow you the Multichannel Outreach and the Image and GIF hyper personalization feature.
3b. Skylead’s All-in-one plan ($100/month)
LinkedIn Messages, InMails, Emails, and Image and GIF hyper personalization feature are all incorporated into Skylead’s All-in-one package.
Plus, have you heard of Skylead’s Smart Sequences?
Skylead’s Smart Sequences are groundbreaking algorithms that allow you to use Multichannel Outreach and personalization to its maximum potential.
Due to the newest LinkedIn restrictions, Smart Sequences are actually the only effective way of generating leads on LinkedIn and via email. They combine LinkedIn features (LinkedIn InMails, Connection Requests, Messages, Follow) with Emails (found and verified by Skylead) and create the highest possible number of personalized touchpoints with your Prospects.
While the old Skylead’s predefined threads are still available, now you have the option of making an entire branch of steps and operations the way you think it will work best for your business goals.
Find out more about it here.
As far as an Email Discovery feature is concerned…
Skylead can discover emails in two ways - either collect the already existing email from the profile when connected with the lead, or discover and verify an email before connecting to the prospect or engaging with him/her in any way.
If you opt to reach via email by doing the search on LinkedIn or Sales Navigator, all you need to do is copy/paste the URL (once you finish prospecting on LinkedIn or other LinkedIn solutions) and use the following procedure:
- For 1st degree connections on LinkedIn - first “View Profile” step and then “Send Email”;
- For 2nd degree connections on LinkedIn - first “Send Request” step to connect and then “Send Email”.
If you opt for a campaign by importing a CSV file, Skylead only requires your document to have a column named “email” (lower case!). You can start an email sequence right away.
With other tools, you either need to collect emails manually or choose to reach out via LinkedIn and then email them as a follow-up. Skylead gives you the option to launch a campaign on LinkedIn and through Email at the same time. Basically, “Email Step” is part of the sequence.
4. Outreach to leads interested in a certain topic
Let’s say you would like to reach out to all people who liked or commented on a post/any type of published material on LinkedIn.
4a. Other tools
The flow would go as follows:
- Phantombuster Post Likers first scrapes names of the people who liked the post and their LinkedIn URLs
- LinkedIn Profile Scraper extracts their names, professions, contacts etc
- Paste results into a downloadable CSV file
- Subscribe to Hunter.io and upload CSV file to scrape emails
- Upload CSV file to NeverBounce to verify emails
- Send emails through lemlist or any other outreach tool of this kind.
4b. Skylead
- Take URL and post it to the “Post Engagement” campaign type, then:
- For 1st degree connections on LinkedIn - first “View Profile” step and then “Send Email”;
- For 2nd degree connections on LinkedIn - first “Send Request” step to connect and then “Send Email”.
Have you noticed how everything with Skylead is just so much easier?
As I said, one tool to rule them all, indeed!
Explore all the benefits that Skylead offers by contacting our customer support team. Discuss how you can make the most out of our product and find out how you can benefit from Skylead the most.
There is a process between the point of getting a new lead and the point where they convert into your new client. The space between the two is called lead acquisition.
Constantly generating new leads is one of the best ways to get a bunch of new clients whether using LinkedIn or other channels.
However, this is easier said than done, right?
Don't worry. You’re not the only one. We were in your shoes, and we needed to learn it the hard way.
Luckily for you, we’ve got you covered.
In this article, we’ll get through what lead acquisition is and how it differs from lead generation. We will also show you some highly effective tactics that you can use to get more clients in the future.
What is lead acquisition?
There is a difference between lead generation and lead acquisition. However, not everyone is sure about the meaning of these terms, probably because they are related.
Both of them are phases of the customer acquisition process. But they are different processes, necessary for the long-term growth of your business.
The lead generation is the process of connecting with your potential customers and getting their contact information. The lead acquisition is the process that comes after a lead is generated.
It’s the process of gaining, filtering, and later getting your leads to become a part of your sales systems.
Check out what the customer acquisition process looks like.
The lead acquisition also includes purchasing qualified leads from different lead vendors.
Namely, it usually starts with previously qualified and filtered leads. There is no need to start from scratch and create lead magnets to generate leads.
You can simply buy prepared leads that match your target criteria. This makes it easier to connect with them and later do sales, without wasting time on lead generation.
When it comes to purchasing leads you need to put your best leads into the appropriate conversion processes and remove those that are not qualified.
We’ll go through some procedures that you should do to get the most relevant target group for your customer acquisition process and convert those leads successfully.
5 strategies to make lead acquisition right
The source from which you’re getting leads in the lead acquisition process is of huge importance for your future actions.
Usually, it’s the website or landing page where you get new leads. But, as we said, you can purchase them from a lead vendor too.
When you buy leads from vendors, you usually get a huge target audience for quite a low price. It is a lot cheaper than generating leads by yourself.
But just because it’s cheaper, it doesn’t mean that those leads are warmed-up to your product or service.
Generating leads by yourself costs $5-$10, and purchasing them costs about $1 per lead.
To increase your lead acquisition effectiveness, take a look at the advice below. They could help you find prospects and prepare them for your offer.
Find the right vendor
When choosing the right vendor for your business purposes, find out about them as much as you can.
You don’t want to buy leads from someone unknown. Let alone find out that the leads are not qualified or not in your target group.
After you get data from the vendor, make sure that all the emails they’ve sent are legit. If there are any fake or incorrect email addresses, remove them.
Sort your leads for better results
First classify the leads into those that you’ve generated through your website, LinkedIn account, another channel, and those that you’ve bought from vendors.
Those categories differ in their level of interest for your product. Therefore, it’s best to separate them by lead source and traffic source.
When it comes to LinkedIn, using tools for LinkedIn lead generation and multichannel outreach can simplify the process of managing your leads.
Also, you will need to warm up the ones from the purchased list later.
Collect information about your leads
In the lead acquisition process, your leads are the ones that make up your target audience. However, it’s up to you to convert them. Not all the leads will be interested in purchasing your product. At least, not right away.
What you can do to increase your conversion rates is to find out more about them and their problems.
The strategy we’re going to show you can simplify your prospecting on LinkedIn. You won't have to contact everyone on LinkedIn separately to find out more about your leads.
Once you create your account on Skylead, go to the “Create new campaign” option.
Click on “Import” to upload the list of the leads you’d like to contact.
Enter the name of the campaign, upload your leads in a CSV file, and then hit “Next”.
In case you’re not connected with some of your leads on LinkedIn, that can be solved in a second.
Just click “Invite to connect”, type your personalized message, let your lead know if you know each other, and then hit “add additional step”.
After we connected with the new leads, we should find out more about them.
To do that in an additional step, click on “Message”.
Here you can find more about your leads. Ask them what they’re working on, what they’re struggling with, and maybe how you can help them overcome some issues they're having.
With all that information, you’ll be able to create a more personalized offer to solve their issues in order to sell your product or service.
The following action in Skylead will save you a lot of time when it comes to contacting your leads and meeting their needs.
Choose your CRM wisely so that it fits your needs and helps you build an effective campaign.
Warm-up your leads and bring them value
The leads that you buy are cooler. They will have to get to know you better . On the other hand, you will have to earn their trust if you want them to become your client.
You can’t be too salesly in the beginning. With the first message saying something like ”Let’s schedule a call”, they will decline you.
Your focus should be on creating a strong relationship with your leads. Bring them value so that they would be willing to get more of it later when you call them to action.
Also, if you give them a piece of cake for free, they will be more likely to get a cake from you for a price. So, be generous to leads - it will pay off.
Create an irresistible personalized offer
When you acquire leads on your own, you can filter them out and choose any demographic you want in order to create a personalized offer.
After you find valuable leads and create a strong relationship with them it’s important to make your offer irresistible.
For example, you can give them a valuable portion of your service or product while promising that it is only a part of the value that they will get if they decide to become your customer.
Also, make sure that your offer is simple and with a clear call-to-action.
Don’t make your offer about you. Let it be about your leads and the benefits they will get if they accept your offer.
Summary
If you want to increase your marketing efforts and get new leads, performing lead acquisition in the right way is crucial.
Also, it’s important to understand what makes it different from lead generation.
Successful lead acquisition is the one that is scalable, produces more clients, and functions in a way that helps you test and track your campaigns.
All the customer acquisition data, whether from a lead vendor or from your own lead generation database, will be immensely useful in your way of producing quality leads and increasing your sales in the future.
If you are hoping for positive results, you should invest more effort into making that process right.