LinkedIn Sales Navigator is one of the most powerful tools for reaching and engaging prospects on LinkedIn. With over 740 million members, LinkedIn is the go-to platform for B2B lead generation and sales. Revscale is the first platform to combine the principles of human psychology with next generation technologies to create a hyper-targeted method to prospecting, and as the founder of Revscale I’d like to share some of my insights and tips.
Many users only scratch the surface of LinkedIn Sales Navigator's capabilities. There are myriad ways to refine your targeting and improve your outreach results, so I wanted to take a few minutes to provide you with the best practices, pro tips, and lesser-known tricks for mastering targeting on LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Whether you're new to the platform or looking to step up your game, read on to boost your LinkedIn prospecting.
Optimize Your Profile for Discoverability
Before targeting others, ensure your own LinkedIn profile is optimized for discoverability. A complete, professional profile makes you more findable and approachable to prospects. A fully filled-out profile makes you more visible and more likely to appear in prospect searches. It also builds your credibility and gives prospects reasons to connect.
Boost LinkedIn Outreach with an Irresistible Profile
Your LinkedIn profile is the foundation for successful sales prospecting. When done right, an optimized profile attracts more views, connection requests, and cold outreach acceptance.
But what exactly makes a LinkedIn profile captivate prospects and drive engagement? To know this, we should take a look at the psychology behind an effective LinkedIn profile for cold outreach - so below, I’ve written some actionable tips to showcase your expertise, establish trust, and compel prospects to connect:
Craft an Appealing Profile Photo
Your profile photo is one of the first things prospects notice when visiting your profile. Studies show it takes just 50 milliseconds for people to form an impression based on a photo.
Follow these best practices for an approachable headshot:
- Use a high-quality, well-lit headshot. Blurry webcam photos undermine credibility.
- Dress professionally but avoid stuffy business attire. You want to look relatable.
- Smile warmly and make eye contact with the camera. This builds trust and likability.
- Ensure your face is the primary focus. Minimal background distractions keep the attention on you.
- Pick a neutral background color. Bright or complex backgrounds compete for attention.
Your profile photo makes a split-second first impression. A polished, friendly headshot maximizes your likability and approachability.
Write a Compelling Headline
After viewing your photo, prospects will read your profile headline. This short tagline should pique interest and communicate your value.
Follow headline best practices:
- Concisely summarize your offering and specialization. For example: “Helping medical device startups launch breakthrough technologies."
- Include keywords and titles prospects may search for. This boosts your visibility in searches.
- Show off thought leadership with stats. For instance: “Generated $5M in cost savings for retail chains through supply chain optimization."
- Add intrigue with words like “growth”, “innovation”, “solutions”.
- Rotate headlines monthly to test new messaging. Measure headline clicks to find what resonates.
An optimized headline attracts your ideal prospects and gets them to keep reading your full profile.
Share Your Story in the About Section
The About section is where you share your story and experiences. This is your chance to establish rapport with prospects.
Best practices for an engaging About section:
- Start with a short intro summarizing your background and capabilities. Think elevator pitch.
- Share career highlights, achievements, unique experiences that shaped you. Help prospects relate to you.
- Outline passions and interests outside of work to showcase your personality.
- Use clear, conversational language. Avoid jargon and corporate-speak.
- Include links to articles, presentations, videos, or other content to showcase expertise.
- Refresh your About section regularly with new experiences, achievements, and projects.
Crafting a compelling About section allows prospects to get to know the human side of you. This builds trust and connection vital for outreach.
Demonstrate Expertise with Featured Skills
LinkedIn’s Featured Skills section is invaluable real estate to showcase expertise. The skills you add appear at the top of your profile in search results.
Maximize this section with these tips:
- Include keywords and niche skills prospects search for. Optimize for discovery.
- Feature both hard and soft skills like leadership, communication, strategic thinking.
- Refresh skills monthly based on current projects and offerings.
- Prioritize skills that differentiate you from competitors.
- Back up featured skills with certifications, courses, and concrete examples in your experience section.
Prominently featuring the right skills attracts prospects seeking those capabilities and establishes you as an authority.
Flaunt Wins in the Experience Section
Your experience section tells a story through past roles and accomplishments. Make every bullet point count by showcasing skills applied and value delivered.
Best practices for an achievement-focused experience section:
- Tailor bullet points to the needs of your ideal prospects and customers.
- Quantify results and impact as much as possible - ROI, revenue growth, productivity gains.
- Emphasize skills like leadership, strategic planning, relationship building, innovation.
- Describe key projects briefly but keep focus on outcomes achieved.
- Use verbs like “increased”, "reduced", "launched", "negotiated" to highlight actions.
- Trim older, less relevant roles and expand recent experience summaries.
By spotlighting your biggest wins, you quickly establish credibility with prospects.
Collect Recommendations and Testimonials
Prospects want assurance you can deliver on your promises. Accumulating credible recommendations builds this validation.
Strategically request and showcase recommendations:
- Get diverse recommendations from managers, clients, partners, mentors.
- Make the review process easy - provide guidance on key points to highlight.
- Give recommendations to colleagues and ask for one in return. Offer to write it first.
- Follow up and remind past co-workers and clients to provide recommendations periodically.
- Rotate which recommendations are featured to showcase breadth.
- Thank recommenders by endorsing their skills, sharing their content, or returning the favor.
Credible, enthusiastic recommendations instill confidence in your capabilities and credibility.
Stay Top of Mind with Regular Activity
Prospects will check your profile for recent activity before connecting. Consistent engagement keeps you on their radar.
Drive more profile views by:
- Commenting on industry news stories, Group posts, and Influencer content daily. Offer insights and perspective.
- Sharing articles, case studies, slides, and thought leadership content multiple times per week.
- Posting weekly status updates highlighting achievements, learnings, events attended.
- Liking and reacting to others’ posts and content regularly to expand reach.
- Joining and participating actively in niche Groups aligned to your expertise.
Frequent, value-adding activity portrays you as an engaged, knowledgeable thought leader. This builds familiarity that makes cold outreach more effective.
Put It All Together for Profile Power
Optimizing each element of your LinkedIn profile strengthens its overall impact. By showcasing your capabilities compellingly and authentically, you attract qualified prospects already inclined to accept your outreach.
The right headline, photo, skills, recommendations, and activity work together to position you as a credible expert and approachable professional.
Keep your profile fresh and focused on the needs of ideal prospects. The more compelling and conversion-optimized your profile, the more it will accelerate opportunities through cold outreach.
Now that you have your optimized profile, you can turn your attention to crafting detailed search queries. The foundation of effective LinkedIn prospecting is crafting targeted search queries. Sales Navigator provides numerous search filters to pinpoint your ideal prospects.
Here are tips for creating precise searches:
- Keyword Targeting - Identify terms prospects use to describe themselves. Look for job titles, skills, certifications.
- Boolean Operators - AND, OR, NOT, and quotation marks help refine searches.
- Location Targeting - Filter by country, state, region, city, and radius as needed.
- Company Targeting - Search by company name or filters like industry, size, growth rate.
- Seniority Targeting - Filter by seniority level, like CXO, VP, Director, Manager.
- Relationship Filtering - Discover 2nd and 3rd degree connections for warmer outreach.
- Persona Filtering - Target by groups, interests, schools attended, and more.
- Recent Actions - Find prospects based on recent job changes, content shares, profile updates.
The more filters applied, the more your search isolates your target audience. Analyze saved searches monthly and tweak keywords and filters to improve relevance.
Export and Organize Prospects
As you perform searches, use Sales Navigator's exporting capability to build targeted prospect lists.
Export options include:
- LinkedIn Profile Data - Exports profile info into a CSV or Excel file.
- Contact Information - Exports email addresses and phone numbers for InMail credits.
- Public Profiles - Exports a list of profile URLs for targeted outreach.
When exporting, choose specific fields and data points to include. This allows you to capture the most relevant info and organize prospects.
Pro Tip: Export regularly to add new prospects to your database. Set a reminder to rerun key searches weekly or monthly.
Segment and Categorize Prospects
Once you've exported prospects, the next step is segmenting your list to map out your outreach.
Best practices for organizing prospects include:
- Separate into tiers based on fit and priority level. Identify your A, B, and C prospects.
- Categorize by role, industry, company size, location, or persona.
- Tag prospects based on relevant connections for warm outreach.
- Note prospects with trigger events like new jobs, promotions, company funding.
- Track where prospects are in the sales cycle for follow up.
Segmenting allows you to personalize messaging and focus your efforts on qualified, ready-to-engage prospects first.
Prioritize Warm Connections
One of LinkedIn's greatest advantages is enabling warm outreach through shared connections. Warm prospects convert attriple the rate of cold prospects.
Leverage existing connections to expand your reach:
- Discover 2nd and 3rd degree connections through LinkedIn and Sales Navigator.
- Check for contacts acquired at events, past companies, or other networks.
- Ask current customers for intros to prospects at target companies. Offer incentives.
- Join relevant LinkedIn Groups to connect with more peers and prospects.
When exporting prospects, flag any you're connected to and reach out to them directly or through mutual connections.
Craft Personalized Connection Requests
When sending connection requests, avoid generic invitations. Personalized requests get up to 80% higher acceptance rates, which is why Revscale users see so much success in their outbound efforts.
Make your LinkedIn connection requests more personal:
- Mention common connections, interests, groups, or experiences you share.
- Pose a thoughtful question or observation about their work.
- Explain why you’d value connecting based on shared goals.
- Let them know you have an article, group, or post to share that’s relevant to them.
Taking the time to personalize connect requests demonstrates extra effort and shared rapport. This strengthens new relationships and response rates.
Pro Tip: Use Sales Navigator TeamLink to collaborate on warm introductions, leveraging the networks of your entire team.
Engage Prospects with Insights
To spark engagement, use Sales Navigator TeamLink and PointDrive to share insights with prospects.
Possibilities include:
- Send an industry report, company list, or news development relevant to them.
- Provide stats on market trends tied to their role and business objectives.
- Share a case study or solution sheet about how you’ve helped similar prospects.
- Highlight their company’s recent funding round, acquisition, leadership change, or award.
When you share valuable insights, prospects see you as an authority. This breaks the ice and gets conversations started on a positive, non-salesy note.
Follow Up with Multichannel Nurturing
Once connected, continue nurturing prospects by engaging across channels.
A multichannel approach keeps you top of mind and advances opportunities:
- Send InMails following up on your initial invitation and shared insights.
- Add prospects to drip email and content nurturing campaigns.
- Provide new data and insights through direct messages and InMails.
- Comment on and share prospects’ LinkedIn posts and articles.
- Retarget prospects through ads based on their LinkedIn activity and interests.
- Expand your network by connecting with additional contacts at the prospect’s company.
Consistent, value-driven engagement across channels makes prospects more receptive when you ultimately convert the relationship into a sales opportunity.
Review Your Targeting Results
To refine your approach, be sure to analyze your LinkedIn targeting on an ongoing basis.
Key metrics to track include:
- LinkedIn search and export volume and growth
- Prospect connection and response rates
- Click-through rates on insights shared
- Converted sales opportunities from LinkedIn outreach
As you collect data, look for ways to expand your prospect pool and increase engagement. Connecting with more of the right prospects will directly translate to more pipeline and revenue.
Getting More from LinkedIn Targeting
Optimizing your LinkedIn profile and mastering LinkedIn Sales Navigator targeting delivers a fast track to prospects. But it requires a personalized, insights-led approach tailored to how buyers engage today. Interested in learning how Revscale’s process can help you achieve this without having to create yet another task for yourself? Reach out to our team, and we’d be happy to demonstrate how Revscale’s buyer intent algorithms can work for your specific use case.
What other tips have you found useful for targeting and engaging prospects on LinkedIn?
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