The hack

Send 20+ connection requests per day to potential buyers and start conversations with them.

Why it works

Almost all professionals now have LinkedIn.

The higher you are in the corporate ladder the more important it becomes. Even if people don't like using it, they're forced to go there.

Whether to check the profile of the upcoming interview candidate or to see how are their old friends from college doing.

There are differences in industries. Salespeople basically live there, engineers can visit only once a week. But broadly speaking almost everyone can be reached there.

How to do it

1. Find the right people

Use the LinkedIn default search and find people based on job titles and locations (cities work the best).

You can also filter industries and other things, depending on your ideal customer profile.

Once you find a relevant person, send them a connection request. Don’t add a message to the request.

For most people in managerial positions, it's impossible to track everyone they have ever interviewed, met at a conference, or seen at the tennis club.

If you send a plan connection they are much more likely to accept it, because they can’t put you in the right category.

But if you send a message in the style of “We never met, but you need to check out my product” – don’t expect many people to accept.

2. Maximize your acceptance rate

The acceptance rate for cold connecting like this ranges from 10% to 40%. You should aim for 30% and above.

There are three things you can do to maximize your acceptance rate.

  1. Make your profile as legit as possible. Here is how to do it: Make a killer LinkedIn profile
  2. Connect with people who are active on LinkedIn. If you connect with people who are not, they won’t even see your request.
  3. Look at the number of connections. Avoid both extremes of the spectrum.
    1. People with 10k+ followers receive an enormous amount of outreach. Are unlikely to connect and less likely to engage in any follow-up communication.
    2. People with too few followers might be the type of people who only connect to people they know. Don’t waste your invites on those people.

3. Start the conversation

Now the hardest part. Forget about sending them a generic message about what you're building with a calendly link at the end.

Your main advantage compared to everyone else trying to sell them in their LinkedIn inbox is authenticity. No one wants to ever talk to the annoying Salesforce sales rep., but you're different.

You're just getting started, building something brand new – that's interesting, they haven't seen that before.

People generally want to help others, and if you play into the founder role it can work like magic.

After connection message

Imagine you're building a new tool to help sales managers manage their teams with AI. That's your target audience.

Here is an example message to send once they accept your connection request.

Hey [name], thanks for the connection! You've some really impressive experience when it comes to scaling sales teams. How did you get from 3 to 50 in just a year... that must have been hell of a ride!  Anyway, just paying respects where respect is due. Have an epic Tuesday!

Notice the quick note about them. You can take this from their profile bio, posts, or recent comments. Once you get into this, it takes just about 2 minutes skimming their profile, to write lines like that.

The main thing here is: praise or comment, but don't sell in the first message.

If the message is good a lot of people will start the conversation themselves. In other cases, they'll just reply thanks. That's ok as well since any follow-up messages to this conversation will show up on the top of their LinkedIn inbox.

Second message

This is the part where you dig for gold. Ideally, try to wait at least 7 days before sending the second message.

First, it gives you more time for them to respond and second, you don't want to make the conversation seem unsincere or pre-planned.

The second message can look something like this.

[name], I was re-reading your profile and posts again and would love to get your expert oppinion. I am building a new sales management tool that helps you check how your team is doing quota-wise using AI.

I just got my first three customers last month, so it's really fresh out of the oven, but feel free to be 100% honest, can take the feedback: [website]. :)

I know that your time is valuable, I don't want to feel like I am trying to grab it from you. I am happy to compensate you for your time, even if it's higher that your hourly rate.

Would you have 15min for a feedback chat sometime next Friday?

Things to keep in mind:

  • Be honest and authentic. Share things like a number of customers, users, or anything else that a big company sales rep. can't do.
  • Make the pitch interesting for them. If they are a sales leader missing quota is always a hustle. Lead with a pain you are solving that they probably have.
  • Offer compensation. This is a hack from Jason Cohen of Smartbear. Most people won't ask you for the money after, but it's something that will make you stand out.
  • Low commitment and specific time. Aim for something that's easy to say yes to. 15min is ok, 60min is too much. Next Friday is far away and people usually don't have a packed calendar. The exact time proposal often limits thinking on their part.

Follow up

After the second message, you'll probably want to wait another 3 days before sending a follow-up.

LinkedIn is not like email. People don't go there every day so be patient.

Follow-ups can be just sending an emoji: 👋 or one sentence like this.

...

Weekly numbers

  • Invites sent: 140
  • Invites accepted (30% acceptance rate): 42
  • Positive replies to the outreach (10% rate): 4

Read more:

https://www.heyreach.io/blog/follow-up-email-and-linkedin-message