In March/April 2021, several BDRs across the globe were greeted with a disconcerting message on LinkedIn.
This 6-word horror story was LinkedIn’s way of telling people to use it less as a prospecting platform and more as a networking website instead.
But if you’re an outbound SDR/BDR Manager that survives on LI for your prospecting, 100 connection requests per week might make your quota seem like a mountain to climb. So, what’s your plan B?
Here is a three-step process you can implement today to meet your demo quota (and perhaps even perform BETTER than earlier?). It uses LinkedIn, but it doesn’t require you to send connection requests. Here’s what you gotta do.
How to Circumvent Linkedin’s Connection Request Limit
#1 Find Alternative Contact Info on LinkedIn
And no, when I say that, I don’t mean clicking on the blue “Contact Info” button on their profiles to find their Twitter account.
You can uncover the direct dial and/or email ID of prospects on LinkedIn using this free Chrome extension.
How does it work? All you need to do is head over to your prospect’s LinkedIn profile, and click on the Lead Finder Chrome extension.
Then, click on “Unlock” to find the contact’s email ID and phone number.
After you’ve exhausted your weekly invitation limit, you can move over to getting your prospect’s contact information this way and then reach out to them directly or set up an email sequence (more about creating quality email sequences in point #2 and optimizing your outreach + prospecting in point #3).
To make sure you hit your quota, do the math—if you were getting a 10% conversion rate with outbounds on LinkedIn earlier while sending 200 invites/week, and your quota is to set up 20 demos, then you’re now in a position where you can only get 10 demos from LinkedIn because of the new limit.
You need to look into how you can use your cold calls + emails effectively to book 10 more demos. Rely on historical email/cold call conversion rates to plan the rest of your week and figure out how many emails/phone numbers you’ll have to collect to hit your quota. We’ll discuss optimizing your process in #2.
You can also do bulk prospecting using the Chrome extension to get the contact info of multiple decision-makers in one go.
Here’s how you can find the contact info of several people from within a company at once..
You can download the Lead Finder Chrome extension here.
Moving on.
#2 Setting Up Good Email Sequences
50% of sales happen after the 5th follow up. Yes, that’s a real stat.
Ideally, your outbound process should always be multichannel (i.e.) set up in such a way that you use multiple channels to reach out to any prospect. You can use an app like SkyLead to set this up in an automated manner.
If you’ve not been doing multichannel outbound already, worry not. Once you’ve exhausted your LinkedIn limit, it’s time to rely on email sequences to get the job done.
As an SDR or a BDR Manager, you’ve obviously heard of email sequencing software. And you know that it can be ultra-effective in fetching high-quality demos.
A software like Outplay gives you a free 14-day trial that you can use to set up your email sequences.
#3 Optimize Your Sequences
While sequences are great, there are two main things that will help you really improve your conversion rates:
- The quality of your emails and follow-ups
- The quality of your prospecting/targeting (prospect intent)
a. Improving the quality of your emails
Poorly drafted emails will cause your conversion rate to plummet.
So, how do you draft great outbound emails and follow-ups? Here are a few ideas that you can use to set up a killer email sequence. Here are some more.
Keep experimenting with your email sequences and always work on improving your conversion rates.
b. Improving the quality of your targeting/prospecting
Even if your emails are great, a prospect that’s a bad fit is always unlikely to buy from you. In other words, you need to figure out who will say yes when you pitch your product over email or other channels.
How do you find this out? Well, here are three questions you can ask yourself to get the job done:
- Which problem of theirs does my product/service solve?
Have a strong idea of who your ICP is. If your ICP is just the VP of Marketing of 501-1000 employee companies in the USA, then you should focus on reaching out to them first. Make sure all the BDRs in your team have a clear idea of who they need to be going after. - How does my product fit into their ecosystem?
The knowledge of their tech stack and how your product fills a gap there is a great way to pitch your product as a good fit for them. You realize they don’t have a good email sequencing software but you know they do outbound? That’s a gap you can fill. A product like Slintel can help you find technographics data of prospects at scale. - Has the prospect exhibited any buying intent signals?
Based on your target account’s purchase behaviour, hiring, upcoming renewals, technology usage, and other such factors, you can determine your prospect’s purchase intent. A product like Slintel allows you to do this too.
Find out who your high-intent buyers are before reaching out to them! That’s really the best way to optimize your email sequences for conversions.
Access to these insights can also help create hyper-personalized pitches, which will drastically improve your conversion rates. For example, here are two emails. Which one of them do you think will work better?
Variation #1
Hey Jonathan,
I’m XYZ working at MyCompany. I was wondering if you had 5 minutes to have a quick call about YourCompany using our product sometime later this week?
It’s an ABC product that helps you:
- Do DEF
- Solve for GHI, and also
- Helps you JKL
Let me know. Thank you!
Cheers,
XYZ
Variation #2
Hi Jonathan,
I noticed that you’re currently using PRODUCT X for your USE CASE requirements, and I can also see that you’re up for a renewal in Q3 2021.
I’d love to step in and show you our platform, PRODUCT Y, that does everything PRODUCT X does and more for a lower price.
In fact, it also has powerful, native integrations with SOFTWARE A and SOFTWARE B that your team is already using, and will take your team’s productivity to the next level. PERSON 1 who handles Marketing at your company used to be our customer when she was working back in COMPANY 0.
I’m looking forward to discussing this partnership with you. Have a great day!
Regards,
XXX
We both know the answer to that question.
Work smart, don’t work hard.
And that’s it! Once you’re done, you can go back to step 1, and follow the same process the next week. Happy selling!
Comments, please!
What did you think about our 3-step process? We’d love to know how this will change your current sales processes! Also, how has the new weekly invitation limit affected your sales? Let us know in the comments below.
