LinkedIn has revolutionised BtoB prospecting on social networks with its 22 million professional members, in this article Blacksales explains step by step how to create an efficient and automated prospecting on Linkedin. This is a comprehensive tutorial for BtoB salespeople and SDRs who want to find new customers quickly using LinkedIn.
You can use this tutorial to prospect from the data of your Blacksales campaigns or from URLs scraped on Linkedin. Please note that unlike Blacksales data, URLs scraped using Linkedin / Sales Navigator filters have an error rate of about 40%.
We will learn to :
1. Exporting leads contacted in Blacksales campaigns
2. Write a prospecting sequence on Linkedin
3. Automate the sending of invitations and prospecting messages with Linked Helper
4. Add prospects to your message sequence and track their progress
5. Get more appointments!
At the end of this article you :
✅ Know how to prospect automatically on Linkedin
✅ Overcoming Linkedin invitation limits
✅ Increase your number of leads by recycling Blacksales data
1) Log on to the Blacksales customer portal: https: //app.blacksales.co
For your information, you can get a list of all your campaigns in the "Prospecting campaigns" tab. This will be useful if you want to create a different Linkedin prospecting sequence for each campaign.
2) Select the campaign you wish to export
In the menu, go to the "my campaigns" tab ➞ Prospects in campaigns.
Click on 🔎 (top right) ➞ campaign name ➞ contains ➞ paste your campaign name.
3) Selecting prospects who received the full sequence and did not respond
Click on 🔎 (top right)
Choose one:
- Status ➞ is ➞ completed
- Responses qualification ➞ is ➞ empty
The "completed" status corresponds to prospects who have received the entire e-mail sequence, i.e. generally all 6 e-mails.
The 2nd filter 'reponses qualification is empty' means that we only select prospects who have not responded to the email sequence.
Tips: If you have a lot of data, you can also create a custom sequence for people who opened your emails but did not reply with the catchphrase "Hello, I sent you an email..."
To export only those leads that have opened at least 1 of your emails, simply add the following filter before exporting your leads:
🔎 ➞ Opening count ➞ Greather than or equal to ➞ "1"
4) Exporting leads
Ξ (more option) ➞ export ➞ XML/CSV
The prospect file is automatically downloaded to your computer.
This gives you a list of prospects to contact on Linkedin.
Once the file is open, you need to isolate the LinkedIn URLs in the correct format into a column.
To do this, click on the header of the "LinkedIn profile" column (usually column H), this selects the whole column.
Then click on "Data" ➞ Split the text into columns ➞ Detect automatically ➞ Customize ➞ "
This gives you a column with only LinkedIn URLs in the format https://UrlLinkedin.com
Delete unnecessary columns (e.g. H, J, K) by selecting them ➞ right click ➞ delete columns.
A prospecting sequence on Linkedin is very similar to a prospecting sequence by e-mail. It consists of 4 or 5 messages with 3 to 21 days between each message. Each message should be short, easy to read, should focus on a business issue of your prospect and should aim to create a discussion with the prospect.
Always keep in mind your target audience (positions, type of company) when writing your Linkedin sequence.
Try to vary the messages by offering content in different formats that address their issues.
With the export of Blacksales data by prospecting campaign, you can write an ultra-personalised prospecting message by citing as an example customers working in the same sector as the prospected segment.
Below you can find an example of a sequence for sales managers of BtoB SaaS companies.
Message 1 (H+1 after addition) :
"Hello {first name},
What 2 things would you like to change to improve your prospecting strategy?
Many software publishers like you (Lengow, Apizee, Hexaglobe...) use us to accelerate/automate their pipeline generation. Result: + 61% of new business revenue over the first 10 months on average.
Are you interested in a first discussion on the subject?
See you soon!"
Message 2 (D+4):
"Hello {first name},
How are you doing? To illustrate more concretely my previous message, here is how Vizir, a chatbot editor, went from a quasi-manual prospecting (lemlist + scrapping) to a totally automated prospecting allowing it to quickly "scrape" the generation of the sales pipeline: https: //bit.ly/use_case_scale
Have a nice day "
Message 3 (D+11):
"Hello {name}
Did you take a look at my previous post? Is the topic of feeding/managing the commercial pipeline worth your attention right now?
Thank you! ”
Message 4 (D+18):
“ {prénom}, le fondateur de Foodtruck explique comment il a ajouté +30K de MRR en 6 mois en modifiant / automatisant la majeure partie de ses processus de prospection : https://bit.ly/video_blacksales
What do you think? Do you share similar challenges?
I hope it will give you food for thought!
Yours sincerely "
Tip: If you make Linkedin posts regularly, you can send the first post on D+7 (and stagger all follow-ups). The LinkedIn algorithm will automatically show your posts first to new people in your network, which will increase your credibility and conversion rate in your Linkedin prospecting campaigns.
There are several tools that can add and send messages automatically on Linkedin, in this article we will see how to use Linked Helper.
Linked Helper has the advantage of costing only 11€ per month and per Linkedin account, with no limitation in the number of actions that can be performed, unlike prospectIn for example.
1) Install Linked Helper
Download Linked Helper to your computer depending on your operating system (Windows or Mac).
Once the software is installed you can connect your Linkedin account to Linkedin Helper.
➞ Linkedin Account ➞ + Add a new ➞ Email: XXX ➞ Password: XXX ➞ + Add
2) Buy a licence
You have 30 days offered on Linked Helper, once these 30 days of test are over you can buy a license for about 11€ / month depending on the duration of the commitment. To do so, you just have to click on "Buy Licence" and to add your bank information.
3) Set up your first campaign
To automate your actions, click on "Open" a second window will open to set up your campaign.
In this article we will create the following workflow: sending a LinkedIn invitation with a sequence of 3 prospecting messages. Each message will only be sent if the prospect has not responded to the previous one.
4) Create your first campaign
Under "campaigns" click on "+New", name your campaign and choose as template "Invite & Follow up" ➞ "Create".
If you prospect by campaign, use the same nomenclature as the Blacksales campaigns to avoid mistakes.
Click on "Workflow", Linked Helper has prepared a workflow with :
- inviting prospects who are not in your network
- checking that prospects have accepted your request to be added
- send a first message
- check that the person has not responded.
Although Linked Helper may not seem intuitive at first glance, the workflow is already created, you just need to add your prospecting messages and add a few parameters to start your first campaign.
Below you can find the changes you need to make to customise your prospecting sequence. Each action is represented by a grey square in the software.
Action 1: Invite 2nd and 3rd level contacts
This action allows you to send invitations to prospects who are not in your Linkedin network.
General" tab
Adding a clear name to your action (and all the others) will make it easier to follow the different stages of the workflow.
Exceeding invitation limits
You can also exceed the limits for adding contacts on Linkedin by checking "Yes" for "Go over Linkedin weekly invitation limit".
The limit is 40 invitations per day with Linked Helper. For a first campaign I advise you not to increase the volumes directly, let it run for at least 2 weeks before increasing the number.
To increase the volumes, go to the menu on the left ➞ settings ➞ Limits ➞ Invite 2nd and 3rd level contacts and increase the associated number. If you have a Sales Navigator account that you use very frequently, you can go to a maximum of 100 invites per day before you get banned from Linkedin.
Message" tab
You can send a message with your invitation. In our experience, the acceptance rate is higher when we do not send a message with the invitation, so I advise you to leave this field blank.
For the "Advanced settings" "Tags" and "Delay settings" tabs, leave the default settings.
Action 2: Filter contacts out of my network (keep 1st level only)
This action checks who has accepted your invitation request against step 1.
General" tab
You can leave the default settings. Linked Helper checks every 60 minutes to see if any new prospects have accepted you.
Action 3: Message to 1st connections | Group members
This action allows you to send an initial message to prospects who have joined your network.
General" tab
By choosing the above settings, you will not send the first message if :
- the prospect has already sent you a message
It is possible that a prospect will send you a message directly after accepting your invitation, asking you why you added them, for example. In this case, it would not make sense to send them the scheduled message because it does not correspond to the prospect's question.
- you have already sent him a message
If you are doing manual prospecting, it is possible that you have already spoken with this prospect, so it would not make sense to send them your programmed message as if you had never spoken.
- you or Linked Helper have already sent a message to this prospect
This avoids duplicates if you have already added the leads to another campaign. If this is your first campaign you can check "No" but I would recommend that you check "Yes" to avoid duplication with future campaigns.
Message" tab
In the message tab you can add your first message.
For the other tabs you can leave the default settings. To use them requires an advanced level.
Action 4: Check for replies
This action is used to check and remove from the sequence the people who replied to your first message. If a prospect replies to you, he is automatically removed from the sequence and it is up to you to reply to his request manually directly on Linkedin.
General" tab
In "General", you can choose after how many days (if the prospect has not replied) you want to move him to the next action, i.e. to follow up with a second message.
To do this, enter the number of days associated with "if no replies are found, move the contact to Successful list". If you want to send the second message 4 days after receiving the first, add "4".
"Timeout between checks" allows you to ask the Linked Helper robot to check whether the prospect has responded or not. You can also leave the default settings. Don't forget that the more you space out your actions, the more they will appear manual to Linkedin, so you will reduce your chances of being banned from the social network.
Leave the other tabs at their default settings.
Action 5: Message to 1st connections / Group members
This action allows you to send a second message to prospects who have not responded and are therefore still in sequence.
General" tab
This is the same action as sending the first message, repeat the same actions as for the first message.
Be careful to select "No" for "Reject if you or LH messaged a contact after connection date", otherwise all your prospects will be "out" of the workflow because they have already received a message from Linked Helper: message #1.
You can add as many messages as you like to your sequence. However, I advise you to vary the time between the different messages: 4 days, 7 days, 14 days etc.
As a reminder, to change the time between messages, simply change the number of days for "if no replies are found, move the contact to Successful list" in the next action "Check for replies".
Congratulations, you have created your first automated prospecting sequence on Linkedin. To make more advanced sequences you can now try and play with the different actions proposed by Linked Helper.
Add Linkedin URLs to the workflow
To add Blacksales leads to your sequence:
At the very top of your workflow click "+Add more" ➞ Upload profile URLs" ➞ Copy and paste the LinkedIn URLs you exported from the Blacksales platform ➞ Import.
You can see in real time the number of leads added to your campaign and track the progress of your campaign. After each step of the workflow, you can see the number of leads in the "queue", i.e. the number of leads that have received the first message, the second message etc.
Limit your prospecting to business hours
Limit Linked Helper actions to business hours to avoid sending them a prospecting message on Sunday or in the middle of the night.
To do this in the left-hand menu, click on Settings ➞ Workings Hours ➞ select only working hours.
Testing different workflows to get more results
Now, the objective is to iterate with different types of content in your messages (use cases, videos etc.) in order to improve the conversion rate of your campaigns and increase the number of appointments to develop your turnover!
