Unlock the awesome power of LinkedIn lead generation

In this guide I’ll show you exactly how I generated 6-figures in new business in just 4 weeks.

Introduction

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for new business development and lead generation, that is often vastly underutilised. Many use LinkedIn passively in the same way they would with mainstream social media, posting things in the hope of engagement. Hope is not a good strategy, and whilst it is possible to build a significant inbound pipeline, the sheer amount of work involved in consistently producing engaging content means that usually it is ineffective. The inbound content approach also takes an incredible amount of time to start seeing results with lead generation, it can be months, years and sometimes you never see any meaningful leads generated this way.

The reality is that this approach simply does not attract many, if any, paying clients for the majority of those relying on it. Not only are social media posts not likely to trigger buying, the people you are targeting are usually too busy to be mindlessly scrolling through feeds, consuming social media. I strongly believe that by actively seeking out and targeting new clients you will get better results, more quickly.

In this guide I explain everything you need to know to generate a significant number of high quality leads that turn into sales. by walking you through a recent campaign I ran for my digital agency.This is knowledge that many lead generation agencies charge their clients thousands of dollars each month to implement.

With that, let’s build a powerful LinkedIn outreach campaign that brings in new business opportunities.

If you want to use LinkedIn automation to speed up your results, I recommend Dripify as it is the safest option. However, you should also note that automation is against the LinkedIn Terms of Service and you should use it at your own risk.

My Results

  • $192,000 Revenue

    Total lead value including retainers

  • 3 New Client Proposals

    Budgets of $15,000, $61,000 and $93,000

  • Ongoing Retainers

    Totalling $23,000 per year

  • 7 Hours

    Total time investment

There are some important details I need to explain here. As you can see I’ve generated nearly $200k of new sales leads in my campaign. By this I mean I have met the clients and qualified them and then my team and I have scoped out their projects and sent them proposals. It defeintly helps to have a team but if you don’t then you can still run a campaign like this but probably want to add a few hours to your time budget.

Leads don’t always mean sales, and as you no doubt know, a proposal doesn’t always convert into a sale. However, if done right, it should be done most of the time. Typically, we convert around 75% of the proposals we send out by making sure they are qualified before we send them. For us, a proposal is simply an outline of the work with costing which has already been discussed and approved with the client – the price should not be a surprise or shock.

If you struggle getting proposals signed off, or your conversion rate is less than 50% then you have a different problem, but don’t worry I can help you out with that as well.

Even with a decent conversion rate things can and will happen outside of your control and sometimes projects get delayed or changed and it’s important to look at sales lead values with this in mind. Most decent CRMs (Customer Relationship Management) have weighted values in them for this reason.

A snapshot of one of my pipelines in my CRM (Pipedrive) showing weighted pricing. This helps you work out the real value of your sales pipeline at any given moment. The number on the left in red is the total value of the entire pipeline based on converting 100% of the deals. Since that is unlikely to happen, a weighted average gives a more accurate estimate for that given pipeline. Each column also has the weighted average listed as well. Please note that the campaign projects mentioned in this article are not shown here.

For us, a realistic worst case scenario with figures like this would be we land just the smaller of these 3 jobs and a lower value hosting retainer meaning $16,000. Still, not bad for about a days work.

On the other hand, getting the full $192k is an excellent result. Usually, the reality is somewhere in between, and with these figures a reasonable result would be landing 2 jobs and a couple of retainers, bringing in between $90-$170k of new business depending on which projects convert, and that is exactly what happened for us after this campaign.

What You Can Expect

Obviously what you can expect to generate depends on a few variables. Firstly, you likely sell a different service or product and probably at a different price. If your pricing is lower than the kind of figures I’ve listed, or you know or suspect others are charging more for the same service, then I strongly recommend you check out my article about creating a killer proposal after you have run the campaign.

In either case, I’d say 1-4 new clients wanting proposals is a reasonable expectation, and it could be considerably more. If an average project value for you is $5k, then realistically you can expect to generate between $5k-$20k of new business opportunities in a month. Using the same logic, if your average sale price is around $50k, you should generate between $50k-$200k as is the case here.

In addition to the injection of new business, the skills you will learn in this article are transferable to all outreach approaches, including to cold email, social media, networking as well as improving your overall sales skills. When I coach my mentees through these campaigns, I usually show them how to use LinkedIn before moving over to cold email for that reason.

I’ve had feedback from the people I’ve helped that these skills have even helped their careers outside of setting up their own business. Sales skills like those describe in this article are just as likely to help you get a promotion as they are to generate new business. For me, my sales have helped in all areas of life including buying our dream home in Portugal.

Campaign Tools

The campaign we are building uses a number of different tools as described below. The total cost for these tools is around $100 per month which may seem a lot, but the revenue you will generate will dwarf that figure. Most of that cost is LinkedIn Sales Navigator and a LinkedIn Automation tool. Whilst you can actually do a campaign like this without paying a penny, you will be spending a lot more time generating new leads, and I’d argue your time is a valuable resource worth more than $100 a month!

LinkedIn

It goes without saying that you are going to need a free active LinkedIn account at the minimum. I’d also strongly recommend you use your own personal LinkedIn account rather than a company one. This whole approach relies on relationship building, something that works best with an actual person rather than a faceless company.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Essentially, Sales Navigator will allow you to better target your ideal clients and reach more people, something that is incredibly important in any kind of campaign. Sales Navigator also has an upgraded messaging system that makes it easier to organise your conversations (although I’d argue it could still be improved).

A CRM

If you aren’t already using a CRM to store your leads, then I strongly recommend you do so straight away. If you can’t justify the spend, some people build their own using Airtable or Notion. Personally I’d recommend a paid CRM such as Pipedrive or Capsule.

Automation tools

There are numerous ways of leveraging automation to drastically speed up results. This could be as simple as using Zapier or IFTTT to streamline processes and sync with your CRM when you get replies, or using full blown automation LinkedIn automation tools to do much of the work for you.

LinkedIn Automation

LinkedIn automation is widely used on the platform to speed up sales. There are multiple tools available, one of the most common being Dripify. You can run this campaign with and without LinkedIn automation tools, although generally speaking you are likely to see much better results using it rather than manually doing everything yourself.

Disclaimer: using automation tools on the LinkedIn platform is against their terms of service and could result in your account being suspended or banned. I take no responsibility if that happens to you. For the purpose of this article I cannot officially condone or encourage you to use automation, however I would say that these tools are widely used by people generating sales on LinkedIn, and you are likely to see much better results using LinkedIn Automation.

Campaign Overview

In this campaign we will be selecting a target group of people to reach out to and connect with them on LinkedIn and follow up with messaging designed to provoke a response in those people needing our services. This is a gentle, non-aggressive sales technique where we will carefully identify the right people, send a crafted connection request, follow up with a question and if they are interested, nurture the sale. It is a numbers game that if done correctly and consistently, delivers results time after time. It sounds simple, because it is, but there are some important details which make this approach very effective indeed.

Pick your target

An essential aspect to any successful campaign is ensuring you have carefully identified your target market. An ideal target for this campaign would be a niche you specialise in helping, or failing that, a geographical location you work in. In my campaign I targeted my local city, but previously I have targeted various niches. One reason local targets work is because it is easy for them to relate to you, and easy for you to physically meet them in person.

You can also use geography if you have a client base at a certain location. For example, if most of your clients are based in a certain area, you could capitalise on that even if you aren’t personally based there.

Whoever you target, make sure that you can relate to them in some way. Don’t target random businesses that have nothing to do with you and what you do.

Next up, we need to think about the buyer. Who are they? Who, in your sales cycle, actually makes the decision to buy your product or service? It won’t be just anyone for example an office administrator or receptionist, it will likely be a leader or senior decision maker in a business that needs what you do.

At my agencies we predominantly design websites for various niches, so I’ve found that senior marketing personnel are ideal for us. Marketing Directors and Heads of Marketing departments are especially good targets for us. Founders and owners can work as well, although we have seen that if you target senior marketing people, then we know that company has a marketing department and already invests in marketing, meaning they are more likely to work with us.

I’ve had some success targeting business owners as well, but this only works well if you make it clear on your profile that you too are an owner or leader.

I’ve worked with mentees that seem to almost randomly target people, occasionally getting some results, but if you consistently target the right people you will do better over the long run.

Build your list

With Sales Navigator there are extra search filters, including one very useful one for this campaign.

Hidden in the search filters is a setting where you can choose people that have changed jobs in the last 90 days. This is great if you are targeting marketing staff, as one thing marketing people like to do when they go to a new business is make changes to the existing marketing. This also works well for other positions such as startup founders since they will be looking for help with marketing and various other services (just make sure they have the money to be able work with you!)

Here is an search criteria targeting senior marketing people in New York that have recently changed jobs:

With this search I got a list of 2,000 matches. I could further narrow this down if needed to specific companies or niches. If I was based in New York, I’d certainly be doing this search. You will notice that for job title I’ve manually typed in “marketing” in order to get the most results. This may mean we potentially pick up a few competitors, rival agencies with staff that have marketing in their titles. Personally, I don’t see the harm in this and sometimes you will find referral partnership opportunities this way. That said, a manual sweep of the contacts is a good idea as you don’t want to waste your time and the finite number of connections you can send each week.

I want this process to work for you, so please use your own initiative to build your own list. If you want to get hyper specific, you could build a list using different criteria, potentially targeting members of groups, or people working at specific companies.

Optimise your profile

Before we start messaging potential clients with connection requests, it’s really important that your profile looks the part. Your profile should clearly say what you do so that when someone clicks on it, they can associate the relevance to them. If nothing else, your profile should resonate with the target, and ideally they will think “oh, this person does what I need right now!”

If your profile is too vague, then the potential client won’t know what you do or how that is relevant to them.

My own profile might not be the best example as I have so many things going on that I target.

However, hopefully when I reach out to people they get a sense of who I am and the people I help.

A decent photo and vibrant background image can help too.

You will get better results if you present yourself as a leader, more people will want to connect with you and get to know you. So instead of having “Web Designer”, “UX Designer” or “Marketing Professional” on your title, use words such as Founder and Director if you are able to. This is because your buyer is interested in speaking to a fellow decision maker, not an employee for a company.

If you target a niche, then getting specific on that can help too. For example “Founder of Company Name, a SaaS development agency that helps ambitious edtech businesses to scale”.

Campaign Sequence

We will use the following sequence in our campaign:

  1. Connection Request
  2. Follow up
  3. Filter out leads
  4. Chat
  5. Meet

Connection Request

Your connection request needs to be short, simple and there should be absolutely no sales speak in there. Getting this right is very important. A good starting message would be something like:

Hello John,

I’m Harry from Company Name, a web design agency based in London.

I’d love to add you to my network.

Harry

You will notice it is clear who I am and what I do. I’ve said the company name, what we do, and location. I would avoid too many descriptive words here if you can help it just because it will sounds like you are trying to sell to your target – you aren’t you are trying to get a connection acceptance at this stage.

If you are targeting a specific location, it’s good to have this listed so they recognise it and how it relates to them. If you are are targeting a niche, then you can focus more on that too. For example:

Hello John,

I’m Harry from Company Name, a digital agency that helps edtech.

I’d love to add you to my network.

Harry

The more specific you can get without coming across as selling to them, the better. A hyper specific message might be something like:

Hello John,

I’m Harry from Company Name, a web development firm that helps sports focused edtech companies in London.

I’d love to add you to my network.

Harry

At the risk of repeating myself here, please do avoid trying to sell, or using buzzwords or sales terminology, this will just put people off and reduce the effectives of the campaign.

An example of a bad message would be:

Hi John Smith!

I’m Harry from Company Name, a world-class, blue sky thinking agency that pushes the envelope in delivering next-gen turnkey digital solutions for your business. As thinkers outside of the box, and a Clutch highly recommended supplier, we are in the best position to solve your problems.

What challenges are you seeing this financial quarter that my capable team and I can assist you with, John?

Harry

Imagine bumping into someone in the street and they launch into you with all of that. Are you likely to buy from them? Are you likely to want to hear what else they have to say? Unlikely, as no one wants a jargon filled elevator pitch from someone they only just met, so keep things casual, friendly and short. To further illustrate the point, because it is important, have a look at this message that just came to me as I’m writing this:

There is so much wrong with this message and when I saw it I immediately thought “who is this guy and what does he have to do with me?” before ignoring it.

Beyond the bad grammar, his messaging lacks personalisation and he has made the cardinal error of launching straight into sales mode before getting to know me.

The funny thing is I do occasionally hire people outside of our business to do these very services, and had he approached me in a more human way, its possible we might have worked together.

Follow up

If and when your target accepts your connection request, you want to follow up with a simple message and a question. Your aim is still not to sell, but provoke them into talking with you. You can imagine the benefits of using LinkedIn automation tools for this part of campaign as they will do this automatically for you while you get on with other things.

A good example of a follow up is as follows:

Hi John,

Thanks for accepting my request.

How are you doing?

Simple, hey?

You might feel the compulsion to start trying to sell at this point, dropping in details about what you do and how you can help them solve their challenges. Please don’t, all you will do here is put off your potential client. If they have a need for what you do, and they can tell what that is, then they will let you know! They do so with subtle clues known as buying signals.

Filter out the Leads

A small percentage of the people you connect with will respond to your question. As you scale up your campaign you will soon realise that you need to be selective with your time.

It’s quiet easy to spend a day messaging dozens of people, only to find out they are the wrong ones. Instead, focus on those that you think would actually hire you. Hopefully your list is pretty accurate at targeting the right people, but it is very common to let a few slip through the net. In particular, people looking for work themselves are far more likely to engage with you, so look out for the signs that this may be the case and focus your efforts more on those that have the better chance of converting into a sale.

Anyone that shows buying intent should be a priority, and if someone offers to meet you and you think they are a good fit, make it your mission to make that happen. If nothing else, aim to get in the room with them. This can be online, but if you can meet potential clients face to face you are far more likely to actually get the work.

Chat

Ok, so this is where the magic happens.

Again, I must express how you should resist the urge to get into sales mode. At this part in the campaign you have narrowed down to just a small handful of people you want to talk to. You know they are a good fit, and they show some interest in what you do.

Look out for requests to meet or discuss things in more detail. This example is from my own campaign. If someone responds like this, then they are giving your buying signals and your next step is to nurture them.

Buying signals can come in all kinds of messaging, but generally speaking a buying signable would be if your target refers to what you do, your company or shows signs of wanting getting to know you more. Basically they are showing an interest.

Sometimes to buying signals are very obvious.

If they don’t show any of these buying signals straight away, don’t despair. It is worth sticking with them and just having a natural conversation as sometimes they prospect needs to get to know you a bit more. After a while the conversation may run it’s course and at that point you will want to put them in the nurture section of your CRM.

Meet

Make your entire campaign focused on meeting your potential client, either online or in person, but I always say in person it more effective if you can do it. If your client doesn’t suggest it directly, but you know they are a good fit, and they have a need that you can supply, then you can suggest meeting them. Again, keep the conversation natural and avoid sales messaging, for example:

Maybe if you have time I could show you how we do things over a coffee? I’m planning to be in the London area next week, any chance you are free?

Keep it human and friendly and most people will respond positively. It’s a numbers game and if you meet a certain amount of people, a certain amount of them will turn into clients that you send a proposal to. In my own campaign I met 3 people that all ended up wanting proposals.

It’s sometimes worth just making up a reason to meet these people just so you get in the room with them. It’s not uncommon for me to get on a plane to meet a high value client a couple thousand miles away based on the pretence of “being in the local area”, so it’s worth thinking of ways you can encourage more prospects to meet you. You might wonder why I bother doing that with tools like Google Meets, Zoom and Teams, but the truth is I’ve found that I convert more than double the amount of clients if I can actually meet them in person which more than covers the cost of my flights, car hire and hotels.

Nurture & Convert

If you are lucky and have followed the steps I’ve outlined closely, you should already have a couple of meetings set up at this point. If not, then give it a little more time and look at your messaging steps and make sure you are reaching out the right people and coming across as normal human beings. If your LinkedIn account is new and you only have a few connections then it might take a while for your account to build enough connections for it to have any authority.

During the nurture stage you will want to continually check in with your prospects. Again, avoid talking to them as if you are selling, for example don’t ask them about their business growth or plans – talk to them as a professional friend. One way I look at it is, imagine you bumped into them in the street – what sort of language would you use? Would you say “Hi Jim, how are things?” or “What are your marketing goals for this quarter?” Be human.

Any interesting people should be stored in a CRM so that you don’t lose their details, and so you are reminded to follow them up in the future. It is a good idea to check in with these people over time and your CRM can help you schedule dates to do that. Checking in could be a simple question to see how they are doing, or ideally you are giving them something as this is more likely to be well received.

Examples of things you can give them include:

  • An invite to an event you are attending or hosting
  • A link to an interesting article (ideally that you wrote)
  • The offer to meet up over a coffee or lunch
  • A free audit of their website/business/product
  • A whitepaper or other content you have created

Nurturing a client can take weeks, months or sometimes even years before they turn into a paying client. It’s tempting to only focus on the small amount of potential clients that show immediate buying intent, but there is a huge amount of value in those prospects you nurture over time. Doing so will help you build a strong and stronger pipeline over time as you build momentum. I like to think of sales as a heavy flywheel rather than one of events. It can take a while to get moving, but if you keep pushing it then before you know it that flywheel is spinning like crazy.

Conclusion

I haven’t gone into the details too much about automation settings, as there are many automation tools out there and I wanted this article to work for those that didn’t want to use automation. Generally speaking the default “safe” settings are pretty good, but as you improve your campaigns you will start to tweak these settings.

After a few weeks or running a campaign you should at the very least have a few interesting conversations with potential clients, if not a some meetings and proposals out of the door. The more consistently you run campaigns like this, the better and better results you get over time, so it is important to keep at it. If you are one of my mentees and would like me to walk you through a campaign like this, just let me know.

This campaign is all about creating opportunities, and sometimes they are not as straight forward as a simple project. Below are a few screenshots with messages I’ve received from some of my campaigns, I’m sure you will also soon start to see similar results after running a campaign like this.