I was having lunch with a friend. 

“This is what we want to start focusing on offering” he said.

They were wondering if LinkedIn was a good place to find active business owners that are more established. 

Their service evolved.

So did their target audience.

Not only are small business owners actively using it, 94% of Fortune 500 CEOs use LinkedIn.

It’s no wonder why.

LinkedIn is a powerful platform for business owners to connect with clients, network with peers, and grow their businesses.

But how can you, as a business owner, capitalize like those CEOs have?

In this article, I will show you how you can make the most of LinkedIn and use it to:

• Become an industry authority
• Build relationships with your audience
• Book more calls
• Land more clients
• Grow your business.

We’ll cover 6 shifts to help you learn, connect, and close more clients on LinkedIn.

1. Fishing

Landing clients on LinkedIn is similar to fishing.

“Fish where the fish are”

If you know where to fish, you won’t have a problem catching fish.

Want help with this? We will do the analysis for you to help you start on the right foot with a Free Target Market Mini-Analysis.

2. Bait

You know where to fish.

Now, you need to know how to make your prospects “bite”.

• Creating posts that are relevant to them
• Reaching out with Personalized messages.

It all comes down to using the right “bait”.

Want help finding the right bait? Get a free market demand analysis where my team and I will personally research this for you for free.

3. LinkedIn Activity – Last 30 Days:

There are 800 million people using LinkedIn.

Sales Navigator’s “Last 30 Days” feature gives you access to prospects currently active on LinkedIn.

Reaching out to active vs inactive prospects will increase your reply rate on LinkedIn.

Reaching out to active vs inactive prospects will increase your reply rate on LinkedIn.

4. Curiosity:

You want to stimulate curiosity so your prospects respond to your DMs.

This is marketing 101.

You aren’t selling in the DMs.

You’re getting prospects to book calls with you.

To pique interest and capture attention, ensure your messaging is highly relevant.

See our Prospect Primer Template Pack.

5. OFFER

When pitching your offer to clients, it should make them feel like they’re losing out by saying “no”.

Create a dull offer – your prospect says “no”.

Create an “irresistible” offer – your prospect says “yes”.

For the past 3 years, after thousands of tests in 20+ industries, we’ve averaged 45%+ opt-ins.

6. booking calls

If you want to book calls and land more clients, offer free value.

• Give them a resource you saw that would be helpful for them
• Write a LinkedIn article and send it to them.
• Tips
• Resources you’ve made
• Engage with their content to nurture the relationship.

Now you know how to make the most out of LinkedIn, just like 94% of Fortune 500 CEOs.

With these 6 mindset shifts, you can become an industry authority, build relationships with your audience, book more calls, land more clients, and grow your business.

 Want to go faster? 

1. If you’re looking for traction on LinkedIn, the best place to start is with a free audit so you can know what you personally should focus on: → LinkedIn Audit 

2. Level up your messaging: → Prospect Primer Pack

3. Don’t miss out on potential clients on LinkedIn due to small details. Our white-glove service and proven frameworks ensure that no opportunity goes unnoticed. →  Blueprint Session 

It’s not their strategy, financing, lack of marketing or sales effort…

You could be putting in all the effort in the world, but if you don’t have this step right, you’ll hear crickets in your inbox.

Many business owners think connecting, DMs, and a good profile are enough for LinkedIn prospecting.

They don’t realize what’s holding them back from reaching the next level.

Leveraging the data they already have.

Here are 4 ways to leverage data when prospecting on LinkedIn:

1. If you aren’t talking to the right people, the rest doesn’t matter.
2. Your customers don’t want personalization, they demand it.
3. Measure what matters
4. Follow the yellow brick road to unstoppable results

1. If you aren’t talking to the right people, the rest doesn’t matter.

If you talk to the wrong person, your messaging wont be aligned and they won’t be interested.

It’s not your fault either, as LinkedIn’s search tends to include a lot of profiles you did not ask for.

A large majority of people believe it is “just a numbers game” and don’t know they are using “dirty” lists (or don’t care to clean them).

How do you solve this?

• Use a filtration/qualification process. We saw an instant 2x boost in qualified conversations with this. 
• Avoid the search results completely and use LinkedIn Groups.

2. Your future clients don’t want personalization, they demand it.

I doubt approaches like this make a good first impression. 

I don’t know about you, but I love getting something that’s personalized. 

Messaging that’s authentic and relevant will stand out more than any post or ad.

With content, you are appealing to the algorithm, for prospecting, we are using personalization.

Find things you can bring up in conversation that would make it relevant.

Roll out the red carpet to your ideal prospects.

Stimulate intrigue.

Spark sales.

3. Measure what matters

At APEX Conversion we look at just 3 numbers.

1. Acceptance Rate – How many people accepted / how many we sent a connection request to. ie. 86 new connections / 100 connection requests sent = 86% Acceptance Rate
2. Reply Rate – How many people replied out of those that accepted? ie.72 replies / 86 new connections = 83.8% Reply Rate
3. Interest Rate – How many conversations turned into them opting in? ie. 57 opted-in / 72 replies = 79.2% interest rate

For example: If your average sale is $15,000, you just added $855,000 into your pipeline.

Your pipeline will increase by almost a million dollars every week.

This is what we have set as our targets with our clients, and the opportunity that is possible when you systemize growth.

4. Follow the yellow brick road to unstoppable results

 Ever feel like you are shooting darts while blindfolded?

We should just “know” what to do next, right?

Recent studies show that even professionals only predict winning variants 52% of the time.

Without a systematic way to test, your chances of growth is left up to sheer luck.

1. 1. Find the golden nuggets in your data through data analysis
   2. Define the minimum test needed to prove out
   3. Sort ideas in order of impact and ease
   4. Prioritize
   5. Create a culture of consistent testing

 Want to go faster? 

1. If you’re looking for traction on LinkedIn, the best place to start is with a free audit so you can know what you personally should focus on: → LinkedIn Audit 

2. Level up your messaging: → Prospect Primer Pack

3. Don’t miss out on potential clients on LinkedIn due to small details. Our white-glove service and proven frameworks ensure that no opportunity goes unnoticed. →  Blueprint Session 

If you’re reading this, most likely you are in one of two situations.

1. Thinking of starting using LinkedIn and want to know the best way to do it.

2. Currently utilizing LinkedIn and doing some outreach, but may not be getting the results you feel you may deserve.

In 2016, I began using LinkedIn for outreach as phone calling and door knocking was effective, but I wanted something more efficient.

I fell in love with it and soon became my main way to land high-ticket, high-caliber, dream clients.

Not only for myself but in 2020 I went all in and built APEX Conversion, where we help industry leaders land incredible clients.

After tens of thousands of tests, we realized that there are three outcomes needed to be successful when it comes to LinkedIn Outreach.

1. Focused Targeting
2. Irresistible Personalization
3. Unstoppable Results

In this no-holds-barred guide, I’m going to share with you the key factors that will have your LinkedIn inbox bursting at the seams with messages from high-caliber clients.

Focused Targeting

The thing we need to have effective LinkedIn outreach is focusing on your target audience.

This means narrowing down your search to individuals who are most likely to want or need your product or service.

Identify industry-specific groups and organizations, or individuals with similar job titles to your ideal prospects.

Determine your target audience

Market research helps you understand your ideal customers so you can tailor your products or services to meet their needs.

Analyze clients you have had success with to determine what demographic or psychographic factors they share and build a profile of your target audience.

Conduct surveys, focus groups, and analyze social media demographics to gather data on your target audience’s age, gender, income, interests, and preferences.

In Jim Collin’s book, Good to Great(would recommend), this is one of the first steps they take.

Look at the current T.A.M.

Find the current and future market opportunity is in the market with T.A.M. analysis

Total addressable market (T.A.M.) analysis looks at the size of the current and future markets for your product or service in order to help you plan accordingly.

Use data from previous sales, market research, industry reports, and competitive intelligence to gather information on your current and potential T.A.M.. (If you’d like to see what we look for, DM me “Dominate” to get our Domination Plan mini-training)

Uncover crucial customer needs and desires

Market research helps you understand what customers are looking for so that you can create products or services that meet their needs and wants.

The book, The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz, is a great supplement to this.

Ask customers directly by conducting surveys, interviews, focus groups, online reviews, and other methods of data gathering to get a better understanding of their needs and desires.

This has a major impact on messaging conversion.

Understand your positioning 

Understanding the competition will help you identify potential opportunities and threats to your business.

Analyze what they’re doing in terms of marketing, product offering, pricing, etc., and read customer reviews to uncover insights into their weaknesses and strengths.

Gain insight from industry experts

Industry experts can provide valuable insight into market trends, upcoming changes in technology or regulations that could affect your business, and other relevant information.

Once you’ve identified your target audience, take the time to research their interests, pain points, and challenges. This information will help you craft your approach and create messaging that resonates with your audience. Don’t be afraid to get niche and specific. The more targeted your approach, the better your chances of success.

Tip: Remember to make sure your profile is compelling for those you target, if you want to see where you are at, grab a free profile audit here.

Irresistible Personalization

Assuming you got the targeting right, the next step is personalization. 

You want to make your target audience feel like you’re speaking directly to them.

This means using their name and referencing specific details or pain points that you uncovered during your research.

Avoid generic messages or pitches, as they’ll likely end up in the trash bin or ignored altogether.

Instead, create personalized messages that show your audience you’ve done your homework, and you have a solution to their specific problem. Click here to get our top converting intro messages.

Tip: If you have low reply rates, consider supplementing regular posting of content to have more opportunities to test what messaging resonates with the target market.

Unstoppable Results

Never stop testing, and you’ll never stop improving – David Ogilvy

How do we measure results?

We look at just 3 numbers.

1. Acceptance Rate – How many people accepted / how many we sent a connection request to. ie. 86 new connections / 100 connection requests sent = 86% Connection Rate.
2. Reply Rate – How many people replied out of those that accepted? ie. 72 replies / 86 new connections = 83.8% Reply Rate
3. Interest Rate – How many conversations turned into them opting in? ie. 57 opted-in / 72 replies = 79.2% interest rate

If let’s say your average sale is $15,000, you just added $855,000 into your pipeline.

Your pipeline will increase by almost a million dollars every week.

We have hit numbers like these many times.

Not immediately.

When it starts out, it’s not even close.

If you’d like to get an audit on your current setup, click here to get a pipeline audit

With the right targeting and research combined with the you can have an insanely successful outreach campaign.

By focusing on your target audience, creating personalized messaging, and staying consistent in your efforts, you’ll be well on your way to dominating LinkedIn outreach.

Ready to take the next step in your business? 

1. If you’re still looking for traction in with LinkedIn, I’d recommend starting with a free profile audit and strategy session: → LinkedIn Profile Audit 

2. Level up your messaging: → Prospect Primer Pack