3 Social Selling Strategies for 100+ Calls a Month – Expandi

Ready to start generating 100+ sales calls per month on LinkedIn?

Today, we’re going to cover 3 main things:

• The state of the art B2B LinkedIn lead generation and outreach overview.
• The 3 most powerful LinkedIn lead generation strategies from 3 leading experts hands-on (with examples and templates).
• A clear path from where you are to multiply your business.

The following is based on a webinar on the same topic hosted by:

• Stefan Smulders – Founder of Expandi – the world’s safest LinkedIn automation software.

• Adi Suja – Globally leading LinkedIn inbound sales expert and founder of renowned LinkedIn growth agency GrowthClub.org and co-founder of imagineGROWTH.institute

• Alexander Gessel – Europe’s leading social selling expert and founder of imagineGROWTH.institute.

If you didn’t get the chance to watch it live, don’t worry, you can still catch the Zoom replay here (with the slides and detailed explanation).

Now, if you’re ready to take your LinkedIn lead generation to the next level, here’s what you need to know.

LinkedIn Lead Generation and Outreach Overview

It’s becoming increasingly harder to generate leads with “classic” LinkedIn lead generation tactics.

Why’s that?

Well, people are skeptical of cold emails and outreach messages.

The new LinkedIn limit stops people from sending more than 100 connection invites per week, and there are better, more advanced tactics you can use instead.

Below, we’ll be taking a look at 3 top outreach strategies and how to bypass the new LinkedIn connection limit completely.

But first, here’s what you need to know about LinkedIn outreach.

The death of a classic LinkedIn lead generation

The classic cold outreach nowadays has a success of <1%.

Prospects block out ads instantly, ignore 80% of sponsored content, and are less likely to open cold emails too.

Classic sales tactics like meeting in person over coffee are not possible either these days.

We live in the age of the informed customer. In most cases, they’re more informed about your product than you realize.

On the B2B side, sales are getting more complex. With your customer being on most social channels you can imagine, outreach strategies like omnichannel and hyper-personalization are more effective than ever.

That and relationship-building. Which is also becoming more and more important.

Let’s take a look at the more modern solution of lead generation.

The rise of modern lead generation

Modern lead generation usually consists of 3 main things:

• Social selling
• Corporate influencers
• Content marketing combined with smart outreach.

Let’s take a look.

Social selling

• 76% of buyers prefer a social media conversation.
• 84% of executives use social media for buying decisions.
• 90% of top salespeople use social selling tools.

Corporate influencers

A corporate influencer is someone who works for a company and builds up their own personal brand talking about and positioning themselves in that niche as an expert.

• 82% have more trust when a C-suite executive is active on social media and recommends a product or solution.
• 92% of buyers engage with salespeople who are considered thought leaders.
• There’s a 6x ROI on influencer marketing.

Content marketing combined with smart outreach

• 2x higher lead-to-close rate LinkedIn inbound vs outbound sales.
• 84% expect brands to create content.
• Creating engaging content is the #1 challenge of B2B marketers.

Reaching out with a strong piece of content (e.g. lead magnet) is great for lead generation.

Check out our brand awareness PDF lead magnet outreach strategy for more info on this.

LinkedIn outreach is constantly changing

You always need to innovate if you want to succeed at LinkedIn lead generation.

The 3 major changing factors that affect lead generation include:

• The Market – Your competitors’ outreach, brand presence, intensity, and creativity.

• The Infrastructure – New marketing platforms, outreach tools, rules & possibilities within the current platforms (e.g. new LinkedIn limits).

• The Customers – Changed behavior, more informed, needs and expectations regarding your outreach, marketing, sales, and more.

These 3 factors will always be changing. The best thing you can do is consistently try new things, follow trends, competitors, and more to see where you can be innovating.

When doing outreach, here’s what you need to consider.

5-T model for laser-targeted outreach

The 5-T stands for:

• Target – Ideal customer persona (in LinkedIn filters).

• Time – Focusing on prospects who are interested NOW.

• Talk – Reason for outreach and commercial teaching sequence.

• Tactic – Adapt to best tactics used now: Consistently A/B testing to optimize and staying up to date.

• Tool – Best social media and support tools.

Check out our best LinkedIn practices for more info on-demand generation and social selling.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the best lead generation strategies you can use with the above in mind.

Top 3 Lead Generation Strategies You Can Start Using Today

Let’s dive straight into the action.

#1 The LinkedIn poll engagement strategy

With this tactic, you can generate 20+ customer meetings and 9 deals with 1 LinkedIn poll.

How does it work?

LinkedIn polls allow you to ask your network a question and give them multiple choices to pick their answer from.

For example, you can ask who is interested in your services and automatically reach out to responders who said “Yes”.

The process is simple:

1. Create a LinkedIn poll.
2. Create a New Search on Expandi.
3. Choose Post Engagement and paste the URL.
4. Use LinkedIn automation to scrape relevant responders and reach out with a relevant outreach template.

That’s 174 people who replied Yes and Alex reached out to them.

If they’re not in your network – you can send a connection request.

If they are – you can message them directly.

Here’s what makes this strategy so successful:

• Right audience – Your network that already consists of laser-targeted prospects.

• Right time – Prospects who tell you they’re interested, which means it’s the right time for them.

• Right vehicle to start a conversation – The LinkedIn poll and the question in it which is a great reason to start a conversation without being spammy.

Here are the outreach templates you can use for this tactic:

And the results for this campaign are as follows:

• 174 prospects voted “Yes” (68%).
• 144 accepted connections (82%).
• 73% replied to a follow-up (51%).
• 29 Booked a meeting (40%).
• 20 Meetings total (68%).
• 9 Booked training (45%).

And that’s with just 1 poll.

#2 The event retargeting strategy

This is one of the best ways to find laser-specific leads from your target audience.

LinkedIn members can join any type of events such as meetups, online workshops, seminars, groups, and webinars.

And with this strategy, we’ll be reaching out to everyone who attended a certain LinkedIn event.

Using this strategy, you can scrape over 1,000+ attendees from LinkedIn events.

The process is also simple:

1. Copy the URL of the LinkedIn event.
2. Go to Expandi, go to the Search tab, and click New Search.
3. Then, paste the URL in the Event Search section.

From there, you can add contacts to your campaign, segment, and filter accordingly.

Based on the event, you can assume the attendees are probably interested in news and approaches that are related to the event topic.

With this campaign, we achieved a 60%+ acceptance rate and generated a ton of interesting leads.

Learn more on scraping LinkedIn events here for a more detailed explanation on how to set up a similar campaign.

#3 How to send over 1,000 connection requests per week (even with the new LinkedIn limit)

With this strategy, you can import a list of email addresses via Google contacts or via a CSV import.

This way, LinkedIn will send an automated connection request for you. Though you can’t add a personalized note, this is still a clever way to get around the new 1,000 connection per week filter.

Here’s how:

1. Find users who fit your target customer personas using LinkedIn Sales Navigator
2. Import and export from Expandi to find emails.
3. Import them to LinkedIn using CSV Import/Google Contacts.
4. Track who’s accepting your connection request on Expandi & send them automated follow-ups.

Here’s what this looks like in practice.

Step #1 – Filtering and defining your target prospects

As an example:

• Geography: Europe, US.

• Job title: CEO, Founder, CMO, etc.

• Company size: 1,-11,51-200.

• Relationship: 2nd or 3rd degree.

• Industry: Advertising and marketing.

• Functions: Entrepreneurship, business development, etc.

Step #2 – Entering your filters in LinkedIn Sales Navigator to shortlist potential leads

1. Open LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
2. Enter your filters from step #1 to find your target prospects.
3. Select users who’ve “Posted on LinkedIn in the past 30 days”.
4. Copy the page URL.

Step #3 – Using Expandi to obtain emails as CSV

1. Create a New Search.

2. Search type: Sales Navigator.

3. Paste LinkedIn Sales Navigator search URL page link from step 2.

4. Click Search.

5. Select your search from the “Searches” list.

6. Click “Export”.

7. Choose “Mail all contacts as CSV”.

8. Enter email addresses to receive your CSV.

9. Click “Send”.

10. Open your CSV with Google Sheets.

11. Freeze your top header row.

12. Sort the email column in ascending or descending order.

13. Delete all rows that have no email data.

14. Create a backup copy of this list in another sheet.

15. Delete all columns except first name, last name, and email in one sheet.

16. Download as CSV.

Step #4 – Importing contacts to LinkedIn

Then, you can import contacts directly to Expandi what your CSV file.

1. Go to your  Profile Settings, delete connection requests after 5 days.

2. Create a new Connector Campaign and name it “Contact Upload Campaign Week 1”.

3. Click “Import CSV” and upload the backup copy of the prospects we created.

The connection requests which are accepted can be seen in the Campaign Dashboard in Expandi.

Then, you can send a personalized follow-up message to your prospects saying:

“Thank you for accepting the connection request, {first_name}.

(Personalized conversation starter)”.

To recap, with this campaign, you’ll first send a connection request and then follow up automatically. Both within Expandi.

Check out our guide to LinkedIn connection message templates if you’re not sure how to start conversations on the platform.

By scraping emails and adding them to your contacts with the CSV, you can still bypass the connection limit and continue connecting with new leads in your network.

Then, you can track your connections and automated follow-ups with Expandi.

These connection requests aren’t included in your usual weekly connections quota. – LinkedIn does the work of reminding these “contacts” for you to connect via email repeatedly.

Just make sure you don’t send out more than 1,000 requests every week. LinkedIn might detect this as spammy and suspicious behavior.

The Right Way to Grow Your Business

So, to recap, what you’ve learned is:

1. The state of the art in B2B Lead Generation. 
2. The 3 most powerful lead generation strategies from 3 leading experts hands-on. 
3. A clear path to move from where you are to multiply your business.

Now, here’s where you can go from here:

• Check out our Top 10 proven LinkedIn outreach templates from top influencers to learn how you can achieve a 55% acceptance rate + 66% reply rates.
• Check out ImagineGROWTH’s LinkedIn Campus program to learn how to start generating leads and skyrocket your B2B sales.

And be sure to follow the speakers of this webinar too!

• Stefan Smulders on Facebook.
• Adi Suja on LinkedIn.
• Alexander Gesell on LinkedIn.