LinkedIn is now an essential tool for every salesperson. And looking for new prospects, LinkedIn has become part-and-parcel of a daily sales job.
But how do you know who your prospect is, and how can you make sure that this prospect buys from you rather than your competitors?
I used to ask myself the same question. With all the opportunities LinkedIn offers today, prospecting has become more of an art than just a tedious task that needs to be done.
Based on what I had to face (and sometimes I still have to), I’ve written an article where you’ll find out:
- How to find prospects on LinkedIn
- What outreach tools to use to find more leads
- And last, but definitely not least—how to convert a prospect into a customer.
So, what are the 15 best ways to find new prospects on LinkedIn?
Here’s the answer. Enjoy the reading!
In a nutshell:
1. Identify the Right ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
Let’s start with the basics: you need to create an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) before reaching out to your prospects.
I know it might sound simple, but you’d be surprised. Often, when I talk to my clients, I find that the issue is a lack of awareness about who their customer really is. Having an idea and a product is not enough—you need someone who will buy from you. That should be the first step in your prospecting.
Building a persona map is essentially identifying your ICP. This is where LinkedIn excels as a tool. How exactly?
LinkedIn allows you to find precise data about your target audience. Specifically:
- where they work,
- how long they’ve been there,
- what university they graduated from,
- what country/city your prospect lives in,
- how long they’ve been at the company,
- and much more.
With answers to these questions, you can identify the following:
- if this prospect might need your product,
- if your product would be a good fit for them,
- what budget the prospect might spend for your product.
Of course, building an Ideal Customer Profile is a much more complex process. To dive deeper into the details, I recommend you check out my recent blog post: What is an Ideal Customer Profile in Digital Marketing?
2. Send Personalized InMail Messages
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is another option to make your prospecting more effective. In this case, you’ll want to use InMail Messages.
However, this feature is only available in the LinkedIn Premium version. It allows you to send a personalized message to a prospect who isn’t yet your 1st connection (meaning someone not already in your network).
Here’s how it works: you go to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, search for your chosen person, and send them a message. The message can either be ignored or accepted. If the prospect accepts, you’re one step closer to making a sale.
Of course, it’s not always that simple—the prospect might accept your message and reply with something like, “Fk off, I’m not interested…” But I believe that’s just a rare occurrence. 😉
Personalization
Good personalization is essential. Whether you’re crafting a message on LinkedIn or writing an email, strong personalization brings you a step closer to being noticed (and getting a response) from your prospect.
In fact, the entire game of outbound marketing revolves around being noticed and crafting well-personalized messages. Imagine your prospects receiving countless LinkedIn messages, emails, and phone calls every day. Yet, out of thousands of salespeople, only one or two stand out. What are they doing better than the rest? They personalize their messages effectively. Simple as that.
—> Here’s what you can personalize:
- The prospect’s name
- The prospect’s company
- The prospect’s job title
- The company’s revenue (tricky)
- The prospect’s tenure (also can be tricky)
- A suggestion on what might not be working at the prospect’s company that your product could solve (risky, but if apt, then pays off as heck)
When personalizing messages, remember to implement A/B testing. Not every approach will work for every prospect.
A/B test as many elements as possible, but remember—always test one element at a time. If you test multiple elements simultaneously, how will you know which one caused the change?
Message on LinkedIn: Number of Characters
This is one of the trickier aspects. Let me start by saying there is no ‘perfect word count.’ The ideal number of characters in a message is one that includes information about the prospect, explains how your solution can help them, and includes a CTA that prompts them to take action. Period. That’s the ideal character count for any message.
In the attached example, LinkedIn tells me I used 661 characters, which is a bit too much. I placed a couple of suggestions, e.g., [Prospect’s Company], which takes up 18 characters. For comparison, the company name could’ve been Nike, which has only 4 characters and just one word. Subtle difference, isn’t it?
However, if you’re aiming to fit LinkedIn’s prospecting guidelines, they suggest an ideal character count of 500. No specific word count is mentioned.
But what’s most important? The message was personalized. This is crucial when you’re looking for new prospects on LinkedIn.
P.S. What’s the final goal at this stage? Get the reply like this one:
✅ Mission complete, now you can move on.
Apply Call to Action
A Call to Action (CTA) is one of the most undervalued elements by salespeople. This is surprising because a well-crafted CTA is exactly what prompts your prospect to take action.
CTAs on LinkedIn can vary widely. Given the unique nature of the platform, you can apply them in many creative ways.
Of course, I’ll start with the standard approach. You write a message and encourage the prospect to act. Here are some examples:
—> [Prospect’s Name], do you still remember me? 😉
—> [Prospect’s Name], this is my WhatsApp number, call me when you’re available.
—> Book a meeting when you have 20 minutes to talk (insert your Calendly link where the text is).
—> [Prospect’s Name], tell me, what can I do to start working with you? I’m open to any of your suggestions! 🙂
—> [Prospect’s Name], how about a meeting on Monday? (<— suggest a specific day, don’t wait for their suggestions).
———
There are many ways to structure a CTA. The key is that it should prompt a decision from your prospect.
Here are some less-pushy CTA options:
- Like their posts
- Leave a comment on their posts
- Share your prospect’s post on LinkedIn, adding a cool (but not too flattering) description
- Endorse their skills (this makes you visible)
- Record a video and send it to them as a LinkedIn message
These strategies will work out. Try them all, and you’ll see the results you’re looking for. Would you add anything else?
3. Find Your Prospect with Lead Generation Tools
Lead generation tools for LinkedIn are one of my favorite topics. The subject matter is quite similar across the board, but there are many options to choose from.
All the above lead generation tools are applicable specifically to LinkedIn. Over the past few years, I’ve used several outreach tools, but I’ve settled on one effective choice: Apollo.io. This is my personal pick, which I’ll now introduce to you.
Apollo.io: Your Next Lead Generation Tool
Apollo.io is a lead generation tool designed to help you find the right leads on LinkedIn. Apollo.io is specifically tailored for business applications in generating leads and gathering data on your prospects via LinkedIn.
Contrary to what you might think, this isn’t an easy task. A few years ago, I had no idea Apollo.io even existed. In fact, I didn’t really understand how lead generation and cold outreach tools worked or what they were. As a result, I wasn’t using LinkedIn. Why bother with LinkedIn if it wasn’t providing any real value, aside from scrolling through other people’s posts? That’s how I saw it back then. Fortunately, that quickly changed.
In short: you use Apollo.io to find information about your prospect, such as their email address or phone number—basically, anything you need to initiate an outbound action.
Above, I’ve included a screenshot of the Apollo.io CEO’s email address. However, Apollo.io can provide many more email addresses that you might need. More importantly, the accuracy of Apollo.io is staggering. The data is highly reliable, with over 95% of email addresses are correct. Of course, there will be instances where an email might not be 100% accurate—such as when a prospect changes their last name, department, or someone with the same name joins the company—but these cases are rare.
Apollo.io: why should you use this lead generation for LinkedIn?
These are 8 why’s you can rely on Apollo.io during your lead generation on LinkedIn:
- Accuracy: Everyone loves receiving accurate data, and Apollo.io delivers it at the highest level. The data is nearly 100% accurate—whether it’s an email address or a phone number. In fact, anything that brings you closer to your prospects.
- Advanced Search Filters: Powerful search capabilities to help you find leads based on specific criteria such as job title, industry, location, and company size.
- Automated Outreach: Simplify your outreach process with automated email sequences and follow-ups, saving you time while maintaining consistent communication with leads.
- Integration with LinkedIn: Seamless integration allows you to easily export and manage leads directly from the platform.
- Performance Analytics: Track and analyze the effectiveness of your outreach campaigns with detailed reports and analytics, helping you refine your strategy for better results.
- Scalable Prospecting: Whether you’re targeting a small niche market or a large audience, Apollo.io scales with your needs, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes.
- Compliance and Security: Make sure your lead generation strategies are compliant with regulations such as GDPR, with built-in features that protect your data and privacy.
Wanna know more? Find here the comprehensive review of Apollo.io: Apollo.io Review: The Best Outreach Tool on the Market
4. Find and Contact Prospects in New Roles
Once again, Apollo.io comes into play—this time for identifying newly hired prospects. How can you find prospects on LinkedIn? Start by checking who has recently been hired at a particular company.
Once you’ve defined your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), target the specific company. If you notice something like this:
You’ve got a perfect reason to reach out. A newly hired individual is an ideal example of someone who might be a decision-maker (e.g., a new Head of Marketing) or someone closely connected to decision-makers. You know, a new hire is often eager to make an impact. Your outreach could be the perfect hit at just the right time.
5. Join Industry-Specific LinkedIn Groups
This is a screenshot of the groups I’ve joined on LinkedIn. These are the groups where you can find the largest number of your prospects. While those prospects may not necessarily be actively sharing posts, you can still find and reach out to them. Additionally, these groups are highly specialized. As a result, you can discover a wealth of topics related to your industry, innovations, and the latest developments being implemented by your competitors (or your prospects’ competition).
Moreover, you can observe how others are contacting their potential clients or what they’re posting. Right—you’re not the only one who had the brilliant idea of joining groups like these. When I worked as an SDR, I had the opportunity to see how others did this effectively, so there’s a great deal you can learn.
6. Set up a Search Alert
You won’t always be able to get past the gatekeeper. You might try calling or emailing—still not enough. But there’s a workaround. Keep an eye on who they hire and what the new job titles are.
Create a job alert where you can track new hires at a particular company. By doing this on LinkedIn, you can stay updated in real-time: Who’s been hired and who they’re currently looking to recruit.
I need to recommend you one more solution: invite Talent Acquisition Specialists from those companies to your network. Set up an alert with the “bell” icon, and stay updated on any changes. These are the people who most often post “We’re hiring!” along with job announcements on their wall. When someone gets hired, you’ll see it under the “New Hires” section on their company’s LinkedIn profile.
7. Connect with Recent Profile Viewers
Newly added connections can be a goldmine of leads. LinkedIn has only one limitation—you can send a maximum of 100 connection requests per week. In an ideal scenario, that gives you 400 new contacts per month, or 4,800 per year. Not bad. However, simply increasing the number of people in your network isn’t enough.
By adding selected individuals to your network, you can continuously monitor how many new prospects you have in your database. When you see that a new person has accepted your connection request, don’t hesitate—reach out to them. Sometimes the best way to find new prospects on LinkedIn is by building a vast network of contacts. And of course, following up with further actions.
8. Explore the Networks of Your Competitors
Let’s take a moment to talk about the competition—specifically, Zoominfo, which is a main competitor of Apollo.io.
Like Apollo.io, Zoominfo is a lead generation and outreach tool. You can use it to generate leads, even as a standard alternative to Apollo.io.
Speaking of alternatives—their customer base often shifts, especially between each other. If you operate in SaaS (like they do), you know exactly what I mean.
That said, by thoroughly understanding your competition, their customers, and their case studies, you can build a solid base of new prospects. Personally, by thoroughly researching my competitors, I was able to create an effective database based on their websites and LinkedIn profiles. Admittedly, if your competition has developed strong brand advocates, winning over their customers might be extremely difficult. Even if you offer a lower price. But that’s the nature of competition, and it also means greater access to potential customers. Give it a shot.
9. Ask for the Right Person
Here’s Henry Shuck, CEO of Zoominfo. In this video, he demonstrates what an effective CTA should look like during prospecting.
Citing: “Henry, if I compelled you that we solve the problem you care a lot about, can you connect me with the right person at Zoominfo to take that conversation forward?”
You have to admit, that’s an excellent CTA. And what else did Henry add at the end?
If you’ve done a good job of personalizing your message, I’m always going to be open to do that.
Once again, a personalized message is your must-have. If the CEO of Zoominfo (with around 1,000 people onboard) says it, then you know it really works.
10. Browse Through Skill Endorsements (and endorse them)
If outbound and cold outreach are all about getting noticed, then do something that will make you stand out—but not in a pushy or intrusive way. Endorse their skills. It’s a small gesture, but when they notice it, they’ll think, “Oh, nice guy, maybe I should reply?” And they will. By doing this, you’re one step closer to closing that sale.
11. Use Content Creation Tools for LinkedIn
You can play the LinkedIn game at a much higher level with the help of a content creation tool. My absolute winner in this game is AuthoredUp.
AuthoredUp is a tool specifically designed for LinkedIn that helps you create content that:
- Generates more leads
- Sells your ideas more effectively
- Increases your audience’s trust
- Helps produce content that grabs attention
Additionally, I personally refer to AuthoredUp as an automation tool. Why?
I regularly recommend AuthoredUp to my clients, both those who are advanced on LinkedIn and those just starting out. By using this content creation tool, you can:
- Create automated posts
- Develop content that maximizes your reach
- Receive performance data, so you know what’s working and what needs improvement.
Since the beginning of this month (August 2024), I’ve been managing a LinkedIn account for my client. We’re focusing solely on the Polish market and the manufacturing industry—a very demanding market. However, we’ve committed to social selling on LinkedIn and SEO. AuthoredUp is helping us create the best content and optimize it for even better results. Although our collaboration is still in its early stages, we (more the client than I) already consider it a success.
If you want to dive into the details, feel free to read my review of AuthoredUp: AuthoredUp Review: The Best Content Tool for LinkedIn.
12. Share Case Studies and Success Stories
Everyone loves stories and success. Now, you can combine the two. Craft a compelling story that highlights how you helped your client achieve significant results. These results could be increased revenue, improved search rankings, larger orders, or a reduced drop in XYZ. Write a great blog post about it, create an eye-catching image in Canva, and share it on LinkedIn. Start with a brief introduction and link the rest of the story back to your blog, encouraging readers to dive in for more details.
This way, you’ll kill two birds with one stone:
—> You’ll enhance your visibility and recognizability.
—> Your network will start seeing you as an industry expert.
—> By driving more traffic to your site, you’ll increase your chances of generating more queries.
This is a perfect (and easy-to-execute) plan.
13. Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator
I believe that Sales Navigator is one of the best tools for B2B sales. It has absolutely everything you need to find your prospects and then reach out to them.
This tool allows you to connect with people who aren’t already in your network. Not every prospect needs to be in your network to receive a message from you. However, you do need access to Sales Navigator to send that message.
I don’t want to sugarcoat—it’s not just about sending messages (though, in many cases, that’s where it starts and ends).
Moreover:
- You can track every step of your leads.
- You can find all the leads you’re looking for.
- You can stay updated with changes at the companies you’re observing.
And much, much more.
Sales Navigator: try it out. Once you’ll do, you won’t be able to resist it.
14. Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
I like the expression that your LinkedIn profile is your business card. Or even better—your landing page. It makes sense.
In the B2B industry, your profile represents who you are. It’s different if you don’t manage a LinkedIn account at all because you don’t need to. Sure, it’s not a matter of life or death. However, if you want your profile to help generate better revenue for your company, it needs to look like the cherry on top.
Let’s start from the beginning: 5 steps to turn your casual profile into a landing page.
Background Image
Neat, minimalist, and reflective of what you do. If you add a CTA, that’d be fantastic. Everyone knows exactly what you do at first sight.
Profile Description
Once again—simplicity wins. In a few words, describe what you do or who you are. @Blogger, @CEO, @Co-Founder of… Then separate topics with the “|” symbol. This helps your network quickly identify who you are.
Link to Your Blog
It can be a link to your blog or a website. You can characteristically name it as I did: Visit my marketing blog! It’s for free. Unless, you’d like to add a specific button, then you’d have to have a premium account.
Place Your Workplace
I assume I don’t need to explain this. You know—it’s crucial to let your network know where you work.
Profile Languages
That’s entirely up to you. You can manage your profile in just one language, or in three. It all depends on your language preferences, your audience, and your plan for developing your profile.
Of course, there are plenty more topics to cover. Do you need help with them?
👉 Book a (free) strategy call with me: https://simongorlak.com/contact-me/
15. Ask for Recommendations
A recommendation always looks great on your LinkedIn profile and helps build your image as an expert. But it’s not just that—it also makes others start to trust you. If you’ve inspired people to take the time to write a personalized review for you, there must be something intriguing about you. That intrigue is what draws others in. The more reviews you have, the better the results tend to be.
Wrapping Up
Finding prospects on LinkedIn might seem challenging at first glance. LinkedIn… and then what? It turns out it’s not as daunting as it seems. The right lead generation tools and methods for increasing reach and visibility can make a big difference. And there are plenty of these strategies to choose from.
So, now you know the 15 best ways to find new prospects on LinkedIn. What are your strategies? Or if you wanted to change something, what would it be?
Let me know if you have any doubts—I’d be glad to help!
P.S. Did you enjoy this post? If so, you can always support my blogging journey with a cup of coffee ☕👇
Thank you for reading, and contributing!
Simon
Author Profile
- Simon Gorlak is a Digital Marketing Expert with over 8 years of experience. He specializes in 3 areas: SEO, Copywriting, and Email Marketing. Simon's blog gathers knowledge that helps Marketers & C-level to increase profits from their online businesses. Also, his content helps to reach the most difficult customers, make others' content to be read & purchased. Besides digital marketing, Simon speaks 4 languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish & works as a Head of Business at an Indian Start-up.
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