Join us in today’s episode as Doug C. Brown and Donald Kelly talk about the best practices for finding hot B2B prospects on LinkedIn. What are salespeople doing wrong on LinkedIn? Doug Brown often sees a lot of people on LinkedIn who are making prospecting a complex process. The other mistake is that they’re not clear on their target audience. Sometimes, it’s not the sales reps fault because they’re trained to prospect in a certain way. On LinkedIn, however, one has to think differently. Instead of targeting many people at once, it’s better to start narrowing at the top of the funnel and getting more focused going down. Narrowing down prospects means that you’re able to pick 25-30 ideal target customers from your list of 100 people to prospect. Think of the ultra-high quality prospects that you would love to do business with because the challenge on LinkedIn and other prospecting methods is the follow-up. The power of follow-up is huge and impactful and this process has to start from the first conversation or from the first connection. Prospecting today The prospecting game has changed because of the birth of the Internet but the basics of prospecting is no different then as it is now. The basic concept of prospecting is still building relationships. The difference in today’s sellers and buyers is the information. Sellers then had all the information. Today, buyers can access the information with a few clicks of their mouse or scrolls of their phones. Sometimes, they even have more knowledge than the sellers. In terms of selling and prospecting, the buyers don’t care about what the sellers know. Rather, the buyers care about what they need, what they want, and what they have to have. Sellers need to build the relationship and we need to make the prospects feel valued in the relationship. If you don’t build the relationship then you won’t get as high a conversion rate or a closing rate. The goal is to sell based on value, and by value, it means what your prospects value. Building the right way Sales is very much like wooing a person you like. You give them flowers, you do your best to impress them, and more. The same is true for your prospects. You want to build a business relationship with them so you also need to let them know that you care about them and you want to help them solve their problems. Asking permission will get you a long way. Before you start asking questions and digging information on LinkedIn, try to ask permission first. You will have higher chances of getting answered and replied to if you get their permission first. Join the groups where the people you’ve reached out to are frequenting. Start answering questions in the group and position yourself as an expert. You also have to use offline methods as well when following up and engaging with your prospects. “LinkedIn: Best Practices for Finding Hot B2B Prospects on LinkedIn” episode resources Follow Doug C. Brown on LinkedIn. Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, about any sales concerns. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? The pain of sales reps continually reaching out with phone calls and emails and not receiving a response is real. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation. All text messaging is not equal. Customers

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