James Caldecott, founder of SWJ Growth and Sales Fit Acquisition, has been using Dux-Soup for over 5 years and says the tool is integral to the growth of his outreach agency. He states, “Dux-Soup has been phenomenal. Not just for my career in sales, but for when I had my business.”
James generously shared his strategy that has generated over 4000 sales appointments and over £15 million in sales revenue from LinkedIn during a live session with Dux-Soup. His awesome content covered:
✅ How to nail your offer
✅ How to build your list
✅ How to use Dux-Soup for your connection campaign
✅ How to follow up to nurture prospects and drive appointments
We cover the content here in an easy-to-grab summary.
Over-complicating the lead generation process
James believes that many of us are massively over-complicating the lead generation process. He states, "Here’s a fact: Your potential buyers are getting bombarded every single day with messages - whether on LinkedIn, on email, or other social media channels."
So he built a very simple but ultra-effective way to generate incredible leads, extremely fast, with very little effort.
The 7-day driver
In 2023, James was given 7-days notice on his job. With a baby due, and a mortgage to cover, James knew he needed to replace his income in just 7 days. This is where his journey as a business owner began. He needed to get results yesterday!
He managed to get his first client on day 11, and replace his income on day 28. What an inspiration!
The power of Dux-Soup
James highlights that when he started his business he made no cold calls, sent no emails, and attended no networking events. He built his business up to £33k/month in just 77 days using Dux-Soup and LinkedIn alone. Wow! Way to go, James 👏
For James, the biggest benefit of Dux-Soup is that it saves time. When generating leads, you need to stick to a consistent process. From finding the leads to sending a connection message, to tracking who you need to follow up with and who has responded.
Dux-Soup manages this process, ensuring messages are sent at the right time delays, stopping the process once someone has responded, and giving you instant visibility of leads at each step of the process.
Traditional outreach approaches don’t work
Traditional outreach methods of sending a message highlighting what you do, accompanied by a Calendly link to book an appointment no longer work. James’s opinion? We haven’t earned the right to sell to anyone during the lead gen process.
We need to think outside of the box here. We want to send a message or a voice note that’s creative enough to open the door and start a conversation. This is not when you start selling.
The ultimate goal on LinkedIn is to get a prospect off the platform and into your calendar. This should be the number 1 goal of every outreach campaign that you run.
Creating an irresistible offer
It doesn’t matter how good your LinkedIn lead generation process is, if your offer isn’t strong enough you won’t get results. Your offer needs to be:
✅ Clear
✅ Compelling
✅ Aligned to your audience’s pains
✅ Highly valuable
You should define your transformation statement. 'What is the biggest, most valuable result you help your clients achieve?'
You can then translate this into a Formula ➡️ I help [ideal client] achieve [specific measurable outcome] in [timeframe] without [biggest objection].
Here are some examples:
- Sales Coaches: I help B2B sales teams increase their close rate by 30% in 90 days - without relying on cold calls
- HR Consultant: I help tech startups reduce their hiring time from 8 weeks to 3 weeks - without paying extortionate recruiter fees
- Finance Consultant: I help SMEs save an average of £50k per year by optimizing their cash flow and reducing unnecessary expenses - without needing a full time CFO
- Marketing coach: I help service-based businesses generate £20k+ per month in inbound leads - without spending a penny on paid ads
- Course Creator: I help aspiring coaches launch and sell their first online course within 60 days - without the need for an existing audience
Building your perfect audience
James always recommends LinkedIn Sales Navigator when you want to be ultra-specific with your audience. You can filter by:
✅ Company headcount
✅ Company HQ location
✅ Current job title
✅ Prospect location
✅ Industry
✅ Profile language
✅ Connection type - 2nd, 3rd degree connections to target new prospects
✅ Posted on LinkedIn - this is a great feature to target only people who are active on LinkedIn
One last option is to select:
✅ Years in current company. You can choose people who have been in their company for say, 1-3 years, who may need help with their lead generation.
Create your Dux-Soup campaign
Using either Dux-Soup’s Free Trial, Turbo or Cloud Editions, head to the Dux-Dash to create your campaign.
James’s recommended messaging approach is as follows:
Step 1: Connection
Hi _FN_,
I hope you’re doing well.
Quick one, I’ve got something I’d like to run past you. Do you mind if I send over a short voice note?
Cheers,
James
And that’s it! A really simple, single-step campaign with just a connection message.
💡 James would rather someone accept his connection request and expect a voice note than accept a blank connection request. Over 12 months of testing for clients, James has generated 977 meetings for clients and this approach was the resounding winner.
Enroll your list into the campaign
Go back to your Sales Navigator list, and enroll your list into your Dux-Soup campaign, using the ‘Enroll’ button from the Dux-Soup extension.
Dux-Soup will send your connection messages out, personalizing the First Name as it sends each one.
Check your connection acceptances
Next, in the Dux-Dash Funnel Flow, pull up your campaign results. You’ll see how many people have accepted your connection invitation. Here we have 28, which means that you now have 28 voice notes to send.
Click on the ‘Accepted’ column to get a list of the contacts to send your voice note to. To get the data, click the ‘copy’ button and highlight the ‘Accepted’ column, then paste the data into a spreadsheet like this:
Do this every Monday, and you can send all your voice notes in one go for a consistent process.
Now you’re in a position where:
✅You’ve built a really targeted audience
✅You’ve got a qualified list of people expecting a voice note
If you can send 30 voice notes a week, you could be generating anywhere between 3 and 10 sales appointments a week. That’s how powerful this approach can be.
It’s very simple, super personal, ultra-tailored, and very specific. And, most importantly it’s different from what 99% of people are doing out there which will make you get noticed.
Sending your voice note
With LinkedIn, you can only send a voice note on the mobile version.
So first, find your contact on LinkedIn, click ‘message’ and then tap on the microphone icon. Press and hold to record your message (of up to 30 seconds) and send it.
Your voice note should include the irresistible offer that you created earlier. Here’s an example of what to say if you’re a sales coach.
Casual approach:
“Hi [First Name], great to connect. Really appreciate you accepting my connection. I help B2B sales teams increase their close rate by 30% in 90 days - without relying on cold calls. Look, I completely understand this might not be something you’re looking at right now, and that’s totally fine. Just wanted to say Hi and see what you’re working on right now. If you’re open to it, I’d love to set up a quick intro call - nothing salesy, just to put a face to the name and see if there’s any synergy down the line. Let me know what you think!”
Or a balanced approach (casual invite with value):
“Hi First Name], hope you’re doing well. I just wanted to send a quick note to say thanks for connecting. I spend most of my time helping sales teams to improve their close rate and it’s always great to connect with others in this space. I’m not here to pitch anything, just love meeting new people and learning more about what they do. Would you be open to a quick intro chat to learn more about each other’s work and see if there’s any potential for collaboration? No pressure at all.”
For a more direct approach:
“Hey [First Name], great to connect, I hope you’re doing well. I recently worked with [similar company] that was struggling with [business challenge] and we helped them achieve [result]. It was great to see how a few small changes made a big impact and I thought it may be useful to share how we did it. Would you be open to a short chat to go over the details and see if it could be relevant to you too?”
Scripting your voice note is important, to ensure that you get the best response rate to these.
Watch the session
For more great content, Q&A on the topic, and additional resources, you can watch the session on demand. It covers:
How to follow up if they don’t respond to the voice note (49:50)
Is it good to warm profiles up in advance of the connection request? (52:30)
Hire James
Interested in exploring how Sales Fit Acquisition can help you with your LinkedIn lead generation process? Book a demo with James via their landing page.
