When using Dux-Soup with LinkedIn, the best way to get more qualified leads is to have a process that works for your business and then follow that process.
Processes allow you to identify problems and make iterative improvements over a short period of time. Processes allow you to complete tasks faster and share with others how you were successful.
When you don’t have a process you lose money, you lose time, you struggle to replicate success.
LinkedIn has over 630M members and without a process, a database that big can feel overwhelming. Processes can help you stay focused on your target market, know when to engage and understand how to analyze what activities are growing your business, and which ones are not. We refer to this process as T.E.A Time, you’ll want to follow your process to a T.E.A.
Here are some best practices you can follow when using Dux-Soup with LinkedIn to get more scheduled, qualified meetings and move social engagements to offline conversations.
Analyze: Begin with the end in mind
Stephen Covey, in his book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People said, “To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.”
Before opening LinkedIn and Dux-Soup, begin with your end in mind by analyzing your profile and capturing three pieces of data. These data points will reflect your trendline, which is a comparison of metrics against yourself over time.
In other words, you’ll be able to immediately know each week if the work you are doing will result in more leads for your business. If these numbers are not changing, then you will know you need to make some adjustments to your profile or the audience you are targeting.
The first data point you’ll want to capture is your Social Selling Index score.
A Social Selling Index score or SSI is a measure of your activity based on four pillars of social selling: profile completion, connecting with the right people, engaging, and building relationships. The scale is rated between 1 to 100. According to the data, sales staff with a high SSI had 45% more opportunities per quarter, and they were 51% more likely to hit their sales quotas. At the end of each week, you should notice a nice increase in your SSI Score.
Click here to capture your SSI score and record your number in a place where you can easily reference each week.
To learn more about how to interpret your SSI score, view this tip sheet below: How to Interpret Social Selling Index
To find this information, from LinkedIn, click on My Network. The number will be next to Connections.
The second data point to capture is how many first-degree connectionsyou have. This number is important because when someone becomes a first-degreeconnection, their connections become your second-degree connections. LinkedInrewards you by allowing you to request to connect with second degreeconnections versus sending an InMail.
To find this information, from LinkedIn, click on MyNetwork. The number will be next to Connections.
The third piece of data to record is how many profile views you receive. This number is a cumulation over 90 days. You can find this data point on your Home page, and it is also listed under Your Dashboard. Record this number in the same place as your SSI score and # of Connections.
These three data points are strong indicators of whether your business is focused on the right market and if your messaging is providing the value your buyer’s are seeking.
Target: Scan before you Visit
Social interactions should mimic real-world engagements.
Imagine you were attending a networking event. You’re all alone, you open the door and what is the first thing you do? If you are like most people, you probably scan the room, looking for familiar faces or something that identifies what you are to do next.
We are constantly scanning our environment looking for familiarity.
The scan feature offered in Dux-Soup works the same way. It scans profiles without visiting them, meaning you’re not viewing profiles. Instead, Dux-Soup is collecting profile information and providing you with a .csv file for you to review and segment the list based on the profiles you are looking to prospect.
Scanning profiles first can allow you to be strategically targeted with your outreach and personalize messages based on the challenge you know you can solve for your customers.
Another benefit of scanning profiles first in Dux-Soup is that a scan is not classified by LinkedIn as a profile visit.
That is important, because if Dux-Soup records the visit as a view, then when it’s time to run an automation such as Visit and Connect, it will skip profiles if LinkedIn classified it as a visit, unless you have set up your setting to 'Never skip any profiles' in the Dux-Soup options panel before re-visiting to avoid undesired skipping.
For additional information on Scanning vs Visiting, read What’s the difference between scanning and visiting?
Here is a typical process you could follow each week when using Dux-Soup for targeting.
1. Sunday & Monday: Clear the data in Dux-Soup.
2. Sunday & Monday: Open LinkedIn to scan profiles from your top 20 target accounts or your Ideal Client Profile. It’s helpful if you know your conversion rate, meaning how many connection requests do you need to send out each day/week to produce the results you are after. We will discuss knowing your conversion rate next week, so for now scan at least 500 profiles.
Download the .csv file and segment your list. It’s probably worth noting that a scanned list provides you with a limited amount of information; therefore, plan to segment your list by title or location. For instance, if you scanned 500 profiles from your top 20 target accounts, you could segment into four separate .csv files using the buyer title. You might have a .csv file for Executives, one for VP titles, another for Directors and one for Managers.
There is not a right way to segment your list, it all depends on how your business is set up.
There are a lot of benefits to segmenting list. For one, it will save you a lot of time when prospecting. Another benefit is it allows you to write messages that offer value based on the gaps identified for each buyer title.
3. Tuesday: Use your segmented list to run Dux-Soup’s revisit tool with a connection request tailored to your Executive Buyers.
4. Wednesday: Run Dux-Soup’s revisit tool again, but use the VP Buyer .csv file
5. Thursday: Rinse and repeat using the manager .csv file
6. Friday: Analyze who looked back at your profile. Who accepted your request to connect? Who did not? What does this data tell you?
Dux-Soup can help you scale and grow your business, but if you don’t have a process for using the tool, then you can come across as spamming your connections. Plus, without a process it makes it difficult to identify what is working and what areas need to be tweaked.
That’s it for now but next week in Part 2 we’ll focus on conversions!
About the Author
Donna McCurley is co-owner of We Make Selling Simple.
We believe small businesses shouldn’t have to feel like they are wearing 100 hats. We provide them repeatable, automated lead generation processes so they can wake up to a room full of qualified leads each and every day.
In fact, most of our initial conversations start with, “How do I make time for all the prospecting I need to do to grow my business?” And after one week of using Dux-Soup our clients are always surprised by how much of their lead generation activities can be automated once they have a process in place.
