In this episode of the Social Selling Show, Will Barron and Daniel Disney answer the question, is LinkedIn sales navigator worth it and bust the myths around the product too.
They analyze some of the tool’s key features and explain how salespeople can effectively use the tool to close more leads.
Featured on this episode:
Resources:
- The Ultimate LinkedIn Sales Guide by Daniel Disney
- Daniel’s LinkedIn Profile
Transcript
Will Barron:
Welcome to the Social Selling Show with myself, Will Barron, and the king, the king of social selling Daniel Disney, Daniel, how’s it going, my friend?
Daniel Disney:
I’m very good Will, and excited to be back for another episode. I’ve loved recording this with you and today’s topic, as well is an exciting one to dig into.
Will Barron:
It is. It’s a topic that is super important for anyone who’s doing any social selling, clearly. This is almost like the crux, the centre point of social selling. We’re going to be covering LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and perhaps a myth-busting around as well.
Will Barron:
And I will just say at the top of the show, just to be transparent, I think the Sales Navigator is a sponsor of salesman.org and Salesman podcast. Just so everyone’s clear, that doesn’t cloud my judgement on any of this, and I’ll be as open and honest as I can, but Daniel will give you the low down as well, I’m sure.
How to Use LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator Tool · [00:47]
Will Barron:
So with that then Daniel, I want to keep this open-ended as possible to get your real thoughts on it. Who needs Sales Navigator?
“The people that need to use LinkedIn are the people that have prospects and customers on LinkedIn.” – Daniel Disney · [01:07]
Daniel Disney:
It’s a really good question. In terms of who needs it, anyone who’s going to utilise it properly. So we go right back to some of the first episodes. The people that need to use LinkedIn are the people that have prospects and customers on LinkedIn. If you have prospects and customers on LinkedIn, then there is no reason why LinkedIn Sales Navigator isn’t going to benefit you, but there are some sort of logistics around it. You need to make sure A, you’re going to utilise it to its full potential because it’s not cheap, let’s be completely honest. It’s not a cheap product or platform to buy, but it is full of a tonne of great features.
Daniel Disney:
What I see and what we’ll tackle a bit today is a lot of salespeople, sales teams, businesses paying for it and not using it. It’s like paying for your gym membership, and some people pay pretty much the same amount you pay for Sales Navigator on gym membership, and they never go to the gym. They just don’t go. Months, sometimes years go past and they haven’t been a single time. And it’s the same, people are spending on Sales Navigator and not using it.
“You don’t need Sales Navigator to build a personal brand, or to create amazing content. There are a lot of things you can do on the free version.” – Daniel Disney · [02:00]
Daniel Disney:
Now, we’ve covered a lot in some of the previous episodes of what you can do with LinkedIn’s free account, and that’s the other side of things. You need to be leveraging those things. You don’t need Sales Navigator to have a optimised LinkedIn profile. You don’t need Sales Navigator to build a personal brand, or to create amazing content. There are a lot of things you can do on the free version.
Daniel Disney:
So yes, the people that need it are the ones that have customers on LinkedIn, but there are a lot of things that we’ll cover today to sort of uncover what you can and should do to get the most from it.
Daniel Explains Who Between Salespeople and Sales Leaders Should be Responsible for Paying for the Navigator Package · [02:24]
Will Barron:
Sure. And you’ve touched on something here. So we’ll just cover this before we get deep into conversation. In a B2B organisation, whether that’s a startup or whether that is a large enterprise organisation, who should be paying for Sales Navigator? In fact, is LinkedIn sales navigator worth it for these people? Is it an individual or should the company, it shouldn’t be part of the kind of package that when you were to… They give you a phone, they give you a laptop, should they also be giving you Sales Navigator as well?
Daniel Disney:
That’s a really good question. I would probably say the company should pay for it, but that’s not to say there is no value or justification for the individual paying for it. I will pay for things and I’ve always paid for things myself if it’s going to help me sell more, because I’m going to earn more. So I’m going to get an ROI on it. So it benefits me in the long-term.
Daniel Disney:
That’s why a lot of salespeople, I would say should invest in their own training, their own learning, their own development, their own coaching. But yes, of course, ultimately, the company should be providing. It is a tool that’s going to benefit the business. So yeah, you would justify it as a company cost.
Will Barron:
Yeah. I guess you can pretty easily justify it in that if you get leads directly from LinkedIn and they translate to… for any B2B sale, like one sale, a quarter, you’ve just paid for Navigator. So putting the metrics behind it is really simple. I don’t think that… Maybe a few years ago, that would have been a more difficult conversation with a Sales Manager, but I don’t think it’s a difficult conversation anymore.
Busting the Myths and Misconceptions of LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator · [03:50]
Will Barron:
Okay. So I want to get into advanced searching, or whether we should use InMail, or maybe we probably shouldn’t use it. Whether we should use Sales Navigator as a CRM. There’s tonnes of different parts of it that we’ll go through, but are there any high level myths or misconceptions about Sales Navigator that we need to cover before we get into the practical steps or the practical features of the product itself?
“I think the biggest myth is that you’re going to click that subscribe button, you’re going to put in your details, and suddenly your inbox is going to be full of inbound leads and you’re going to be drowning in sales.” – Daniel Disney · [04:03]
Daniel Disney:
I think the biggest myth, Will, is that you’re going to click that subscribe button, you’re going to put in your details, and suddenly your inbox is going to be full of inbound leads and you’re going to be drowning in sales, and it’s just going to happen like that. Like the same principle with the gym, you’re going to walk in the gym and suddenly be big, buff and fit, and lose loads of weight. You have to put the work in.
“Sales Navigator is full of tools, but those tools are only good if you use them and you use them properly.” – Daniel Disney · [04:23]
Daniel Disney:
So the biggest myth that I want to clear up right now is yes, Sales Navigator is full of tools, but those tools are only good if you use them and you use them properly. InMail can be a very… Okay, maybe not very effective, but it can be an effective messaging method if you do it right.
Daniel Disney:
But if you’re going to send out hundreds of spammy InMails, you’re not going to get anything, and you’re paying your subscription to send all those spammy InMails that are going to generate no response. If anything, it’s going to be damaging because you’re going to be scaring all those people away.
Daniel Disney:
So yeah, the biggest myth is you’re going to subscribe and suddenly become a social selling master, and get all of these sales from it. That’s not the case, you need to work hard with it.
How to Use the Lead Recommendation Feature to Generate Leads for Your Business · [05:01]
Will Barron:
Because they have that lead recommendations feature, right? I’ll be blunt here, as you’re describing, putting work in, using the search tools, having the search limits removed, which we’ll come onto all this stuff in a second, that’s really useful. That is worth the price of the product for me, but I’ve not had any luck… Maybe it is luck, maybe that’s the right word to describe it. I’ve never had any luck with these, I’m quoting here from our document lead recommendations.
Will Barron:
Is there value in that, or is that almost a bit of a gimmick?
Daniel Disney:
There is a small value, but it is small. I might say 10% to 20% would be potential leads from that list out of the entire list that they recommend. A big part of that though, does depend on what you’ve put in when you set up your profile. So again, a lot of salespeople, they get logged in, they want to get to the good stuff, so they don’t really fill in all of the details. They kind of fast track that bit. And if you spend a bit more time or go back and really populate it with your ICP, your target customers, your target prospects, then LinkedIn is going to get a lot better at suggesting you target leads that might be suitable.
Daniel Disney:
So yeah, you kind of reap what you sow in that instance, but even then, they’re not going to be fantastic. But I think I’m the same as you, the best features for me are extended searches. InMail can be effective, but also, things like profile views and tonnes of sort of buyer insights, and buyer signals that you can tap into, that really does justify the cost, from my perspective.
The Advanced Search Features on LinkedIn Sales Navigator · [06:29]
Will Barron:
Cool. And it’s probably the programme analogy of garbage in, garbage out when we’re coding, right? Probably comes down to some of this. Okay. So let’s go through I guess the advanced search features first, because that’s what I personally get the most value out of, and we can talk about the Boolean search and different ways to search within LinkedIn itself.
Will Barron:
But is there anything you want to touch on before we get into the technical side of that? Because it isn’t just a better search. When you understand the tool, it’s a more effective search as well, isn’t it?
Daniel Disney:
Well, not only is it a more effective search, but you can save those searches. You can actually keep them, store them. Whereas again, on LinkedIn, every time you log in on the free account, you have to re-put in all of the filters. In Search Navigator, you can save it, becomes a lot more effective, efficient, and a lot easier to manage.
Daniel Disney:
So yeah, we’ll dig into the nuts and bolts, but yeah, the search features, the advanced search features, are one of the best parts of Navigator. And again, for salespeople that are going to use it, that are going to actually put time into leveraging it, then it’s going to reap a lot better results for you.
Will Barron:
Yeah. So I think coincidence is really important there, and it probably goes beyond the product itself, but we need a routine with some of this, right? We need to search either daily or weekly. People change jobs. I’ve had so much success selling ad space on the Salesman podcast, selling our training product that we have, which you can find by Googling it. I don’t want to be plugging it on here, but someone will buy once. They’ll stay in the organisation two years, they’ll get a promotion, so they’ve got even more budget, and then they’ll move to another organisation, and they will follow up with me and get on it.
Will Barron:
And I found a lot of success in different notifications, tracking people on LinkedIn, because I wouldn’t know where else to track them other than LinkedIn. And just a quick message, whether it’s… Well, I wouldn’t send an email, but a quick LinkedIn message saying, “Hey, I see you’ve done this, this and this. If there’s anything I can do to help.” Not salesy, genuine asking if there’re any connections I can make with them, or if there’s anyone at that organisation, especially if it’s the enterprise that I can introduce them to, if they’ve not managed to get in front of, things like that, immediately get the conversation started. So there’s value in all of this, right?
How to Maximize Search Value with LinkedIn’s Navigator Search · [08:40]
Will Barron:
So let’s dive into the search then. Again, I’ll ask this open-ended to you, Daniel, why do we want to use Navigator Search and not just the search on the LinkedIn box, or the top of the page, or on our phone, more generically?
Daniel Disney:
And again, to be very clear, there is a lot you can do on the free LinkedIn account with their searches. You mentioned Boolean searching, you don’t need Sales Navigator to do that. You can do that on the free LinkedIn account and generate really filtered results. There’s a tonne you can do, and again, lots of potential there.
Daniel Disney:
What Sales Navigator does is then expand those filters, expand your ability to identify those sort of buyer signals and those insights that they don’t really give away much of on the free accounts. So it just unlocks more features. It’s like taking the next step. The way I kind of describe it to a company or a sales team is utilise everything you can on the free LinkedIn account, really maximise that out, which might take three months, six months, nine months, a year, whatever it takes you, then when you’re ready, Sales Navigator is just that next step. Or if you are a larger enterprise company or a bigger sales team, then again, it can be a good way of managing a wider sort of rollout of sort of social digital selling.
Daniel Disney:
But yeah, it’s that kind of next step. So maximise what you can do then unlock all those features where you’re really going to benefit from them. But there’re tonnes of searches you can do on the free LinkedIn account. What I love about Sales Navigator is the expanded filters, and again, that ability to save those searches. So you can go back daily, weekly, monthly, revisit them. And as you say, get fresh leads and fresh insights.
Expounding on LinkedIn’s Limit to the Number of Searches You Can Perform Per Month · [10:07]
Will Barron:
I don’t know how widely published the numbers are, but are there… Clearly, there are search limits on the free product and there’s probably search limits, but much higher ones on the Sales Navigator. Do you know what those numbers are off the top of your head? I can look them up if not.
Daniel Disney:
It’s funny, I’ve just put them in my new book that comes out in April. I won’t do a cheesy promo for it.
Will Barron:
No, no, plug. What’s the book called?What is it called?
Daniel Disney:
It’s just The Ultimate LinkedIn Sales Guide, published with Wiley. It’s sort of the comprehensive guide for leveraging LinkedIn, and I researched and made sure all the up-to-date numbers were in there for all of those limits. I can’t remember from the top of my head because there are so many numbers. They will be in that book, but yeah, we can look it up and add it to the show notes.
Daniel Disney:
There are search limits. I remember certainly in my early years of social selling, I used to use up my limit on the free LinkedIn account, pretty much by the halfway point, every single month, I would have used up all my free searches. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is an infinite. It does have an extended limit, but that’s a lot harder to hit. And I was heavy social selling back then.
Daniel Disney:
So sort of a week and a half, two weeks into a month, I would use up all my free limits, and then Sales Navigator, when I eventually upgraded, then allowed me to kind of continue searching. But there are some ways you can get around those as well.
Will Barron:
So that’s the search covered. I feel like one of the major benefits of if you’re doing tonnes and tonnes of social selling, or searches and research, and maybe this is more appropriate if you’re an SDR, as opposed to like an account manager or someone, if your roles are split up like that. If you are SDR, you probably are doing a freaking heck tonne… had to watch my language then, a heck tonne of searching a day. So maybe that’s more relevant there for you.
Is LinkedIn’s InMail an Effective Lead Prospecting Tool? · [11:40]
Will Barron:
Okay. Now, you were slightly more positive about InMail at the top of the show than I think I was in my language and demeanour here. I’ve not had any success with InMail. When I get InMail, I immediately assume that it’s spam and it’s not always spam. Now, clearly it does get to the top of the inbox. I think it’s like bolded out. It’s visible, but I feel like a lot of the time, if somebody sent me an InMail, is because they’re not connected with me. If they’re not connected with me, is because they either don’t want to connect with them, or they’ve not made an effort to build that bit of relationship first. So I feel like it’s pre-framed up almost, InMail. as a sales tool, as opposed to a way to wave a hand and get attention quickly and effectively.
Will Barron:
So that’s my thoughts on it. I feel like if you don’t have to use InMail, you should probably go about it the way that we described in the previous episode on video messages or what we’ll cover in the future, of just more normal kind of text messages. But tell me your thoughts, Daniel, and then are there specific ways and reasons, and occasions that we should use LinkedIn InMail?
Daniel Disney:
Yeah. So I’m with you, Will. InMail’s effectiveness isn’t great. So whilst I said there are ways you can leverage it. You can get results from it. I’m not going to lie, but I certainly won’t sugarcoat it and make it seem like there’s a lot of potential in it.
“The reality is when you send an InMail, when someone receives an InMail, you know that person has paid to send it to you. If they have paid to send it to you, it means they want something in return.” – Daniel Disney · [13:02]
Daniel Disney:
The reality is when you send an InMail, when someone receives an InMail, you know that person has paid to send it to you. If they have paid to send it to you, it means they want something in return. And unfortunately, the majority of InMails that I receive, a lot of my customers receive are spammy sales pitch messages.
Daniel Disney:
However, they can be effective, and the key to effectiveness, and we can dig into this a little bit, is the personalization. So if you’re not sending some sort of copy and paste, irrelevant message that’s done no research, no homework, nothing’s actually personal to them, then it’s not going to work.
Daniel Disney:
But if you actually have something relevant to save, you can really reference something that you’ve seen by looking through their activity, their profile, their website, whatever it may be. If you can find something good, then an InMail can be effective because some people are really difficult to connect with.
Daniel Disney:
Either, maybe they’ve used up their connection limit. There are limits and there are a lot of decision-makers that might have their 30,000 limit filled. There are other decision-makers that don’t want to connect with salespeople, and you can try all the various tactics. And there are a lot that will help you connect with decision-makers that might otherwise not connect with you, but some still won’t.
Daniel Disney:
And so an InMail is one of the only ways, because they’re not answering your cold calls, they’re not replying to your cold emails, they’re not connecting with you on LinkedIn. So actually, an InMail is one of your only routes in, but the key is in doing it right. And a lot of that is down to that kind of authenticity and smart selling, not spam selling, that’s where InMail fails. And unfortunately, that’s what a lot of people do.
What Happens When you Hit 30,000 Connections on LinkedIn? · [14:32]
Will Barron:
That’s a much more educated opinion on this than my blanket statement of it’s BS. That makes total sense, if you connecting with someone who… Well yeah. So let me just clarify this thing. So I’ve never really pondered on this, I’ve never really come across it. If someone has 30,000 connections, if I try and connect with that person, do they just not get anything, or do they get the opportunity… Does LinkedIn say, “Hey, would you like to add this person and drop someone else off the list?”
Daniel Disney:
It’s an interesting one. So I’ve had 30,000 connections for a couple of years now, and you still get the request. So it still comes through as a connection request. You can click accept, but it won’t actually… It does it, and then it resets it back into that connection request. What you would have to do is yeah, delete someone from your network.
Daniel Disney:
So on a regular basis, I have to do a call 100, 200 people so that I can then connect with new prospects, new customers, et cetera. And my network’s been built up over years. Some of it is historic in industries that obviously I don’t sell in now, so we’re just fine. But yes, you still get the connection request, but they would have to delete someone.
Daniel Disney:
Now, obviously you can follow their LinkedIn profile and you can see all their content, you can engage in their content, but they can’t see your content and they can’t message you. So if they’ve reached their connection limit but you really do want to connect with them, you need to give them a really good reason to want to accept. So you need to put a lot of value in that sort of relationship built up period.
Daniel Disney:
And the best way you can do that is engage with authentically on their content, build a relationship like that. And then maybe utilise InMail probably after a couple of weeks or a few weeks of building that sort of foundation, to then do a really personalised, relevant message to them that might then open the doors of communication, where they then will start to hopefully see you in a much more positive light.
Will Barron:
Yeah. And I guess we’re probably at this point with talking, clearly, you’ve built a business on social selling. So clearly you’ve got an incredible amount of people following you and trying to connect with you. With a B2B buyer, we’re probably talking about CEOs of public companies at this point, aren’t we? We’re not talking about your average Joe marketing manager at a Fortune $1,000, are we?
Daniel Disney:
No, no, no. You’re absolutely right. There’s not a tonne of people, certainly from a decision-maker point, that have used up their limits, but that’s only going to increase. The longer that people are utilising LinkedIn and growing their networks, and certainly people are more and more active on it as the years go on. It’s only going to increase so next year, the year after, there’ll be more and more people, more decision-makers, C-levels, Directors, VPs that start to hit those limits because businesses are seeing the benefits of LinkedIn, not just from social selling, but from branding, from marketing.
Daniel Disney:
So building their audiences is a key thing and yeah, it will only increase as the years go on.
Will Barron:
Yeah, and for context for myself, so I think we talked about this on the previous episode. So the audience should know this by now, my full name is Raymond William Barron. My kind of business name with what we do with salesman.org and Social Selling Show is Will Barron, and you can find it on LinkedIn. I’ve got a LinkedIn profile from when I worked in medical device sales, and I don’t know how I’ve not logged into that in like five years. So who knows what’s on there?
Will Barron:
But I had this clean start perhaps five, six years ago now, and I’m up to about 7,000, 8,000 connections. And what you said is absolutely right Daniel of, I could probably call a third of them, because four or five years ago, I didn’t know what the business was, I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know who I was trying to prospect. I’ve never really sat down and outbound connected with people. It’s all inbound people can’t do with me, but there’s going to be at least a third of those individuals who are not relevant anymore, just because it was the right person at the right time then. Now it would be the wrong person at the wrong time.
Will Barron:
They’ve moved jobs, they’ve retired, they’re doing something else. And so, you could easily call back on some of this. So hopefully, if you are trying to get in front of a CEO… Well, to be fair, maybe we’ll go down the wrong rabbit hole there. If a CEO of a large company, they probably have someone managing their own LinkedIn profile, and it’s probably a PR job as opposed to the management themselves.
Daniel Dissects the CRM Elements on LinkedIn Sales Navigator · [18:27]
Will Barron:
So let’s move on from that, and let’s get into… This is something that I’ve never really got to work for me. I think this is probably the future of LinkedIn, which is probably a conversation for another time as well, but how does the CRM elements of this line up? Because you can save companies, you can save individuals, you can group them. And what does this mean, Daniel, for us, from a perspective of, should we usually LinkedIn Sales Navigator as a mini-CRM? Is there value in that as well?
“With CRMs, you reap what you sow and what a lot of salespeople don’t do is they don’t put into the CRM what they need to get the best out of it, and it’s the same with Navigator.” – Daniel Disney · [19:25]
Daniel Disney:
Absolutely, and the biggest trap that sales teams fall into with CRMs is they… You reap what you sow and what a lot of salespeople don’t do is they don’t put into the CRM what they need to get the best out of it, and it’s the same with Navigator. I love all of the CRM-esque features that you get on Sales Navigator. You can add notes, you can add hierarchy. Is LinkedIn sales navigator worth it? Well it completely depends if you have a CRM that can integrate with it.
Daniel Disney:
These are amazing things. Yes, it takes a little bit of upfront time, and that’s what puts a lot of people off. You might need to spend a couple of minutes inputting that information, but my word, does it help further down the sales cycle in the following days, weeks, months, years, that you may manage that account. Those notes are crucial.
Daniel Disney:
I don’t know about you Will, I can remember so much, but my memory is not fantastic. I’m not a human computer, so being able to input that data into Sales Navigator is great. And obviously, there are a lot of CRMs that integrate with Navigator to allow you to then take those notes and details even further.
Daniel Disney:
But yeah, absolutely. I think I met quite a few companies that don’t have a CRM, but have Sales Navigator. And there’s quite a lot you can do on there that’s equivalent, but not a replacement. I do think, just quickly, as you mentioned the future of LinkedIn and Sales Navigator, I’ve kind of been expecting, ever since Microsoft bought them, the dynamics to release something, some sort of really unique, awesome combination with Navigator. Nothing yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that comes out in the near future.
Will and Dan Share their Thoughts on Microsoft’s Plan to Intergrate Dynamics 365 with LinkedIn Sales Navigator · [20:32]
Will Barron:
So I’m super excited about this, Daniel. Clearly it would make total sense for Dynamics 365, or whatever it’s called, to be rolled into LinkedIn. LinkedIn has the best database, the most up-to-date database of any company ever of contacts. In fact, most databases that you buy or pay for subscriptions to, they’re just ripping stuff off LinkedIn one way or another.
Will Barron:
LinkedIn also have accurate and up-to-date email addresses because people are having to log into LinkedIn. So it’s not like people… When someone wants to change or if someone changes their job, they’re going to change their email address. They want to keep that LinkedIn profile current, so they’re going to have to log in. So they’ve always got those updated email addresses as well.
Will Barron:
Clearly, it is the future of Microsoft’s plans. I think it would be incredibly… It would be just a terrible move, not to integrate it forever, I feel.
Daniel Disney:
I don’t think you’re going to spend billions of dollars…
Will Barron:
No.
Daniel Disney:
On a product or platform like LinkedIn and then not leverage it like that. And especially as Dynamics in reality, has such a small market share of the CRM market. This could be, as you say, one of those features or combinations that allows them to take a much bigger chunk, which they should do. It’s a good platform, and if they can combine it with LinkedIn, why wouldn’t they?
Daniel Disney:
And then hopefully after that, they’ll release more connectability to other CRMs, and also other platforms. LinkedIn traditionally has been very closed with its data, with its API, as in they’re starting to open the doors a little bit. But yeah, fingers crossed, we get to see a lot more of that in the coming years.
Will Barron:
Do you think that that’s going to come though? I think that if they do get that deep integration with Microsoft’s product, or maybe just Microsoft’s product becomes a LinkedIn CRM, whoever kind of brands it is irrelevant. Do you not think they’ll just close the doors to everything then? There’ll be no APIs, there’ll be nothing.
Will Barron:
And you have to, if you want data from LinkedIn, you have to use their CRM. That’d be an incredible selling point for the product in itself.
Daniel Disney:
It would. I would be a very aggressive, a very competitive selling point. There’ll be pros and cons. They will be limiting potential revenue they could generate by offering integration into other platforms, that potentially could be charged or licenced. So yeah. Yes, it might attract people, but you don’t want to monopolise it.
Daniel Disney:
I don’t know. It’s an interesting one, Will. Maybe that’s a whole debate we can have, what potential opportunities exist for LinkedIn, and the pros and cons?
Will Barron:
I’ll tell you what we’ll do at some point, next time there’s big LinkedIn news, we’ll get you on. I do a show with a sales legend, Victor Antonio, called This Week In Sales. And this is the kind of thing that we ponder on, kind of over the course of an hour. So next time there’s big LinkedIn news, we’ll get you on that show, Daniel, and we’ll deep dive into that. We’ll keep this show in this episode more actionable.
LinkedIn Learning Compared to Other Online Learning Platforms · [23:10]
Will Barron:
Okay. So there’s not that many more features that we need to cover. One of which is LinkedIn Learning. Is LinkedIn Learning any good? Clearly, you do sales training. I do sales training. So we’ve both got probably, even unconsciously, some biassed opinions on this, either pro or con, but I’m going to ask you bluntly, is LinkedIn Learning a valuable tool in our arsenal, or is it just an add-on that they’ve stuck on, onto the side of the Sales Navigator product?
Daniel Disney:
It is just an add-on. Being completely honest about it, it is just an add-on. I’ve done quite a few of their courses, they’re short, they’re very brief, they’re very generic, but there are good. There is some value in them. They do cover some great topics. They get some great trainers and experts in. So there is a value to it, but it’s certainly not a value you would say, you’d look at those courses and perhaps pay for them yourself. They don’t stand up against other sort of more full, comprehensive courses.
Daniel Disney:
So there is a value, it is a great added feature. And if anyone’s buying Navigator and they get it, it’s fantastic. That is a nice cherry on top to have with the platform, but it’s certainly not going to then fill your need to go and get other training as well. It’s not a replacement for proper training.
Will Barron:
Yeah, I agree. And maybe will become that in time. And they’ve asked me to do some work on there, which I’m not going to do, due to time commitments and an effort commitment for no pay-off, basically. That’s a conversation for another time of what the offer was for that, but over time, it might become really valuable.
Will Barron:
They’ve got a clear enough horsepower, they’ve got enough clout to essentially get 99% of sales trainers on the… And the problem is I feel as well, slightly is LinkedIn Learning, they’re trying to cover sales, marketing, operations, finance, because anyone in the B2B space, and increasingly in the B2C space, is on LinkedIn. So maybe they’re just spreading themselves thin and maybe it will materialise into something more useful over time.
Will Barron:
So is there anything else Daniel, that we need to cover? Because I’m leaning on your knowledge of Navigator here. I’ve covered what I use Navigator for and what pops up on my screen when I log into it, but is there anything else that we need to cover, or any other myths that we need to bust?
How to Access and Utilize LinkedIn’s “Who Viewed Your Profile” Feature · [25:21]
Daniel Disney:
Do you know what? The last feature I think we should discuss, and it’s probably the one that I maybe utilise more than anything we’ve discussed in this episode. On the free LinkedIn account, you can only see the most recent three or four people that have viewed your profile. With Navigator, you can see everyone, and there is so much potential, so much sales leads and revenue I’ve generated from that in itself.
Daniel Disney:
That is one of the biggest justifications of cost for me, when you utilise it effectively, because there are so many prospects viewing your profile that don’t make it through to sending you a message, sending you an InMail, or going to your website and filling out a lead inquiry. But actually, by being proactive, seeing that, and then sending them a message and starting a proactive conversation, or building them into your cadence, it can open so many opportunities.
Daniel Disney:
So those profile views, unlocking all of them is really helpful because with the free account, like I said, you’re going to see the most recent three or four. You could be checking three, four times a day, and that’s in the early stages, to keep up with the amount of people viewing your profile. I get hundreds of people viewing my profile a day. It’d be impossible on the free account to keep up with that. I’d have to be checking every hour to kind of see that.
Daniel Disney:
So that is another feature of Navigator that I certainly believe has a lot of potential, and certainly justifies the cost.
Will Barron:
That was a real good example, Daniel, of the value of this show, because if I get something out of this, hopefully the audience are getting a tonne out of it, and I never checked that ever. I never checked that, and maybe I should.
How to Turn LinkedIn Profile Views Into Sales Opportunities · [26:49]
Will Barron:
So what’s your process of determining kind of… Again, I’ll ask you open ended. What do you do? What’s your process for seeing… So on view profile, when do you reach out to them? Do you reach out to them? What does that look like?
Daniel Disney:
Do you know what? I’m going to go deep into this Will. This is like my course and training level stuff, but I’ll make this nice and easy. So you check your profile views. First thing you do is you qualify in and out. Qualify out anyone that doesn’t look like your ideal customer profile, doesn’t look like a prospect or customer.
Daniel Disney:
Then the ones that you’re left with, and that might be 10%, 20%, 5%, whatever number that is, the people that look like your target prospects, obviously do a bit of research. Go onto their profile, go onto their activity. Look for those potential opportunities to start a conversation.
Daniel Disney:
But the easiest thing you can do is send them a message. I might say, “Hey. Will, thanks for checking out my profile today. I’d love to learn a little bit more about how salesmen.org is leveraging LinkedIn to sell?” Obviously, a similar message relevant to whatever product or services you sell. You’d be amazed at how many people feel accountable for messaging you back because they have been on your profile. They feel, “Whoa, they’ve seen, they’ve seen me. They saw me,” and they’ll have that justification.
Daniel Disney:
“Oh, I saw a post. I saw your content. Someone in my network shared your post,” Whatever it may be. You obviously came onto their radar and they were usually just curious. Nonetheless, they’ve responded and you’ve opened that door of conversation. You can then start to go back and forth, go gentle. Don’t high pressure. It’s not about selling. This is all about conversation, but you can then guide that conversation into a more sales focused one where you start to ask more qualifying questions, dig a little bit deeper.
Daniel Disney:
And then you’d be amazed again, how many of those can then convert because they’ve had some value. They’ve seen your profile, you’ve seen this in your profile, so they feel a little bit on the back foot. But that can work if you tread carefully. It can work very well.
Why Most People Don’t Realise That Other People Can See LinkedIn Profile Visits · [28:39]
Will Barron:
Do you think that people don’t realise that you can see their profile? Is that fair to say? So I’ll rephrase that. Do you think that it’s fair to say that people don’t realise that you can see that they’ve been on your profile?
Daniel Disney:
Not everyone does. In probably about four years ago, salespeople used to hide when they’re reviewing profiles, so that you would be unknown member, and less people are doing that now because there was no real benefit back then. It’s not a bad thing to be looking at someone’s profile.
Daniel Disney:
But not everyone realises that it’s trackable, and even if they do, they’re not worried about it. It’s not something to feel really embarrassed about.
Will Barron:
No, it’s not.
Daniel Disney:
So it’s not something that they’re going to be consciously focusing. Even when you’re not calling them out, but when you highlight it, they’re not going to feel hugely embarrassed. They’re just going to tell you why they were on there? And again, it’s communication, it’s a conversation.
Will Barron:
Yep, makes total sense. And you used the word conversation there, this is happening a lot more. They’re calling it conversational selling or conversational marketing. Companies like Drift are at the forefront of this. So they’ll have a chatbot in the corner of a website. When you visit the website, it’s tracking kind of your IP and geolocation data.
“A good chunk of the future of B2B sales is going to come from inbound leads and inbound inquiries.” – Will Barron · [29:56]
Will Barron:
And then when you chat, it then realises, because to start the chat, you’re typing your name and perhaps a question. So this is happening off LinkedIn, as well as in LinkedIn, and probably a good chunk of the future of B2B sales is going to come from inbound leads and inbound inquiries.
Will Barron:
Which is why content… Which we’ll do in the future, a future episode as well, which is why content is so important, because you said it right there, you give the example of someone got onto your page. You messaged them and say, “Hey, I saw this piece of content you did.” And so drawing them in is the value that I kind of… Is another piece of the puzzle of getting these conversations flowing.
Daniel Disney:
Oh, massively, Will. And content is probably a couple of episodes at least, worth of a conversation. We should definitely cover that. So yeah, content’s huge, but conversation. That’s what it’s all about. Again, it’s not about pitching, it’s not about trying to sell or pressure someone into a sale. It’s about talking to them, qualifying them, finding the right people to have those conversations with, earning that opportunity. And then the sales process becomes a lot more organic, natural, and tends to be a lot more effective.
Will Barron:
Yeah, I agree. And it’s probably what sales should have been from the very beginning. Clearly, we didn’t have these technologies. We didn’t have the ability to put content out there. I like sales when we’re in not necessarily a completely inbound environment, but I like an environment where I can push stuff out, get leads that come in, qualify the leads, close them.
Will Barron:
And I’m not hounding people. We won’t get into the cold calling conversation. I think you’re slightly more liberal with the effectiveness of it than what I am. But I don’t want to be sat there, cold calling people that don’t give an ass all day, day in, day out. I’d rather be, if possible, if my buyers are on LinkedIn, I’d rather be creating content, creating conversations and doing deals that way.
Will Barron:
So with that Daniel, anything else maybe before we wrap up, or is that… I think we’ve covered LinkedIn. I think we’ve done a good job of both promoting them and probably giving them some feedback of how they should look at improving here.
Daniel Disney:
No, I don’t think there’s much more we can add. I think we’ve really covered that Sales Navigator is effective. It is worth the cost. If you’re going to put the work in. There are a tonne of amazing features that are certainly very valuable, but utilise all the stuff on the free account, which we’re going to be digging in throughout the rest of the series. And we’ve already covered in the episodes previous to this.
“If you are going to invest in LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator, get some training as well.” – Daniel Disney · [32:10]
Daniel Disney:
So I think we’ve covered it well, certainly make it a consideration. Look at what you’re already doing on LinkedIn. Look at how you could use it properly. And I guess the last tip I’d give is if you are going to invest in it, get some training as well. Don’t just buy it and then try and navigate your way through it yourself. Get someone in, get some proper training, learn how to use it properly, and you’re going to generate far better results from it than if you go in, give it to your sales team and say, “Here you go.”
Daniel Disney:
Same with any tool, you can do that with CRM sales enablement, any tool that you buy and invest in, don’t just plunk it on the desk of your sales team and expect them to know how to utilise it properly. Learn how to do it, get the most from it, and you’re going to get a better result than six months down the line when the CEO’s complaining that he’s spending all this money on Navigate when the sales haven’t gone up.
Will Barron:
Yeah. And I’ll say, because I don’t think Daniel will, but the answer is to reach out to Daniel and get some training for your team. With that, we’ll wrap up the show there. Hopefully, I’m not going to promise, but hopefully by the time this episode airs, socialsellingshow.com, there will be a form on there. You can ask your social selling questions and we’ll answer them at the end of each episode. So socialsellingshow.com.
Will Barron:
And with that, that was Daniel Disney, the king of social selling. My name is Will Barron, founder of salesman.org. And thanks for tuning in again and hopefully we answered the question is LinkedIn sales navigator worth it , through The Social Selling Show.
Daniel Disney:
See you next time.
