How to Implement a Winning LinkedIn Outbound Strategy with Monica Mcllroy

According to LinkedIn, 78% of businesses that use social selling outperform those that don’t. Social platforms help you build a sense of trust with your prospects, where you’re not too pushy or too much in their face. This helps you naturally talk about their pain point or bring in your solution without being overbearing and by retaining your newfound friendship.

In session 5 of our Outbound for Dummies series, Monica Mcllroy, Business Development Manager at TLDR, shares how to draft a message that turns heads and everything else you need to know to make that next LinkedIn outbound sequence a hit.

Below is an excerpt from her session. But before we begin, let’s cover why LinkedIn is a great place to start your sales conversations. 

Benefits of LinkedIn as a Channel

LinkedIn is a powerful platform for sales reps as it allows them to balance networking, lead generation, and building relationships with potential clients - all on one platform. Here are a few reasons why you shouldn’t neglect LinkedIn.

1. Content sharing

You can show where your true expertise lies by sharing posts, articles, and videos that cover the pain points and solutions. Sharing valuable content can also open the path to becoming a thought leader and help attract inbound leads.

2. Lead generation 

Using LinkedIn, you can search for customers matching the ideal customer profiles and plan the initial outreach (without going straight for the pitch). Almost all of your prospects can be found on LinkedIn.

3. Networking  

You can up your networking skills and build relationships with influencers, leaders, prospects, individuals in similar roles, etc., and open doors to more valuable connections and opportunities. With LinkedIn, SDRs can build rapport first before they resort to a pitch. This leads to an added layer of trust.

4. Sales Navigator and InMail 

Sales Navigator is a premium feature on LinkedIn that provides advanced search and lead filtering options, as well as the ability to save leads and track their activities. Plus, InMail allows reps to send personalized and slightly longer outreach messages to prospects. 2 really great features in 1 platform.

5. Personal Branding 

Sharing a regular dose of content, interacting with prospects, and leaving a trail of your memorable skill/personality (more on this later) across your posts will help sales reps establish credibility and trust with potential clients.  

Let’s cover Monica’s session now. 

Top 3 Tips for a Successful LinkedIn Strategy

1. Don’t view LinkedIn as the whole picture. Have small micro-interactions with your prospects on LinkedIn, Twitter, Slack communities, or even on LinkedIn groups. Of course, LinkedIn is a crucial piece to the puzzle, but you want your prospects to know your presence on channels like Twitter, Email, SMS, Phone, etc. as well.  

2. Make sure your interactions with your prospects are short and frequent. Why? Because people have low attention spans. So comment on their posts, ping them if you notice something on their bio, or see anything different in their post. It's all about building up your name.

3. There are two pillars of creating content and engaging with prospects. The first step is just rapport building, becoming friends with them, being funny, and charismatic, and trying to build real relationships on LinkedIn.

The second is posting valuable content and making it relatable. Small text blurbs, memes, etc. can be posted to strike a chord with the prospect.  

Hot tip: The sweet spot for Monica is posting between 7:00 AM and 9:00 AM, eastern time, once a day.

A Common Mistake that Sales Reps Make

The biggest mistake is not optimizing your LinkedIn profile to your target market. A lot of times a salesperson includes all their sales records on their profile, which is just going to scare the prospects away. Keep it basic, talk about your other interests, achievements, etc., and mention how you can actually help them. 

Hot tip: What should you include in the content while sending a connection request? The answer is no message. If you see a message with the connection request, it usually looks like they’re using a tool to automate the reachouts. On the other hand, if you're just adding a bunch of people at scale with no message, it feels a lot more casual and passive. 

How do you Build a Personal Brand on LinkedIn? 

It’s important to have something of your own that sets you and your content apart from the rest.

This is what Monica does to add a personal touch to her content -

“So I post a lot of tactical advice on building SDR teams and prospecting, but every time I make one of those posts, I also include a picture of a matcha latte that I drink every morning. 

I can't think of how many times I'm trying to think of someone, I know their face from LinkedIn, and I kind of know what they post about, but I can't remember their name. 

I share a lot of advice, have the Matcha emoji in my name, and also post a lot about my Matcha lattes. So that's just one example of how I try to separate myself from the pack.

I've had a couple of people message me who said, “I really appreciate what you wrote, and when I saw the Matcha latte, I knew it was your post.” ”

Make sure to be known for 1 to 2 things and make them very noticeable on your profile.

You can also share something personal, but tie it back to your profession. That way you can create a good balance between both and also create content that catches attention. 

How to Have a Great LinkedIn Profile 

1. Have a clear picture of yourself with a warm facial expression. Keep it professional and update it from time to time.

2. Have a compelling profile picture and cover photo that talks a bit about you or your personality.

3. Share a little bit about yourself on your bio, to become a real person and not just an avatar on LinkedIn. Have a very digestible, simple, and short tagline to describe you and your work. 

ChatGPT and LinkedIn

Should You Take ChatGPT’s Help to Write Your Profile?

Absolutely not, says Monica.

It's really important to maintain your voice, whether you’re trying to be serious or quirky. 

As she says, your voice is a beautiful thing that makes you who you are as an individual, and obviously, ChatGPT will make you sound very robotic. 

How to Set Your Outreach Apart

Monica does a couple of cycles of what she calls Bursts and Rests.

For 3-4 weeks, have 3-4 touchpoints. You can do a once-a-week outreach to the prospect (this again depends on the ICP you’re reaching out to) for a month and then put them in a rest nurture period for 2-3 weeks.

Re-enroll them into a different sequence, i.e., get them into a second burst period. Continue that for another month, post that, put them in another 3-4 week rest, and then do your last burst outreach.

Due to a lot of reasons, it wouldn’t be the right time for the prospect to engage in a conversation with you. But you can always come back to those initial contacts and pick up the conversation.

If you want to listen to Monica’s entire session recording, you can check the video below. It has everything you need to scale your sales on LinkedIn and see success straight away!