How to Generate Leads with LinkedIn

Objectives• Explore opportunity to provide live LinkedIn

training to recently laid off professionals from the oil and gas industry

• Gain one-to-one discussion with decision makers at all career transition companies with a Calgary presence

Challenge• Current network consists only of contractors to career

transition companies, with no decision making power

• Need to understand the organizational structure of career transition companies and identify who the ultimate decision maker is

• Once identified, I need to directly reach the decision maker, and avoid working through gatekeepers who may dilute my message

Vital Statistics• Over 80% of B2B social leads come from LinkedIn,

compared with 12.73% on Twitter, and 6.73% on Facebook

• 75% of the business-to-business (B2B) buyers and 84% of C-level/vice president executives use social media to support purchase decisions

• 90% of C-suite executive say they never respond to cold calls or email blasts

• 80% of introductions generate a sale

Method• Research companies with LinkedIn Advanced

Search– Started with outplacement term (from my current

connections) and discovered career transition was more common term

• 1000’s of keyword results in Calgary-specific search, due to contractors and former positions

Method• Used information from current network that advised a

partner or president would make decisions (smaller companies)

• Narrowed results down to 100 by switching search terms into “Title”

• Results down to 35 by further refining search terms

• Used current contact’s name in my outreach in most cases to improve chances of a reply

Results• Found seven organizations that had capacity to provide

live training and reached out to them

• Responded to by five organizations

• Two companies did not provide any LinkedIn training, and promised to contact if they were interested in doing so

• Three organized a conference call and discussed training options

“Eliminate the gatekeepers, reach the decision makers.”

Will LinkedIn work for your business? Find out.