A Popular (yet Ineffective) LinkedIn Tactic

Considering investing in LinkedIn automation software? Already using automated tactics? Beware: Automation is not helping social sellers start conversations. Don’t let your hopes or a LinkedIn “expert” (charlatan) tell you otherwise. This isn’t my opinion. I speak from experience — and that of my customers. I don't like to speak in absolutes. Nothing is certain in our world. But automating the gathering of lead data and sending messages to prospects wastes time, damages reputation and what's worst is buyers see through it — instantly. It's spammy. Also, LinkedIn is cracking down and suing service providers. It took a while but Microsoft has had enough. Short-cuts rarely work in life. Buckle-down and do the work. And yes, I know you need to scale. Me too. Tech tools like LinkedIn help us scale time. But LinkedIn automation is ineffective. Lately, it can also hurt you. Automating Outreach and Scraping Contact Data We need targets to call on: Companies, decision-makers and contact data. LinkedIn is a database. But gathering contact data is time-consuming. Plus, getting these contacts to connect with us (open the door to communication) takes time and effort. Wouldn’t it be great to automate the data collection, connections and messaging? We could mass email messages to prospects — without much effort. We’ll reply to the responses, manage the leads. Enter LinkedIn automation tools. But beware of reality: Automated profile viewers and contact data scrapers are being sued by LinkedIn/Microsoft; Non-personalized (spammy) or "personalized" (fake personalization) messages aren't helping sellers start conversations with buyers; Decision-makers are actually hiding from overzealous sellers and accepting fewer connection requests. How Automation Software Works You look up a group of contacts using a LinkedIn search. Boom. Software automatically: Grabs those search results Views each contact's profile Scrapes the screen (cuts-and-pastes name, company, title, etc. into a spreadsheet) Software will also: View profiles Invite people with keywords or titles to connect Automatically send them welcome messages when they accept Automatically endorse them Automatically send them congratulatory messages when they have a birthday, work anniversary or change jobs Automatically send sales messages to large swaths of your connections Sounds great. But let's pretend you are Microsoft (LinkedIn's new owner). You just paid $26 billion for this data. How do you feel about people scraping it? How do you feel about automating all of these non-personalized functions (which are all trying to look personalized and social)? That's why LinkedIn is suing these service providers. Automation tools are popular. But these are often “companies” that have no public contact data themselves! Companies that, in fact, aren’t companies … and have (for years now) operated in clear violation of LinkedIn’s Terms & Conditions. LinkedIn prospecting expert, Bruce Johnston, is blunt: "It is instructive that I went through my list and less than half of the companies I added 12 to 15 months ago still exist.” Quick Reasons to not Use LinkedIn Automation Once you start down the automation path you are moving into marketing speak — and away from sales. Move toward writing for many people, instead of just for one, and everyone is going to see through your effort. Trust me! What's the first place most sellers turn to when starting to write cold emails? Marketing literature. Don't do it! Beyond encouraging yourself to write like a spammy mass marketer, LinkedIn: Is suing parties involved in most automation tools (say goodbye to your investment); Can prosecute you, too; Often freezes and/or terminates user accounts for violations. “But Jeff … these software tools have been at this for a while. They know how to skirt the rules. These automation tools view X number of profiles a day. They know how to ride the threshold, and push the envelope without getting in trouble.” Mr. Johnston says it best: “They are (or at least were) too structured for my liking. You don't have to be a rocket scientist at LinkedIn to figure out what is going on when someone sets up a search and looks at 500 profiles at exactly 18 second intervals.” He also warns: LinkedIn is the sole arbiter of whether you broke the rules or not; As well as to how they are going to punish you for doing so and; As two people join LinkedIn every second, it will take them one half of a second to replace you! Conning Your Customers A lot of us want to start a relationship with a connection without having to go to the trouble of knowing something about them. People are lazy. I get it. But robotic nonsense? Too many smart people are falling for this dangerous gimmick. In a recent post on LinkedIn, Bruce says: “Doesn’t anyone find it ironic when these [automation] companies say: 'We will automatically look at 500 profiles, scrape the data from the profiles, then automatically accept invitations to connect sent your way, and send the new connection a welcome message. It’s the ultimate in social selling! … Wait a second, where was the social part? How social is it when you are starting off your relationship with someone by conning them?” Bruce raises the real question here. Do This Instead Buckle-down. Get serious. Stop trying to start one-on-one conversations using mass marketing approaches that you know aren’t going to work! In 2007 it took an average of 3.7 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts (Source: TeleNet and Ovation Sales Group). Ok. I got it. This is not easy. I'm in sales too, after all! And yes ... you should be calling, emailing, InMailing. But how you write matters, now more than ever before. Literally. Because buyers are inundated with noise. Think about it. All these people pushing, pushing, pushing you. This is why you value what you ask for — more than what's offered to you. Right? This is why you value what you conclude for yourself — more than what you’re told. Right? So how do you get people to ask for help? How do you get people to figure things out on their own (as well as trust you as their guide)? Is the answer LinkedIn automation? Nope: An effective communications technique. Automation is the first step in the wrong direction — away from personalization, toward mass. Want to be successful at starting more conversations this year? Invest in becoming good at provoking prospects. Beyond that, start: Attracting customers to the idea of talking to you about their nagging fear, exciting goal or ambition. Once in conversation, helping customers discover on their own what they want, and when and why. Sounds obvious. But are you doing it?

Lead Generation

A Popular (yet Ineffective) LinkedIn Tactic

Jeff Molander

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Jeff Molander