Using LiNCS from Target Ink to boost your sales

Launched more than 20 years ago, LinkedIn is older than most of the popular social media networks, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. While others have come and gone, LinkedIn has held its own with more than 1.2 billion users worldwide and 1.77 billion monthly visits.

In addition to simply being a social media platform, LinkedIn has evolved over the years, building tools within its armour to make use of the data contained within its membership. Of these, Sales Navigator, launched in July 2014, is one of its most well-known tools, designed to support businesses with their prospecting and relationship-building.
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Since its inception, Sales Navigator has undergone numerous enhancements, including the introduction of mobile applications, expanded CRM integrations and the addition of features such as lead recommendations and real-time alerts.
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Here at Target Ink, we have taken Sales Navigator one step further and created our own sales package for clients. Called LiNCS, it is focused on finding and securing those vital leads more effectively. Having been through the LiNCS process with us, the goal is for our clients to come away with a diary of meetings with verified warm leads, with the prospect of converting into sales.

There are existing tools in the marketplace that utilise AI to ‘communicate’ with potential leads identified in Sales Navigator – but the process with LiNCS not only utilises the data and uses automation to engage with potential leads but also introduces real people into the process, who engage in those all-important conversations with potential contacts.
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We’ve all been in situations online where it’s obvious we are ‘talking’ to a bot and, while many are very good nowadays, it generally isn’t long before we click away, as they continually don’t understand our questions.

If a business signs up to LiNCS, our Target Ink marketing expert takes time to get to know the organisation and its products or services, as well as its ultimate business goals. In addition, they establish the language and messaging the client wants to use to communicate with any potential customers.

LinkedIn is a social media platform made up of individuals, so one of the first tasks is for the LiNCS client to identify which person within their organisation is going to ‘take part’ in the sales process. This will typically be the managing director, if the company is fairly small, or perhaps a sales director or business development lead.

Once that person has been identified, we will typically suggest that our social media expert at Target Ink reviews their LinkedIn profile and suggests ways to tidy it up or update it. We might suggest they start to engage more with LinkedIn, if they haven’t been already and share relevant content to make their profile more engaging.

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Then we will utilise virtual private servers and automated software to start engaging with some of their potential sales targets – typically liking posts they share etc. We all know that if somebody likes one of our posts on social media, it always helps to make us feel more favourably towards that person and, at the very least, we start to notice them.

Once there’s been a certain level of engagement, we will continue to use automation to send those potential targets a LinkedIn request from the person we are working with. It goes without saying that they are more likely to accept that request from somebody they’ve potentially noticed has been engaging with and liking their content on LinkedIn.

Here at Target Ink, we acknowledge that automation can only go so far and we will then introduce a real person into the process to engage in any future conversations with those potential contacts. They are obviously able to have general conversations and answer basic questions but if this contact asks something technical or has a question we can’t answer on our client’s behalf, then we will ask our client for their input. The next stage is for us to secure a meeting with this potential customer and our client, who will then see meetings start to populate their diary.

For LiNCS to work as effectively as possible, the business using it needs a real objective and marketing plan at its heart – to make it work properly and for positive results to be achieved.
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If you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve in the first place, then it’s hard to measure success. And, while Sales Navigator and our custom automation will bring potential clients through the door, our inclusion of a real person having real conversations is what ultimately leads to qualified leads.

The results we’ve achieve for clients with LiNCS have been excellent so far and we’d love to share that success with you.

Do get in touch to find out more: 01892 800400