A Deep Dive Into The LinkedIn™ Hunting Strategy

Welcome to today’’s Deep Dive. I have identified four strategies for using LinkedIn™, those being Hunting, Farming, Fishing and Mining. In this Deep Dive, I want to talk about the Hunting strategy to help you decide if this is right for you, and what LinkedIn™ related skills you need to implement it. 

A Hunting strategy on LinkedIn™ involves two tasks: finding your prospects and contacting them. 

Seems simple, right? Not so fast. Actually, the finding part isn’t that hard, given the power of LinkedIn™’s search capabilities. 

To generalize, the more expensive your product or service, the fewer prospects there will be. This puts a lot more weight on the quality of your outreach. And the quality of your outreach will depend on two things: how good your actual outreach message is, and how good the research was that assisted you in writing the outreach message. 

Realistically, a Hunting strategy on LinkedIn™ consists of the following four steps. 

1) Finding the right people at your prospect companies

Skills required: Using LinkedIn™ to search for people. I have been able to use LinkedIn™ search for all kinds of exotic people searches, but I have been using the search utility extensively for fifteen years and have skills and experience most LinkedIn™ users don’t. The new AI based search capabilities should make Searching a lot easier. I have had it for a couple weeks now, and it doesn’t seem any better to me, just different.

2) Researching these people 

This is a critical step that most people skip. Your research will help inform what you write in an outreach message.

Skills required: Using LinkedIn™ to research people. Most people skip this step, which I think is a big mistake. There is often relevant information which will help you in people’s profiles, and it doesn’t cost anything to read profiles. 

3) Deciding which is the best method to approach these people

Skills required: figuring out which outreach method to use. 

Actually, there are two parts to this. The first is deciding whether LinkedIn™ is the best method to use versus an alternative like Email. Then, if LinkedIn™ appears to be the best method, which technique should you use? Group messaging? InMail? An introduction? A connection request? 

4) Writing and sending your outreach message

Skills required: writing outreach messages

Writing outreach messages is easy. Writing outreach messages that get replies is an art form. I have taught courses to my corporate clients on how to write outreach messages. There is that much to writing a really effective outreach message.

You can see why I think Hunting is an approach that is geared towards more high ticket products and services. With the Hunting strategy, you put a lot more time and effort into increasing your odds of success with specific people. 

A note about Sales Navigator:

If you are a Hunter, you should definitely consider a Sales Navigator subscription. The reason for this is that Sales Navigator gives you more tools to be able to:

• Search more effectively – with Sales Nav you get unlimited searches and a lot more filters at your disposal. The search filters may lose some of their value with AI based search coming, but the unlimited searches won’t. 
• Send InMails – while there are alternative methods that I advocate (like Introductions) and methods of sending free messages (the Group message and Open Profile methods), the fact remains that there will always be times where your only method to message someone is with an InMail. And if you really want to reach someone at a high dollar value company, then Sales Nav and its InMails can be worth the money.

The bottom line is Sales Nav currently runs around a hundred dollars a month and there are times where a hundred dollars is a bargain. 

A Hunter’s Checklist

Search

1) I have tested and have the search filters I need to find the people and/or companies I am looking for.

2) I have my filters set such that they return an actionable number of results. A filter that makes me wade through 300 results is of no practical use to me.

Research

3) I know specific information I am looking for when I research people or companies, as this information will fit in with my outreach strategy in hyper personalizing my outreach messages

Choosing outreach methods

4) I have my criteria set in order to decide whether LinkedIn™ is the best method to approach these prospects, or whether I should be considering an alternative such as email instead.

Outreach messages

5) I have the framework for my outreach messages set up that establish my credibility, are results oriented, and have an appropriate call to action

6) I have different messages designed for different job descriptions (purchasing versus manufacturing for example) or requirements (finding out who the right person is if I can’t ascertain that from my research)

7) I have time set aside every week to put my hunting plan into effect.

The bottom line: Hunting works, always has worked and likely always will work. And LinkedIn™ is a great place to hunt.