The Challenge:

Before engaging with LinkedSelling, Listen Technologies was primarily reacting to interested prospects who came to them.

They also relied on paid search terms that resulted in connections with people who were on the lowest tier on the lead generation funnel (ie “people that already knew the pain that they had, knew what products they wanted and, and may or may not have known about us specifically as a company”).

Adam Collings, the Director of Marketing, said they wanted to change that,

“We knew that in order for us to continue to grow as a company, we needed to get our solutions in front of people who have the problem but may not be aware that there's a solution.

We identified LinkedIn as being an ideal ground and ideal platform for us to find the people that we knew would have our pain but may not know specifically what solutions we provide. By engaging with Linked Selling, our idea was that we'd be able to reach out to those people and get our message in front of the right audience that had that pain and, and be able to present our solutions to them.”

Once they identified LinkedIn as a viable marketing and relationship build channel, Listen Technologies also realized that they wanted to really understand “what it looked like to socially sell our product” - and do so at scale.

Adam explains,

“We didn't want to be just showing up and bothering people on LinkedIn and coming into their feed or trying to reach out to them with these very hollow [messages, like], ‘Hey, my name's Adam and I want to connect with you so that I can sell you something.’ We were really trying to build relationships. And the challenge is that relationships are inherently one-on-one.”

“So to scale, relationship building can be difficult and we didn't know even where to start. So our hope with engaging with LinkedSelling was that we'd be able to get the education and see how it's done, both for our edification, and then obviously to offload the amount of work that it takes in order to scale one-on-one relationships.”

The Solution:

Once Listen Technologies engaged LinkedSelling we immediately implemented our proprietary process using outbound strategies on LinkedIn. The process looks like this:

1. First, our team optimized their LinkedIn presence, updating their profiles, understanding who their target is, and dialing in the messaging.
   
   
2. Second, to target and connect with their primary prospects on LinkedIn, we used search terms based on demographics such as title, company, and more. This information was used to conduct targeted searches on LinkedIn and execute campaigns to expand their database of prospects, connecting them with the exact people they want to get in front of.
   
   
3. From there, we implemented a top-of-mind strategy designed to build thought leadership and brand awareness through posting content on LinkedIn and growing LinkedIn groups.
   
   
4. Finally, we managed multi channel messaging and email campaigns to send targeted LinkedIn messages and emails to their prospects leading them to book appointments.

The Results:

“We’ve Hit the Motherload!”

Thanks to the LinkedSelling outbound lead generation strategy, Listen Technology saw many benefits for their company, including:

Real results and real conversations with new prospects:

“From the time we launched our campaign we got a couple of conversations started proactively by the people that we were reaching out to.  So, on that first day, maybe within the first 48 hours we were like - we've hit the motherload!”

“it changed how we approached presenting our products to people that may or may not have known that we existed.”

A Competitive Advantage In Their Industry

“You can execute a relatively standard digital campaign, but if everybody else in your industry is just not really paying that much attention, your results are going to be, you know, way ahead of the curve.”

“From a digital perspective, there's not a ton of competition in some of these areas that we're going into. So, you know, hopefully six months from now, I can back that up. We really feel like we've learned the things that competitive industries are doing to build their brand. And in our industry where we're kind of uniquely positioned, we hope that we can get maximum value out of what we've learned by engaging with LinkedSelling.”

Real knowledge about how to find and nurture cold leads into booking appointments on a social platform:

“We wanted to transition and have LinkedSelling teach us how to do the searches, how to have those conversations, how to invite people to the group, how to manage group content and then eventually how to take people from the group and start those sales conversations.

We really feel like we've learned the things that really competitive industries are doing to build their brand. And in our industry where we're kind of uniquely positioned, we hope that we can get maximum value out of what we've learned by engaging with LinkedSelling.”

A new and improved outlook on outbound lead generation and selling:

“We got to see firsthand kind of what it takes to go after the right people, how to behave in a social environment where you're trying to connect with prospects and get these relationships established so that you can provide the right value before eventually offering up some of the product line that you have in hopes that it's something that they're interested in.”

“We went from being very reactionary (responding to leads that came to us) to finding leads that had already had a certain level of qualification. So we went from leads just kind of coming to us through search into being able to provide solutions and provide a value into the social relationship before then presenting our specific product.”

“It really has kind of transformed the way that we think about demand generation and establishing our authority in the space with techniques that we didn't previously have. Previously, it was not a competency of ours as a marketing team to go into these social platforms and build these relationships in the right way.”

A methodology to empower corporate teams (no more micro-managing)

“Thanks to our engagement with LinkedSelling, our team is empowered to continue to build these relationships.

Before, sales reps might be coming to me asking me, “Hey Adam, how do I do this on LinkedIn?” Or “I see my colleagues doing XYZ thing, how do we promote this?”

“We now have a plan and we didn't previously have that. It would have been haphazard and kind of across the board, we now have a methodology so we're able to do things that we weren't previously able to do as a marketing group. Which really empowers the team to be more proactive in how they present themselves on LinkedIn and [...] how we can build better relationships and provide more value.”

“My team can now feel confident. They have a resource, they know where they can get their questions answered and now they're kind of up and running on their own and you can go in and generate these leads for themselves and build these relationships without me having to handhold them on every, you know, specific step along the way.”

A partner as committed to Listen Technology’s success as they are

“...of all the agencies that I worked with, and over my career doing this for the last 10 or 15 years, I've worked with a ton of different agencies and these guys seriously did WAY more in the amount of time, from week to week. It was these huge jumps in work production of things that I’d look at and go...  'this just seems like a boatload of work to keep track of all these different elements of the campaign'.  And they were always on it and they would incorporate changes quickly."

"My experience here was that Billy and the team, at LinkedSelling, was as committed to my success as I was. And that's rare. The team at LinkedSelling they know what they're doing and they are committed to your success."