Posted by Ben Kniffen in Uncategorized
LinkedIn is regarded by many as the premier social network for B2B prospecting, and rightly so. The search functionality that LinkedIn provides its users with makes it as easy as possible to target prospects with pin point accuracy.
But even LinkedIn is not without its limitations.
For anyone that has spent a minimal amount of time prospecting on LinkedIn it becomes quickly apparent that there are rules you have to abide by that keep you from getting to anybody and everybody in one quick search.
If people are outside of your network then you need to figure out ways around “the system” to make sure you can get to your targeted prospects.
For most that means joining a group that your prospects are members of, which gives you the ability to not only message them but send them a connection request as well.
But what if you can’t see what groups your prospects are a member of because they are too far out of your network?
What happens if a prospect is not even a member of any groups?
What if you know someone is a good target but you simply cannot get any information from their profile because they are too far outside your network?
Fear not, for where there is a will there is a way.
LinkedIn wants to make you think that you have colored too far outside the lines if you find yourself in this situation. What LinkedIn does not tell you, and what most people don’t know, is that there is nobody on LinkedIn who is unreachable. You can reach any LinkedIn member, regardless of how far outside your network they are.
Let’s take a look at how this can be done: 
To the right is a screenshot of a search conducted in LinkedIn.
It is a search for CFO’s that work in Logistics and Supply Chain in the UK, a search that is showing results way outside my network – 3rd degree connections and beyond.
All of these are great results for this example.
Let’s look at the 3rd result; it is for the CFO at Briggs Equipment. Unfortunately all we can see is his first name, headline, title, and location. Past that, we are not provided much more information about Peter J. 
The good news is that the information shown is all that we need to get to Peter.
The next step in this process is to take all the info we can get from Peter’s profile and copy & paste it into Google.
You may need to clean up your search a little. But for the most part, copying and pasting the text exactly as it comes from the LinkedIn profile is all that you need to do. Once you hit search you should see an interesting result.
The first result is a LinkedIn profile and it just so happens to be Peter’s, only now we see his full name and the link to his profile.
Now if we open up Peter’s profile from the Google search results we will still see a profile that restricts us from doing anything but sending InMail, so our work is not quite done.
Remember the search we originally did in LinkedIn to get to Peter in the first place? Head back over to LinkedIn and enter Peter’s full name in the search.
Peter’s profile comes up as the only search result, except this time we now have access to send him a connection request. And we now also have the ability to view his whole profile.
So what happened? Before we couldn’t see anything about Peter except a few tidbits of info and now we have access to his whole profile and the ability to send a connection request. During the first search we didn’t know who Peter was but in the second search we had his name – his full name.
LinkedIn will allow you to connect with anyone if you have their full name. DING DING DING!
LinkedIn wants you to be able to find people who you already know and be able to connect with them.
So they make the assumption that if you have their full name, you must know them. Then LinkedIn allows you access to the prospect’s profile and the ability to send out the connection request.
The key to this is knowing how to get someone’s full name.
You can see how powerful of a prospecting play this is. Anyone who is on LinkedIn, the entire 300 million user network, is now just a click of a button away. You can become a LinkedIn connection with anyone who fits your prospect profile.
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But there are limit 5000 connections….
That’s true, so make sure all 5,000 count!