LinkedIn Now Lets You See Where You Rank In Your Network

When this blog post was first published, LinkedIn had just introduced a new feature in the “Who's Viewed Your Profile” section of your profile that let you see how you rank, in terms of page views, with others in your network. While LinkedIn continues to offer the “Who's Viewed Your Profile” feature (the section of your profile that lets you see which of your connections has taken a look at your profile. Note that this feature is limited with free LinkedIn membership and opened up to those who have a paid subscription)...

The “How You Rank” tool is no longer offered. At the time, it not only told you how many people had been peepin' out your profile, but it also assigned you a rank within your network.

LinkedIn removed this feature as it was rather arbitrary ranking as it depended highly on the number of connections you had rather than the quality of connection and engagement.

However, LinkedIn still offers a ranking called the “Social Selling Index” (LinkedIn’s SSI), you can see your score and learn more about it on LinkedIn’s site here. This is useful for professionals who want to see how they rank in the four elements of Social Selling.

According to LinkedIn, those elements are:

1. Establish your professional brand
   Complete your profile with the customer in mind. Become a thought-leader by publishing meaningful posts.
   
   
2. Find the right people
   Identify better prospects in less time using efficient search and research tools. See how we do this here.
   
   
3. Engage with insights
   Discover and share conversation-worthy updates to create and grow relationships.
   
   
4. Build relationships
   Strengthen your network by connecting and establishing trust with decision makers.

The beauty of social selling is that it removes the “salesy” part of sales and focuses on relationships.

This has been our focus here at LinkedSelling since we started connecting clients with prospects on LinkedIn nearly a decade ago! In other words, our focus is to build relationships that create the opportunity for real sales conversations so that you keep your pipeline full of quality leads consistently.

That being said… while 1-on-1 LinkedIn outreach is a valuable - and essential - tool in our tool belt, it’s not the only one we use. In fact, had we continued to solely use LinkedIn messaging in lead generation, our pipeline might have dried up a while ago.

Update: What We’re Doing Now To Fill Pipelines...

Today at LinkedSelling, while we continue to utilize LinkedIn messaging, targeting individual connections, and conducting campaigns that build a solid business relationship over time, those efforts on LinkedIn are now fully embedded within our multi-channel outbound approach. 

We learned that in order to use LinkedIn effectively, we had to see it as ONE component of our strategy, instead of our whole strategy. Here’s why...

Why Use LinkedIn As Part of A Multi-Channel Lead Generation Campaign

LinkedIn can be an effective tool for lead generation, however, there are some drawbacks to using it on its own as your main lead generation channel. As is the case when you rely on any one platform - you might face restrictions, the platform might go down, or something might happen that’s completely out of your control where you can no longer contact your prospects to bring new leads into your pipeline.

It’s the same concept why people are taught not to “put all your eggs in one basket”. Especially because as so many businesses have learned with the Google and Facebook changes over the years, if you’re over reliant on one channel, any single change can affect your entire business. 

With a multi-channel outbound approach, you diversify your lead generation to maximize ROI. It’s the same with your retirement account.  You are invested in a mutual fund that diversifies your portfolio, so that when one channel suffers from market trends, another outperforms and it balances itself out.  The key though is being able to predict the volume, regardless of what happens in each channel.

That alone is reason enough to consider using multi-channel campaigns but it’s not just related to the fear of change. The real driver of including as many channels as possible in your outreach to prospects is based on the habits of those who succeed.

Over 80% of high-performing sales teams use at least three marketing channels and create at least 15 touchpoints per prospect. (Source)

Why are so many of these teams taking a multi-channel approach? 

Because they’ve learned that showing up in your prospects’ preferred channel is how you break through the noise.

The main reason is that it comes down to opportunity cost: You risk sales opportunities if you are not connecting with potential prospects via multiple channels. 

At the right time with the right message and in the right place. Learn more about this here.

Understanding the channels you incorporate into your marketing mix and how they work together to create a sum that is greater than its parts and allows you to engage with your prospects via the channel they prefer, at the time they prefer, and with the right messaging.

In the next section, we’ll share some resources that will help you understand the multi-channel strategy better and that will help integrate those marketing and sales development channels (including LinkedIn) into a cohesive, scalable system. But before we get there, let’s the address a few more reasons we’ve structured our lead generation approach this way:

1. An integrated multi-channel outbound approach offers more control over lead quality and volume
2. Allows you to take back wasted time and resources.
3. This approach makes your pipeline more predictable.
4. It provides a structure that will build more profitable business relationships for your company.
5. Finally, this will make your influence more widespread.

It’s no mistake that a multi-channel approach to lead generation and sales development brings these kinds of benefits. To learn about why we set it up the way we do, click here. 

If you want to level the playing field with your competitors and arm your team with the ammo they need to close more deals, your brand (and your employees) need to be viewed as authorities in your field. We take a unique approach to develop strong relationships with your audience through a multi-channel outbound approach, including social media, email and phone all while positioning your team as the go-to choice in your vertical. See below for how it’s done...

What Does An Integrated MultiChannel Outbound Approach Actually Look Like?

As an outbound outsourced lead generation and sales development agency our job is to put you in front of the hard-to-reach, high-value prospects. Our tactics include our revolutionary and proprietary:

• Targeted messaging strategies using a multi-touch point approach (from email, to LinkedIn, etc.) 
• Social media ads management, 
• And Sales Development Rep (SDR) dialing services

>>> Not familiar with SDR dialing services? See how incorporating SDR’s increased our speed to lead AND our appointment numbers by 33%! <<<

This is what we mean by an “Multichannel Approach”; we connect with targeted prospects using some combination of the channels above, and execute proven systems to attract these prospects, connect and build real business relationships with them, start conversations, qualify them, and get them on your sales team’s calendar.

To understand more about how to use LinkedIn effectively as a lead generation tool for outreach, learn more about our approach using a multichannel strategy and how you can incorporate it into your business as well, click here to read more about how companies are realistically using this strategy to keep their pipelines full year round while fueling business growth.