Ep 156: Cold Outreach Is Dead: Why Relationship-Building Matters on LinkedIn

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In this episode, I share the most common mistake B2B businesses make with LinkedIn prospecting: skipping the warming-up period before pitching offers. I provide a clip from my recent LinkedIn prospecting workshop that details my three-step approach to deepening connections and converting leads without feeling salesy.

• Most businesses fail by sending cold outreach without building relationships first
• The effective three-step LinkedIn DM approach: connection DM, problem exploration, and soft offer
• Problem exploration involves asking about specific challenges and relating to your experience
• The soft offer extends an invitation to connect further to discuss their challenges
• Consistency is key—just 15 minutes daily on LinkedIn can transform your prospecting results
• Warm leads by commenting on content before moving to DM conversations
• Have your "ask" and "give" prepared before connection calls to create natural follow-up opportunities

Want the full LinkedIn prospecting workshop with templates and scripts? Head to the show notes page to purchase the complete course. Follow me on LinkedIn (Sarah Noel Block) with any questions!

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Chapters

• 1:37 Intro to Tiny Marketing Podcast
• 2:10 Episode Introduction and Host Update
• 3:33 The Problem with Cold Outreach
• 5:42 Workshop Clip on LinkedIn Prospecting
• 11:19 Q&A Session from Workshop
• 12:56 Final Tips and Episode Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:50

Podcast that helps B2B service businesses do more with less. Learn lean, actionable, organic marketing strategies you can implement today. No fluff, just powerful growth tactics at work. Ready to scale smarter? Hit that subscribe button and start growing your business with tiny marketing. Hello everyone. Welcome to episode 156. I am sick. I have my throat coat tea right here, filled with like 50% honey. But we're gonna do this thing. Today I am sharing a clip from the workshop that I had on Monday on LinkedIn prospecting. And I'm sharing it's about like five to seven minutes of the part that I see most people get wrong with LinkedIn prospecting. So I thought that this would be the most powerful thing to share with you. And then down in the show notes, you can find the link to purchase the entire it's been turned into a course. So the entire course on LinkedIn prospecting. So let's talk a little bit about it. I just had a call with a client yesterday who has she has a salesperson on her team who's sending out 10,000 emails on her offer. She says, We're not getting anywhere. And I'm not really sure what the problem is. So I asked, are these cold or are we warming them up before we start talking about our offer? She's like, Yeah, they're cold. They're we're finding them on like Zoom info or we're finding them on LinkedIn Navigator, and then we're reaching out to them. I was like, okay, so here's the problem that is likely happening here is you aren't using a warming up period to build a relationship with them before you say, hey, here's my thing, purchase it. You need to have a fairly significant warming period where you build a relationship with them. You are commenting on their content, you're sliding into their DMs and having genuine conversations before you start talking about your offer. So right off the heels of that conversation, I thought that's the perfect clip to pull from this LinkedIn prospecting workshop. How do we deepen relationships and convert them? So that's what I'm sharing today. And let me tell you a little bit why I'm feeling sick right now. So my week was crazy. Last weekend, my alter ego, my award-winning contemporary romance author ego, I had a book signing right outside of Indianapolis. So that was an eight-hour round trip drive. It sold out. It was awesome. It was so cool to meet readers, but it was also a lot. And then the day I came back, I taught this LinkedIn prospecting workshop. And then the day after that, I teamed up with the community and I taught them a gateway offer workshop. So it was just like boom, boom, boom, boom. And now my body was like, Sarah, no, it's time to rest. So here I am being forced to rest. So none of that really matters, but I thought I'd share it anyway. Enjoy this clip. And if you want more, if you want the full workshop, which has been turned into a course that has templates and scripts that you can use, then head to the show notes page and the grab the LinkedIn prospecting workshop. It's there for you. All right. Thank you all. So rule number four is deepen the connection and convert. And this is the last rule. So we're good. So inside the LinkedIn playbook, you can find us there too in the Tiny Marketing Club. But there is a three-step approach to using DMs to move warm leads into a call without it feeling sadsly and gross. So the first one we've already learned about. So that's exciting. You've already done this. It's the connection DM, the magic DM. It is it tells them exactly what you do and who you do it for. Now the second one is a problem exploration one. So you want to ask about their specific challenges and goals. An easy way to do this would be like, what projects are you working on right now? So that's a nice and easy way you can do that. So you ask them, hey, are you working about on anything exciting? And then they'll tell you and say, Oh, I've experienced that before. Did you run across this problem like I did? Or something like that. Or one of my clients was doing that too. And they ran into this. Did you experience that? And then the third DM in this sequence is the soft offer. So you want to extend an invitation to connect and discuss the challenge further. So I use the same strategy in niche communities. What I'll do, because in niche communities, people are asking their questions publicly and people are answering them publicly. So I'll usually answer them publicly and then I'll DM them and ask if they want to connect on a call real quick so we can brainstorm on how to solve that problem. Or we can talk through my explanation a little bit deeper. But that's what you would do in the soft offer version is you would explore that problem and then you can talk about how you helped the client solve it. And then you could say, if you want, we can connect on a like 15-minute call and go over that strategy real quick. And that is an easy way to move into a connection call that usually converts into a sales call because you started it in this value point of view. I see the questions rolling in. I will get to them. Now I'll get to them now. Okay. After a connection call, I find that I don't always have a reason to follow up. Any tips? Okay. So Annette for you, you could go into just ping me and I will add you to the lead waterfall because that is another easy way to do it. If you are hosting a workshop or a training, that's another, that's an easy way you can follow up. I'm doing this on this date. If you want to attend, here you go. But my go-to on those connection calls, like reasons to follow up, is to have my ask and my give already available and in my head. So whenever you're doing a connection call, usually someone is going to be like, How can I help you? What are you trying to look for? Any specific resources, et cetera, et cetera. So I go into that conversation already having a give available and an ask available. So that will usually lead to a follow-up conversation based on what that was. So it might be I know about a really great niche community that you'd be part of. It's invitation only. Let me connect with them and then I'll reconnect with you. So that's another easy way that you can have a reason to follow up, is you're helping them with something. And that's my favorite way to do it is doing it by serving. And if you have a podcast or you have a partner style workshop where like it's two people that are training, you usually have a guest. That's another great way you can follow up because you can invite them into your spotlight and you can have them as a guest on your podcast or in your training. So those are a couple ways you can do it. Okay, Amy, if it's a cold LinkedIn connection, how soon after connecting can you ask the problem exploration? A worry that I would still feel too cold for them to respond. I agree with you, Amy. What I would do is I would do the connection request first. And then I would do those warming up tactics that I talked about first. And then once you've had a genuine interaction with them publicly, that's when I would move into that DM conversation once you've been warmed. So connection request first with that magic DM, then go into the warming techniques that I taught, and then go into that problem exploration. But it usually can happen really fast within a couple days. Okay. So we don't have time to craft your problem exploration DM live right now. We had a lot of nice QA happening, but I'm gonna have this in the replay. And you guys are invited to the office hours. So what I do want you to do is craft your problem exploration DM in between this time and come to the office hours and let's talk through it to make sure that it hits and it's working. And hopefully you'll have some time to be able to explore and practice and use it within those times. So our goal is to not have a sales script, but to have a friendly conversation with dream clients. And the biggest goal is to get them on a 15-minute call so you can have you can deepen that conversation. And if they are ready for a sales call, they will raise their hand at that point. Some just reminders is trigger hand raisers by using CT CTA's calls to action, like DM me if you want blah, blah, blah, whatever your post is about, and microhabits, just having 15-minute daily timers so you can comment on people's posts. Our goal is to go from content, prospecting, engagement, and calls and just be consistent. Spend 15 minutes on LinkedIn per day. That's all you really need is consistency over perfection and commit to using just like one of these habits and then adding the next one and the next one so you can start prospecting and getting really warm conversations happening that can convert into sales. Hi, beauties. I hope you enjoyed the snippet from the LinkedIn Prospecting Workshop. And if you want the whole replay, it is in the show notes page. If you have any questions that come up, then make sure to follow me over on LinkedIn. I'm Sarah Noel Block there. And you can DM me your questions. I'm looking forward to connecting with you. And I'll see you next time. Bye. You love all things tiny marketing. Head down to the show notes page and sign up for the wait list to join the Tiny Marketing Club, where you get to work one on one with me with trainings, feedback, and pop up coaching that will help you scale your marketing as a B2B service business. So I'll see you over in the club.