#614: How to Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Lead Generation

0:00Sellers, cold outbound sucks for both you and your prospect. It takes an insane amount of effort, reply rates are in the tank, and you are fishing in the same pond as everybody else. I literally wrote a book on cold calling, but Sam McKenna, who's the CEO of hashtag SamSales, completely changed my mind about what I thought social selling and great outbound prospecting is. Sam literally has broken 13 national sales records. She was recruited by LinkedIn because because she was so good at LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and she built her business from scratch into a multi-million dollar business using exactly what she teaches in her social selling course that she built in partnership with 30MPC.

0:43Go to 30MPC.com forward slash Sam. Her new course teaches you how to use relationship data and your network's network to get warm introductions into your dream accounts that would never answer your cold call, respond to your cold email, or open the gift that you sent to their office. If you go to 30mpc.com forward slash Sam, we are giving away all of Sam's favorite LinkedIn sales nav reports, alerts, and scripts that you can use to break into more accounts with less effort. We are going to teach you how to build your own inbound machine for the warmest, easiest leads you could possibly work. Today, I am sitting down with Sam McKenna, who has broken 13 company sales records in her career and has used what we are teaching in this video to bootstrap a multi-million dollar business.

1:32Most social selling advice is garbage. We are not going to sit here and tell you to go post content and wait for the leads to roll in. Here's the thing about social selling. Your network and your network's network is constantly changing. People are leaving and joining companies. They're speaking on conference panels together. They're engaging with each other online. And there is no way to keep track of that unless you do what we are going to teach you in this video where LinkedIn can literally alert you anytime there is a social qualified lead. So Sam is going to take us through the highest performing alerts, how to set them up, and then how to actually reach out to these people.

2:07So the first one is in-network job changers.

2:09Sam McKenna: So think about this. Every single time you have somebody that you know that's a first degree connection and moves into your territory, you're going to get a lead alert about it. Right. I love this because again, it's people that you already know, but we can't track the 500 or 3 ,000 or 10 ,000 people that were connected on LinkedIn without this. But instead now, you know, anytime somebody moves in and you can capitalize on this. Right. So an example of this would be you used to work with an AE at your last company and you're connected on LinkedIn and they changed jobs. And now they're a CSM at a company you want to sell to.

2:42Even if you don't sell into the CS org, this person is someone that you know, you're a first degree connection, you'd kind of be a fool not to be like, yo, remember me? Can you help me break into your org?

2:54Sam McKenna: That's how we write it. That's great. Exactly. So what you're going to see here for current company is I've listed all of my accounts and I've selected first degree connections. This gives me a list of any first degree connection I have that's within my territory. And while that list is great, what I really want to do is hit save as we talked about the previous module and get alerted anytime somebody new that I know joins my territory. Let's just think about a quick organizational note you're going to see all of your saved searches that are listed here for your leads and on a weekly basis you're going to get updates every single time there's an update to the saved search that'll be delivered directly to your inbox and then you can come and check it here alternatively you can block time and go in and look at these you're also going to see any time a search has new results like for this one you'll see that there's been 22 new results since this particular date so the next one is when your executive leadership team makes new friends so So example, your skip, skip, skip level boss speaks on a big panel at a major conference.

3:50And she is a co-panelist with one of your prospects. Now, unless you are quite literally monitoring the calendar of all of your executives, you are going to miss times that your leadership team connects with and meets prospects that you want to tell to. So we've got to track this.

4:11Sam McKenna: You got it exactly right. So I think the other thing to think about is, well, I have 1 ,400 executives, so who am I going to prioritize? What you want to look at is your senior executives that speak often or travel often. Think about who's going to CON or who's going to World Economic Forum and who's constantly on the road speaking at conferences as a subject matter expert. These are the people I would build the searches around because we know that their networks are constantly expanding. Or if these are executives who are very active on LinkedIn, even if they're not speaking, we know their networks are often changing.

4:39Sam McKenna: So here's how you do that. So this search is pretty straightforward. What we want to think about with this in mind is that I've put one of my senior leaders, I've used Leigh Hickoen as an example, and so it said connections of. And then I put it against all of my accounts. Now, again, the results are interesting, and if you haven't done anything with the results before, you want to do something with them. But, again, the magic here is in the save because it will send you an alert. Any time Leigh makes a new connection with somebody that's in my territory, I will be notified about it, and I can capitalize on the newness of the relationship.

5:08Sam McKenna: Did they recently speak together? Did they meet at a conference? What is it? and I can go in for the kill and make an ask that my peers probably aren't. Next one. This one is one of my favorites. This one blew my mind, Sam. This is a new executive joining your company. And the reason this is so powerful is when a new executive joins a new company, they are eager to make a fast impact. And this is actually one of the ways that they can drive the most amount of value in like 15 minutes. Exactly. So you want to set up a search that basically tells you anytime somebody new joins your organization.

5:41Sam McKenna: And I'll tell you, this is why it blew your mind is because nobody thinks to do this. So what I love about this is that not only will you check the data on who's joining your org, you'll be able to connect with senior executives at the same time. And you are going to make an ask of them that no one else is going to do. And man, are they going to be impressed by you. The bonus, they're going to talk about you positively when you're not in the room while you are building your network extensively and getting introductions to people that ordinarily wouldn't give you the time of day. Trust me, I really need all the goodwill I could get.

6:11Sam McKenna: So here's how to run this search. Again, pretending that we work at LinkedIn, I'm going to say, tell me anybody who shows up as an executive working at LinkedIn. You'll see current companies listed as LinkedIn. past company again i've excluded because not that i don't want to know people that have been promoted internally but i'm really looking for is net new employees of our company not promotions or divisional changes and then you'll see here for seniority level i've listed vp and cxo again the list is important and plenty that you can go after here but the magic is in toggling the save and making sure that you get notified anytime somebody comes in now you might wonder why don't I just put them in connections of here, right, and make sure that I can immediately see who they know and against my territory.

6:53Sam McKenna: The thing is, you need to be first degree connected with somebody to be able to see their connections first. So the primary trigger we want is knowing that people come into our territory and then being able to connect with them. Once they've accepted, then we can go in and compare their network against our territory, just as we did with Inner Circle or your leadership network.

7:37We'll see you next time. multi-threading playbook powered by Align. It's free in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Pipedrive's easy-to-use and customizable CRM with built-in meeting intelligence. My favorite discovery question is the multiple choice question, which sounds like typically when I'm talking with folks like you, they're focused on A, B, or C. Which is it for you? Now, A, B, and C have to be problems that you can solve because that's how you steer the conversation in the direction of places you can help them. Now, Pipedrive's built-in meeting intelligence helps you focus on your follow-up question, not on scrambling to take live notes.

8:10And we built a full discovery toolkit with them free in the 30MPC closers hub. There's a link in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Outreach, the agentic AI platform for driving execution across every stage of your deal. Great sellers drive velocity at every stage of their sale. And one thing that's worked well for me is assigning redline deadlines to my prospects when we kick off vendor review. Even artificial micro deadlines for things like first cut of redlines and security review helps my prospects get their internal team moving. We built a guide on how to help you drive six and seven figure deals with our friends at Outreach.

8:44Get it free in the show notes. So the next search is when you have an executive leave your company, but then join a company that is in your territory.

8:51Sam McKenna: Just like in our previous module, we talked about how you can look for people who used to work for your company and now work in your territory. We're doing the same thing here, except we're getting notified the minute they leave. And this is setting up an alert to say they've left our organization and now they're in your territory. This is fantastic because we want to capitalize on their goodwill of still wanting to support your existing company while trying to figure out how they can help you get a helping hand in their new account. So what you're going to see here is I've listed current company, I've excluded LinkedIn, and past company, I've included LinkedIn.

9:22Sam McKenna: So what I'm saying is tell me anyone who used to work for LinkedIn but no longer does, their current company is not LinkedIn, again avoiding promotions, and tell me if they've left LinkedIn and now work in my existing territory. You'll also see I've kept the seniority level high VP CXO so that I don't get notified of 1600 people a day that leave and I can save the search again and take a look at the results as they come in live. So the next search is when an executive at one of your current customers leaves and joins an account in your territory whether or not you actually know that executive.

9:56So an example of this would be if Drishti on my team closed a deal with Jones Day and then the CFO of Jones Day left and joined a different law firm that's in my territory, I want to know about it because they've probably had a good experience with us.

10:12Sam McKenna: Let's hope. You got exactly right. And so this is going to give us that alert every single time that happens. And just because we didn't know that person, we can still capitalize on the brand recognition. Plus, if they're just leaving, they might want to take us with us. And that speed to lead is going to be critical before all of our other competitors reach out and try to sell to them as well. The final thing I would say here is that because they've been an existing customer, you have higher odds of them taking you with them. And again, an easy, scalable way to do show me, you know me in your subject line when you reach out.

10:43Sam McKenna: Let's look at how to pull this exactly. So what you're going to see is for current company. Again, I've got my territory listed and in past company, I've created an account list that shows our biggest logos. I may do this by fortune 50 that work with us. If I'm an enterprise seller, I might also do this by verticals, law firms, pharmaceutical sales, etc. Especially if people move within the same industry, it's very, very easy for me to create those searches that are specific to verticals. So I've got these two pieces here. You're also going to note two things. I've got seniority level, and I've narrowed this down to my geography.

11:16Sam McKenna: Otherwise, if we have large companies and people moving left and right, we might get a lot of results. Finally, the list is very important, as we always talk about, but The magic is in saving the search and getting alerted. Once you start to see those job changes, start to think about the other logic that we've taught you in these modules. How to leverage referrals, how to leverage your common connections, and figure out your shortest path to that executive. So the next search here, Sam, is a flavor of what we just talked about. So what we just talked about was an exec at a current customer changes jobs into my territory.

11:45That's great. But you have another search of, you call it client job hoppers.

11:51Sam McKenna: Can you talk through this one? So every single time somebody closes a deal with us, any of the stakeholders, the people that we're multi-threaded into, they get saved into a list. Now, this is a little bit of a different thing because we're not in saved searches, but rather we're creating lists. In a list, I'm going to add this person to existing customer, job hopper. And what that means is this person was part of the buying process. They might have been in procurement. They might have been on legal. They might have been a key champion, our mole, our skeptic, whoever it might be. But if you were part of our deal and you came over, I want to save you to this list.

12:22Sam McKenna: because when you inevitably leave, I wanna know about it and I wanna know where you go. This is a slight variant in that you're not tracking when they leave and go into your territory, you're tracking when they leave, period, and seeing where they go. One of the things that I love, if you want a little extra credit here, is when you see that somebody that's purchased from you goes into an account that belongs to a peer, you can send them a signal. What a great way to build morale and camaraderie inside your organization and say, this isn't a lead for me, but you should know, they love us and they're now in your book of business.

12:53Sam McKenna: On that note, there's a variant of this list. It's not just the customers that purchase from you, but you want to think about the people who wanted to purchase from you and couldn't make it happen. So perhaps the broader buying team decided to go in a different direction. Perhaps IT came in and said, not going to happen. Whatever that might be, there are still people who know you, want to work with you, and may eventually change jobs. When they do, we want to know about it and see if it's in our territory. These two searches are fantastic if you are a frontline leader. Consider how large the territory is of your five or six or nine direct reports and how you can track that over time and you can see who is moving where and help your AEs prospect directly.

13:31Great. There's one other flavor that you were sharing with me, which is enthusiast user changes. So we just talked about people that we sold to or were like key stakeholders in a deal. We talked about people that we tried to sell to that we lost, there's one other flavor, which is what we call enthusiast user changes. So these are people that are like power users. At 30 MPC, we call them super fans. And when we see them change jobs, those are people that we want to be able to hit up. So that's another search that you might save. They're all very similar flavor. So use what Sam showed with that first search.

14:04The last one is a little bit different. These are notifications of profile views. They're looking at your profile. You're not going to say anything?

14:12Sam McKenna: No, I'm just going to sit there quietly and wait for them inbound, right? Oh, well, that's how I met my wife. Okay, here's how to set up the search. So you'll look at this little toggle over here that says viewed your profile recently. We hit that. And then yet again, we've got in our current company, all of our account lists. So this is giving me the result of anybody that currently works in my territory and looked at my profile recently. You are going to notice one specific thing, and that's that we did not include seniority, geography, anything. All I care about is that somebody that's interested in my profile, in my territory, looks at my profile.

14:42Sam McKenna: If it's a BDR, great. If it's an AE, great. If it's a marketing coordinator in the UK, don't care. What I want to do is capitalize on this to say, what made you swing by? Would love to know how we cross paths. Are you guys talking about using us internally? And spark a conversation.

15:07So here's a tip about multi-threading. There are stakeholders in your deals that you don't even know exist, like the VP of Finance, who's viewed your champion's recap twice this week, but no one actually introduced you. That is the type of person who's beacon around your deal and might sneak up to kill the deal at the finish line, and Align's AI surfaces it before it's too late so you can multi-thread to them. We built a full multi-threading playbook powered by Align. It's free in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Pipedrive's easy-to-use and customizable CRM with built-in meeting intelligence.

15:37My favorite discovery question is the multiple choice question, which sounds like typically when I'm talking with folks like you, they're focused on A, B, or C. Which is it for you? Now, A, B, and C have to be problems that you can solve because that's how you steer the conversation in the direction of places you can help them. Now, Pipedrive's built-in meeting intelligence helps you focus on your follow-up question, not on scrambling to take live notes. And we built a full discovery toolkit with them free in the 30MPC closers hub. There's a link in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Outreach, the agentic AI platform for driving execution across every stage of your deal.

16:11Great sellers drive velocity at every stage of their sale. And one thing that's worked well for me is assigning redline deadlines to my prospects when we kick off vendor review. Even artificial micro deadlines for things like first cut of redlines and security review helps my prospects get their internal team moving. We built a guide on how to help you drive six and seven figure deals with our friends at Outreach. Get it free in the show notes. So what do I actually say?

16:36Sam McKenna: So I think you've got three examples here. Let's say there's a prospect that you know, it's a first degree connection, but there's no existing opportunity. Say something along the lines of, hi, I was just thinking of you and thought I'd pass this article along. When we send them a note, we're going to send them a little nurture, something that's related to either something we sell, something we can do to help them, or it can frankly be something about a dialogue you guys have had in the past about something you're both passionate about. What's interesting about this is that you're sending something of help.

17:02Sam McKenna: You're not sending a sales pitch to which they'll hopefully respond and say, oh, my gosh, I was just thinking of you as on your profile. And you're going to say, no way. And then let's see where that leads. So I'm not being creepy and saying, hey, saw you viewed my profile. Don't say that. Then you've got another opportunity where it's not somebody that you know, but you have an open opportunity. What a fantastic way to multithread. So let's say you've got an opportunity that's running with a engineering team and you see that a senior manager of engineering happens to look at your profile from that company.

17:33Sam McKenna: I would send them a connection request and say something along the lines of, we're currently working with the engineering team in one of your organizations. I saw you swing by my profile and simply wanted to say hello. If you're related, if you're working on the opportunity or if there's something I can do to support you, please let me know. What I love about this is that you may know that this person's tied to the opportunity, but you don't need to call attention to it. or you may not know. Perhaps they're in another division. Perhaps they're on another team. Perhaps leadership was talking about working with you in a leadership meeting.

18:01Sam McKenna: They caught wind of it and now they wanted to see who you were. Either way, this capitalizes on the data, creates a conversation and may lead to accelerating your opportunity or an expansion. Then we've got our last one. It's somebody that you don't know and you don't have an existing opportunity. What a great way to spark, again, that dialogue and see why they swing by. So simply send a connection request and say something along the lines of this. Saw you pop up on my profile views and wanted to say hello. I work with a lot of your industry peers on solving this specific challenge, SysSync, you only have 300 characters.

18:33Sam McKenna: If I can ever be of help or if you'd be up for a chat, I'd be grateful for the time. One quick call out, you're going to notice that I didn't say I'd love to talk to you. I switch out language as often as I can to make it less salesy and love is one of those words I try to kill and use grateful for or appreciative of in its stead. So those are the best performing alerts that you should be setting up. There are, of course, other ones you can set up, but these are the highest performing ones based on the work you've done with thousands of sales teams. Talk to me now about how to action this, because I feel like if I set this up and don't have a way to work the alerts, I'm going to forget.

19:07Sam McKenna: I'm not going to book any meetings, and then I will be sad. Just like we talked about in the previous sections, we want to think about blocking time on our calendar to do this, or it won't get done. I think the thing that's important here is think about a daily triage, whether it's in the morning or whether it's before you close out in your day. I personally love to do it in the morning. It's quiet. Not everybody's online yet. My Slack isn't blowing up and I've got time to check these reports and then to take action with the results I get. The one thing I want you to think about in everything that you've learned so far, it's work.

19:34Sam McKenna: It takes time. It takes effort. It takes process. But here's the thing. If you think, why should I have to prospect? Why should I have to work so hard? Can't I just have my BDR do this? Can't I just wait for inbound leads? My pushback to you is one, prospecting is such a fantastic way to build your own system of leads. And frankly, closing an opportunity that you brought in yourself is like no other feeling. The second thing is you're in a pressure cooker of sales. Why would you ever leave your ability to perform or to get to President's Club in somebody else's hands? This is a way for you to build a process, systemize everything and get there every year.

20:08So if you liked this video, we got some more goodies for you. One, this was just a taste of the social selling course that 30 MPC and Sam built together. And so in the full social selling course, we cover so much more. We go through the non-obvious warm referral paths that you should be taking advantage of today. We go through how to use social selling in your deals to create moles who give you inside intel they would never share on company email. We talk about how to multi-thread on social and get access to executives in your deals to move them faster and move them bigger. We also talk about how to work your prospect directly on social in a non-cringe way.

20:45If you're interested in the full course, we've got a discount code in the description. If you're not, or you're not sold yet, I've got even more to maybe tip you over the edge. So we talked about a lot of different alerts you can set up in this video. We documented all of those alerts, as well as the best referral paths that you're not thinking of in an easy to use guide that is also in the description. So grab either of those. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you on the next episode of 30MPC.