How to use LinkedIn for prospecting in the cannabis industry

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LinkedIn is the most popular social networking platform for business professionals, making it an important channel for B2B cannabis brands to focus their marketing and sales efforts. While promoting cannabis or cannabis-related brands on LinkedIn is challenging if not impossible, there are many opportunities for marketing and sales leads on LinkedIn.

In fact, connecting with LinkedIn is easy because all the tools and information you need to connect with your audience are right at your fingertips. But be careful! Identifying a bunch of leads and sending connection requests or LinkedIn InMail direct messages is unlikely to yield great results.

The LinkedIn community frowns on trying to sell to users without first establishing a relationship with them and making sure they are actually interested in your products or services. Therefore, there are a few important steps you need to take before launching a sales pitch on LinkedIn.

Steps before you start prospecting on LinkedIn

The first thing a person will do when you send them a LinkedIn connection request or an InMail message is look at your LinkedIn profile to learn who you are and the value of connecting with you. It is crucial that they find a comprehensive and active profile.

Here are five important steps you should take before launching a sales pitch on LinkedIn:

1. Prepare: Make sure your LinkedIn profile tells the right story, showcasing your expertise, experience, and unique value proposition. Why? Because it’s the first thing people see when you send a connection request or an outreach message.
2. Connect: Connect with people you already know, including your co-workers, and make sure your profile is linked to your company’s LinkedIn page. In other words, before sending any connection requests or outreach messages to prospects via LinkedIn, start building your network and social proof to back up your claims.
3. Publish: Post content on your profile and share other people’s content. The goal is to show your profile visitors and connections that you add value and are an excellent, trusted resource.
4. comment: Comment on content shared by other people to increase your social footprint and reach.
5. Socialize: Join relevant groups where your audience is likely to be active. Participate in the groups by sharing content, commenting and liking other people’s content, and so on.

Steps to get started with sales prospecting on LinkedIn

You can use the basic search features on LinkedIn to find prospects, but they’re very limiting. Not only are you limited by the number of search criteria you can use, but also by the number of searches you can perform per month and the number of connection requests you can send. If you’re really serious about using LinkedIn for prospecting, invest in LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

In fact, you should contact your employer and ask them to pay for each seller. When the efforts of the entire sales team can be coordinated using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, your company will close more deals and increase return on investment.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers a long list of features to help you take your prospecting to the next level. Some of these features include:

• Selling Preferences: Set up criteria so Sales Navigator knows what type of leads you want to see based on criteria like industry, seniority, role, location, company size, and more.
• Advanced Search: Use 20+ advanced search filters to find exactly the audience you’re looking for.
• Action based search: Search for specific actions, e.g. B. when new content is posted by entering keywords to find people who have posted or interacted with content related to those keywords.
• Saved Search: Save searches to use in the future. It saves so much time and effort.
• warnings: Set up notifications to be notified when the triggers you have identified occur, e.g. B. when a person changes jobs, publishes new content, comments on a post and much more.
• groups: Use the advanced filter to not only find groups, but to find people in groups.
• Lookalike Audiences: Search for your audience, select a lead and click the “Show similar” link to get 100+ leads that are similar to your audience.

These enhanced features make it easier to find the right prospects and identify opportunities to engage with them (eg, when they’re posting content, when they’re commenting on someone else’s content, and so on).

Key Takeaways on Using LinkedIn Sales Prospecting in the Cannabis Industry

The key to using LinkedIn for prospecting in the cannabis industry is to first understand how to find the right people. If you start sending connection requests and sales messages to everyone, you won’t get good results.

Instead, you need to find people who are likely to be interested in your products and services. In this group, a small percentage will be ready to buy, which means prospecting on LinkedIn takes time. You need to be visible and active so you’re front and center when someone is ready to buy.

With that in mind, here are key tips and next steps to start prospecting on LinkedIn: 1.) Set your selling preferences in the LinkedIn Sales Navigator, 2.) Build Audience Lists, 3.) Find Lookalike Audiences, 4.) .) join groups, 5.) set up notifications for trigger actions that might give you an opportunity to send a sales message, and 6.) be active.

Did you know that many of the verified contact profiles in the Cannabiz Media License Database link directly to individuals’ LinkedIn profiles? Schedule a demo and see how a subscription can help you boost your sales acquisition and meet your business development goals.