Sales is not an all-of-a-sudden kind of activity. The process involves comprehensive planning, and building a sales pipeline is also part and parcel of this process. By building a strong sales pipeline on a professional platform like LinkedIn, businesses can track and nurture their leads and close deals more efficiently. Plus, if you build your sales pipeline on LinkedIn, you can achieve high-quality leads and unique networking opportunities to expand your business. It is a very resourceful tool for today’s sales professionals and founders, they can leverage it smartly to achieve their sales goals.
Now you might be wondering how to create a sales pipeline that works, so in this blog post, we are going to talk about how to build a sales pipeline on LinkedIn and leverage this powerful platform to grab opportunities and increase sales.
What Is a Pipeline in Business: A Quick Overview?
A sales pipeline is the pool of prospects who are interested in your products or offerings and provides an overview of the prospect’s journey to the business. It tells where the prospects stand or how close they are to making purchases in the overall process. By monitoring the pipeline closely, you can identify how close you or your sales team is to converting the prospect into a paying customer. The main objective of building a strong pipeline is to convert leads into customers efficiently so the sales and marketing pipeline stages include collecting leads from various platforms, nurturing leads, and closing deals.
Sales Pipeline Vs Sales Funnel
People often misunderstand the sales funnel with the sales pipeline. There is a slight difference between both terms. A sales pipeline tracks individual leads as they progress through different stages, from prospecting to closing. In contrast, a sales funnel shows the overall volume of leads at each stage, highlighting conversion rates and how many leads drop off as they move from one stage to another. The pipeline focuses on actions, while the funnel emphasizes the number of conversions at each stage.
Stages of a Sales Pipeline
Stage 1: Lead Generation and Prospecting
“Prospecting is the lifeline of sales; without it, the salesperson is out of a job” - Zig Ziglar.
Lead generation is the first step in building a strong sales pipeline. It involves gathering leads who may be interested in your product or service. LinkedIn offers powerful tools like LinkedIn Advanced Search and Sales Navigator, through which you can find high-quality leads. You can filter your target audience using these tools and reach the prospects who are genuinely interested in your offering.
Stage 2: Lead Qualification
All leads are not genuinely interested in your offering. The leads that show genuine interest in your product or service are high-quality or qualified leads and the objective of building a strong sales pipeline is to find such a prospect.
“Prospecting is not just about finding customers; it’s about finding the right customers” - Jeff Gitomer.
There are various factors through which you can identify or access the qualified leads such as their interest in the offering, budget, and specific needs. LinkedIn offers a premium tool i.e. Sales Navigator specifically for sales reps and business developers who want to access potential leads. The tool offers various other features too that are tailored for sales teams.
Stage 3: Building Connections
Now that you have a list of high-quality leads, it’s time to build a connection with those leads.
‘’Successful prospecting is about making a genuine connection with your prospects” - Tessa Stowe.
LinkedIn provides super effective features for connection building. By leveraging features like InMail credits and LinkedIn messaging, you can access your leads and build long-term relationships with them. It is the stage where the salespersons need to build rapport and trust and the best way to reach out is to send personalized messages based on the lead’s interest, needs, and challenges. You can also use a reliable LinkedIn automation tool to schedule connection requests and personalized messages to your leads and build connections efficiently.
Stage 4: Suggesting Solutions
“Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”- Damon Richards.
This is the point where you need to nurture your leads. Make sure you suggest solutions through your LinkedIn messages or posts that address the lead’s pinpoints and challenges. Plus, don’t forget to personalize each message or LinkedIn post carefully to follow up with your leads in a better and more humanized way. It will improve sales engagement and your chances of lead conversion will improve consequently.
Stage 5: Making Proposals
Now it’s the time to propose to introduce the lead to your product or service. Crafting the proposal needs due care. It should not look sales-y or promotional. Remember, hard selling is not the key. The right way to craft messages or proposals is to equip them with the value of your product or service, and address the prospect’s needs. It should communicate how you can help and introduce the lead to pricing and timelines patiently.
“Every sales and marketing email must have an offer, no matter how small or inconspicuous” – Jim Keenan.
Stage 6: Negotiating
‘’Successful negotiation is not about getting to 'yes'; it's about mastering 'no' and understanding what the path to an agreement is’’ - Christopher Voss.
At this stage, the sales rep may face hurdles and questions from the leads. Here you need to focus on communicating the true value of the offering and educating the prospect on how the offering solves their problems. LinkedIn messaging is the right tool to engage the lead consistently and answer their concerns promptly.
Stage 7: Closing the Sale
“The way you ask a question—and how you follow through in the conversation—has an impact on the result you get. It might not change the outcome, but it can take a lot of the sting out of hearing no.” —Jia Jiang.
So yes, here comes the stage where you close the deal and end up with a win-win agreement with the prospect. It takes consistent communication and follow-up on LinkedIn to reach this point in the sales process.
LinkedIn Key Metrics for Sales Pipeline Success
LinkedIn offers various resourceful tools for CEOs, founders, and salespeople that help them navigate through the sales process smoothly. One such tool is LinkedIn Data Analytics. By consistently monitoring and tracking the key metrics, salespeople can assess the effectiveness of their sales pipeline and adjust their sales and marketing strategies to achieve their objectives efficiently.
1. Lead Conversion Rate
The lead conversion rate is a very useful metric that helps to analyze how your marketing campaigns are performing. It refers to the percentage of leads moving to the next stage compared to the total number of leads.
Formula:
(Number of Leads Moving to the Next Stage / Total Number of Leads) x 100
For example, if 100 leads enter your pipeline, and 20 of them move to the next stage, your lead conversion rate is 20%.
Why It’s Important:
A higher conversion rate suggests that your sales and marketing strategies are performing well, while a lower rate indicates potential issues with your messaging, targeting, or nurturing.
2. Pipeline Velocity
Pipeline velocity represents the time leads take to move through the various stages of your sales pipeline. It gives insight into the speed at which deals are being closed. The metric helps identify the flaws and bottlenecks in the marketing and sales strategies and highlights the stage where most leads are stuck in the sales pipeline.
Formula:
(Number of Deals in Pipeline x Average Deal Size x Win Rate) / Sales Cycle Length
For example, if you have 10 deals with an average deal size of $5,000, a win rate of 30%, and a 90-day sales cycle, the pipeline velocity would be (10 x 5,000 x 0.3) / 90 = $1,667 per day.
Why It’s Important:
Improving pipeline velocity means deals are closing faster, which increases revenue in a shorter amount of time. It also helps sales teams to forecast more accurately and identify areas where leads may be stuck.
3. Win Rate
Win rate is the percentage of leads that ultimately result in closed deals. It indicates how successful your sales team is at turning leads into paying customers.
Formula:
(Number of Closed Deals / Total Number of Deals) x 100
For example, if your team works on 50 deals in a month and closes 10, your win rate is 20%.
Why It’s Important:
A high win rate shows that your team is effectively closing deals, while a low win rate may suggest issues such as poor lead qualification, ineffective sales tactics, or strong competition.
4. Average Deal Size
Average deal size, also called average order size, helps calculate the value of a sales transaction or any other company deal. This is how you can forecast the sales revenue of your company and also track the performance of the sales team.
Formula:
(Total Revenue from Closed Deals / Number of Closed Deals)
For example, if you close 10 deals totaling $50,000, your average deal size is $5,000.
Why It’s Important:
Knowing your average deal size helps with setting realistic sales targets and revenue goals. A higher average deal size can indicate that you're landing larger clients or successfully upselling.
5. Sales Cycle Length
Sales cycle length is the amount of time it takes to move a lead from the initial contact to closing the deal. A shorter sales cycle indicates a more efficient process, while a longer cycle may highlight areas where leads get stuck.
Formula:
(Total Number of Days to Close Deals / Number of Closed Deals)
For example, if you close 5 deals in 150 days total, your average sales cycle length is 30 days.
Why It’s Important:
A shorter sales cycle allows for quicker revenue generation and better cash flow. If the sales cycle is too long, it may indicate the need for process improvements or better lead qualification.
How To Link Your Sales Pipeline with LinkedIn?
Let’s talk about how LinkedIn helps build a strong sales pipeline for businesses! You have really been missing out if you aren’t using LinkedIn yet to boost the sales process and make it more workable than ever. You should essentially integrate LinkedIn at every stage of your sales pipeline to make it more efficient. Here’s How you can do it.
1. Lead Generation & Qualification with LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a premium subscription plan by LinkedIn for salespeople like you. This premium subscription is specifically designed to boost the sales process and includes all the tools that can accelerate it. You can find top-notch leads using its advanced search filters and make a more targeted search by filtering the audience by job title, industry, or even company size. Moreover, you can send InMails directly to decision-makers, which has a greater response rate than sending messages.
2. Nurturing Relationships with Personalized Messaging
Okay, so you’ve found your leads. Now what can you do through LinkedIn?
You can send connection requests to the leads and once they accept your request, you can send InMails and direct messages to build relationships. Sending meaningful, tailored messages and consistent follow-ups improves your relationship with your prospects, leading to closing a deal in the future. Make sure your messages are hyper-personalized. Tailored communication improves the response rate and chances of converting the leads into paying customers.
Pro Tip: Instead of jumping straight into a sales pitch, start with a question or comment that shows concern. Trust me, people appreciate it when they feel seen!
3. Presenting Solutions via LinkedIn InMail or Posts
You can authentically engage with your LinkedIn audience by sending messages as well as through relevant LinkedIn posts. You can share informative content like case studies, your product’s quick demo, or success stories on LinkedIn and engage your leads to start communication. How you present your solution really works on LinkedIn. Regularly posting on LinkedIn about how your product can solve real problems will be noticed by the prospects and persuade them to ask for more information.
4. Tracking Engagement with LinkedIn Analytics
Blindly following a marketing strategy can lead you to miss valuable opportunities. Therefore, monitoring whether your plan is performing well or not is very important in the sales process. Here, LinkedIn assists you with its analytics tools. You can check everything like profile views, post engagement, and message responses, and identify who is more interested in the offerings so you can refine your outreach accordingly. Those who keep looking at your profile and check out your post can be the next qualified leads.
5. Streamlining Follow-Ups with LinkedIn Automation Tools
Sometimes, it is quite overwhelming to network on LinkedIn and take time to message and follow up with each prospect. Here, you can take the help of a handy and reliable LinkedIn Automation Tool. LiProspect is one such tool that allows you to automate connection requests and follow-up messages. It is one of the best b2b prospecting tools businesses and sales teams can leverage to achieve their sales targets.
With LiProspect, you can:
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Automatically send personalized messages at scale and save your time for more important tasks.
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Just input the best times to send emails and schedule consistent follow-ups with your leads without putting in time-consuming manual efforts.
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With its intuitive dashboard and analytical insights, you can monitor your team’s performance and track how the marketing campaigns are performing.
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With LinkedIn segmentation, you can run hyper-personalized campaigns to nurture leads efficiently.
Important tip: Though automation is the key to simplifying your outreach, remember to set it up carefully and schedule your outreach moderately to avoid LinkedIn Account Restrictions.
Best Practices for Maximizing Your LinkedIn Sales Pipeline
Now that you know LinkedIn is a truly resourceful platform for building a strong sales pipeline, you might be wondering about the most effective ways for how to build a Sales Pipeline that brings positive outcomes. So, check out a few ways how you can do it.
Personal Branding on LinkedIn
Personal branding on LinkedIn is the best way to show how you can set yourself apart from other social sellers. You should strengthen your profile if you want to get noticed. Optimize your LinkedIn profile by updating a professional profile picture and your headline in the best possible way. Update your story in the summary section and showcase your experience, skills, and personality. You can also customize the LinkedIn URL to make your profile more accessible.
Furthermore, position yourself as a thought leader in the community and boost engagement by joining different relevant groups and consistently posting relevant content. Regularly posting on LinkedIn and responding to posts leave a positive impression on the audience.
Recommendations and endorsements are social proof that strengthens your personal brand, so actively collect endorsements and make recommendations to engage your audience.
Engagement Techniques
You have to keep the conversations going if you want to close more deals. Engagement and consistent communication are the best ways to nurture leads and become prominent. Engagement helps to persuade leads without being too pushy or sales-y. You can engage your audience in various ways such as liking or commenting on their posts, sharing articles or current news, utilizing LinkedIn polls to get noticed, leveraging native videos or visual content to get attention, and participating in LinkedIn collaborative articles. All these techniques increase your engagement on LinkedIn and make you more prominent on the platform.
Follow-Up Strategies
Consistent follow-ups can make a great difference in your sales strategy. After you make initial contact, set a schedule for follow-ups. You can switch it up with different touch points—like a message, a comment, or even a call.
Following up on all the leads consistently is time-consuming and strenuous. So here, you can again leverage a reliable LinkedIn Automation tool like LiProspect to schedule follow-ups at the right time.
Pro Tip: Keep your follow-ups thoughtful, and always offer something of value. Timing matters too—don’t wait too long, but also don’t overwhelm them!
Common Challenges and Solutions
Struggling with Personalization and Timely Follow-Up
During the sales process, a sales rep needs to reach a ton of leads at a time which is time-consuming. Here it is quite obvious to feel overwhelmed. Sending personalized messages to each lead tailored to their needs is a strenuous activity and you can miss valuable opportunities if you don’t reach them timely. Automation is the lifesaver here. You can automate all the repetitive tasks like sending connection requests, messages, and InMails using automation tools such as LiProspect.
Over-Automation
It’s all about balance. Automation can save time but overdoing anything like sending connection invites or scheduling too many messages every day can get your account restricted. Plus you will also lose that distinct personal touch needed to nurture long-term relationships. It is better to schedule all the activities adequately when it is the right time to connect to avoid account bans and restrictions.
Wrapping Up
LinkedIn is a powerful networking platform that can get you plenty of valuable opportunities if you follow the right strategy. By learning how to build a sales pipeline on LinkedIn, you can increase conversion rates and boost sales. However, the most important yet challenging stage of the sales pipeline i.e. lead generation can be navigated smoothly by using handy automation tools such as LiProspect that save you time and automate the manual repetitive processes! By using LiProspect, you can reach qualified leads more effectively and efficiently leading to sales success.
