The Ultimate LinkedIn Messaging Guide

CHAPTER 5RESEARCH, PERSONALISATION & RELEVANCE

There's an essential formula that I teach when it comes to messaging on LinkedIn, and it's this:

R + P X R = REPLIES

When I scroll through my LinkedIn inbox, looking at the messages I get from salespeople trying to sell me something, there is one thing that most of them have in common:

Nothing in the message is about me, the prospect.

It's all about them. Who THEY are, what THEY are selling, what THEIR company does, what THEIR product does, etc. This spray‐and‐pray approach doesn't work (I'm not sure if or when it ever did); ultimately, it is lazy selling. Create a template, copy and paste it, and send it to as many people as possible to see if someone bites. It's lazy, and not only does it rarely (if ever) yield results, but you also run the risk of giving potential prospects an incredibly poor first impression of you.

This is why personalisation is so important and why good research is crucial to find the information you need to personalise the message properly.

It's no longer enough to scrape their name, position and company name from LinkedIn. You need to dig deeper. The deeper you dig, and the more relevant you make the message, the more impact it will have.

How much research should I do? How LONG should I spend researching someone?

This is very important:

The amount of time that you spend researching a prospect should ...