It’s no secret that LinkedIn is widely considered one of the top social media platforms for B2B marketers.

Some of the key stats you must know to understand the importance of LinkedIn as B2B marketer

– 79% of B2B marketers view LinkedIn as an effective source for generating leads

– 92% of B2B marketers leverage LinkedIn over all other social platforms

– 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn

– 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content

In recent years, I’ve invested much more time in LinkedIn for prospect research and business development and I’m not the only one who does that. All successful sales professionals have taken a similar approach for many years.

In research developed and compiled by Jill Konrath and Ardath Albee for their eBook, Cracking the LinkedIn Sales Code, they surveyed 3,094 sellers to find out how they were using LinkedIn to create new business opportunities.

“Top Sellers” — as defined by those that generated “lots” of opportunities via LinkedIn and were having a really good year in sales — use LinkedIn as both a list development tool and prospect research engine as well.

How to use LinkedIn to prospect your B2B list using advanced search?

So far, I’ve explained the importance of LinkedIn. Now, I want to explain how to go out and find your prospects. They may not come and find you, but you can go find them.

LinkedIn’s advanced search gives you an incredible way of identifying the exact type of people who you are targeting.

Even without the upgraded LinkedIn membership, you have a great filter for narrowing down your search.

From the LinkedIn header menu, once you click on search box you can find like below “search for people with filters” and click on that

Now the most powerful aspect of Advanced People Search is in the right column as shown below, in which you can filter your search by location, current company, industry, past company, school, profile language, and so on.

I had done sample search looking for CEO in UK area and the human resource industry.

Now the results are filtered and giving me a chance to connect with 148369 people. But the problem is you can’t send large number of connection request to strangers. If you do your LinkedIn account may be limited from inviting members. This is generally happen due to many of your invitations being rejected or ignored by the members you’ve invited as they find you as stranger.

“To be a connection on LinkedIn, I would wait until you have some kind of rapport,” Lizzie Post, co-author of Emily Post’s Etiquette 

How to overcome this problem?

It is always better to send connection request to people only you have some kind of rapport. So cold email outreach is the best way to start a rapport with those filtered LinkedIn targeted members.

How to find the corporate email address of any person?

Make a list with your filtered LinkedIn members in excel sheet like sample shown below and find the corporate email address with the help of LeadZippo which will help you to find corporate email address any person.

Whom to send LinkedIn connection request?

Once the corporate email address are identified with LeadZippo you can start send your cold email outreach campaign. Find the best free cold email resource 

Once the email was sent you can wait for a day and filter the people who opened your emails and send them a connection request, now you can see more connections will accept your request and from there you can take them to your sales pipeline.

Signup now to start with free leads and connect with people matter for your business.