Things you’re not doing on Linkedin, but should... Hey! Dan here. I’m one of the founders of Orca and I was tagged to write our first blog post ever �… Yippie! Full disclaimer. I’m a sales guy, not a writer. So if you’re expecting Pulitzer quality blogs, thank you… but you are sadly mistaken. � I write at about the fourth grade level, you’re just gonna to have to bear with me on this one. Now that expectations have been set, let’s kick this thing off with the question that’s on everyone’s mind: What is Orca and why did we build it? Hold up. Multi-tasking. Thinking, writing, coffee in belly. Need to process. I’m gonna assume you do sales like me and you’re starting to see a drop in email opens and responses. I know what you’re thinking. No, it’s not you… it’s the The Law of Shitty Click-Throughs. � Coined by Andrew Chen, a ex-Growth at Uber, the law states: “Over time, all marketing strategies result in shitty click-through rates.” The same law applies to email automation. Cold emails are ineffective because everyone and their mothers are doing it. That brings us back to Orca. What is it exactly? Orca is a social selling tool that automates engagements on Linkedin, like visiting profiles and sending connect requests, and emails all in a sequence. Say what �? You read that right… with Orca you have the ability to not only automate and sequence emails, but also Linkedin engagements and eventually across other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Angellist, etc.
Why should you automate your Linkedin? For starters, LinkedIn is a gold mine. Professionals all around the world use it to find and engage leads and interact with their network. And you know this… chances are you’re already using Linkedin as we speak to find leads, visit profiles, and send connect request to potential customers. Most of you are probably doing this manually, one tedious-ass click at a time. Some of you even hired interns to do this for you because it really is that boring �. But guys… no finger should ever suffer the fate of 1000 clicks.
Thank God for automation. But let’s get honest here… sales is not about automation, it’s about real conversations with real people. Everything you do up to that point is simply trying to get your foot in the door. But getting your foot in the door ain’t that easy anymore. It’s gotten harder and harder over the last few years. Cold emails alone just aren’t as effective as they used to be. So you gotta somehow make yourself standout in the crowd. What do you do? You gotta warm them up through social selling. In other words, you’ve got to use Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, etc. to engage and build rapport with leads. In my opinion, Linkedin is the best platform to engage and warm up leads. There are several things you can do to get noticed, or initiate what I like to call a look back. A look back happens when you do something that causes someone to visit your profile. Most people don’t know this… but your Linkedin profile page is really just a landing page. There are ways to optimize your Linkedin profile, which I’ll talk about in a future post. Here are some actions you can take to trigger a look back: 1 ⃣ Visiting a lead’s profile
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⃣ Sending an invite to connect ⃣ Endorsing skills ⃣ Liking or commenting on posts The best way to think about a look back is to think of it as if it were a billboard on a highway. You’re taking small actions here and there that gets you noticed by potential customer. These actions add up over time. In marketing, we call this orchestration. Hence the name, Orca �.
We’ll talk more about orchestration, but generally speaking, orchestration is a strategy used to control consumer touch points across different channels or platforms. There are several tools out there on the market that one can use to automate engagements on Linkedin, here are few:
Dux-soup GPZ Linkedin Linkedhelper Linkedomata
These tools are awesome. I’ve personally used Dux-soup and GPZ Linkedinand they are great, but both lacked the functionality to sequence across multiple channels. For example, if you wanted to visit a profile, wait a day, and visit the profile again, the only way to do this on Dux-soup is visit the profiles, save the profiles, literally wait a day, and visit the saved profiles again. Furthermore, if I wanted to visit a profile, send a connect request, then send a few emails in sequence… I’d have to use other tools along with Dux-soup to do it. I’d have to use a lead gen tool to generate work emails. Then I’d have to take the lead list, upload it to cold email tool, like Mailshake, and set up a sequence there… That’s already too much work for me. I’ve got more important stuff to do like talking to customers… and organizing my desk �.
This leads us to the second part of the question we asked at the beginning. Why did we build Orca?
The answer is simple. I’m lazy, which is normally a bad thing, but sometimes some good can come out of it. We built Orca to create an end-to-end sales development experience, a TOFU(top of funnel) sales tool that handles lead generation and prospecting plus all the social stuff you can do on Linkedin.
Sales the traditional way: Currently, sales peeps are either buying lead lists or scraping the web for leads and uploading it to a lead gen tool, like FindThatLead or Hunter.io, to generate the emails, downloading the list and importing it into a CRM or email automation tool to sequence emails and calls. To run any social selling engagements, they’ll have to use a different tool to visit and connect with leads. Whyyyyy? � That’s so much work… not to mention how tedious and repetitive it is. Orca makes prospecting easier by taking out all unnecessary in-between steps from finding a lead to generating emails to sequencing emails and calls, minimizing your stack the same time. And because it’s all automated, Orca frees you up to focus on the most important thing that is talking to leads and closing deals. Orca literally handles everything. Tell Orca WHO you want to talk to and define HOW you want to do it and Orca will execute. It’s like having a virtual sales development assistant. � “Ask and you shall receive.”
What Orca can do for you… Auto-visit leads Orca will auto-visit profiles and automatically retrieve data such as name, role, company, size, and most importantly, emails. Yeah, you read that correctly. We will grab work emails for you… You don’t have to worry about downloading a csv file and uploading it into a third party tool or Google sheet add-on to get emails. All the profiles you visit will get a notification indicating that you’ve visited them, some of them may even visit you back or possibly even connect with you. That said, make sure you work on your Linkedin profile. Optimize it and treat it like a landing page or website. Offer value upfront and you’ll start getting new connections, introductions, and leads without lifting a finger. Auto-connect with leads Instead of manually clicking on the “connect” button and writing out an invite, Orca will autoconnect you with leads. You can personalize your messages using magic snippets. Orca also has a feature, where you can automatically follow up after you’ve made a connection.
My connection rate is about 46%.
And now that they are in my network, I’ll be able to add value in a number of different ways to start building rapport. If you’re looking to get the most out of your connections on Linkedin, you’ll need to go beyond just automation… you’ll need to invest some real quality time to build value. Remember automation gets your foot in the door, the rest of it is up to you. Cross-platform sequences This is our bread and butter and by far the coolest feature we have. Instead of talking about it, watch the video below to get a sense of how you can use Orca to automatically scale your reach and land more meetings. Check out the video.