Describe use cases for and capabilities of LinkedIn Sales Insights

  • 6 minutes

A key part in building relationships today is being able to effectively use social media as a sales tool. This is where you use social media to find, connect with, and nurture sales prospects. This is typically referred to as social selling. With social medial so engrained in our daily lives, it's the modern way to build meaningful relationships with potential customers early so that it's your company who they think of when they're ready to buy. For many people, it replaced the process of cold calling where you call as many people as possible to attempt to get a meeting.

One of the best ways to identify good prospects and build relationships with them is through LinkedIn. LinkedIn is an online platform that connects business professionals. Your LinkedIn profile summarizes your professional experience to your current connections, current and future employers, and recruiters. LinkedIn can also act as a powerful sales tool. LinkedIn Sales Insights is LinkedIn designed for sales professionals. It provides searching capabilities, deeper visibility into extended networks, and personalized algorithms that help you reach the right decision maker. For example, withLinked Sales Insights you could easily search for any healthcare CEOs in your geographic region that have been in their current role for less than a year. By specifying less than a year, you're likely identifying people that are new to their role in the organization and don't have already established relationships with competitors. Once you identify those individuals, you can use the sales lifecycle management capabilities of Dynamics 365 Sales to help convert them into revenue and build a long-term relationship with them.

Microsoft Relationship Sales brings together both LinkedIn Sales Insights and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales to empower sellers to drive that more personalized and meaningful engagement with buyers. By integrating Dynamics 365 Sales with LinkedIn Sales Insights and using your LinkedIn network, you identify potential sales leads and gain avenues for introductions with prospects. This positions you as a subject matter expert that prospects want to engage with, helping build trust and strengthen relationships over time.

LinkedIn Sales Insights integration with Dynamics 365 Sales creates a seamless experience between LinkedIn Sales Insights and Dynamics 365, empowering sales reps to get insights on customers and recommendations directly from any Dynamics 365 record.

With LinkedIn Sales Insights integration, sellers can:

  • Get headline information, recent activities, news, and job change information when viewing the customer record in Dynamics 365.

  • Use icebreakers to identify commonalities between you and your prospects.

  • Ask for an introduction to the lead from anyone within their network or anyone in your organization who might be connected to the lead.

  • Get one-click access to LinkedIn InMail and increase your probability of reaching your buyer.

  • Have LinkedIn user images used as ​Contact images in Dynamics 365.

  • Surface LinkedIn Activities such as InMail activities in the Activity Timeline displayed in Dynamics 365.

LinkedIn Sales Insights controls are available and can be placed on Dynamics 365 Sales forms. There are two types of controls available.

  • LinkedIn Sales Insights Lead control: Shows information about a LinkedIn member profile. It contains the following sections, which you can choose to show or hide:

    • Top Card: Shows information about the person like name, headline, and more. Additionally, it provides capabilities to message or save the person as a lead in LinkedIn Sales Insights.

    • News (Icebreakers): Shows the person’s highlights, activities, conversation starters, and more.

    • Connections (Get Introduced): Shows the mutual connections and allows for a warm introduction to the person.

    • Related Leads: Shows potential LinkedIn Sales Insights leads who are like the target person and might represent the relevant stakeholders around them. On a sales scenario, this insight is crucial to identify the potential decision-makers for a deal.

  • LinkedIn Sales Insights Account control: Shows information about a LinkedIn company profile. It has four modules, which you can choose to show or hide:

    • Top Card: Shows information about the company like company name, industry, location, and more. Additionally, provides capabilities to view the related account and save it in LinkedIn Sales Insights.

    • News: Shows the latest news of this company.

    • Connections: Shows relevant connections for this company that can establish a first contact.

    • Recommended Leads: Shows the recommended potential leads in this company that might be opportunities open for the next deal.

Screenshot of integrated LinkedIn Sales Navigator inside Dynamics 365 Sales.

By combining both items into a single place, you can gain more insight into a prospect and engage with them through personalized content. When combined with other Dynamics 365 components, such as Sales Insights, you gain the ability to observe a potential buyer’s interests. This insight is derived from analyzing the content they share on LinkedIn and their active participation in discussions. By using this integration, you can discern what topics and areas engage the potential buyer. This knowledge helps tailor your approach and build more effective connections.

Now that we saw how LinkedIn can be used to identify and engage with prospects, let’s how Dynamics 365 Sales Insights can help build long lasting relationships with those customers.