Archives: 29 June 2022

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Competitive intelligence is a vital part of any business strategy. By gathering and analysing data about competitors, companies can gain insights into market trends, potential threats, and opportunities for growth. However, gathering this data can be a complex and time-consuming process, particularly in today’s fast-paced business environment where new information is constantly emerging.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the various methods and tools that businesses can use to gather data for competitive intelligence from modern sources like social media and web scraping. We’ll also share tips and best practices for organizing and analysing the data you gather, to ensure that you’re able to extract meaningful insights that can inform your business strategy.

Whether you’re just getting started with competitive intelligence or you’re looking to refine your existing processes, this post is for you. Let’s dive in!

1. Primary vs. Secondary Data: Which Should You Use for Competitive Intelligence?
2. Social Media as a Source of Competitive Intelligence Data
3. LinkedIn for Competitive Intelligence Data Gathering
4. Lix B2B API for Scraping CI Data from LinkedIn

Primary vs. Secondary Data

When it comes to gathering data for competitive intelligence, there are two main types to consider: primary and secondary data. Primary data is information that is collected directly from the source, often through surveys, interviews, or focus groups. Secondary data, on the other hand, is information that has already been collected by others and is readily available through various sources such as databases, reports, and articles.

While both primary and secondary data can be valuable for competitive intelligence, it’s important to understand the benefits and limitations of each type. Primary data is often considered to be more reliable and specific to the research objectives, as it’s collected directly from the source. This can provide a deeper understanding of the target market, competitors, and industry trends. However, primary data can be time-consuming and expensive to collect, especially when it requires extensive resources such as surveys or focus groups.

Secondary data, on the other hand, is often more readily available and cost-effective. It can provide a broader understanding of the industry and market trends, as well as information on competitors and their strategies. However, secondary data can also be less specific and potentially outdated, as it’s not collected specifically for the research objectives. It’s important to verify the accuracy and relevance of secondary data before using it for competitive intelligence purposes.

Ultimately, the choice between primary and secondary data will depend on the specific research objectives and available resources. A combination of both types may provide the most comprehensive understanding of the target market, competitors, and industry trends.

Social Media as a Source of Competitive Intelligence Data

Social media platforms have rapidly become one of the most valuable sources of data for competitive intelligence professionals in recent. With over 3.8 billion active social media users, there is an abundance of publicly available information that can provide insights into a company’s strategy, customers, and competition.

One of the main benefits of social media as a source of competitive intelligence data is the real-time and unfiltered nature of the content. Companies and individuals often share their opinions, experiences, and reactions on social media platforms in real-time, which can provide valuable insights into their preferences and behaviors. This type of data can be particularly useful for monitoring trends and identifying emerging issues and opportunities.

Another advantage of social media as a source of competitive intelligence data is the ability to conduct sentiment analysis. By analysing the language used in social media posts, comments, and reviews, competitive intelligence professionals can gauge the sentiment around a particular brand, product, or issue. This information can be used to identify potential risks or opportunities and inform strategic decision-making.

However, social media data comes with its own set of challenges. The sheer volume of data can be overwhelming, and it can be difficult to separate relevant information from noise. Additionally, social media data may not always be accurate or reliable, as individuals may not always provide truthful information or may have biases that affect their views.

Overall, social media can be a valuable source of competitive intelligence data if used effectively. It can provide real-time insights into consumer behavior, sentiment, and emerging trends. However, it’s important to use the right tools and techniques to manage and analyze the data, and to validate the information gathered from social media with other sources.

LinkedIn for Competitive Intelligence Data Gathering

LinkedIn has become a crucial platform for gathering competitive intelligence data. With over 800 million active users, it is a treasure trove of information about companies, industries, and individuals. Companies use LinkedIn to promote their brand, products, and services, and to engage with customers and partners. Competitive intelligence professionals can leverage LinkedIn’s features and powerful search to access a wealth of information about their competitors.

One of the primary benefits of using LinkedIn for competitive intelligence is the ability to gather information about a company’s employees, such as their job titles, work history, education, and skills. By analysing the profiles of key employees, competitive intelligence professionals can gain insights into a company’s organisational structure, its strategic goals, and its competitive positioning. LinkedIn also provides a way to track changes in a company’s leadership or workforce, which can signal shifts in strategy or focus.

LinkedIn Groups are also valuable resources for competitive intelligence professionals. Groups are online communities focused on specific topics or industries, where members can share information, ask questions, and engage in discussions. By joining relevant groups, competitive intelligence professionals can gain access to a wealth of insights and opinions from industry experts, customers, and competitors. They can also use groups to monitor trends and news in their industry, and to identify emerging topics or issues.

In addition to employee and group data, LinkedIn provides a wealth of information about companies themselves. This includes company profiles, which contain detailed information about a company’s products, services, industry, and size. Competitive intelligence professionals can also monitor a company’s activity on LinkedIn, such as updates, job postings, and engagement with other users. By analysing this data, they can gain insights into a company’s marketing and communication strategies, and track its competitive positioning over time.

Lix B2B API

Web scraping is an essential tool for any professional wanting to collect competitive intelligence data on competitors and market trends. It involves using software to automatically extract data from websites and other online sources. There are many different tools and techniques available for web scraping, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

Lix’s API provides a reliable and efficient way to scrape and gather high-quality data competitive intelligence data from LinkedIn.

One the pain points of competitive intelligence is the challenge of finding accurate and up-to-date information about your competitors. With Lix’s API, users can easily access contact data, extract full LinkedIn profiles, company data, jobs (and more!) from LinkedIn, ensuring that they have the most relevant and timely information available.

Lix’s API also streamlines the data gathering process, enabling users to gather data much more efficiently than manual methods. This saves time and resources, allowing you to focus on analysis and insights, rather than data collection.

If you want to learn more about how you could utilise the Lix API for your competitive intelligence strategy – talk to us! We’re always happy to share our knowledge and guide you towards the best solution for you. Either click on the purple live chat icon in the corner, or send us an email.

Gathering competitive intelligence data is a critical component of any successful business strategy. The information collected from various sources can provide invaluable insights into market trends, customer behavior, and competitor activities.

While there are many methods for collecting this data, using web scraping tools and techniques to extract secondary can seriously streamline the process. Lix’s B2B data API is an excellent example of such a tool, offering a vast array of data points, including contact data, LinkedIn profiles, company data, jobs, and more.

By utilizing these tools and techniques, competitive intelligence professionals can stay ahead of the curve, making informed business decisions that can propel their organisation to the top of their industry. Whether it’s through web scraping, primary research, or secondary data analysis, the key to success lies in gathering and analysing the most comprehensive and accurate information possible.

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If becoming a LinkedIn Influencer is one of your goals for 2023 then you have come to the right place. Before we get started, it’s important to note that this is not a quick-fix guide to turn you into an influencer overnight. It can happen: a ultra-viral video, a huge investment in your company or a popular article about in the press can all catapult you to ‘influencer’ status rapidly; but that’s not something we can optimise or plan for!

This guide is all about putting in the work to build a community and become a leader in your space. This brings me to another important point – consider your motivations for becoming a LinkedIn influencer. If this is a vanity project, the hunt for likes and comments, it’s likely that you won’t stick at it. In a game where consistency is key, that simply won’t get you where you want to go. With that said, you can still take plenty of advice from this article that will make your LinkedIn more popular and with it, those all-important engagements.

How to become a LinkedIn Influencer in 4 steps

• Step 1: Be the expert
• Step 2: Build your community
• Step 3: Create value-driven content
• Step 4: Dedication & consistency

Step 1: Be the Expert

There are two kinds of LinkedIn influencers – the “I can post about anything and everybody listens” kind, and the “I’m an expert in my field, so listen to me!” kind. For 99% of influencers, you have to start as the latter before you’re trusted enough to become the former. Even the megastar influencers (Branson, Huffington etc.) got to those lofty positions by conquering their respective fields first.

Now, being an expert is easier said than done. It takes years of work and experience. Perhaps you already are an expert in your field – if so, you can skip this next part and head straight to building your community!

Not an expert just yet? Read on.

Some influencer guides, courses and coaches will tell you that you can shortcut this by reading and regurgitating a few key books in your chosen subject. However, this is not a school project. The aim isn’t to ingest just enough information to pass a test – your goal is to build a community who trust you and what you have to stay. Starting that process by being disingenuous is, I would argue, not the right way to do that.

Instead, read those books and ingest that knowledge – and yes, post about your learnings! – but include your community in that process. The chances are that when you get started, you don’t have a huge following anyway; so who exactly are you putting a on performance for? You’ll connect with your audience better by including them in the journey. Read the books, listen to the podcasts, post about what you’re learning and ask questions of the people reading your posts. Engage with them and learn together. That way, you’re learning how to become the expert your community needs, whilst also building the foundations of your follower base.

Step 2: Build your community

With any luck, you’ve been doing this already – whether you meant to or not! Connecting with people, engaging with their content and posting are all ways to build your community and if you’ve used LinkedIn at all then you should already have some experience with this.

Groups

When it’s time to get serious with community-building there are a number of ways to go about this. One of the more popular routes is to find an already established community and become a fixture within that group: sharing, engaging, forging relationships.

This method works well because the audience has been gathered for you! If you want to be an influencer in web3 and you find a great and active web3 group on LinkedIn then you’ve got a ready-formed group of people interested in your particular subject, ready to speak to.

The drawback to doing things this way is that you can become limited by the size of the group and the willingness of the group owners to let you take centre-stage.

If you’re in a niche that has a number of groups, my advice is to become active in a few – don’t spread yourself too thin and definitely don’t just copy and paste the same posts in each group. People will notice this and earmark you as a spammer! Tailor posts to groups, reply to people’s questions and provide value where you can.

Networking

Never underestimate the power of networking – both in-person and via LinkedIn itself. Send connection requests to people that would benefit from your content, and get to know them. Especially in the early days while you’re building a base, forging these relationships is crucial.

These people may go on to be your advocates, sharing your posts, commenting, engaging – all important stuff for improving your reach and overall growth. Having a team of individuals that have spoken to you and connected with you that are likely to support your content is a real boon in the early days.

Other Platforms

LinkedIn users, for the most part, are not confined to LinkedIn alone. They will often use Twitter, or Facebook / Instagram / TikTok (depending on the demographics of your target audience). My advice is not to chase all of these platforms at once, you’ll burn out and waste a lot of time. Pick one, or perhaps two others that have the audience you want and post, network and engage on those too. Make sure you link to one platform from the other (put your LinkedIn profile link on your Insta bio, for example) and allow one to help you build the other.

Step 3: Create value-driven content

So you’re an expert in your field, or you’re learning to become one, and you’re building your community – what do you share with them? My advice here is to begin with a value-driven mindset. Think about information that you can share that will provide real value to those consuming it. Here are three high-level bullet points to consider when creating content:

• Relevant: The first question you need to ask yourself is “what does my audience want?”. You should be on the right path here already, as you’ve already chosen your niche, but dig a little deeper. What problems are your audience facing? Is anything changing in your industry? How can you provide them with content that improves their day? If you provide genuine, relevant value they will return.

• Unique: There are a ton of other people out there vying for your audience’s attention, so be unique. That doesn’t mean you can’t cover the same topics and stories as others (but if you can find totally unique content, great) but give your unique perspective on it, or find the angle nobody else is covering. Find a way to stand out from the crowd.

• Engaging: Hopefully if you’ve got points 1 and 2 covered you’re already halfway to engaging your audience, but the work doesn’t stop there. Great content engages, enthralls and keeps the reader or viewer on the page. This includes using effective storytelling techniques such as using anecdotes, metaphors, similes and personification when describing concepts or ideas rather than just stating facts without context or meaning behind them. In other words – entertain while you inform!

Step 4: Dedication & Consistency

As I said at the start, there is no magic formula or quick fix. Even a viral sensation can be lost to the background if they never hit those heights again. Becoming a LinkedIn Influencer is going to take hard work and dedication. It’ll be hard not to give up at times but if you stick with it, I promise that you will see results.

Don’t be disheartened if your early content doesn’t get much engagement, or your group posts fall flat. You need to persevere, keep posting and always analyse your content to see where you can improve. It will take time, so keep at it!

These steps above tell you how to become a LinkedIn influencer – it’s now up to you to head out there and put in there work. You’ll need to be passionate about your topic, willing to work hard at it, and have some promotional skills. You’ll also have to be willing to build a community of connections and followers who will share and promote your content for you. And lastly, you’ll have to create a lot of value in content that people want to read.

Catering yourself toward the needs of others will only further establish your credibility as an Influencer on LinkedIn.

I hope this article has encouraged you to take the plunge into becoming a LinkedIn influencer. It’s not an easy process, but it can be done with dedication and hard work. If you follow these four steps, we guarantee that your content will get noticed by other users on the platform, which will help boost your brand and authority as well!

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What is Sales Data?

Sales data serves as the foundational intelligence that helps drive targeted customer engagement and efficient decision-making. It’s the fuel that optimises your sales pipeline, ensuring that your sales professionals can quickly zero in on high-potential leads while also customising their outreach strategies for maximum impact. In essence, the right data sets the stage for predictable, efficient sales outcomes.

In this blog, we’ll delve into finding and leveraging B2B data for better sales, explain the different types of sales data, and provide information on how you can tap into LinkedIn’s treasure-trove of sales data and even pipe it directly to your own apps and tools via the Lix LinkedIn API.

Types of Sales Data

As salespeople, we’re already use data to inform our decisions, even if we’re not aware of it. SDRs and BDRs understand who their prospects are, what roles they perform and at which kinds of companies. Sales leaders make decisions based on market changes and customer preferences. Data underpins all of these decisions.

Demographic Sales Data

Demos means “the people,” and graphy means “writing about or recording something” — so demography literally means “writing about the people.” Demographic data then, is anything related directly to prospects. The actual human beings at the other end of your outreach! For sales, this mainly consists of geographical data, names, email addresses, locations, employment histories, and skills. This data helps to adapt offers and messaging to specific target groups, making it the basis for B2B prospecting. You can usually find and extract the most up-to-date records of demographic data via a prospect’s LinkedIn profile.

Firmographic Sales Data

Firmographic data refers to the ‘demographics of organisations’; it allows companies to be segmented into defined groups for your SDRs to target. This type of data includes company name, location, industry, number of employees and so on. Key data for figuring out messaging, price points and much more.

Chronographic Sales Data

Another interesting type of sales data, is Chronographic data. This also known as sales trigger data, and it refers to events and changes that occur over time. These changes can lead to an opening to engage with a new prospect or to revisit a prospect that went cold. Chronographic sales data includes company location moves, prospects leaving or joining a job, company acquisition, company funding, hiring trends, and company IPOs. A good source for this information is a company’s social media activity – for B2B, LinkedIn posts are a great option.

How to Find Sales Data?

If your sales team has adopted a data-driven approach, collecting reliable, high quality data in real-time is a must. Data can be collected manually from public sources such as social media profiles, websites, and online articles such as blogs. However, for efficient and reliable data, it’s best to invest in a reputable B2B data provider.

Lix’s LinkedIn API allows you to tap into LinkedIn’s unparalleled store of business data, integrating real-time LinkedIn data into your CRM systems, internal and external apps or other sales tools. Say farewell to old spreadsheets and manual updates. Instantly pull accurate data on potential leads, keeping your sales team one step ahead of the competition.

Why LinkedIn Data?

In short, because LinkedIn is the best store of up-to-date B2B data anywhere on the web. The difference between LinkedIn and any other source of data is not only its scale (over 800 million users & 30m companies) but the fact that it is updated so regularly by the users themselves. Rather than relying on company websites, that are updated as and when marketing or management teams decide, LinkedIn rewards users for providing data about themselves and their companies as events happen. Other providers of B2B data source their information from places like job boards or data lists from brokers. This information goes stale, fast. We use LinkedIn, because it has the cleanest and freshest data and that is exactly what you need to make better decisions.

High-Volume Data Export

Need a lot of data? No problem. The Lix API‘s robust high-volume data export capabilities mean you can retrieve enormous sets of valuable information from LinkedIn profiles. Send up to 10,000 requests per day with no loss of performance. Integrate this data directly into your tools to better understand your target market, tweak your sales tactics, and drive results at scale.

Laser-focused outreach with “Nearest Decision Maker”

One of our most powerful features is the “Nearest Decision Maker” tool. This enables you to identify who holds the purchasing power within a target organisation. It answers the pivotal question: who is the key decision-maker that you need to engage? By targeting your outreach towards individuals who have the authority to make purchases, you enhance efficiency and increase the chances of closing deals.

Seamless Software Integration

Whether you want to integrate with your CRM software, specialised sales analytics platforms, or even your own internal and external apps, the Lix LinkedIn API ensures smooth and straightforward incorporation. The result is a unified, efficient, and tremendously powerful sales operation that capitalises on real-time data and insights.

Benefits That Transform Sales Operations

Here’s a rundown of the game-changing advantages you’ll gain with Lix’s LinkedIn API:

• Time-Efficiency: Automate data retrieval tasks that previously required manual labor, allowing your sales team to focus on what they do best: selling.
• Precision Targeting: Use accurate, real-time data to identify the best leads and decision-makers, significantly improving your targeting accuracy.
• Enhanced Analytics: Import large volumes of data seamlessly into your analytics tools, providing a richer, more accurate view of market trends and customer behaviors.
• Direct Access to Decision-Makers: Utilise the “Nearest Decision Maker” feature to bypass gatekeepers and speak directly to those who have the authority to seal the deal.

The Lix LinkedIn API offers more than just features; it provides a comprehensive solution aimed at propelling your sales processes into the future. By employing real-time data, high-volume export capabilities, seamless integration options, and transformative tools like “Nearest Decision Maker,” you’ll be well-equipped to tackle the modern challenges of sales with a data-driven approach.

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TLDR: We can integrate with your Bullhorn CRM to update all your contacts and eliminate stale data! Interested? Get in touch.

Recruitment is all about relationships. Forging good relationships with clients and candidates alike is what sets apart good and great recruiters. In order to maintain those relationships, it’s important to have accurate and up-to-date customer information at your fingertips.

That’s why we use CRMs – Customer Relationship Management! But even the best CRM system can fall short if the data it contains is stale or out-of-date. It is common for data in a CRM system to become outdated or “stale” over time, especially if the system is not being actively maintained and updated. According to the ONS, every 3 years, 27% of the workforce change jobs – whether via promotion, location or career change. That’s a big chunk on your relationships to lose touch with. Therefore it is important for businesses to regularly review and update their CRM data to ensure that it remains accurate and useful. This can help them to maintain effective communication with their clients and stay up-to-date on important changes within their organization or industry.

This is where our product comes in. Lix‘s real-time data extraction from LinkedIn integrates with you Bullhorn CRM, meaning you can avoid data decay and keep your CRM system current and relevant. This can be done periodically, updating your CRM at regular intervals, to ensure that you are not losing those valuable relationships.

Lix seamlessly integrates with your existing Bullhorn CRM system and the update process is done for you. This means that you can get your CRM to full health with minimal setup or configuration required.

If you’re interested in refreshing your CRM and bringing those stale contacts back to life – please get in touch. We’d be happy to discuss and provide you with a quote.

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Looking for a cold email sequence template you can start using right away? We’ve got you covered!

Are you looking for ways to effectively reach out to potential clients or partners through cold emailing? A well-crafted sequence of emails can be a powerful tool for generating leads and closing deals, but it can be difficult to know where to start. In this blog post, we will provide a template for a sequence of cold emails, including follow-up emails and the length of time between them.

The first email in your sequence should introduce yourself and your company, and explain how your products/services can benefit the recipient’s business. Be specific and provide proof points to support your claims.

After waiting 3-5 days, send a first follow-up email. This email should remind the recipient of your initial message and offer to answer any questions they may have.

If you don’t receive a response after another 7-10 days, send a second and final follow-up email. This email should reiterate the potential benefits of working together, but also let the recipient know that you will respect their decision if they are not interested and will not contact them again.

By following this template, you can ensure that your cold emails are professional, courteous, and effective. Good luck!

Cold Email Sequence Template:

1. First email

Subject: [Name], let’s discuss how we can work together

Body:

Hello [Name],

I hope this email finds you well. I am reaching out to you because I believe my company’s [Product/Service] could greatly benefit your business.

[Insert specific details or benefits about how your product/service can help their business]

I would love the opportunity to discuss this further and see if a partnership makes sense. Could we schedule a call to discuss?

Best,

[Your Name]

2. First follow-up (sent after 3-5 days)

Subject: [Name], following up on my previous email

Body:

Hi [Name],

I wanted to follow up on the email I sent a few days ago about how our [Product/Service] could benefit your business.

I understand that you may be busy and may not have had a chance to read my previous email. I just wanted to remind you of the potential benefits of working together and offer to answer any questions you may have.

Please let me know if you would be interested in discussing further.

Best regards,

[Your Name]

3. Second follow-up (sent after 7-10 days):

Subject: [Name], one last follow-up before I move on

Body:

Hello [Name],

I wanted to reach out one last time to see if you would be interested in discussing how our [Product/Service] could benefit your business.

I understand that you may be considering other options, but I just wanted to remind you of the potential benefits of working together and offer to answer any questions you may have.

If you are not interested, no problem. I will respect your decision and won’t contact you again.

Best, [Your Name]

Feel free to play around with the email content – please check out our Cold Emailing Complete Guide for more opening email templates and a the low-down on how to write them from scratch!

If you’re about to start a cold email campaign, give Lix a try: we offer 50 free valid B2B emails every single month.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Sales teams are, by their nature, lead-hungry. They want more, high-quality leads and they want them now. They need to keep their pipeline full, but with so many different sources of leads, it’s important to know which ones are worth pursuing and to keep them organised. That’s where lead management comes in. Lead management is the process of identifying, prioritising and distributing sales leads to increase your sales. An effective lead management system can help you prioritise, allocate and track a lead – from a marketing campaign to close.

Lead management is the process of prioritising, distributing and tracking leads to increase your sales.

If your company receives inbound or marketing-qualified leads, you will know that before anyone can contact this lead and begin the sales journey there is work to be done. Someone must decide which leads are worth pursuing, divide the leads up between the sales team (whether this is done by industry, geography, size etc.). Once the lead has been distributed to a salesperson, the journey of this lead through your sales funnel must be tracked, to ensure no good lead slips through the net. This is an important, but time-consuming process.

But this is 2023! Important, but time-consuming processes are on the path to become important, but automated processes. Sales intelligence and salestech in general is advancing a rapid pace and steadily, these problems are being solved.

Isn’t this my CRM’s job?

Some CRM’s handle a portion of the lead management journey, but not all. CRMs such as Hubspot and Salesflare are great at tracking a lead from the moment it has been assigned and added to the CRM, but as we know – there is work to be done before we reach that stage!

Ideally, you want to use as few tools as possible to get the job done. The fewer tools, the less of your budget they take up and the less training you have to do to get your staff up to speed. So, if you have a great CRM that handles most of this for you – excellent. The only gap you need to fill is the pre-CRM steps of prioritising and distributing those leads efficiently.

Strike while the iron is hot: Prioritise leads in real-time

Inbound leads are much beloved by salespeople, because they show intent. If someone has responded to a marketing campaign, signed up for your mailing or entered their details into a ‘contact us’ form on your website, it’s a clear sign that they are interested in your product. We all get way too many emails and interruptions on daily basis, so to have a potential lead actively request contact from a company is very valuable thing.

The last thing you want to do, is wait for that buying intent to wane. The sooner you can prioritise and allocate that lead to the right person, the better. That’s where a tool like LookC Ping steps in.

LookC Ping works with your web forms and office communications (eg. Slack, Teams) to ‘ping’ you with a notification packed with important identifying information every time a new lead comes in. This includes information for the individual’s company such as founding date, industry, company size, location and estimated revenue. All important indicators of a lead’s importance, as well as providing all the information you need to correctly allocate that lead.

For example, if a Mr William Gates asked to be contacted via the form on your site, LookC Ping would notify you via Slack or Teams, letting you know that: William Gates (bill@microsoft.com) the Founder of Microsoft, a Tech company founded in 1975, based in Washington, with 233k employees and an estimated revenue of $203b; was interested in hearing from you.

Were this to come true – I’m sure you’d like to know about it within seconds, rather than waiting for the marketing team to discover it later and then pass it over!

Ping allows you to act on hot leads instantly, to prioritise leads at a glance and is super easy to install and get up-and-running. If your company receives inbound leads, mail-list sign ups or any other kind of web form interactions from customers – get Ping!

Tracking the lead journey

Once your lead has been prioritised and allocated to the correct salesperson, what happens next? In many organisations, things get a little cloudy at this point. Usually, the salesperson adds the lead to their CRM. At the very least, there is now a record of the individual containing their contact details (which will go stale over time!) and the nature of their enquiry. If you’re not using a tool like Ping, the information that you enter here may be scant, depending on the way the lead came in and how much data was collected during this process.

A good CRM will allow a manager, founder or even a whole team to monitor the progress of that lead and to ensure that they are being guided towards a deal. Let’s think back to our enquiry from a certain Mr. Gates – you wouldn’t want this lead’s journey to go dark and slip through the net.

If your CRM doesn’t do this, my recommendations are Salesflare and Hubspot. Both perform particularly well in user ratings and reviews for this particular area of CRM and have a pedigree within the industry. If you’re not looking to change CRM (understandably it is a quite a task to undertake) then think about ways to shine a light on the on the lead journey after it enters the CRM. This may involve more detailed reporting from your sales team, for example.

Lead management software is designed to make it easier for sales teams to nurture leads and convert them into customers

It’s important to keep track of the lead’s journey from marketing campaign to close. There are many steps in this process, and it can get confusing if you’re not using a tool that helps you manage your leads effectively. Lead management software allows you to capture prospects’ contact information, convert them into leads, track their progress through your sales funnel, and measure their engagement with your brand throughout this journey.

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If you need to know how to find the current or former employees of any company on LinkedIn, look no further. You can either follow the instructions below, or watch our video guide!

LinkedIn makes it easy to find current or former employees of a company, due to their powerful search filters. If you want to learn more about how to make the most of the LinkedIn search – we have a blog for that too! Let’s get into it…

Contents

• How to Find Current Employees of a Company on LinkedIn
• How to Find Past Employees of a Company on LinkedIn

How to Find Current Employees on LinkedIn

This is a really easy method for finding the current employees of any company. It involves finding the company page on LinkedIn and opening up the employee list.

Step 1. Find the Company’s LinkedIn page.

• You can search for the company’s LinkedIn page by going to LinkedIn and typing the company’s name in the search bar

Click on the “X employees” link in the company bio

• This will show you all the current employees at this company.

Filter your Results

LinkedIn will show a maximum of 1,000 connections in this view. That’s because it has a page limit of 100 pages, with 10 results per page. This can be an issue if the company in question has more than 1,000 employees! If that’s the case, you will need to break down the results into smaller batches using the powerful LinkedIn search filters at the top of the page

Exporting the Results

Sometimes, simply viewing someone’s connections within LinkedIn isn’t quite enough. You may want that data in a spreadsheet in order to further filter or examine. Perhaps you’re searching these connections in order to generate some leads… In either case, you need a tool (like Lix!) to export that data and find those emails.

Exporting connections with Lix is super simple. Once you have an account (sign up for free & get 1,000 rows of data and 50 valid emails every month!) and have added our extension to your browser, you simply follow the steps above and when you’re on the results page your Lix extension will begin to glow.C Choose your export options, hit the LIX IT button and voila!

How to Find Past Employees of a Company on LinkedIn

This method is slightly different, but just as easy! Simply perform a People search on LinkedIn, hit the ‘all filters’ tab and then scroll down to ‘past company’. Input the company of choice and there you have it, the previous employees of any company on LinkedIn.

Watch our video guide:

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Ever wondered how to see someone’s connections on LinkedIn? Wonder no more!

Note: In order to see someone’s connections on LinkedIn, you must be connected to them. This is and has always been the rule with LinkedIn. It’s designed this way to encourage you to connect and network. There is a risky workaround for this, but we don’t advise it!

• Finding someone’s connections
• Exporting connections
• Workaround

How to see someone’s connections on LinkedIn

Route one is to go to the profile of the person you want to view and click the ‘connections’ link in their bio:

This will present you with a list of the individual’s connections in the standard LinkedIn search view. You can also reach this point by performing a LinkedIn search and filtering for ‘connections of’. It’s just a slightly longer way journey to get to the same point!

The page will look something like this:

LinkedIn will show a maximum of 1,000 connections in this view. That’s because it has a page limit of 100 pages, with 10 results per page. This can be an issue if the person in question has more than 1,000 connections! If that’s the case, you will need to break down the results into smaller batches using the powerful LinkedIn search filters at the top of the page.

How to Export Someone’s Connections (and even find their email address!)

Sometimes, simply viewing someone’s connections within LinkedIn isn’t quite enough. You may want that data in a spreadsheet in order to further filter or examine. Perhaps you’re searching these connections in order to generate some leads… In either case, you need a tool (like Lix!) to export that data and find those emails.

Exporting connections with Lix is super simple. Once you have an account (sign up for free & get 1,000 rows of data and 50 valid emails every month!) and have added our extension to your browser, you simply follow the steps above and when you’re on the results page your Lix extension will begin to glow:

Click it and you will see the Lix toolbar drop down, from here you simply select your export options – Excel or CSV, number of profiles, email or no emails – and hit the LIX IT! button. Easy peasy!

If there are more than 1,000 connections in the search and you need to filter, select the ‘create new project‘ option on the toolbar. This will allow you to store all the filtered exports into one, de-duplicated project file.

Workaround for non-connections (not advised – risky!)

Of course the easiest way to get around not being connected, is to connect with that person! If this isn’t possible for some reason (perhaps they won’t accept, or they’re a competitor) you have two options. The first is tough, but less risky. The second is very risky and we do not advise you take this option.

Option 1: Tough, but less risky

You can see if you have a connection in common, ask them if they’d be willing to find / export the data for you and send them this blog explaining how to do it. This isn’t breaking any rules, the data is still public data, you’re just working around the lack of connection. The hard part is finding someone willing to do this for you.

Option 2: High risk, not advised

If option 1 isn’t possible, then it could theoretically be possible for you to create a fictitious LinkedIn account and connect with this particular user from said account. This is risky and it could result in a ban from LinkedIn – certainly for the fake profile. LinkedIn can spot suspicious activity but there is some leeway with new accounts so if you were to do this (again, we don’t advise it) then it would be wise to get the data ASAP before the account is closed. Perhaps using a VPN would be a good idea too.

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There are a number of reasons you might need to convert Sales Navigator URLs to LinkedIn URLs. Thankfully, there are a number of ways to do it!

The first method involves manually copying and pasting the bit of the URL you need. It works better when you have a small number of URLs to convert. The second method uses an Excel / Google Sheets equation. This is a great option for when you already have a large list of URLs to convert. The third method converts Sales Navigator URLs to LinkedIn URLs automatically, as you export from sales nav – using Lix! Skip to the method that suits your needs.

1. Manual URL Conversion
2. Excel / Google Sheets Equation
3. Automatic conversion during export

Manual URL Conversion

This is a super-simple and quick way to get the standard LinkedIn URL from the Sales Nav version. Essentially, it’s just removing a small section of the Sales Navigator URL and copy & pasting it into the standard format.

1. Select and copy everything that comes after lead/ and before the first comma:

2. Paste this on the end of the standard LinkedIn profile URL format www.linkedin/com/in/

You can also replace sales/lead with in and delete everything after the comma – both methods give the same result!

If you’re converting a handful of profiles, this process is great… What happens when you have hundreds (or thousands!) of Sales Navigator URLs to convert?

Excel / Google Sheets Equation

If you have a list of Sales Navigator URLs you need to convert LinkedIn URLs en masse, this is the solution for you.

Here is the formula:

=LEFT(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"<https://www.linkedin.com/sales/lead/","https://www.linkedin.com/in/"),SEARCH(",",SUBSTITUTE(A1,"https://www.linkedin.com/sales/lead/","https://www.linkedin.com/in/")>)-1)

1. Open up your file with the Sales Nav URLs and paste the formula in the next column. Be sure to change the value ‘A1’ in the formula to correspond with the cell of the first URL to convert.

2. Click the square in the bottom-right corner of the cell and drag all the way to the bottom of the list – this will apply the formula to the correct cells on the left!

3. Voila! A list of converted Sales Navigator URLs to LinkedIn URLs

Automatic Conversion During Export

If you’re regularly converting Sales Navigator URLs to the standard LinkedIn format, it’s probably easier to use a tool that does it for you! When you export data from Sales Nav using Lix, we automatically apply a formula like the one above, so that your spreadsheet comes with both Sales Nav and standard format LinkedIn URLs.

It looks like this:

You can watch a short video on how to export Sales Navigator data using Lix:

You can export 1,000 rows of Sales Navigator data every single month for free, on Lix’s starter plan. It also includes 50 valid emails and 50 profile enrichments.

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What is Data Decay?

Data decay refers to the gradual deterioration of data quality within a database. This can be especially damaging in sales and marketing databases. Sales and marketing efforts require accurate contact information for leads, along with up-to-date information on their organisations, employees, branch locations, and so on. When data decays from inaccuracies, outdated information, or aging out, B2B companies can see a decline in their overall performance, as well as in sales and marketing.

A simple example of perfectly good data decaying over time might be a website that includes information about movies that are currently playing in local cinemas and their showtimes. When those showtimes change without any updates being made to the database, the website will feature incorrect or outdated information.

Apply this to your own CRM and it’s not hard to see how data decay could be negatively impacting your efforts to close new deals. Every time an individual changes jobs, gains promotion, switches industries and updates contact details, the data in your CRM decays. This can present a big problem, especially for those of us with large databases. According to the ONS, every year 9% of people change jobs – that adds up to a 27% workforce shift every 3 years. Even for a modest-sized CRM with 5,000 entries will have 1,350 erroneous entries every 3 years.

No wonder then, that a recent study shows that data quality remains among companies’ top priorities. Among the companies that decreased their investment in data: 35% saw their overall performance decline; 75% saw a decline in sales and marketing performance; and 94% of those companies said that their sales and marketing performance improved after increasing their investment in data.

How can I avoid data decay in my CRM?

The simple answer is – stay on top of updating your database! This can be done manually, although that is not advised. Updating 5,000 records, even at a constant pace of 5 minutes per entry, would take 17 days without a break! Also, manual data entry is more susceptible to mistakes. Luckily, database enrichment can now be automated. Here at Lix, we offer a product called ReTrace, that plugs into your CRM and updates and enriches the entries with fresh B2B data. If you’re interested in learning more, get in touch.

There are some added bonuses to keeping your data fresh, too. An individual switching roles or being promoted can be a great opportunity to close a new deal. A prospect that knows you and your product, now in a buying-role at a new firm is a hot lead! Retrace CRM enrichment is not just about refreshing what you have, it also uncovers the potential deals hidden in your data.

It’s important to keep track of your data so that it doesn’t become stale, or corrupted over time. This will ensure that your information remains accurate and up-to-date and leads are never lost. If you’re looking for some help with this task or another project, please reach out! We’d be happy to assist you with any questions or concerns related to data decay.