Time flies and I’m guessing that it has been close to 10 years since LinkedIn decided to close its access doors to most third-party applications including Nimble CRM.
Shortly thereafter, they did authorize limited access to a few enterprise level CRMs providing that you have the right LinkedIn premium account. What about smaller companies and solopreneurs with budgets to match?
Nimble CRM is a fully featured platform at an affordable price. They have also introduced a number of innovative features that can be leveraged to increase your prospecting effectiveness and this includes on LinkedIn and other social networks. Here’s how!
The Goal
Discover potential opportunities on LinkedIn and then manage those in Nimble CRM. Let’s take a look at our …
Nimble Toolkit
Main Web App
Contact Records
Since we are talking about LinkedIn, you might be inclined to try to manage those relationships in LinkedIn. The challenge is that, try as they might to convince you otherwise, LinkedIn is not a CRM and a CRM is built specifically to manage relationships and to take those from LinkedIn to real-life.
The contact record is the heart of any CRM. All activities and notes should be housed in these records so that you don’t have to go searching for this information either in document folders or on multiple web platforms.
You might direct message connections on LinkedIn, you might monitor your news feed to discover opportunities, but with the miracle of copy and paste, or even image clipping, this information can be, and should be, added to contact records in Nimble. No, we can’t directly integrate with LinkedIn, but we can work around that.
Workflows/Automations & Pipelines
Workflows, and these are user defined, represent a process. For our purposes, let’s use a Lead Qualification Workflow. New leads are brought in and they go through defined stages in order to qualify them. Once qualified, they could be turned into a potential deal and placed in a Sales Pipeline.
Automations can also be built into workflows. You define the trigger, for example moving to the 3rd stage, and then you create an action. Actions include …
- Send an email message
- Create a task or note
- Assign a tag
- Add to a message sequence
Group Email Messaging
Using templates that you create in Nimble, you can send a personalized email to any group of contacts. Same email, different personalization by recipient. Unlike most bulk mailers, ALL Nimble email messages are sent individually via your provider. This also means that each message will be attached to the appropriate contact record.
Automated Email Message Sequencing
Message sequencing allows you to create a series of emails, to be sent on a specific schedule, to an individual or any group of contacts. There are sophisticated options to test whether a contact receives the next message or exits the sequence successfully or unsuccessfully. You can even add successful contacts directly to a workflow for further follow up.
LinkedIn (and other social networks) Profile Discovery
Whenever a new contact record is added to Nimble, four things will happen immediately …
- Nimble will conduct a social profile search, add any matches to the record, or suggest possible matches if a match cannot be confirmed.
- Create a summary of that individual or company based on web discovery.
- Suggest additional contact record info based on web discovery.
- Conduct a previous 90 day email and calendar search and add those entries to the record. Nimble offers two-way email and calendar integration with Google and MS 365. Contact syncing options are also available with these services.
Email Finder
For those records where you have not determined an email address, Nimble can attempt to discover one. You will need at least a company name, but a domain URL will consistently yield better results.
Nimble Prospector (Browser based, including Gmail & Outlook, Extension)
Prospector is a browser extension that allows you to access your Nimble contact database from anywhere on the web including social platforms like LinkedIn. Not only can you look up existing Nimble contacts, you can also edit them and/or create any of the activities that are available in the main web app.
Additionally, you can create new Nimble contacts while visiting these other sites. Create them, edit them, add notes, create tasks, add them to your workflow for follow-up, or even add them to a predefined email message sequence to nurture interest. Prospector is also available in Gmail, Outlook, and MS Teams.
Nimble Mobile App
Like Prospector, Nimble’s mobile apps will allow you to perform any contact related activities that you wish and while you are on the go.
A Suggested LinkedIn Prospecting Process
Discover, evaluate, document, engage, nurture and in this order.
Discover
By monitoring your news feed and by using LinkedIn’s search tools, you should be able to find potential opportunities and those opportunities will be associated with individual LinkedIn profiles.
Evaluate
Take a good hard look at their LinkedIn profile and do not do this anonymously. You want them to know that you looked at their profile. This is the first step toward creating name recognition and this will be critical if, and when, you wish to connect.
Pay attention to who they are, what they do, what they talk about, and who they talk to. If they are a 2nd degree connection, you can also see your shared first degree connections.
You are also looking for things that you might have in common. Very few people will take the time to do this, but these efforts, used appropriately will yield dramatic results! Are they potentially a good match for your services? Or maybe they might provide an avenue to reach others who are? If yes, proceed to the next step.
Document
From their full profile page, deploy Nimble Prospector. You will be given an option to create and edit a new contact record in Nimble. You will want to find and fill out as much information as you can including …
- Full name
- Title
- Company name and website address
- Email and phone number if displayed
Keep in mind that anything found on their profile can be copied from LinkedIn and pasted into Nimble. For example, copy and paste their “About” info into a note. Once you have documented as much as you can from their profile page, here are some things that you might do next (without leaving Prospector) …
- Create a task for follow up
- Add a tag or tags (contact groups in Nimble)
- Add then to your Lead Qualification Workflow
From the full web app, discover additional contact info such as their email address.
Engage
You will most like begin the engagement process on LinkedIn. As you do this, you can also register these engagements as completed tasks, or even in a journal note, on Nimble via Prospector. In general order …
- Follow
- Like
- Repost
- Comment
- Connect
You are performing what I refer to as progressive engagement. Once again, you are building name recognition. This is even more critical due to another recent change in LinkedIn. You used to be able to personalize unlimited invitations to connect. Now, with free accounts, you are limited to 5 per month. Thanks, LinkedIn:(
Once you are connected, you will have the ability to direct message them on LinkedIn. You can manually register these in Nimble, but I would rather take my engagement efforts to email, phone, and Zoom. As a connection, this individual may be willing to share this information with you.
Nurture
There are two stages to nurturing. Stage #1 follows right after the connection. The last thing you want to do is to reward your new connection by immediately asking for their business. While there could be many euphemisms and analogies for this, the most popular as of late is pitch-slapping. I like it:)
Creating relationships on LinkedIn is no different than dating so … take it slow. Get to know the person before you attempt to put a ring on their finger. Nimble has several tools, including their Stay in Touch Reminders, to assist you in this process.
Have fun!
Are you thinking about a CRM? If you would like to explore whether or not Nimble CRM might be right for you, please book a free 30-minute Zoom consultation with me by going to my calendar.
To learn more about our Nimble training and implementation services, please visit our Nimble CRM training services page. Thank you!
Are you thinking about leveraging AI for more effective LinkedIn prospecting, or perhaps using advanced marketing in your business, or are you looking at improving your managed I.T. services including security, workflow, and telephony? With so many people talking about these things, it’s tough to figure out who to talk to.
My area of expertise is Nimble CRM (specifically sales), however, I would be happy to connect you to an AI, managed services, or marketing professional who I know and trust. Please reach out to me at craig@adaptive-business.com for an introduction!
Craig M. Jamieson
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