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Business developers like to compare their deal pipelines to giant funnels. Into the top of the funnel, you pour your new investment opportunities. As the funnel narrows, you engage with the deals that meet your investment hurdles and have the highest probability to close.<\/p>\n
Often business development strategies focus on the top of the funnel<\/a>: the leads that a company is collecting. Most strategies have something to do with widening the funnel or the volume of leads that are going in. These deal referral leads can come from in-house lists, purchased lists, online directories, and are driven by business development activities.\u00a0 The main goal of these strategies is to invest resources to drive volume at the top of the funnel.<\/p>\n However, ask any seasoned BD professional and they will tell you of the horrors that can be created from just focusing on increasing the number of new deal leads.\u00a0 That is it creates much more work to separate the quality deal leads from the duds and shepherd the good and actionable deals through to closing.<\/p>\n Business developers are becoming increasingly aware of the drawbacks of this model and the execution bottlenecks it can create.\u00a0 The digital age has made it easier to get in front of more eyeballs, and collect more inbound leads in easy-to-use CRM databases. But so far it hasn\u2019t done as much to smooth or streamline the midpoint of the funnel.<\/p>\n I advise today\u2019s technology enabled investment professionals to focus not just on increasing the volume of new deal leads, but on the quality of the leads which is directly correlated to the quality of the referral source.\u00a0 And one popular social media platform has made it a lot easier.<\/p>\n Since its inception, LinkedIn has grown from just another place for recent grads to post resum\u00e9s to the de facto <\/em>social network for businesses. LinkedIn\u2019s ad services are prized for how precisely they can be tailored to clients by sector and demographic. They tend to turn up leads of more consistent quality than purchased data lists and online directories.<\/p>\n Now the platform is adding<\/a>\u00a0Lead Gen forms<\/a> to make the process of converting leads even smoother. This is a game-changer for business developers; by instantly populating a custom form with a LinkedIn user\u2019s information when they click an ad on the site, Lead Gen forms eliminate the need for a landing page that users need to fill out manually.<\/p>\n This helps make the process of collecting lead information as smooth as possible. As soon as a potential customer clicks an ad, their information can be collected and added to a database as a potential lead.<\/p>\n LinkedIn\u2019s ad services are prized for how specifically they can be tailored and served according to metrics like sector, location, and even position, increasing the likelihood that they\u2019ll be seen by someone with decision-making power. But no matter how well an ad is targeted, the click-through experience can often keep a business developer from capturing a prospective deal referral source\u2019s contact information and reason for inquiry which can further help screen to actionable deal flow.<\/p>\n By automatically populating a form with a visitor\u2019s data, LinkedIn has eliminated the need for a manual form. Instead, every click on a sponsored ad becomes a conversion, collecting quality information that staff can use to follow up, nurture a relationship, and eventually close a deal.<\/p>\nUsing LinkedIn to land (and keep) referral sources and deal leads<\/h3>\n
Every click a conversion<\/h3>\n