7 lists of prospects you should have

I’m writing this at the start of September, when most people have returned from summer holidays and agencies have high expectations for the next 3-4 months.

You’re hoping for an influx of new business, as brands are approaching their peak trading periods; maybe you’re planning additional marketing activity to try and make sure that happens; and, perhaps, you’re open to recruiting new team members for when that work lands.

The question I ask my clients - and the question I want you to ask yourself - is: who?

I would love to know you’ve got a list.

In fact, I’d love to know you’ve got several.

I’d love to know that you’ve got them already but, if not, there’s no time like the present.

Here are 7 lists I think you should have:

1. A list of all your clients and lapsed clients on LinkedIn Sales navigator (or in custom lists on vanilla LinkedIn…I’ll explain how to do that at the bottom of this article, in case it’s not something you’ve done before). You shouldn’t miss an update from any of them and you want to be the first to help. You want the early warning when they’re asking who knows an agency. You want to make sure that you and your team are amplifying the things they’re sharing (on the odd occasion that they actually do). You want to use the intelligence in the platform to map out their organisations and work out who else you need to know. You want to see who else is being hired at that organisation, so you know what problems or opportunities might be coming down the pipe as a result.
2. An ever-growing list of suspects: you should have an ICP (firmographic, demographic, and potentially psychographic, information describes what an ideal client is for you. I’ve written about ICPs here) and you should have a list, in your CRM (or equivalent contact database…and ideally on LinkedIn) of all the relevant individuals at all the companies that you think match your vision of an “ideal” client. You want to know how many there are. You want to know where they are, and what they have in common. You obviously want to watch for the signals that they’re looking for a new agency. You want to be proactively talking to all of them.
3. A full list of MQLs: everyone who has attended one of your events, or downloaded a whitepaper, or engaged with your marketing to the degree that they’ve given you their email address. I like to have different lists for each event and/or campaign in LinkedIn Sales Navigator and I’ll want to be able to segment that list by campaign/event in a CRM. I want to see how many touchpoints we’ve had and what those touchpoints were. I want to be able to sort that list by how many touchpoints we’ve had and what they were.
4. A list of all potential event attendees: if I run events, I want to look at my lists of attendees to previous events; map shipping addresses; and work out how far people tend to come for my stuff (more relevant if you’re not in Manchester, London, or perhaps Leeds, where most attendees are usually already in the city); then, I want to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator and/or my suspects list to work out who else is close enough to attend, so I can be much more proactive when promoting my event. The LinkedIn feed is now extremely unreliable for promoting events (often surfacing posts after they’ve happened and not a moment sooner), so we need to contact people directly. Maybe we want to send a save the date; maybe we want to send a survey to understand what would make them come (who do you want to see speaking/what topics etc.?) - ultimately, I want to be able to say “let’s do that next roundtable/seminar in [location]...let me just grab my list of all the people I think might attend.”
5. A list of co-marketing targets: if you do run events, I would include potential speakers on this list; if you have a podcast, then potential guests; if you interview people for your YouTube channel or blog, potential interviewees. I don’t think you need separate lists (unless you’re large and sophisticated enough, with a big enough marketing team, to have different audiences for these things), but you want to keep the output consistent and nothing slows you down like having “find a speaker” still on your to-do list…ideally, you want everyone lined up for the next several months. Find these people by browsing the lists of speakers at other events; guests on other podcasts; interviewees in major publications; and generally just using your suspect list because you want to flatter people and have an excuse to talk.
6. A list of all your current employees on LinkedIn (Sales Navigator): either a Sales Nav list; a custom list; or just alerts will work. If your employees are sharing on LinkedIn, you want to amplify them and make sure that everyone sees what a good time they’re having at your place/how smart they are and how great they’d be to work with. If you have ever lamented how little your team posts on social media, ask yourself how disciplined you are when it comes to engaging with the things they do share. Show you appreciate it and you’ll get more of it.
7. A list of potential recruits: either on LinkedIn; in a separate CRM pipeline; in another database; or all of the above…if you want people in the office, then you should know everyone in commuting distance, especially if you’re not in a major city. When we started Rise at Seven in Sheffield, within a month or two we’d arranged a drink with all the people we knew there. We’d have a chat with someone we knew from Twitter and tell them “we don’t have a job for you right now but we’re building [this thing], would you be interested if we created a role for you further down the line?” If you’ve ever felt like there isn’t a big pool of talent in your location, can you at least say you know 100% of the people who are there? Bonus points if you can segment this list by people you have already interviewed and would be a good fit, just not for the job you interviewed them for/not at the time/they weren’t as good as someone else. You’ll maintain and further your culture this way (and save on recruitment fees).
8. BONUS - cold lists that you buy: you can still buy lists e.g. maybe you specialise in a certain CMS, like Shopify…you can buy a list of all the websites using Shopify from BuiltWith. Lots of lists are available from lots of brokers and if you don’t have time to sort through LinkedIn Sales Navigator, I’d say go for it.

Do let me know if you have lists that I’ve missed!

How to create a custom list/feed on LinkedIn

1. Go to “My network”
2. Click “Connections”
3. Click “Search with filters”
4. Change the filter from “People” to “Posts”
5. Sort by latest
6. Add the people whose content you want to see
7. Save the page as a bookmark

Voila! A LinkedIn feed showing only the people you want to see, without any of the grifters!