Interview: Using LinkedIn To Approach IT Buyers With Matt Reuter

Matt Reuter is leading his SDR team at GTT to book tons of meetings with IT buyers.

MORGAN INGRAM

Matt Reuter is leading his SDR team at GTT to book tons of meetings with IT buyers. We know the IT space can be difficult to sell into, especially if you want to use social media. IT buyers seem to have less social media activity compared to other industries, which means it’s harder to use social to engage and get connected. Matt has some killer ideas on how to engage with IT buyers and get their attention with super personalized messaging and content so his reps stand out and get the buyer’s attention.

Here’s Matt’s secret sauce for talking to IT buyers on LinkedIn…

LinkedIn Prospecting

Morgan: So as we know, LinkedIn can be a difficult place to prospect if you talk to IT buyers. It’s a place where not everyone has activity and a filled out profile, that kinda stuff. So how are you using it to approach IT buyers?

Matt: I think it’s more along the lines of, or at least what I hear from my SDRs is, Hey, these people aren’t on LinkedIn. They’re not actively changing things on LinkedIn. It’s not an effective tool for that as it’s kinda personal. It’s in this little zone where it’s not quite Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, but it’s more of a professional zone. And so there’s a level of comfort, going after that person on more of an intimate, social level.

So, especially in the IT field, we leverage LinkedIn because we’re going after people who have jobs that require them to keep people from clicking links and teaching people how not to go down the dodgy alleys of the internet. When we send them content or send them videos through email, a lot of time they might hit spam filters or are completely blocked out to where none of those links even make it to their inbox. And if they do, they’re not going to click it because they don’t know you.

So my team leverages a LinkedIn in that aspect because LinkedIn, if you notice when you click on a link, it doesn’t take you to an external site. It keeps you on the platform. So from security standpoint, it’s a little bit more secure. LinkedIn is the tool that every single it decision maker has their cell phone on them. I mean that’s the world that we live in now and that’s a form of communication that’s gonna go right to their phone every time and it’s a different notification.

It’s not a voicemail or an email which they get all day. It’s something else and it’s something that they’re checking on the weekends and they’re checking in their spare time.

Standing Out In The LinkedIn Inbox

Morgan: So how are you making sure you get connected and send a message that really engages that person?

Matt: So it can be three different things. You can screen share their profile. That’s the easiest way to get them to click it because you can tell it’s personal and that you just created the content. You can look at their website. You know, a big thing for GGT is that we serve multinational clients, people that are global, large organizations. And so what’s kind of our main bread and butter is the number of locations. And so you can pull out the information that helps us know they’re a good fit for us on that.

We can go to their website, pull that list up, go through location by location, how we could help. But on the flip side, we also use our website and we direct them through the website. You know, a lot of times if you send them a website link and say, Hey, check out our website, that link gets lost and they don’t. But if you do a video showing them your website, and they watched that video, then you’ve navigated them through your website. So it’s a good way to drive traffic there.

So the video is a personalized video to them. If I’m prospecting you and I look at your profile, Hey Lauren or Morgan and I notice that we have a similar background. You’ve been through this. Maybe we mentioned something that you’re here in Dallas with me and we talk about the new Cowboys head coach and how that new season’s going to look and something like that. Just to break open the conversation and then just say, I appreciate you connecting with me. This is what I’m looking forward to speaking to you about the future.

LinkedIn is not an immediate meeting. It’s not a tool that you use to immediately get a meeting, that’s the phone. LinkedIn is a slow process. It’s building a relationship, getting this person comfortable with talking to me before you’re asking for the close. So that’s how we use it.

Choosing the medium to use in outreach

Morgan: LinkedIn is where you want to be. And I schedule the majority of my meetings through LinkedIn. I’m still using phones and using email, but LinkedIn has been a great source. So when you send the screen recording, the voice note, the video… are you making this a cadence, all 3 at once? How are you deciding the best way to send these message?

Matt: You choose one of them. If we started seeing a lot more success with one over the other types then we would focus on that. I want a bigger data set to review and really crunch the numbers. Then we make a call like that.

Morgan: Yeah. The reason I had asked that is because I wanted to see if you guys had a studio in the office. That place to go and make your videos and your LinkedIn and voice messages.

Matt: We take our laptops into a conference room and just record recording right there.

Morgan: And so in the IT space, as we know, people will think about how to get people to engage with that video, right? They’re skeptical. People in other industries may be more open to engaging in that way, so how are you making sure you get the right response rate you need?

Matt: It all starts with a truly customized video, customizing the title, customizing that first frame is what makes them click. Using their name in the video to where they know that this isn’t just a replicated video. Hi, my name is Matt and this is what I do. Where you can generate that and send it to whoever you want, those are the main ways. I think also continuing to follow up on that and maybe make another video, just showing that you’re continually trying to reach out to them if they’re not clicking on it is big.

That’s a wrap. Join us next time

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