You’ve launched your first few sequences, but are barely generating enough meetings for your SDRs. It’s surprising though, that you did what all LinkedIn gurus recommend :
You sprayed & repeated that process
Well, here’s the problem: you believed the gurus.
You believed that a massive prospecting approach works.
And unfortunately, they couldn’t be more wrong! 😉
We’d love to tell you the opposite—it would make prospecting 100x easier (and we’d sell new licenses much faster 😅). But no!
Reality is very different: prospecting is hard! You have to capture your prospect’s attention in just a few seconds, whether on the phone, by email, or on LinkedIn.
And it’s impossible to have precise copywriting without ultra-targeted segmentation.
But it’s also impossible to have ultra-targeted segmentation without a profound understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve—and therefore who you’re solving that problem for.
You want to improve your conversion rate? Keep reading!
Key benefits
Clear understanding of why mass prospecting does not work.
Segmentation frameworks to structure your personas and account types.
Practical method to use Sales Navigator to support your segmentation.
Why doesn’t mass prospecting work?
La Growth Machine data analysis
At La Growth Machine, we’re lucky to have access to incredible data on our users’ prospecting setups and performance. And the data doesn’t lie. 😉
If we look more closely:
Proof 1: reply rate decreases as audience size increases
To start, we have some very interesting data: the average reply rate depending on audience size. As we said, the less segmented the audience, the lower the reply rate, with a sharp drop beyond 400 prospects.
This is revealing: the more people you group into a large audience, the more likely you are to have different personas within that same audience. As we’ll see, each persona has different reasons to adopt your product and needs to be approached separately.
When you group too many personas into a single audience, you end up with copywriting that’s so generic — trying to fit all personas at once — that in the end, it is attractive to none of them. As a result, it barely generates any conversions.
Proof 2: users who stay on LGM do not focus on volume
Another interesting data point is what our loyal customers do with La Growth Machine.
The hypothesis is simple: if they’ve been customers for a long time, it’s because they’re getting value from LGM by generating leads! 😉
Here are the two takeaways from the table above:
Loyal customers do not aim for quantity: on average, they activate 170 leads per week. If we assume a 20% reply rate, with one-third of those replies being positive, that’s 11 new qualified leads per week per sales rep.
That is clearly enough to keep each SDR busy full-time!
People who churn within the first three months tend to focus on quantity — and leave because they don’t get value from LGM: on average, everyone seems tempted by volume at first, but by the third month, customers realize that segmentation is crucial, or they double down on quantity and eventually churn because they don’t get enough conversions.
The classic learning curve: realizing segmentation is crucial
In the end, what the last graph also shows is that most of you follow the same learning curve:
You try to do a lot of volume—after all, why not? It’s easy to do with LGM, and the gurus say that’s what you should do!
But by the end of the second month, you realize that you don’t have enough results, or not enough qualified results, with this mass approach. From there, you can take one of two paths:
a. Do even more volume to compensate for the lack of qualified leads. As the statistics show, this is a losing battle: more volume means less segmentation and unfocused copywriting. That results in even fewer conversions, and you also end up burning valuable prospects…
b. Recognize that volume as a strategy is a lie and start investing time into segmentation and tailored copywriting.
If you’re reading this before you start, congratulations—you've just saved yourself three precious months.
If you’re reading this after you’ve already started, it’s time to choose the right strategy 😅
All is not lost—we're now going to show you how to fix your strategy with solid segmentation and tailored copywriting. ✌️
Introduction to segmentation: understand the problem and who you solve it for
Define segmentation
We’ve noticed that segmentation is essential to get higher conversion rates. To really understand what segmentation is about and to give you some frameworks to build your own, here is our definition:
Segmentation means targeting the right person, with the right message, at the right time. It also means understanding a very simple truth: not everyone will value your product/service in the same way.
To segment, you must first:
Understand the problem your personas are trying to solve
Identify pain points for each persona
List who, among all personas, struggles the most with that problem
To illustrate this, let’s take La Growth Machine as an example and analyze our personas.
Segment properly: the right message to the right person at the right time
Example of segmentation by persona
La Growth Machine's value proposition is simple: saving users time by automating their multichannel prospection. When you think about it, such a value proposition can be attractive to many personas, including :
Growth Hackers
Salespeople
Company Founders
Recruiters
Marketers
We could contact them all with the same sequence using generic copywriting. Yet, even for something as straightforward as La Growth Machine, that is not as simple.
If we deep-dive into each segment, we will see they have different characteristics!
The growth hacker
The Growth Hacker is :
Highly technical, looking to build advanced and complex/integrated strategies.
They’ll be very interested in the modular capabilities of the custom workflows, our diverse integrations with Zapier, and Phantombuster, as well as using our APIs & Webhooks, but care less about CRMs
In terms of prospecting strategies, they generally favor quantity over quality. So our feature to workaround LinkedIn’s connection request limits as well as the high volume of emails will be very important to them.
Last but not least, everything has to be automated, so no call calling.
The sales rep
The salesperson is quite the opposite :
Most of them are not technical. Even worse, they are not interested (almost afraid) in the technicality of it. Their goal is to save time and spend it with prospects rather than doing repetitive tasks.
They’ll favor simplicity over complexity and be sensitive to saving time (a lot of it).
Synchronization with their CRM is a must since this is where all the information has to be gathered and their reporting happens, but they don’t care for APIs/Webhooks/Zapier.
In terms of prospecting strategies, they’ll tend to favor quality over quantity, as they are the ones handling replies and calls - and generally, those that have their time wasted handling unqualified prospects.
They’ll also value task reminders to plan for cold calling sessions.
If we compare them, we immediately see the contradiction in how they would value LGM. If we grouped them in the same sequence with the same copywriting, we’d be shooting ourselves in the foot.
So we need two separate sequences to contact them. Let’s continue with the other identified personas.
The founder
The Company Founder :
Their goal generally is to test out markets and close their first few clients. They need to iterate quickly, all while being able to measure precisely their results.
They’ll be interested in how quickly they can get started, the type of tests they’ll be able to launch, and the dedicated support provided along the way to help them reach their goals.
When discussing with them, most conversations will be about experimentations and closing the first few low-hanging fruits so they can prove their traction and recruit.
The Founder is a mix between the Growth Hacker’s need for quantity and rapid results, and the sales reps’ lack of time to invest in LGM’s technical depth.
Again, this will require specific copywriting to reflect that.
The marketing manager
Next, the Marketer :
Opposite to any of the above, the marketer generally works not on outbound strategies, but on inbound lead generation strategies. They’ll be especially interested in using LGM to increase their inbound engagement or to generate leads for marketing events such as dedicated Webinars and white papers.
They’ll be keen to look into integrations with third-party tools and Zapier to handle Inbound leads, connecting their form submissions or new signups to LGM.
When discussing strategies, we will focus on Webinar sourcing strategies, engaging with LinkedIn likes/comments, and managing all events within the CRMs for lead scoring.
They are not focused on cold outbound at all, but on smart lead creation and activating marketing activities.
The recruiter
Finally, but not least, the Recruiter:
This is your most untechnical user of LGM with one motto: the simpler the better.
They’re looking to use LinkedIn automation as most of their job is about finding good potential candidates on LinkedIn and contacting them. They might use emails as well but are generally reluctant to use professional emails to hunt for candidates - since that would mean offering them a new job on their current professional email address. But they’ll do one thing that no other persona will do: use the personal email La Growth Machine can enrich as a channel. Also, to stand out, they’ll generally tend to be heavy users of LinkedIn Voices
In terms of integrations, Recruiters aren’t using CRMs but ATSs (Applicants Tracking Systems) as well as LinkedIn Recruiter rather than Sales Navigator. They’ll need dedicated integration with both, usually via Zapier. But since they’re not technical, they’ll require some live support and guides to help them along the way
In terms of volume, while they rarely need to do mass outbound, they generally reach the limits on LinkedIn and will need LGM’s unlocked contact requests feature
Again, the copywriting here is totally different. We will emphasize our ability to bypass limits, find and use personal emails as a channel, and integrate with their dedicated ATS! If we grouped them with any of the personas above and used generic copywriting, it would be a total failure.
We could continue like this, but you’ve probably got the idea: even for a service as simple as automating your prospecting, you can’t cut corners on segmentation and copywriting.
Go further: also segment by company type
Company segmentation vs persona segmentation
But wait, we made a big mistake here: we only segmented by persona! What about company segmentation? The pain point can be very different, even for one specific persona, depending on the company details.
If you segment by company size, you’ll end up with two types of characteristics :
Prerequisites: mandatory characteristics for a company to qualify as addressable
Sorters: classifying characteristics that will allow you to regroup the company into similar company profiles
Prerequisites for LGM
The prerequisite characteristics for LGM’s potential customer companies are:
Being a B2B company—B2C can’t get a good ROI due to the volume needed and the limitation of each outbound channel in LGM—in other words, you won’t contact enough people.
Selling a solution/service to a sufficiently large market—if your addressable audience is only a few hundred people per year, you don’t want to risk burning all your available leads with automation. Each opportunity is too valuable to risk with automation. Also, automation is justified when you have so many people to contact that doing it manually would be a waste of time.
Having a high enough Annual Contract Value (ACV) to support direct sales—prospecting, organizing meetings, follow-up calls, etc.—can be costly. Your ACV must be at least €8,000/year to even consider direct sales; otherwise it’s very difficult to make it profitable if you have a complex sales cycle.
Having a digital audience—La Growth Machine is about multichannel automation. It only makes sense to consider multichannel automation if your leads are active on LinkedIn & email at minimum. Don’t waste your time prospecting on LinkedIn (or even by email) if you’re targeting medical practitioners—they won’t reply.
Categorizing addressable accounts
If a company meets all prerequisite characteristics, we then classify them based on:
Their business model: a SaaS company won’t have the same outbound approach as a service provider or an agency.
Their industry: to adapt our social proof so we can present case studies and clients based on their sector. It’s essentially a great way to say: “People targeting similar audiences to yours had great results — why not you?”
Which CRM they use.
The number of sales reps (or recruiters?): companies will organize La Growth Machine differently depending on how many salespeople they have.
From the founder doing sales alone up to 5 sales reps, usually everyone handles their own prospecting and is responsible for their own pipeline. That means everyone will have their own LGM access and dedicated training. They have little understanding of their market and will run many experiments.
From 5 to 10 sales reps, we start seeing sales operations and growth hackers step in to streamline processes and best practices. But sales reps might still be hands-on inside La Growth Machine and have a say in how it’s used.
After 10+ sales reps, it’s very rare that the people managing La Growth Machine are the SDRs themselves. At this stage, companies will have dedicated lead generation managers, a deep understanding of their market, and strong requirements for CRM integrations, manual tasks, and reporting.
As you can see, we start to have different strategies and target personas depending on the company’s maturity. In our case, maturity is closely related to the number of sales reps, but you could use other maturity indicators such as funds raised, company size, total revenue, etc.
Obviously, if you want to be thorough, you’ll need to merge your company segmentation with your persona segmentation and end up with a complex matrix of opportunities to address.
The document below is an excellent framework you can use to build such a matrix.
We only show three, but in reality, we have 15+ prospect types in our matrix. Looking at the details, you’ll notice that we can have multiple personas for a given account type. That’s completely normal when you’re aiming for tailored copywriting!
As you develop a deep understanding of your market, your matrix will grow from a few columns to as many as ours, enabling excellent segmentation and copy.
OK, so now we have a huge matrix of our segments and a deep understanding of how to approach them. Let’s now dive into how to find these segments using LinkedIn Sales Navigator!
How to use Sales Nav to find each of these segments?
Start with account searches
If you’re targeting a digital-savvy persona, LinkedIn Sales Navigator will be an excellent source of leads. However, it’s essential that you’re aware of the risks of using it!
If you use the wrong filters, you could end up with up to 40% irrelevant results in a lead search.
To avoid this, you need to start with account searches in order to implement real company/account-based strategies. And when we say accounts here, we mean companies.
Why do I need to search by account type first?
If you’re trying to implement an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy, you’ll likely be searching using LinkedIn’s industry classification. This allows you to target companies working, for example, in the computer software industry.
However, this information is wrong if used at the lead level! Why?
Because there are two types of industry in Sales Navigator
The industry self-declared by the contact
The industry the company states on its company profile
And 40% of the time, both don’t match for two main reasons :
Industry at the lead level is self-declared and not automatically updated whenever somebody changes the company.
There is a high probability that the information is outdated
Many people understand it as the department they work in instead of the industry of their company.
For example, somebody working in the marketing department of a construction company might identify itself as working in the Marketing & Advertising industry, resulting in your search results useless
Data indicates that it can affect up to 40% of the search results, leading to almost half of your leads being wrong!
Now if you use the Industry filter at the account level, it solves everything!
The goal is to build a list of accounts within Sales Navigator to turn into a lead search. And you can do just that.
How to build an account list and turn it into a lead search?
Pictures are worth a thousand words 😉
Now that you know the basics, let’s deep-dive into implementing the result of our Matrix into Sales Navigator
Matrix - Account type into Sales Navigator using built-in filters
If you’re targeting Accounts using standard categorization such as Industry, Company Size, Department Size, or Open Job, Sales Navigator will make it easy for you
Targeting per Industry? LinkedIn Sales Navigator includes a very detailed list of 2223 industries. Discover them here and address the right for you in the least filtering.
Targeting based on the number of people in a specific department? Filter companies based on the number of people working in a specific department
Selling a SaaS that scales per sale? Target per number of sales!
Selling a SaaS helping the Finance team do their work? Target companies with a minimum of people in the accounting department
Are you a recruiting Agency? Or do you want to target Accounts that are currently recruiting as a sign of rapid growth? You can filter them too
Or even better, learn how to do Boolean Searches on LinkedIn.
Targeting marketing agency? Try "growth agency" OR "marketing agency" OR "SEO" OR "SEA" OR "lead generation" OR "growth hacking" OR "digital performance"
In our case, for example, we will focus on SaaS companies
Last, but not least, do not forget to target per geography
Matrix: importing accounts into Sales Nav using CSV import
We’ve just seen the basics, but sometimes, LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s filters won’t be enough to target your companies. Let’s say you’re targeting eCommerce companies as explained in this guide, or a specific industry that isn’t listed in Sales Navigator.
You’ll end up buying company lists from sources such as:
And any other data provider
Do you have company names, and company websites, and want to turn them into a list of companies on LinkedIn?
You’re in luck. Sales Navigator Teams & Enterprise allows you to upload a list of companies, and LinkedIn will automatically match it in its database and create the list for you to use
Upload, and match the columns and you’re set to succeed :
With both features, you can now build your lists of Accounts according to your Matrix. Let’s now find the persona matching your account in your Matrix
Matrix: persona types using Sales Nav
As shown in the video above, you have saved many lists of accounts matching your multiple Account types in the Matrix.
Now it’s the easy part, translating it into a persona. Or so it seems. First of all, you need to be aware of the risks of using Keyword searches (must read). With that in mind, you’ll be targeting directly by JobTitle instead. However, you will have to be thorough in the job title as Sales Navigator isn’t smart enough to do so for you!
Targeting Sales People? Be Thorough and include multiple keywords such as “Sales”, “BDR”, “Business development”, “Business Developer”, “Sales Development Representative”, “SDR”, “AE”, “Account Executive”, “Account Manager”, “Key Account Manager”.
You’ll have to adapt the language of these keywords to the geography you are targeting!
If you’re unsure of the keyword, you can always use a mix of Department Filters & Seniority. However, a piece of advice, this only works well if you’re targeting English-speaking profiles.
Play around with the other filters, and there you have it, the Matrix Account “5-10 Sales People French Companies” x Persona “Sales”.
Export the results using La Growth Machine so we can start activating them into a multichannel sequence!
How to automate your segmentation and copywriting using La Growth Machine?
So, we now have a list of prospects matching our subsections from the matrix, and we want to contact them on LinkedIn and by email. The good news is that you can also use La Growth Machine for that!
La Growth Machine handles everything; starting from a selection of LinkedIn profiles, we will automatically:
Find their professional email addresses and phone numbers.
Automate a series of emails and LinkedIn messages using your copywriting.
Sync everything into your CRM to ensure pipeline continuity.
Not bad, right? Very French! And if you want more, read our guide on how to implement multichannel outreach using LGM.
Bonus: how to reach a +30% conversion rate with a great call structure?
After launching your first sequences, if you followed all our recommendations, you’ll quickly start booking meetings.
But you are still far from closing deals!
It’s only the beginning of the sales journey—and the next step on this journey is your sales call.
A sales call is hard, and the biggest mistake we see is a poor call structure.
Ask any great sales rep you know: even if it looks like it, a great sales call is not a moment of “improvisation” — it’s a well-defined situation you play out with the prospect. A carefully written, theatrical dialogue that feels very natural, very “in the moment”, because of one simple thing: the call structure. 😉
And if you’re a great performer, you can even play with flow, intonation, volume, and emphasis!
FAQs
Why does mass prospecting perform so poorly?
Why does mass prospecting perform so poorly?
Because when you increase volume, you mix multiple personas into the same audience, which forces you to use generic copywriting that doesn’t truly resonate with anyone.
Why is segmentation essential to improve my reply rate?
Why is segmentation essential to improve my reply rate?
Because it allows you to send a precise message in a precise context: the right persona, the right type of company, the right moment, and the right pain point.
Why should I start with account searches in Sales Navigator?
Why should I start with account searches in Sales Navigator?
Because industry filters at the lead level are often wrong or outdated. Account-level targeting allows you to start from a base of truly relevant companies before identifying the right contacts.