I'm sure you've received a cold LinkedIn message or connection request offering lead gen services. They typically say, "Can you handle more qualified appointments?", or "How much would it be worth if you had an extra 20 leads per month?", something along those lines. Of course, who doesn't want an extra 20 leads a month? And if you're a B2B services business, LinkedIn is the perfect platform for lead gen. So all these lead gen services sound very appealing, but if you've tried any vendors promising 20 leads per month in the past and you've been burned, join the club.

I've wasted something in the neighborhood of 10,000 on lead gen email service providers, more than $20,000 in sales consultants promising to double my business, and much more on business coaches that had zero results. Maybe it's not them and it's me or my business, but either way, I have become super skeptical and cautious when I hear someone can get me 20 qualified leads a month, simply because I know how hard it can be. I've even had a full-time sales person who tried cold calling, cold emailing, relationship building, everything under the sun, and 20 leads would be phenomenal in our business.

So LinkedIn lead gen services is one of those things that sound too good to be true, but you can't dismiss it very easily, because whatever they do work? And depending on your service and pricing, you probably only need to get one or two clients out of the 20 leads every month, in order to make it worthwhile. So I took it upon myself to dig a little deeper. I interviewed three LinkedIn lead gen service providers, and here's my understanding of how they work. They charge one or $2,000 a month, and they sometimes come with a minimum three month contract. They will ask you for a targeting group, geography, industry, company size, job titles. Then they will put together a campaign with a series of LinkedIn messages, connection requests, follow up one, follow up two, typically three or four messages in a campaign.

Next, they will run the campaign for you. By the way, they will most likely need your LinkedIn login credentials to send the connection requests and messages, and finally, they will create a spreadsheet for you to review warm responses, and take action. In fact, I came across one lead gen service provider who does all these manually. I think they send you a laptop, they log in remotely, and you can see how they're going through the contacts, inviting them and messaging them. But the majority of these vendors use automation platforms.

So I thought, why don't I use the automation platform myself? And I actually found a simple to use platform, We-Connect. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, it is just a tool that I'm currently using and I found it pretty straightforward. The cost is only $49 a month, and you have full flexibility on the targeting and the messaging. The trade-off, of course, is that you're not using a white glove service. An experienced lead gen service provider may have experience and can make suggestions on how to structure your campaign messages to get better results, or maybe they can advise you on how to best handle warm responses. I don't know how much value they can add. If anyone has used them, I'd be very interested to learn more.

Here's my results so far with We-Connect: it took me two hours to define my target groups and set up three campaigns, each with two simple messages. So far, I have about a 6% connection rate and a 40% response rate, meaning that if I send a hundred connection requests with an intro message, six will connect, and two or three will respond positively. Now, the campaign I'm currently running is about offering to interview B2B experts, and showcase them on B2Bnext.com, so I'm not selling anything. In fact, I'm offering to promote their thought leadership. So I don't know how the numbers would change when introducing a service, but still, for me, using an automated platform to replicate what I was doing by hand is a huge time saver, and I don't think that a LinkedIn lead gen service would perform much better. For spending two hours to set it and forget it, I'm all over saving $2,000 a month. Let me know if you've had any different experiences, because LinkedIn lead gen is a very hot topic these days, and could have a lot of promise if I'm overlooking something.

Board Studios partners with B2B/Services businesses to execute video strategies in order to build their YouTube channel, connect with their audience on LinkedIn, and win more business - and is recognized as one of the Top Digital Marketing Agencies For Small Businesses