There’s a reason why Entrepreneur claims networking is “a salesperson’s most powerful tool.” After all, sales are built on relationships, and a strong network makes it easier for salespeople to build and grow their connections.

Yet, today, many salespeople continue to rely on high-effort, low-conversion approaches like cold outreach — often because few systems exist to support a network approach. They may have some connections added on LinkedIn, while others live solely in their inbox as email contacts. Understanding second-degree connections also becomes challenging, unless salespeople are looking at a specific user on LinkedIn.

With The Swarm, we’re aiming to change that. Read on to learn how sales teams can use The Swarm to tap into a unified company network and use warm connections to accelerate deals.

Sales teams are moving towards a network approach

Today, most sales teams follow the same tried-and-true playbook, mainly using cold emails and cold calls to reach out to new prospects. Yet, this approach is no longer working for companies — in fact, less than half of SDRs are consistently meeting their targets. Less than 1 in 10 cold emails receive a response, and cold calling results tend to be even lower, with only a 2% success rate.

This traditional, high-volume approach no longer works as leads have become accustomed to receiving generic requests to hop on a call. Every day, leads are bombarded with cold calls and emails, and most of them will delete messages without ever opening them.

And in today’s macro environment — where companies need to achieve more with less — sales leaders are looking for more efficient processes. As David Connors, CEO & Co-Founder of The Swarm, explains:

“With a recession around the corner, inflation skyrocketing, and funding slowing down, founders have been forced to re-evaluate their approaches, looking for opportunities to stretch their runway while improving the efficiency of their growth. 

Founders still want growth, of course, but it’s no longer about growth at any cost. For the first time in a decade, companies have to be judicious and aim for efficient, sustainable growth. They’re looking at the fundamentals of how much they’re spending, how much revenue they’re generating per employee, and how efficient their everyday processes are.”

This is where a network approach comes in.

A warm connection makes all the difference in sales. When a salesperson is introduced to a new lead through an existing relationship — compared to cold outreach — that lead is 5.2 times more likely to return to their call. Personal connections can also boost sales productivity by up to 243%.

A network approach allows salespeople to leverage existing relationships to establish trust with leads. And The Swarm’s Network Graph allows sales teams to find, visualize, and track those existing relationships with ease.

A unified view of warm connections around a company

Using The Swarm, companies can combine the warm connections of their teammates, investors, advisors, and partners. Individuals can choose to import connections from both LinkedIn and Gmail, centralizing connections in a single place. Soon, we’ll also let teams expand their reach by adding people who worked at the same company at the same time as their members (but who aren't necessarily connected to them on LinkedIn).

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Once all of your team’s connections have been added, your sales team can explore the company's far-reaching network — filtering by titles, companies, location, and relationship holders.

Identify and prioritize target companies within your network

If you’re working with a list of target accounts, you’ll want to use the Companies tab within The Swarm. Here, you can identify the companies you’re connected to and who you know there — filtering between them by: 

• Employee count
• Industry
• Location

When you click into a company profile, you’ll get to see quick stats on the company, as well as who your network is connected to within the company. 

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Exploring your company network by company lets you identify warm connection paths, find net-new target companies within your existing network, and prioritize your sales pipeline based on the strength of your network connectivity.

Build up your sales pipelines

By adding connections to sales pipelines, you can organize them and prepare to reach out. You can build out multiple pipelines and customize them as you wish in order to keep your leads organized.

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You can then request an introduction from anyone in your network who is connected to them. Your leads can then be organized by status:

• Suggested
• Intro requested
• In contact
• Meeting set
• Removed

Whether you’re building your own pipeline or collaborating with other team members, you’ll be able to keep your progress visible and your leads organized by status.

Maximize your sales team’s efficiency with The Swarm

In an increasingly competitive environment, sales teams need to move beyond the old playbook of blasting out emails to cold leads. Taking a network approach allows teams to leverage their combined networks for increased efficiency, better opportunities, and more strategic selling.

Learn more about how sales teams are using The Swarm, what makes us different from Sales Nav, and request early access here.