LinkedIn is one of the premier lead generation platforms used today.
On LinkedIn, you have access to hundreds of millions of users who are looking for the same thing as you: to do business.
In other words, you’d be a fool not to take advantage of this platform for generating leads.
But even though LinkedIn is amazing, it can always be better. After all, nothing is perfect.
Luckily, there are tons of tools and add ons that can help with lead generation on LinkedIn, from finding more qualified leads to streamlining outreach.
In fact, there may be TOO many tools. Because how do you decide which ones to use? How do you know which ones are best?
That’s where we come in.
At Pear Lemon Leads, we are reviewing some of the best LinkedIn lead generation tools available, so you don’t have to.
And this week on Pearl Lemon Lead’s LinkedIn Lead Generation Tool Review, we’ll be discussing Crystal.
Source: Crystal
WHAT IS CRYSTAL
Crystal is a Chrome add on or extension that, after going on someone’s LinkedIn profile, will read and analyse their online presence and give you insights on:
- Their personality
- How to start conversations with them
- How they may or may not react in certain situations
- What they respond well or poorly to
- Tips for interacting with them
What do we mean by “online presence”? We mean everything that is publicly available online about them. Crystal scrapes information from:
- Social media
- Websites
- Blogs
- And “thousands of other sources”
Crystal then takes this information and analyses how they write and communicate, then what other people write about them and how they respond.
Finally, it takes all of this data and creates a personality profile.
This is useful for lead generation because it will help your cold outreach on LinkedIn become more effective.
No one communicates the same, and when reaching out to someone you don’t know, it can be hard to tell what they will respond well to by looking at their LinkedIn profile alone.
But using the information Crystal provides will potentially help you communicate in a way that is more likely to get responses, develop professional relationships and generate leads.
For example, the information can tell you:
- What tone to use in emails
- If you should joke around a bit or be more direct in meetings
- What you should bring up during a phone call
And so much more.
How Does Crystal Work?
That all sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?
How could it possibly come up with all of that information?
It does this through something called personality AI.
AI, or artificial intelligence, analyses mass amounts of data to predict potential outcomes.
With Crystal’s Personality AI, it takes data points mentioned in the “What Is Crystal” section and combines those with psychology and personality theory to get a read on a person’s personality and determine how to communicate with them.
Sounds trippy right? Like this technology could be the basis of a prequel to the sci-fi film Ex-Machina?
Well, it’s very real and can help you with your lead generation.
So, let’s dive into how to use Crystal and everything it can show you to help with your LinkedIn lead generation.
How To Use Crystal
Crystal will probably one of the easiest and more intuitive LinkedIn add ons out there.
First, you go to someone’s profile and a button will appear with the Crystal logo that says “View Personality.”
Then, all you have to do is click the button to get a full personality profile.
Here is what it looks like on our CEO Deepak Shukla’s LinkedIn profile:
It’s that simple!
As you can see, the personality profile starts with a one-sentence overview of the person’s personality.
For Deepak, he is “likely a quick learner with strong creative skills, and may bounce around between many interests.”
Other examples are:
- _____ tends to be supportive and naturally empathetic and may dive into long, deep conversations instead of direct, efficient ones.
- _____ tends to be objective and direct, favouring straightforward facts over ambiguous emotions.
This section also tells you the person’s “personality type.” Crystal has 16 different personality types that people can fall into, which are displayed on this map:
Source: Crystal
As you can see, Deepak is an “influencer,” which means he is “adventurous, a visionary, and outgoing.”
There is also:
- Motivator- Enthusiastic, talkative and talkative
- Encourager- Optimistic, open-minded and inclusive
- Harmoniser- Warm, cooperative and creative
- Counsellor- Accommodating, diplomatic and reassuring
- Supporter- Stead, accepting and agreeable
- Planner- Patient, thoughtful and soft-spoken
- Stabiliser- Perceptive, consistent and organised
- Editor- Meticulous, calm and purposeful
- Analyst- Objective, collected and reserved
- Sceptic- Sceptical, pragmatic and accurate
- Questioner- Persistent, methodical and independent
- Architect- Competitive, vigorous and efficient
- Captain- Assertive, confident and hard-working
- Driver- Direct, persuasive and decisive
- Initiator- Spontaneous, opinionated and ambitious
For more on Crystal’s personality types, here is their Ultimate Guide To Personality Types.
The personality profile also gives you an overview of the person’s personality and telling you what makes them tick:
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here are some of the other things you can see on someone’s Crystal LinkedIn personality profile.
Conversation coach
The next section of Crysta’s personality profile is the Conversation Coach.
To use the conversation coach, first, you indicate under the “I need to…” section whether you are going to call, email or have a meeting with the person.
Then you choose one of the following scenarios under the “So I can…” section:
- Make a sales pith
- Schedule a meeting
- Discuss pricing
- Deliver bad news
- Resolve a conflict
- Give feedback
- Collaborate on a project
- Brainstorm ideas
- Give instructions
- Ask for a raise
- Convince them to hire you
- Say thank you
- Follow up
- Say no
- Connect on LinkedIn
- Apologise
- Recruit
- Introduce to someone
- Interview them
- Other
It then gives you suggestions on what to say and what you should and shouldn’t do.
Here are a couple of examples:
Meetings
The “Meetings” section offers you what is essentially a full report card on how to conduct a meeting with the person based on their personality.
You get information on:
- What you should say
- Persuading the other person
- Preparing for the meetings
- How the other person may act or think during the meeting
Crystal creates a report card for four different meeting scenarios:
- Discovery
- Demos
- Closing
- Negotiation
Here is what Deepak’s negotiation report card looks like:
Comparisons
You can also compare two different people’s personalities with Crystal.
For an example of what that looks like, here is a comparison of Deepak’s personality to that of Bill Gates:
Email Templates
Writing emails can be intimidating.
Everyone writes them different and has different expectations, leading to questions like:
- Should I have a formal or casual greeting?
- Is a “LOL” acceptable?
- What do I put in the dreaded subject line?
That’s where Crystal’s email templates come in.
This section gives you email advice and Do’s and Don’ts for the following parts of an email:
- Subject
- Greeting
- Body
- Call to action
- Sign off
Here is what it looks like:
Below the email advice, you will then find templates for 17 different scenarios tailored to the individual’s personality.
There are templates for:
- Give advice
- Schedule a meeting
- Discuss compensation
- Discuss deadline
- Event thank you
- Interview follow up
- Interview invitation
- Investor follow up
- Investor pitch
- Invitation
- Apply for job
- Give job offer
- Potential customer follow up
- Pricing concerns
- Recruit for job
- Reject application
- Sales pitch
Here are a couple of example templates:
Cost
When you first sign up for Crystal, you get ten free personality readings. After that, it costs $29 per month for the premium version where you get 25 personality profiles per month.
Review
Alright, time for the official review!
First, it is super easy to set up and use. It takes one click, and you’re off and running. It is also organised simply and intuitively, so after messing around with it for a couple of minutes, you’ll understand where to go for the information you need.
The concept of this tool is also great, and the information on people’s personalities could potentially be extremely useful.
But there are a few aspects of this tool that makes me a bit sceptical.
One, is I can’t help but wonder how accurate the information is?
Personality AI sounds like powerful technology, but I’m curious as to how accurate AI can be at predicting human behaviour.
Some of it definitely is, but after testing out the tool on people I knew, I noticed some inaccurate information.
And when the information was accurate, it was often vague and general. So was the advice and conversation/email templates.
I can see this information being helpful for your first time contacting someone to get an idea if they would prefer a formal or casual email or message, but after that, you might be better off using past conversations and your knowledge on the person to guide your interactions.
So, in summary:
Pros:
- Easy to set up and use
- Well organised
- Gives you a lot of information that could be useful when first reaching out to someone
Cons:
- Not always accurate
- Information and advice is vague
- Might not be useful after initiating contact
Official Pearl Lemon Rating
Crystal is an easy to use tool with a lot of information, but the uncertainty revolving around its accuracy and its vagueness prevent us from strongly recommending it, meaning it gets:
◯◯ 3 out of 5 lemons.
Scale:
5 out of 5 lemons: You absolutely NEED this tool!
◯ 4 out of 5 lemons: We highly recommend this tool!
◯◯ 3 out of 5 lemons: We don’t strongly recommend getting or not getting the tool. It’s up to you to decide if its price is worth the investment.
◯◯◯ 2 out of 5 lemons: We don’t recommend purchasing the tool, but there could be some benefits so we won’t hold it against you if you buy it.
◯◯◯◯ 1 out of 5 lemons: Seriously, don’t get this tool.
◯◯◯◯◯ 0 out of 5 lemons: Avoid this tool at ALL costs!
Next Time…
Thank you for reading Pearl Lemon Lead’s review of Crystal!
For more on Crystal, check out our video review of Crystal on YouTube!
And be sure to join us next time when we review LeadFuze!
