Prospecting
LinkedIn Prospecting
LinkedIn rewards patience in a way the phone doesn't, and most sellers use it the other way round: connect, then pitch within the hour. The channel isn't the problem. The compression is.
By Shane McGrath · Published 24 August 2026
The relevance argument is the same here as it is on the phone or in email: a message that could have gone to anyone gets treated like it did. Cold outreach covers that. What's different on LinkedIn is the mechanics, and the mechanics are where most teams waste the channel.
The connection request is not the pitch
Accepting a request costs nothing and means nothing. It's permission to be visible, not permission to sell. A note attached to the request should be short and about them, or absent entirely. What it should never be is the first line of a sequence.
Connect-then-pitch is the phone equivalent of talking over the hello
On a call, nobody would answer "hello" with ninety seconds of product. On LinkedIn people do it constantly, then conclude the channel doesn't work. It works. It's just being used as a slower, more public version of a bad cold email.
Message or InMail
- A message to an existing connection is the warmest option and the most wasted, because it's free.
- InMail costs you something, so treat it like the one shot it is: shorter, more specific, one question.
- Anything that scrolls on a phone screen will be skim-read at best.
- Sequences that continue regardless of whether the last one was read are visible as sequences.
Voice notes
They cut through because almost nobody sends them, and they're harder to fake. That also means a rambling one does real damage. Thirty seconds, one specific observation, one question. If you need to plan it for five minutes, it's too complicated to send.
Engagement is a signal, not a tactic
Commenting to be noticed is obvious and slightly embarrassing. Reading what someone posts to understand what they're dealing with is research, and it usually produces the one sentence that makes an outreach message land. The useful signal isn't that they posted. It's what the post tells you they're worried about.
Patience, and what it's for
The advantage of LinkedIn over the phone is that a buyer can see you for weeks before you ever ask for anything. Most sellers throw that away in the first message. What would change if the first thing you sent had no ask in it at all?
FAQs
Common questions
- Should we send a note with a LinkedIn connection request?
- Only if you have something specific to say about them. A blank request is fine. A note that's clearly the opening line of a pitch is worse than nothing, because it tells them exactly what the next message will be.
- Is LinkedIn better than cold calling?
- Different, not better. The phone gets you a conversation faster when it works. LinkedIn lets a buyer get familiar with you before you ask for anything. Teams that use both well are usually the ones treating the underlying job as the same.
- Do LinkedIn automation tools work?
- They work at producing volume, which was never the constraint. The moment a message could have been sent to a thousand people, it reads like it was. Automation is fine for the admin around prospecting and poor at the part that earns a reply.
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