Almost everyone starts at the end. They buy a tool, import a list of two thousand people and launch a sequence. Two percent reply, half of them to say no, and the conclusion is that LinkedIn no longer works. What does not work is the order.
Step 1: squeeze the network you already have
If you have been on LinkedIn for years you have between five hundred and three thousand first-degree contacts who accepted you once and whom you have never spoken to since. It is the most undervalued asset on the channel: they already accepted you, so you spend no invitation allowance, you risk nothing on the account, and the reply rate is several times that of a cold message.
The work is going through that list, discarding whoever does not match your ideal client, and writing only to those who do. There are usually between forty and a hundred and fifty people worth a conversation. That is a quarter of commercial work without sending a single invitation.
Step 2: define who you want, specifically
"CFOs at mid-sized companies" is not an ideal client profile, it is a category. A useful profile answers four things: what role, in what kind of company, at what moment, and what problem they have now that you solve. The "at what moment" is the one almost nobody writes down and the one that decides whether there is a conversation.
An example of a useful profile: heads of sales at B2B services companies of twenty to two hundred employees who have just posted a job ad for a sales rep. The moment, that they are hiring, is what turns a generic message into a timely one.
Step 3: write from a signal, not from a template
A signal is a checkable, recent fact that justifies writing today rather than six months ago: a post, a job change, a funding round, an open vacancy, a comment on your own content. Without a signal any message reads as spam, however well written.
The structure that works has four lines and not one more:
- The signal, specifically. "I saw you are hiring a rep for the B2B team." Not "I love what you do".
- One observation that shows you understood something, not that you read the headline.
- One question, open and easy to answer in a single line.
- Nothing else. No link, no calendar, no company pitch, no PDF.
The rule that changes the numbers most: do not ask for the meeting in the first message. The first message has one job, which is to earn the second.
Step 4: the follow-up, where everything falls apart
Most replies arrive after the second or third contact, and most reps give up after the first. Two follow-ups, four and ten days apart, each one adding something new: a data point, a similar case, a different question. A "did you see this?" is not a follow-up, it is a nuisance.
Step 5: measure what decides, not what comforts
- Invitation acceptance rate: below 30 percent, your targeting is wrong.
- Reply rate on accepted: below 15 percent, your first message is wrong.
- Conversations that reach a meeting: below 10 percent, you are talking to people who do not buy.
- Followers and profile views: they measure nothing you can invoice. Look at them last, or not at all.
And content, is it necessary?
It helps a lot and it is not essential. Posting means that when you write, the other person sees a profile with activity and judgement rather than a stranger. It multiplies reply rates without touching a line of your messages. But it does not replace writing: posting and waiting is marketing, not prospecting.