How to Follow LinkedIn Prospecting Etiquette for Sales

Sales folks, take note! Spamming a target company's employees with your services and requests for meetings will result in your company making its way onto a buyer's blocklist. As a buyer in the localization industry, I receive dozens of emails and LinkedIn requests every single day from vendors looking to showcase translation, AI, QA services, and more. It's not humanly possible to give personal replies to every outreach. When vendors can't get through to me, they often reach out to everyone on my team... and sometimes to many others across my company. I'd love for this practice to stop. It wastes valuable company time and makes a vendor appear desperate and non-strategic. Here's what to do instead: 1. Appeal to ego! Invite a target company’s decision-maker to a panel, or start a vlog series and ask buyers to appear and discuss industry topics. It’s also a great opportunity to reposition your company as a thought leader. 2. Offer genuine insight, not just services. Share a case study, white paper, or benchmarking data that’s actually useful to the buyer’s role, and do it without a sales pitch. 3. Build a reputation before you build a pipeline. Comment thoughtfully on posts. Contribute to community conversations. If you consistently show up with value, you’re far more likely to get noticed. 4. Target smarter, not broader. Don’t shotgun your message to an entire company. Learn the org. Understand the buyer’s scope. Then send one well-researched, personalized note that shows you actually did your homework. 5. Focus on mutual value. Can you help solve a known pain point or offer perspective on something changing in the market? Frame your outreach around collaboration, not consumption. 6. Use timing to your advantage. Keep tabs on when companies are hiring for roles associated with your offerings, launching in new markets, or attending conferences. That’s when buyers are more receptive to new solutions. 7. Lead with generosity. Offer a no-strings-attached resource, intro, or suggestion that doesn’t benefit you directly. Reciprocity is a powerful trust builder. And please! Don't ever ever call me on the phone! ;)

I just watched a sales rep spend 3 hours crafting the "perfect" LinkedIn message to a prospect who bought from his competitor yesterday The prospect had been posting about their challenges for 6 weeks. Sharing articles about the exact problem this rep's solution solves. Commenting on industry discussions about implementation timelines. But this rep never engaged with any of it. Instead, he was busy perfecting his cold outreach template while his competitor was building relationships in plain sight. This is social selling backwards. Most sales teams treat LinkedIn like an email database with better targeting. They research profiles → craft personalized messages → send connection requests → pitch immediately But social selling isn't about better cold outreach. It's about becoming part of your prospect's decision-making process before they even know they're buying… and just keeping it casual, like a normal human. Here's what the highest-performing social sellers actually do: → They follow prospects months before reaching out → They add value to conversations prospects are already having → They become a trusted voice in their prospect's content feed → They earn permission to have sales conversations When you consistently add insight to someone's posts for 4-6 weeks, your eventual outreach isn't cold anymore. It's the natural next step in an existing relationship. Your prospects are literally telling you their priorities, challenges, and timeline through their LinkedIn activity. Stop treating social selling like fancy cold calling and start treating it like relationship building at scale. How much of your prospect research happens on LinkedIn versus actually engaging with their content? — Enjoy this? 📱 Join our community: https://lnkd.in/e3WAJnft

I was asked today a very simple question, How can I #prospect better on #LinkedIn? This simple question does not have a simple answer. So I did what I always do and made my list, went to #askSSL.ai and used my” Brynne Avatar” who is already trained in my voice, with my content, and my prohibitions oand spent about 20 minutes crafting and editing the following: ⸻ How to Prospect Better on LinkedIn Without Sounding Like a Sales Pitch Prospecting on LinkedIn isn’t about sending more messages. It’s about starting the right conversations with the right people in the right way. The professionals who succeed treat LinkedIn as a relationship platform, not a cold-calling tool. Here’s how to shift from pitch-based outreach to conversation-driven social selling. 1. Transform Your Profile from a resume to a Resource If you are in a revenue-driven role, your LinkedIn profile should not be a resume. It should speak directly to the challenges and goals of your ideal buyer. Lead to your solution by offering insight and value that not just shows how you help but actually helps, earning you the right to get the conversion. 2. Engage Before You Reach Out Engagement builds visibility and credibility. Thoughtful comments on the right posts open doors. The more value you bring in public conversations, the more permission you earn to move to private messaging. 3. Reconnect with Existing Relationships Take inventory of your network. Revisit clients, prospects, and referral partners. Share something relevant. Ask a thoughtful question. Start conversations around topics that are meaningful to them. 4. Map Paths to Referrals Use LinkedIn and Sales Navigator to find mutual connections. Ask for introductions. Warm referrals often outperform any cold outreach. Most professionals want to help. You just need to ask the right way. 5. Write Like You Speak Skip the templates and formal language. Your message should feel like it belongs in a real conversation. The goal is not to sell. The goal is to earn a response. Bonus: use the native voice messaging or video messaging in the LinkedIn app to humanize the connections even more. 6. Use AI to Prepare Smarter Tools like askSSL or ChatGPT can help you write better outreach messages, create personalized content, and research your prospects. Use AI to support strategy, not replace it. Prospecting on LinkedIn is about earning the right to a conversation. That can come through valuable content, a warm referral, or thoughtful engagement. The key is to start trust-based conversations that feel helpful, not salesy. When you make them matter, you matter. How do you prospect better on LinkedIn? #sslinsights