LinkedIn outreach: steps, limits and message templates.

The four ways to reach someone

LinkedIn outreach is writing first to people who do not know you yet, from your own account, for a sale, a hire or a partnership. LinkedIn gives you four ways in, and each has its own rules. Most outreach uses two of them: a connection request, then a message once the person accepts.

A free account can message only its first-degree connections. InMail reaches people you are not connected to, and it is a Premium feature (LinkedIn Help, article a6239760, read 24 October 2026). A message request is the odd one: when LinkedIn lets a message reach someone outside your network, it lands as a request they can accept or ignore.

In GetSales these are workflow steps (Visit profile, Connection request, LinkedIn message and InMail), each sent from your sender profile's own account; the InMail step needs a Premium account with InMail credits left on it.

Your profile is the landing page

Almost everyone you invite opens your profile before they decide. It does the job a landing page does for an ad: in a few seconds it has to say who you are, who you help and why a stranger should talk to you. Fix it before the first request, because every invite after that sends people to it.

Write as yourself, too. Outreach that hides who is writing, invents a shared past or poses as a peer asking for advice gets reported, and it should. Use your own account under your own name, and if a team sends, give each sender a profile worth opening. Check these five things first:

• A clear photo of your face and your real name, never a logo in place of a person.
• A headline that says who you help and with what, in their words, not a job title alone.
• An About section that opens with the problem you solve, then one or two results you can back up.
• Something a curious buyer can open: a featured post, a short case, a one-page deck.
• A few recent posts or comments in your field, so the profile is not a blank page.

In GetSales every step goes out from your sender profile's own LinkedIn account, which the account holder connects themselves, so the profile people open is the real one.

Write only to people with a reason

The list decides more than the message does. Start with the role you sell to at companies that fit: titles, seniority, company size, industry and region. Then look for a reason to write now. If you cannot say in one line why this person and why now, leave them off the list.

Good reasons are things that changed or things they said: a new role, a post about the problem you solve, a team hiring for the job your product helps with, a new office, a funding round, an event you both attend. Read the profile, the recent activity and the company page before you write, and keep what you found next to the name, since it becomes your first line.

By hand, use LinkedIn's people search, or Sales Navigator's filters if you have the licence, and save the search so you can run it again. The people who reacted to a post on your subject are a good list too: they already told you what they care about.

In GetSales, AI Search turns one sentence into search filters, or runs a search link or a post link as is, and checks every person against your tables and your stoplist; Signals plays act on a job change, a new post or a visit to your site.

The connection note: short, or none

The note has little room. LinkedIn Help gives it 200 characters (article a563153), and another of its pages gives 300 with Premium (article a6239760), both read 24 October 2026. Use it for one line on why you want to connect: shared context, a post of theirs, the field you both work in. No pitch, no link, no meeting ask.

Should you add a note at all? The studies outreach vendors publish disagree, so test it on your own list. A blank request from a profile that fits is fine. A note helps only when it says something specific, so with nothing specific to say, send the request blank. Five to start from, each short enough for a free account:

In GetSales the Connection request step takes an optional note with each person's details as variables, counted as you type, and a note with an empty variable is not sent, by default; an A/B test step can send one version with a note and one blank, each with its own accepted count.

The first message and the follow‑ups

Once they accept, you can message them directly, with the room the note did not have. Thank them in a few words, give the reason you wrote and ask one question that is easy to answer. Keep it short enough to read on a phone. If there is a pitch, it goes here, in one sentence.

Then follow up two or three times at most, a few days apart; guides commonly space them two to five days. Each follow‑up should carry something the last one lacked: a short case, a fact about their market, a sharper question. Never send a bare "just bumping this". Stop the moment they reply, on any channel, and answer the reply, not the sequence.

If they have not accepted in about a week, stop waiting. Try email, or withdraw the request and let it go.

In GetSales an AI column writes a first line for each person who fits, from your words and their row, and the workflow waits for the accept, sends the LinkedIn message, holds each follow‑up for the days you set and skips it for anyone who replied, by default.

Limits and account safety

LinkedIn sets the limits on how many invitations and messages an account can send, and they are LinkedIn's to change. Guides commonly cite a weekly figure for connection requests. Treat any number you read as a ceiling someone else reported, never as a target for your own account.

The habits that keep an account healthy are the ones that get replies anyway: fewer requests to better-chosen people, and an eye on your accept rate. A low accept rate says fix the list or the profile, not send more. Withdraw the requests nobody accepted after a few weeks, so your pending list holds people who might still say yes.

A new account, or one that has been quiet for months, should start slow and build up over weeks. Send in working hours, when people read their messages. Never hand your password or a two-factor code to anyone to run outreach for you: the account holder signs in.

GetSales paces every send within each account's limits, gives a new LinkedIn account a gradual ramp, and marks a sender profile that needs your attention on every workflow it sends for, with what is wrong and who fixes it on the Sender profiles page.

Add email when LinkedIn goes quiet

Not everyone accepts, and some people who do rarely open their LinkedIn inbox. Email reaches them where they work. The usual shape: send the request, wait about a week for the accept, keep LinkedIn for the people who accept and write by email to the rest.

You need a work email for each person: look it up from the name and the company, check that it delivers before you send, and send from a mailbox under your own name. Keep the email in the same voice as the note, with the same reason, so someone who sees both recognises one sender.

Run one channel at a time, each waiting on the other. Two messages on two channels on the same day read as a chase, not a conversation.

In GetSales a Find work email column looks up each person's address at 1 credit per email found and delivered, a miss free, and a wait for the accept sends a LinkedIn message to those who accept and an email from the same sender profile's mailbox to the rest.

Replies, and the numbers that matter

A reply is the point of all this, so answer it soon, by hand or from a draft you read first. Stop every other step to that person the moment they write, on either channel: few things lose a warm lead faster than a scheduled follow‑up landing after they said yes.

Count two things per step: accepted per request sent, and replied per message. Change one thing at a time, the note or the opener, and compare it with the version without the change. Do not count reads: a message stays Sent, never Read, when the other person has read receipts off, and InMail senders see no read receipts (LinkedIn Help, articles a569649 and a567370, read 24 October 2026).

In GetSales every reply lands in Unibox, one list for LinkedIn and email, and pauses that person's steps by default. The AI SDR drafts each answer, and each scenario sets whether it sends on its own or waits for your OK. Every step shows what it sent, who accepted or replied, and the rate.