LinkedIn Prospecting

What this skill produces

A repeatable pipeline that turns one input — (product, target country, decision-maker role) — into a validated, contactable, message-ready list of LinkedIn decision-makers, complete with the email/phone the article-floor "google → linkedin" trick can't actually deliver:

1. A search plan of 8–15 Google + Bing + Wayback dorks adapted to the country's primary LinkedIn profile language and to the role's local title
2. A profile list with LinkedIn URL, name, title, company, location, mutual-connection count, post-activity tier
3. An enrichment file with email + phone (where legally extractable) via Apollo/Snov/Hunter/Lusha/Wiza
4. A 4-touch outreach sequence — Connection Request → Accepted DM → Follow-up → Channel-switch — with templates in EN / ES / PT / FR / DE / AR / JA, plus a reply-handling matrix
5. A compliance pass — LinkedIn ToS limits + GDPR / CASL / CCPA flags per country

The end state: a junior salesperson can pick up the list and start sending without rewriting messages, and the LinkedIn account doesn't get rate-limited or restricted in week one.

When to use this skill

• Foreign-trade seller wants to skip LinkedIn Sales Navigator ($99/mo) and still find the same people
• Founder needs 50–200 cold conversations with overseas decision-makers to validate a market
• Agency is building an outbound list of procurement/buying contacts for a manufacturer client
• A previous WhatsApp campaign (google-whatsapp-prospecting) is exhausted — switch to LinkedIn channel for the same buyer set

Do NOT use for:

• B2C influencer outreach — see tools/backlink-kol-extractor and brand-strategy/influencer-marketing
• Recruiting / hiring — different ToS rules apply, different role keywords
• Markets with low LinkedIn penetration — Russia (LI is blocked), China mainland (LI shut down 2021), Iran. Switch to local platforms.

Required inputs

Refuse to start with vague inputs.

Input	Format	Example
Product	Specific noun phrase	"12V LED strip light, IP65, 5050 SMD" — NOT "lighting"
Target country	One country at a time	"Brazil, focus São Paulo + RJ" — NOT "LatAm"
Decision-maker role	One specific title (or "tier" — exec/buyer/sourcing)	"Procurement Manager at companies with 50–500 employees" — NOT "anyone who buys"

Optional: target company-size band, industry vertical, language requirement (EN-only vs OK with PT/ES native).

The four-stage pipeline

Each stage has a dedicated reference. Read it before executing the stage.

Stage 1 — Search

Build a query plan from references/search-formulas.md. The article's single formula

site:linkedin.com/in/ "<product>" "<country>" "<role>"

is the floor — it now misses 30–60% of profiles because of LinkedIn's 2024 Auth Wall and Google's resulting deindexing. Real campaigns add:

• Bing + Yandex mirrors (often have less LI deindexing than Google in 2025–26)
• Localized role keywords from references/role-keywords.md — "Comprador" for Brazil, "Acheteur" for France, "Einkaufsleiter" for Germany — most countries' LI profiles use the local title
• Wayback Machine fallback for profiles Google has dropped: https://web.archive.org/web/*/linkedin.com/in/*<role-keyword>*
• Company-page → people chain: find target companies first via site:linkedin.com/company/, then dork their employees
• Post-activity targeting via linkedin.com/posts/ to find people who posted about the product recently
• Exclusion of consultants/freelancers/recruiters who pollute results: -"open to work" -"consultant" -"recruiter" -"hiring"

Stage 2 — Enrich (find email + phone)

Article A vaguely promises "tools to extract emails" — references/enrichment-tools.md names them with cost, accuracy, and legal context. The realistic stack:

• Free tier: Hunter.io (50/mo), Snov.io (50/mo), Apollo.io (60/mo) — start here for under-50 lists
• Paid bulk: Apollo ($49/mo, 12k credits), Lusha ($29 starter, mobile-first), Wiza ($30, LinkedIn-export specialist)
• Manual fallback: pattern-guess email from company domain (firstname.lastname@company.com) → verify with NeverBounce / ZeroBounce

Tools cost money. The article elides this — set client expectations.

Stage 3 — Outreach (4 touches)

Use templates/outreach-playbook.md. The article gives 7 DM templates, all of one archetype (pain → solution → low-friction CTA). The playbook adds:

• 5 more archetypes the article missed: mutual-connection intro, replied-to-post warm, recent-news/award reference, reverse-pitch ("we want distributors"), voice-note opener (highest 2026 reply rate)
• Connection Request template — completely separate from DM, hard 300-char limit, different psychology
• Per-language native templates — not Google Translate
• Reply-handling matrix — what to send when they ask price / send catalog / not interested / ghost

Touch cadence:

1. T0: Connection Request (≤300 chars)
2. T1 (24–48h after acceptance): Opening DM using one of 12 archetypes
3. T2 (5d after T1, no reply): Follow-up
4. T3 (10d after T2, no reply): Channel switch — pivot to email or WhatsApp using enrichment from Stage 2

Stop after T3. Do not chase further on LinkedIn — your account gets flagged.

Stage 4 — Compliance + LinkedIn account hygiene

Read references/linkedin-limits.md before any campaign >25 connection requests/day. Hard limits in 2026:

• Connection requests: ~80–100/week (down from 200/week pre-2024). Exceed → "You're approaching the weekly limit" warning, then 1-week freeze.
• DM volume: ~100/day for 1st-degree connections, 0/day for 2nd+ unless you pay InMail credits
• Automation tools (Phantombuster, Linked Helper, Dux-Soup, Octopus, Expandi): all violate LinkedIn ToS § 8.2. Account ban is the standard outcome — even "throttled" tools eventually get caught.
• Country regulation: same GDPR / CASL / CCPA / UWG §7 as google-whatsapp-prospecting — LinkedIn DM is "commercial electronic message" under most regimes

Recommended account hygiene:

• One personal LinkedIn per active outbound campaign
• Warm the account for 2 weeks (post 1×/week, comment 3×/week, accept inbound) before high-volume outbound
• Never send the same message text >5 times — LI similarity-detects across accounts

Workflow (end-to-end)

1. Confirm the three required inputs. Refuse to proceed if vague.
2. Open references/role-keywords.md, get the localized role list for the target country.
3. Open references/search-formulas.md, build 8–15 queries combining: localized role + product + country + Google/Bing/Wayback + exclusions.
4. Execute searches manually or via SerpAPI batch (reuse templates/serpapi-batch.py from google-whatsapp-prospecting/templates/). Dedupe LinkedIn URLs.
5. For each LI URL, capture: name, current title, company, city, mutual connections (if visible without login), post-activity tier (last 30d).
6. Run the URL list through Apollo / Snov / Hunter — see references/enrichment-tools.md for picking the right tool by region. Get email + (where available) mobile.
7. Score each lead (templates/lead-tracker.csv's priority column): mutual connections (×3), post-activity (×2), title match (×2), company size match (×2).
8. Write Connection Requests for top 80 leads/week using templates/outreach-playbook.md.
9. After acceptance (T1): pick the right DM archetype based on what you saw on their profile. Personalize the merge fields. Send only inside their local 09:00–17:00.
10. Track in CSV. Run T2 follow-up at 5d. Run T3 channel-switch at 10d (use email from Stage 2, or WhatsApp number if surfaced).
11. After T3, archive. Do not chase further on LinkedIn.

Common failure modes

• Using English role titles in non-English markets: searching "Purchasing Manager" "Brazil" returns ~25% of the BR procurement population that lists their title in English. Always include the local term (Portuguese: "Gerente de Compras" / "Comprador").
• Hunting CEOs of large enterprises: in companies with 1000+ employees, the CEO never signs purchase orders. Filter to small/mid companies (10–500 employees) when targeting CEO/Owner; for enterprise, target Procurement/Sourcing director.
• Connection request opens with "Hi, hope you're doing well": 300 chars are precious. Cut all pleasantries, lead with the specific reason in 1 sentence.
• Sending 7 identical templates from the article: LinkedIn's similarity detection flags pattern-blast accounts. Use the templates as scaffolds, rewrite the verb and the example each send.
• "Free gift / send link" hook in T1: triggers LI's auto-spam classifier. Defer the link to T2 after they reply.
• Skipping enrichment: 30% of leads will ghost on LI but reply on email. Without an email column you can't do the T3 channel-switch.
• Running 200+ connection requests/day via Phantombuster: account gets restricted in 7–14 days. Worth it only if you're OK losing the account.
• Sending DM at 3am buyer-local time: same time-zone issue as WhatsApp prospecting; cross-reference google-whatsapp-prospecting/references/country-targeting.md for send windows.

Source-article gap analysis (2026-04-26)

Source articles built from:

• "开发信没邮箱？一键复制这个Google公式，精准反查LinkedIn海外买家CEO！" (慧进AI工具说)
• "建议马上收藏！外贸老鸟都在悄悄用的7个LinkedIn高回复私信模板" (慧进AI工具说)

Article topic	Article said	This skill adds
Google reverse-search	1 formula	8+ formula variants + Bing/Yandex + Wayback + company-page chain + post-targeting
Role keywords	10 English titles	50+ titles localized into 8 languages with regional variants
CEO targeting	"Find the CEO"	Company-size band gating: CEO only for ≤500 employees; >500 = Procurement/Sourcing Director
Tool mention	"Use specialized tools"	Named comparison of 6 enrichment tools with cost, accuracy, legal context
LinkedIn ToS	Not mentioned	Full quota / automation risk / account hygiene reference
DM templates	7 same-archetype	12 templates across 5 archetypes; plus separate Connection Request templates
Localization	English only	Native templates for ES / PT / FR / DE / AR / JA
Follow-up	None	T2 + T3 sequence with channel-switch logic
Reply handling	None	7-row response matrix
Voice notes	Not mentioned	Voice-note opener template (2026 highest reply-rate format)

See also

• references/search-formulas.md — Google + Bing + Wayback + company-chain dorks for LI
• references/role-keywords.md — 50+ decision-maker titles in 8 languages, by company-size band
• references/enrichment-tools.md — Apollo/Snov/Hunter/Lusha/Wiza comparison + free fallback patterns
• references/linkedin-limits.md — quota table + ToS § 8.2 (automation ban) + account warm-up protocol
• templates/outreach-playbook.md — Connection Request + 12 DM templates + T2/T3 sequence + reply matrix
• templates/lead-tracker.csv — CRM with priority scoring
• Sister skill: ../google-whatsapp-prospecting/ — same 4-stage shape but channel = WhatsApp; share the SerpAPI script