A Smarter, Creative Way to Generate Leads on LinkedIn in 2025
In 2025, people are more overloaded than ever. Everyone is flooded with cold emails, spammy DMs, and endless sales calls—and they're ignoring them all. So how do you break through the noise?
That’s the kind of question I help professional services firms solve every day. I specialize in building creative, personalized, multi-channel outbound strategies for businesses that don’t have the time or team to do it themselves. And in this article, I’m going to share one of those strategies with you—something I use with my own clients. I’ll explain why it works and how you can implement it to start generating new leads for your business.
Why Traditional Cold Outreach Is Falling Flat
Let’s start with the reality: LinkedIn is still the most powerful B2B lead generation tool in the game. But it's also saturated. So is email. Decision-makers get dozens of “Hi [First Name], I can help you get 30 more leads a day delivered straight to your inbox…” messages every week.
The volume of bad outreach has made people numb to good outreach. Even personalized messages can get buried or ignored simply because they’re one of 25 others sitting in the inbox.
Here’s what’s working now: creative, human-centered campaigns that don’t feel like a sales pitch. And are executed across multiple channels. Relying on a single email with 2 follow up emails isn’t going to cut it.
The Power of Relationship-Centered Selling
We’ve forgotten what LinkedIn was built for.
It’s not a database. It’s a networking platform—designed for conversation, community, and professional relationship-building. And yet, most sales teams use it like a giant cold-calling machine, blasting out sales messages to strangers and hoping something sticks.
In 2025, that approach just doesn’t work. The businesses seeing real, sustainable growth are the ones investing in relationship-centered selling—a long-game strategy rooted in connection, relevance, and trust. That’s what today’s buyers are looking for. They don’t want to be sold to; they want to be understood. When someone engages with you based on mutual interests, shared contacts, or real curiosity (not desperation), you become a name they recognize—and eventually, a resource they trust. (Financial Times)
Here’s an example of what that looks like in action:
Stop cold-messaging decision-makers with service pitches. Instead, spend 90 days building a network of second-degree connections tied to your happiest clients. Engage with posts, start thoughtful conversations in the comments, and share advice and useful resources on your newsfeed. You’ll recognize when the timing is right to approach them with your services, if they haven’t already approached you first. With leads that are warmer, more responsive, and already familiar with your name, you’ll recognize a response rate that’s 4x higher.
Yes, this approach takes more time. But if you’re not building this kind of strategic pipeline right now, you’re already behind. And if you are building it now, you're setting yourself up to grow faster and more effortlessly six months from now.
Micro-Targeted Strategies
Instead of one broad, generic outreach strategy, implement micro-targeted strategies.
Here’s an example:
Build a short list of prospects who are closely connected to your best clients on LinkedIn. Then, send those prospects a connection request that mentions your client as your mutual connection. This type of personalized approach will build credibility, increase your acceptance rate, and ultimately generate higher quality leads.
Why You Need This Type of B2B Outreach in 2025
This strategy cuts through the noise for three key reasons:
It’s anchored in real relationships.
When you reference a mutual connection (someone they know and trust), the message immediately feels less spammy.It’s curiosity-driven, not sales-driven.
You’re not pitching in the first message. You’re sparking a conversation based on relevance and shared circles.It feels organic.
Because it is. This approach feels more like networking and less like prospecting—and that’s exactly why people respond.
Let’s break it down.
Step-by-Step: How to Run This Campaign Yourself
Here’s how to execute this strategy from start to finish:
1. Identify Your Client Advocate or Happy Customer
Start with a customer who:
Is highly satisfied
Has a decent LinkedIn network
Is influential or well-connected in your target industry
2. Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s “Connections of” Search Filter
Go to LinkedIn’s advanced search and use the “Connections of [Name]” filter. Combine this with job titles, industries, or companies you’re targeting.
Example:
Filter your search by connections of Joe Boudreaux (your client) who are Directors of Operations at oil and gas companies in Texas.
This gives you a curated list of highly relevant people who are one degree removed from your business—warm, but not yet reached.
Here’s a LinkedIn Sales Navigator How-To Guide.
3. Personalize Your Connection Request
Don’t use the generic "We have mutual connections" opener.
Try this instead:
“Hi [First Name] – I work closely with Joe Boudreaux and saw you’re connected. I manage his annual safety audits and noticed you’re in a similar space. Nice to connect with you on LinkedIn!”
Keli Dantin
President of Bayou Safety
It’s short. It’s specific. And it’s not selling anything.
4. Warm Them Up with a Soft Message
After they accept, follow up with something like:
“Thanks for connecting, [Name]. If anything comes up where I can be a resource, feel free to reach out.”
You can also share a relevant piece of content (blog post, guide, short case study), but keep it conversational, not salesy. And by relevant, I don’t mean something that promotes your business, but something they would truly find useful in theirs.
5. Nurture the Relationship Authentically
Once they’ve accepted your connection, don’t pitch. Start by engaging with their content: like, comment, or share their posts when relevant. Post your own useful content on your feed to stay visible. Occasionally, send a short, thoughtful DM that adds value or shows genuine interest—such as:
“Hey, will you be attending [industry event] this year?”
“Are you a member of [professional organization]? Trying to figure out if it’s worth the investment.”
“We have a job opening for [job title]. If you know anyone looking, please share.”
These touchpoints keep the conversation going without coming off as salesy—and they create space for trust to grow naturally.
6. Make a Specific, Low-Pressure Ask
Once you've warmed up the relationship, it’s time to make a move—but do it in a way that feels natural and original. In-person meetings have gone by the wayside. Stand out from the crowd by offering to go meet them in person. And by making it time-bound, you can create gentle urgency. For example:
“Do you have an office in [City]? I’ll be there for another client meeting in a few weeks and would love to stop by and introduce myself.”
This type of ask works because it’s friendly, direct, and gives a clear reason and timeframe. It nudges them to respond, without feeling like a hard pitch. Even if they can’t meet, it often opens the door to further conversation or a virtual intro.
Best Practices for Using LinkedIn as a Sales Tool
The real power of LinkedIn lies in one-on-one connections—not just in posting content. If you're serious about using LinkedIn as a sales tool, you have to be strategic about who you're adding, why you're adding them, and how you engage. It’s not enough to simply post on your business page and hope someone bites. The magic happens through personal outreach, conversations, and consistent visibility.
To effectively grow your LinkedIn network:
Focus on the Owner’s Page, not the Business Page: LinkedIn's algorithm favors personal profiles over business pages. Refocus your LinkedIn strategy to growing the owner’s LinkedIn network and you’ll recognize up to 5 times more engagement compared to the company’s page. LinkedIn.
Connection Requests: Limit yourself to around 20 connection requests per day, totaling approximately 100 per week, to avoid LinkedIn's restrictions. Evaboot
Personalized Messages: Always include a personalized message with your connection request to increase acceptance rates.
Withdraw Unaccepted Invites: Regularly review and withdraw pending invitations that haven't been accepted after a couple of weeks to maintain a healthy account status. You’ll be able to send a new connection request three weeks after you withdraw the invitation. LinkedIn
Consistent Posting: Share valuable content regularly to stay top-of-mind with your network. Remember, only your connections will see your posts, so growing your network is crucial for broader reach.
Introducing Dripify: Automate and Streamline Your LinkedIn Outreach
Since LinkedIn is a platform most people are familiar with, implementing any of these strategies will be easy enough. The hard part? Staying consistent. Prospecting, sending connection requests, and engaging with new connections can be difficult to manage manually.
That’s why automation tools like Dripify are essential if you want to scale without spending hours every day on LinkedIn. Plus, these tools have features built-in to keep you from overstepping LinkedIn’s limits. This matters a lot– getting restricted by LinkedIn is real (just ask Seamless.ai 🙃).
Dripify allows you to:
Automate connection requests and follow-ups.
Create personalized drip campaigns.
Track campaign performance and analytics.
I’ve helped dozens of clients launch LinkedIn campaigns with Dripify, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. One of my clients recently told me:
“The LinkedIn campaign is working amazingly! I’ve never ever seen so many people accept my connection request before. The way you designed the strategy is working great. Great work!”
That strategy was all me. But Dripify was the tool that helped deliver those results.
I’ve tested other options like Connect 365 and Linked Helper, and each has its challenges–even Dripify. But for usability and cost, Dripify is the clear winner.
Interested in trying Dripify? I’d really appreciate it if you’d sign up using my affiliate link, and show me a little love for sharing this product with you 🙏
Final Thoughts: This Isn’t a Tactic—It’s a Mindset Shift
In 2025, the old rules of outreach don’t work. If you're relying on templated messages and cold email alone, you're invisible.
This strategy works because it's real. It’s based on actual connections, personalized messaging, and strategic creativity. And it’s just one of the many non-traditional ideas I use with my clients at Lavish Sales & Marketing to help them consistently generate high-quality leads—even without a full-time sales team.
If you want more ideas like this, here’s how we can work together:
Book a Consulting Session. During this one-hour workshop, I’ll ask specific questions to learn more about your business, such as who your best clients are and how you first obtained their business. From there, I’ll suggest strategic ways to find and engage more people like them. You'll be able to take these ideas and start applying them right away.
Hire Lavish as your Fractional Sales Team. If you’re just getting started, or simply don’t have the time to implement these strategies yourself, we provide ongoing support through hourly or retainer-based contracts. We’ll adapt our services to your business, not the other way around!
Lavish Sales & Marketing is a boutique consulting agency helping B2B organizations build smarter outreach strategies since 2020. A peak inside our toolbox, you’ll find Apollo, Warmup Inbox, Write Sonic, and Dripify. But the real difference comes from how you use that data, and that’s where we come in. Lavish is owned and operated by Keli Dantin.
