By Zivko Dodovski, Founder & CEO, DoneMaker · Updated September 2026
Finding leads on LinkedIn is two decisions, in order: who you want to talk to, then how you find them. Most people skip the first and start searching, which produces a big list fast, full of people who look right on paper and will never buy. This is the way we build the list on every account, with or without Sales Navigator, and it starts before you open LinkedIn at all.
Start with the ICP, from your best clients
The ideal customer profile has four parts: industry, company size, geography, and the person whose desk the problem lands on. Write all four down before you touch a filter.
Don’t build the profile from hypothetical buyers. Build it from the clients you already have: the ones who closed fastest, stayed longest, and complained least. That is your ICP in the wild, and it usually looks narrower than the one you would have written from scratch. Two or three verticals where you can name real clients beats ten where you can’t.
One page, four fields, and it becomes the checklist every list gets built against. This takes an hour and saves weeks of messaging the wrong people. If you’re starting from zero, how to build an ideal customer profile walks through it.
Function and seniority, not a single title
Here is the trap for anyone new to LinkedIn prospecting: search one title, get a huge result count, assume that’s the audience. It isn’t.
Titles on LinkedIn are typed by the person. “Owner,” “Founder,” “Managing Partner,” “Principal,” and “President” can all be the same job at five different firms. Search one and you miss four.
The fix is to layer job function with seniority level, then narrow with a keyword. Function tells you which department; seniority tells you how much authority; the keyword (“bookkeeping,” “fractional CFO,” “paid media”) tells you the domain. Together they catch every variant of the title without guessing them one by one. The filter mechanics are in the Sales Navigator guide.
Company size tells you who buys
Headcount isn’t a demographic; it’s a proxy for how a purchase gets made.
At an owner-led firm, the owner is involved in every purchase. Short cycle, tight budget, but the decision-maker is right there and still reads their own LinkedIn messages. At a firm with department heads, the person running the function has real authority and the owner has delegated; you message the head, not the owner. Past that, a procurement layer appears and you need a champion inside; that is a different game, and mostly not the one manual LinkedIn outreach is built for.
Most of our clients sell to the first two. Pick the band because it matches how your service is bought, not because it feels right.
Who to message first
The lazy move is to go straight to the most senior name on the list. It’s often the slowest path to a closed deal.
At an owner-led firm, message the owner; they are the buyer, the user, and the person who feels the problem. At a larger firm, message the person who owns the problem day to day. They are closer to the pain, easier to reach, and get a fraction of the cold outreach the CEO gets. A conversation with them gives you context and a name to reference when you do reach the person who signs; a cold message to the top lands very differently when you can say “I’ve been talking with your operations lead.”
Tag each person on the list by role. You are not sending the same value proposition to the owner and to their operations manager; different roles feel the problem differently, and the message has to match. That is targeting and messaging meeting in the middle.
Intent signals: who is ready right now
A title tells you who someone is. A signal tells you whether they’re ready to hear from you.
- Post engagement. Someone who recently liked or commented on content about your category is already thinking about the problem. They’ve self-identified.
- Changed jobs recently. A new role means a mandate, a budget being set, and vendor relationships that haven’t formed yet. Reference the change in the connection message.
- Group membership. Groups are niche. Someone in a group for independent accounting firm owners is engaged in that world.
- Posted recently. Underused and the most important. If someone is posting, they are on the platform, and your request will be seen. If they aren’t, you’re messaging a ghost.
And the tactic almost nobody uses: competitor post engagers as a ready-made list. Find a competitor’s company page or a well-followed voice in your space. Look at who is liking and commenting. Those people are actively engaged with your category; they’re not cold, they’re already thinking about it. Build a list from that engagement and every conversation starts warm.
How to find leads on LinkedIn without Sales Navigator
You don’t need the paid tool to build a good list; you need the ICP and some patience. Everything below runs on a free account.
- The regular search filters. Filter people by location and current company; filter companies by industry and size, then open the company’s “People” tab to find the person. Slower than Sales Navigator, same output if the ICP is tight.
- Post engagers. Yours, your competitors’, and the thought leaders your buyers follow. The comment section is a prospect list with intent attached.
- Groups. Join the ones your buyer joins. Read who’s posting and answering.
- Event attendees. Industry webinars and LinkedIn events list who’s attending. That is a pre-qualified room.
- Profile viewers. People who looked at you already know you exist. Top of the list.
- Directories and associations. Trade bodies, “top firms” lists, conference speaker pages. Take the company names, find the owner on LinkedIn by hand.
Sales Navigator makes all of this faster and lets you save and refresh it. It does not make a fuzzy ICP sharp. The Sales Navigator guide covers the paid version; the free version is the same logic with more clicks.
2nd-degree first, then warm up the rest
Connection degree matters more than most people realize. A 2nd-degree prospect shares a mutual connection with you, and that shared name creates trust before you’ve said a word. Filter for 2nd-degree first and reference the mutual, even casually.
For 3rd-degree prospects, warm them up before the request: a real comment on a post, not “great insight,” a couple of times over a week or two. Now you’re not a stranger when the request lands.
We don’t use InMail. A connection request with one true line, sent by hand, is accepted more often and starts a real thread; InMail arrives as a paid message from a stranger and prospects treat it that way.
Niche verticals LinkedIn’s taxonomy doesn’t have
LinkedIn’s industry list is broad. It doesn’t have “independent pharmacy,” “boutique architecture firm,” or “regional freight broker” as options. If your ICP is a niche, the dropdown will fail you.
Use the keyword field. People write their own bios and company descriptions, and they use the language the taxonomy misses. Search the niche term and let LinkedIn surface the profiles that use it. Then use groups, which niche verticals often have in numbers, and industry directories as a source list you check by hand.
Local targeting
If you’re a service-area business, geography isn’t a filter; it’s the whole list. The geography filter goes to city and metro level, and it stacks with function, seniority, industry, and size like any other filter.
One thing that changes the message: say the location. “We work with a lot of manufacturing businesses in the Chicago area” is a relevance signal. It tells the prospect this isn’t a mass blast, and that specificity is what gets a reply.
How DoneMaker builds the list
On every account, a strategist builds the ICP with the client during onboarding, starting from the client’s best existing customers, then builds the list this way and saves it into the client’s campaign document alongside the four messages. The outreach specialist works that list by hand every working day; the strategist reviews it on the weekly strategy call, and if the connection rate says the targeting is off, the list changes before the messaging does.
As of September 2026:
- Running manual LinkedIn outreach since 2018
- 58+ active client accounts, US and Canada
- Up to 40 connection requests sent per working day, by hand
- 25–30% average connection rate
- 7–11 deal opportunities per account per month
- 4–5 booked calls per account per month
- Clients: accounting, bookkeeping and CFO firms; digital, marketing and advertising agencies; coaches and consultants; B2B services with relationship-driven sales
A deal opportunity is a prospect who expresses clear interest: asks questions, opens an email exchange, or books a call.
A precisely targeted list with generic messages is still a waste. Once the list is built, the work moves to personalizing the outreach messages, then to the conversation that turns a connection into a client. The whole system, list to booked call, is in the LinkedIn outreach playbook.
Frequently asked questions
What job titles should I target on LinkedIn for B2B sales?
The person who owns the problem your service solves. At owner-led firms that is the owner; at larger firms it is the head of the function. Don’t search single titles; layer function with seniority so you catch every spelling of the role, then narrow with a keyword for the domain.
How do I find leads on LinkedIn without Sales Navigator?
Write the ICP first, then use the free search filters (location, company, industry), the “People” tab on company pages, post engagers on your competitors’ and industry voices’ content, groups, event attendee lists, and your own profile viewers. It’s slower than the paid tool and produces the same list if the profile is tight.
How big should a LinkedIn prospect list be?
Small enough that one value proposition fits everyone on it, and large enough to run for a couple of months at your daily volume. If half the list would need a different message, it’s two lists.
Is it better to connect with 2nd-degree or 3rd-degree connections?
2nd-degree, first. The mutual connection creates trust before you’ve written a word. For 3rd-degree prospects, engage with their content for a week or two before sending the request so you’re not a stranger when it lands.
How do I find local business prospects on LinkedIn?
Set the geography filter to your city or metro area and stack it with function, seniority, industry, and company size. When you message, say the location; it separates your message from generic mass outreach in one line.
Want the list built for your buyer, and worked by a person every day? Book a call; 20 minutes, and we’ll tell you honestly whether LinkedIn outreach fits your business before anything else. If you’d rather read first, here is how the service works.
