LinkedIn outreach for B2B companies: Smirnov Consulting Group runs outreach from your founder's and sales team's LinkedIn profiles with warm email follow-ups, qualification and booking, launching about 15 days after the contract is signed.
Smirnov Consulting Group is a Prague-based B2B outbound lead generation agency that runs cold email and LinkedIn campaigns for founder-led B2B companies and books qualified sales calls. 12 years in outbound, hundreds of B2B companies, 24 countries.
The short version: profiles, sequences, volume and terms
- Channels: LinkedIn connection requests and messages from real profiles on your team, followed by warm emails. A warm email is one that reaches someone who has already seen your name on LinkedIn. When LinkedIn alone cannot reach enough people, we add cold email volume, usually after the first two or three weeks.
- Profiles first: the founder's and every sales rep's LinkedIn profile gets rebuilt before a single message goes out.
- Sequence: 7 steps across LinkedIn and warm email, written in three versions for three situations.
- Volume: we plan around 2,800 people per LinkedIn profile per month. More volume means more profiles.
- Qualification rule: agreed with you before launch. A prospect has to match the company and title profile we set together before a call is booked.
- Reporting: people contacted, replies, calls booked, calls that actually happened and deals signed, each as its own number. A weekly report, a monthly report and live notifications every day, plus a client portal with live campaign data if you want one.
- Launch: about 15 days from signed contract, with profiles, lists and copy done first. First replies and booked calls often come within the first 30 days after launch.
- Terms: from USD 3,000 (about EUR 2,500) per month, depending on scope. No minimum contract length, 1 month's notice, at least 3 months recommended. See pricing.
- Who does the work: senior experts only, no interns and no juniors: lead generation experts, GTM architects, GTM engineers and AI specialists. A senior team member runs your account day to day, and you have a direct line to Artem Smirnov, the founder. We keep the client list small on purpose, so every client gets full attention and full responsibility for results. The people who write your LinkedIn messages can be found on LinkedIn themselves, which is a fair test for any agency that wants to write in your name.
Your profile is the messenger, so it gets rebuilt first
When a prospect gets a LinkedIn message from a stranger, they open the sender's profile first. If all they find is a job title and a photo, the chance is gone in about two seconds. Nobody writes back to explain why.
So before anything sends, we rebuild the profiles that will do the outreach. We build each one around one offer for one type of buyer, with proof a stranger can check: results with real numbers, and ideally a short video that shows a real person is behind the account.
This goes beyond the founder. Prospects look up your sales reps too, in the gap between booking a call and joining it. An empty rep profile loses meetings that were already on the calendar.
Content supports all this, but it is not the engine. For most founders we work with, about one post a week, done properly, is enough. It is there for the moment after your message lands, when the prospect goes looking.
Seven steps across LinkedIn and warm email
Most founders run one connection request, one message and hope for a call. That was never built to work. We write 7 steps across two channels. LinkedIn opens the conversation, and the warm emails that follow reach someone who has already seen your face.
Each sequence comes in three versions. A prospect who replied "interesting, but not this quarter" should not get the same fifth message as one who accepted your request and went quiet. Same offer, different route in.
We also count conversations started, not only calls booked. A team chasing booked calls pitches in message one. A team chasing conversations asks a question, answers the reply, and lets the meeting come up when it fits. Calls come out of conversations. That order cannot be skipped.
One profile reaches about 2,800 people a month
That is the practical ceiling for one profile acting like a person rather than a script. It means one founder with one profile cannot produce the volume most founders want, however good the message is.
The answer is more profiles running the same winning sequence. For a financial advisory firm in Australia, the setup was 5 LinkedIn profiles and 20 email accounts. Each rep had one LinkedIn account, one email account for follow-ups, and three for cold email.
Territories are split account by account, so two of your people never land in the same prospect's inbox in the same week. After 10 to 14 days of real data, we add accounts to whichever channel is working in your niche.
LinkedIn lists get their own filters
LinkedIn prospects get a separate list from cold email prospects. We build them in Sales Navigator, alongside our other data tools, with boolean title searches that keep the decision-makers and drop the assistants.
One filter matters more on LinkedIn than anywhere else: people who posted in the last 30 days. It is a rough sign that a human actually checks the account. Every message sent to an empty account uses up part of the 2,800 a profile can reach.
Replies are read by a person, qualified and booked into your calendar. How that works is on our appointment setting page.
Case: UK UX design agency, 796 sales calls in 12 months
A UX design agency in the UK. The campaign ran on LinkedIn with a 6-step sequence. It opened with a profile view. If the prospect's profile accepted free InMail, the first message went as an InMail. If not, it went as a connection request.
Result: 796 sales calls in 12 months. In the best month, December, the campaign sent 1,243 messages and received 360 replies, about 29%.
That is about 66 calls a month on average, held for a full year from LinkedIn outreach.
Full story: UK UX design agency, 796 sales calls.
Not a fit if
- You do not want your profile touched. Outreach from a profile that fails the two-second check wastes every message.
- You want 10,000 people a month reached from one profile. The ceiling is about 2,800.
- Nobody on your team can take a call within about a week of the booking.
- You would pause when things get busy. Sequences break mid-flight and the pipeline goes thin a quarter later.
Questions buyers ask about LinkedIn outreach
How does LinkedIn outreach work for B2B lead generation?
We rebuild the profiles that will send, then build a list of decision-makers in Sales Navigator and other tools. Each profile runs a 7-step sequence across LinkedIn and warm email, reaching about 2,800 people a month. A person reads the replies, qualifies the interested ones and books them into your calendar. You get the numbers for every stage, from contacted to signed.
How is LinkedIn outreach different from cold email outreach?
On LinkedIn, the prospect sees your face and your profile before the conversation starts, so trust builds faster. The limit is volume: about 2,800 people per profile per month. Cold email reaches far more people, from separate domains and many mailboxes, with a shorter 4-step sequence. We usually open on LinkedIn and add cold email for volume after two or three weeks.
Do you send LinkedIn connection requests, InMail, or both?
Both, depending on the prospect. In the UK UX agency campaign above, the sequence started with a profile view. Prospects who accepted free InMail got the first message as an InMail, and everyone else got a connection request. The follow-ups then move to warm email, because by then the prospect has seen your name.
Do you use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for targeting?
Yes. Sales Navigator is one of 16+ B2B data tools we build lists with, alongside Apollo, ZoomInfo and Clay. On LinkedIn we use boolean title searches, one headcount range, specific countries per rep, and a filter for people who posted in the last 30 days. Email addresses for the warm follow-ups are verified before use, with bounces kept below 0.5%.
How fast can LinkedIn outreach start generating replies?
Replies start in the first weeks of sending, once setup is done, about 15 days after the contract is signed. Here is one real month from a single LinkedIn account, with email follow-ups: 1,200 people contacted, 289 replies, 21 interested, 16 booked a call, 12 showed up, 3 deals signed so far. That was one profile. More profiles running the same sequence multiply it.
How long should we run LinkedIn outreach before judging it?
We recommend at least 3 months, and the industry average to get outbound fully working is about 6. There is no minimum contract and the notice period is 1 month. Calls can come in the first month, but B2B sales cycles often run 6, 9 or 12 months, so the deals from those calls may close 4 months later or more. Month one tells you whether conversations are starting, not what the channel is worth.
How many touchpoints does a prospect get before you stop reaching out?
Seven, across LinkedIn and warm email. One or two messages is not a sequence, and five or six touchpoints is the working minimum. Then the sequence ends. A "not now" reply gets written down with a date, because a prospect who says "talk to me in March" is worth more than most first meetings.
Related
- Pricing
- Case studies
- Cold email agency
- Appointment setting
- Industries we run LinkedIn outreach for: construction companies, civil engineering companies, industrial and manufacturing companies, marketing agencies, advertising agencies, business coaches and consultants, financial advisory firms
- How outbound works FAQ