Mastering LinkedIn: Advanced Sales Strategies for Success

There’s no denying that in the last few years, LinkedIn has changed beyond recognition. From platform and algorithm tweaks to the rise of automation and AI, LinkedIn is becoming a challenging platform to use from a sales perspective. 

The old days of simply sending a connection request and asking for a meeting are long gone. Using LinkedIn today for lead generation and to nurture sales relationships requires a strategic engagement approach.

To help you navigate the new landscape of LinkedIn, we’ve invited two experts to share their strategies. Laura Hannan is the Founder of Pitch121, a company that manages senior executives’ LinkedIn profiles. Chris Wright is the Co-Founder of Lime, an app that works with LinkedIn to streamline your feed and help you engage with the platform on your own terms, rather than the algorithm’s.

From cutting through the noise to creating a curated feed, there’s plenty you can do in 2025 to master this platform and make it work for you, rather than the other way around.

How LinkedIn operates in 2025

Automation has made LinkedIn very noisy, as has the massive increase in people creating a lot more posts. Content that worked well for engagement four years ago – simple posts based around the ‘7 ways to’ structure or similar – are no longer enough to cut through the reams of competing content, fake engagement pods and AI. 

And with the struggles to get people to open emails and sponsored ads getting more expensive, it’s no wonder it feels so much harder to make genuine contact with prospects in a way that doesn’t cost all your time and effort.

But it’s also important to remember that your buyers and prospects are often discoverable on LinkedIn, and many are open to engaging if you approach it in the right way. So, how can you reach them?

“There’s lots of noise, noise, noise, noise, so it’s finding some way of breaking through that.” – Chris Wright, Co-Founder, Lime.

Chris Wright shares his advice in a 2-minute bite-sized training video: 

LinkedIn as a business development touchpoint

Rather than being your sole way of connecting with a prospect, view LinkedIn as just one of many touchpoints, alongside others such as your website and in-person events.

Prospects now do a lot of research before they’ve even spoken to a salesperson, and this will certainly include LinkedIn. View your company as a collective of LinkedIn pages, both for the organisation as a whole and also for each individual. Ensure that when a prospect does their research, they can build trust at scale across all these pages. Use them to present messages from different aspects of your business, from the culture behind the scenes to product development, so prospects can start to get a well-rounded picture of what you offer.

“It’s all about the touchpoints LinkedIn can bring in amongst the other things you’re doing.” – Laura Hannan, CEO, Pitch121

It’s also important to remember the power of the personal: people buy from people. As long as they’re not your sole content, more personal posts and photos work well to drive engagement. Selfies are particularly good at this, tapping into our inbuilt desire to look at human faces. Without even realising it, we slow down to look at a post with a selfie, and this tiny slowing triggers the algorithm to then recognise interest and push the post.

Using Sales Navigator to manage leads and prospects

Sales Navigator is an excellent way to leverage the power of LinkedIn. Use it as a dynamic directory and it easily identifies key decision-makers within organisations, allowing you to strategically target those most likely to drive business decisions.

One of the key features that make Sales Navigator a valuable resource is the filter functionality. Use it to pinpoint specific decision-makers within companies, from current employees to influencers, making it easier to break into the right accounts. Instead of spending time sifting through endless profiles, the filters help you quickly find pathways into the organisations you want to work with. 

For example, filters such as “second degree connections” are essential – these allow you to find people within the company who may have mutual connections, such as ex-colleagues, who might help facilitate an introduction.

When you’re trying to connect with someone on LinkedIn, always aim for second-degree connections. Pitch121’s research shows that there’s a 14% higher acceptance rate when you only target second-degree connections, compared with a mixed pool of second- and third-degree connections. By targeting second-degree connections, you’re leveraging mutual relationships, making it easier to build rapport and get your foot in the door.

You can also filter based on activity – aim for those who have posted in the last 30 days and are active on the platform. 

One function of Sales Navigator that doesn’t work so well, however, is InMail. It’s pushed by Linkedin as a way of showing value, but it usually produces low response rates. Laura’s tip is to use it as a tool to get the connection request accepted, rather than a way of contacting people to start a conversation.

Tips for successful Sales Navigator searches

• Use the keywords box: This is a great way to find decision-makers by job title, expertise or industry. Although this filter can sometimes lead to false positives, it usually delivers solid results.
• Don’t forget the ‘OR’ operator: Including ‘OR’ in your searches helps you broaden your results with multiple search terms, which is helpful when you’re trying to cast a wider net.
• Use the ‘exclude’ filter: This often-overlooked filter can help you eliminate unwanted industries, roles or keywords from your search results and refine your prospects. 

The other strength of Sales Navigator lies in its ability to track the activity of your prospects and then nurture them over time. Once you’ve built your list of prospects you can follow their activity, stay engaged with their content and gradually build a relationship. Monitor their posts and discussions in real-time, so you get valuable insight into what’s top of mind for them. Engaging with them around these topics increases the likelihood of sparking a conversation and getting a response. In fact, Pitch121 has found that simply liking a post before sending a connection request can increase your chances of acceptance by 10%.

This approach aligns with an account-based targeting strategy, which is particularly effective for mid-to-large companies, though it can also work for SMEs. By staying on top of your prospects’ activity, you ensure that when the time is right, you can reach out with context and relevance.

In this bite-sized video, Laura Hannan shares her top tips on how to build trust in your company on LinkedIn: 

Using third-party tools with LinkedIn

Third-party tools can be a great way to simplify your LinkedIn and cut through the noise to engage with people you really want to see.

New to the market is Lime, a ‘wrapper’ app that works around your LinkedIn profile. Tell it who you want to interact with, and it presents you with a clean feed of just their posts. It also integrates with other sales tools and social media platforms such as HubSpot and Bluesky.

This can really aid LinkedIn strategy: simply identify the sector of people you want to target that week, see their content as it’s posted, then engage with it to start building that relationship.

Chris’s top tip? You don’t have to engage with a post straight away – in fact, waiting a few days can be better, so your interaction doesn’t get lost in the first flurry of notifications on the post. Popping up a few days later can make your prospect more aware of your engagement. 

There are also a host of other tools on the market to enhance LinkedIn strategy. These range from outreach automation platforms such as Lead Connect to lead generation at scale apps such as Dux Soup. Two important things to note: Firstly, as many of these tools are AI-powered and capable of mass outreach, it’s important to make sure you’re operating within your ethical framework. Check out our post on the use of AI in sales for a more detailed discussion on this. Secondly, not all of these tools are supported by LinkedIn – the platform has strict rules about what third-party tools can be used. Please check your terms of service before proceeding. 

Making LinkedIn work for you

It’s important to remember that despite its changes, LinkedIn is still a social media platform that wants us to dwell and engage, so it will reward people who post and comment. 

But rather than wasting your time on engaging for the sake of engaging, and being scattergun in your approach, it’s crucial to use it strategically. Whether this is by employing target lists to get in front of the right people, or using third-party tools to enhance engagement levels with your network, your success on the platform will be determined by how you connect with people on a meaningful level.

Recommended further reading at Ethical Sales: learn how to master the Art of Social Selling and get some content creation inspiration.  

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