Who should you connect with on LinkedIn to get clients?

Who you connect with on LinkedIn matters more than how many people you connect with, what you post or how clever your first message is. Connect with people who look like your best clients and the rest gets easier, because the right person reads a decent profile and a plain thank-you and wants to reply.

Get the list wrong and nothing downstream can save it. I've watched founders rewrite the same message five times when the real problem was that they were talking to people who could never buy. Targeting comes before copy. Always. It's the first step in growing your LinkedIn network with the right people, and everything else rests on it.

Why are you connected to so many people on LinkedIn who will never buy?

Because LinkedIn makes it easy to say yes to everyone. Recruiters, vendors, other coaches on LinkedIn, people from a conference in 2017, someone who liked one post. Each acceptance felt harmless at the time. Add them up and your connection count climbs while your conversations stay flat, because almost none of those people can buy.

The Noise Machine adds its own rubbish. Automation tools send requests to anyone with the right job title, and pay-per-appointment vendors hand you calls with people who were never going to buy and only wanted to pitch you back. A LinkedIn network full of those people is busy without being useful.

Being visible to the wrong people on LinkedIn is just invisibility with extra steps.

Who should you connect with on LinkedIn to get clients?

Connect with seven groups, roughly in order of importance: lookalikes of your best clients, their advisers, their board, consultants on the same projects, peers who sell something different, the voices your buyers follow, and your own lapsed contacts. Nearbys are the six groups around your buyer, people who already have the buyer's ear.

1. Lookalikes of your best clients. Same role, same size of business, same industry, same kind of problem. Aim at the person who signs, the owner, managing director or chief executive, and not the person who researches options and passes them up the chain.
2. Their trusted advisers. Their accountant, their lawyer, their banker. They already have your buyer's trust, and one introduction from them can open a door that cold requests never will.
3. Their board. The chair and the non-executive directors who sit beside your buyer and get asked "do you know anyone who..."
4. Consultants on the same projects. The people who sit next to you on the same kind of work for the same kind of client.
5. Peers in your space who sell something different. A brand strategist and an operations consultant serve the same owners. They can refer each other all year.
6. The voices your buyers follow. Look at the Interests section on your best clients' LinkedIn profiles. The people they follow shape what they read, and their audiences look a lot like your buyer.
7. Your own lapsed contacts. Former colleagues, former clients and people you've lost touch with. They know you. They just haven't heard from you in a while.

It works like a “braai” (barbecue). You rarely meet the buyer cold at the gate. The host, the neighbour or the brother-in-law introduces you, and those people are your nearbys.

Then apply one filter to all seven groups. Only connect with people who have posted or been active on LinkedIn in the last 30 days. Someone who hasn't opened LinkedIn since the spring will accept in six months, if ever, and won't reply to anything.

Here is how that plays out in a made-up example. An executive coach whose best clients are first-time chief executives of companies with 50 to 200 staff would connect with other first-time chief executives at that size, the chairs and non-executive directors who appointed them, the headhunters who placed them, and the finance directors who sit beside them at the board table. Four of the groups, one buyer, and every one of them is a person who could hire the coach or mention her name to someone who would.

Who should you leave out of your LinkedIn network?

Leave out competitors, your clients' junior staff unless you've been introduced, job seekers and students, companies too small to afford you, and anyone already in a conversation with you. They inflate the count without adding a buyer. A short list of exclusions saves a lot of wasted weeks.

• Competitors. They'll study you and never hire you.
• Your clients' junior staff, unless you've been introduced. It can look like you're going around the person who pays you.
• Job seekers and students. Lovely people, with no budget.
• Companies too small to afford you. If they can't pay your fee this year, they're a referral at best.
• Anyone already in a conversation with you. A cold request from someone they're already talking to looks careless.

Be careful what goes on that list on a hunch, though. At the dawn of smartphones I was walking the Durban beachfront with my then partner when a bead-seller pulled out a Samsung D900 and used MMS with ease. The corporate world had said ordinary traders would never handle that technology. We built software that let curio sellers photograph a product and text it straight into a shopping cart. Anyone who believed the received wisdom missed that market completely. So before you decide a group is too senior, too old or too traditional to be on LinkedIn, search for them. Let the search decide.

If your LinkedIn requests go unanswered, the list is the first thing to check, before the profile and long before the message. I go through the full diagnosis in why LinkedIn connection requests don't get accepted, and what a healthy number looks like in what a good connection acceptance rate is.

Should you connect with people you don't know on LinkedIn?

Yes, if they look like your buyer or sit next to your buyer. LinkedIn was built for people who haven't met yet, and a request without a note is a small, polite ask. The test isn't whether you know them. It's whether you'd be glad to be in a conversation with them next month.

The old advice was to only connect with people you know well. That made sense when LinkedIn was an online CV. It doesn't now, because your next client is almost certainly someone you haven't met yet. What matters is that the request makes sense from their side. A stranger who runs the same kind of business as your best clients will usually accept. A stranger with no link to their world usually won't, and shouldn't.

So before you send, look at the LinkedIn profile for ten seconds and ask one question: would this person be glad I found them? If the answer is no, move on to the next name.

Should you accept every LinkedIn connection request you get?

No. Accept the people who fit your buyer, the people around them and anyone you genuinely know. Ignore the obvious sellers, the bots and the fake profiles. Every person you accept on LinkedIn shapes your feed and your network, and a network full of noise is harder to work.

A quick check takes seconds. Is there a real photo? A real job at a real company? Do you share anything, a sector, a town, a connection you trust? If an incoming request fails all three, leave it. If it passes, accept it and send the same thank-you you send everyone, because someone who chose to connect with you on LinkedIn is often the easiest conversation of the week.

How do you build the right LinkedIn list yourself this week?

Build it this week, from your best clients outward. Pick three to five seed clients, read their profiles and recommendations, build a search that matches them, filter for activity in the last 30 days, check 20 names by hand, then send by hand. Start with people, then add the filters.

1. Pick three to five seed clients. A seed client is a best paying client you'd happily clone. Write down their role, company size, industry and location.
2. Read their LinkedIn profiles properly. Look at their Interests section: the voices they follow, the companies, groups, newsletters and schools. That tells you what they care about, and it gives you a few extra places to find people like them.
3. Read their recommendations for language. The words other people use about your best clients tell you how their peers describe themselves.
4. Build the search. Use LinkedIn search or Sales Navigator, LinkedIn's paid prospecting tool, to find people who match. Add the 30-day activity filter. Remove the leave-out list.
5. Check 20 names by hand. If more than a handful look wrong, fix the search before you send anything.
6. Send by hand and thank everyone who accepts. Without a note, at a human pace. I explain why in should you add a note to a LinkedIn connection request. For the handful who matter most, leave a few comments on their posts first.

When someone accepts and then goes quiet, don't chase them. One nudge after 48 hours, then leave it. There's more on that in how to follow up on LinkedIn after silence without sounding pushy.

How many people should you connect with on LinkedIn each week?

Connect with as many people on LinkedIn as you can thank by hand within a day or two of them accepting. Start at 100 a week by hand, the same pace our operators use on Bronze, and only build from there once your acceptance holds. Fifty of the right people beat five hundred of the wrong ones.

Volume is where it goes wrong. Owners hear that outreach is a numbers game and send to anyone with a title. The number that matters isn't requests sent, it's conversations started with people who could buy. If your list is right, fewer requests do more. If it's wrong, doubling them just doubles the silence. I go through the weekly numbers in how many LinkedIn connection requests to send a week.

And keep it steady. A burst of requests one week and nothing for a month looks odd to LinkedIn and to the people you're connecting with. The same number, week after week, is how a network grows without anyone noticing the effort.

How do you know you're connecting with the right people on LinkedIn?

You know because the right people reply. Watch three signs for a month: who accepts, who answers your thank-you, and whose job titles show up in your LinkedIn profile views. If those are owners and directors like your best clients, your list is right. If they're sellers and job seekers, fix the search before anything else.

Write the numbers down once a week. Requests sent, requests accepted, replies, and how many of the replies came from someone who could buy. You don't need a dashboard. A note on your phone will do. After four weeks the pattern is plain, and you'll know whether to change the list, the LinkedIn profile or the message, in that order.

What does it look like when our team does it?

We build your list from links to five of your best clients and their recommendations, you approve the search, and our operators send requests by hand through your own Sales Navigator. On Bronze that is 100 requests a week for $550 a month. We never contact your seed clients and never name them anywhere.

One seed works, five is better. From them we build the picture of the buyer and the search, and nothing goes out until you have approved it. If you'd rather not spend your Thursdays on it, we build that list for you. Thursday and Friday we build the list. Monday we send. Tuesday to Thursday every new connection gets a thank-you with one genuine question.

Across 40,525 requests sent by hand on accounts running at full speed, 200 a week, between April and July 2026, 31.4% were accepted. That number comes from the list as much as the profile. When acceptance drops, the first thing we look at is the targeting, not the message.

Who is this not for?

This is not for you if you sell to the general public, because most of your buyers won't be on LinkedIn looking for you. It is not for you if referrals are still pouring in, because you don't need a bigger network. Enjoy the referrals.

If you can't name a best client yet because you're still finding your first one, start with your nearbys and lapsed contacts and leave the lookalike search until you have a seed.

Start from the people who already pay you, add the people around them, filter out the inactive and the wrong, and check every name. Then send by hand. Who you connect with decides almost everything else, so connect with people who look like your best clients.