Your LinkedIn network has hidden sales. Here's how to find them

To get sales from your LinkedIn network, look past your own connections to the friends of your connections who match your buyer, then reach out mentioning the friend you share. Those second-degree connections already trust someone you know, so they accept your request and reply far more often than a cold stranger. In the video I find 20 GTM leaders this way with one prompt in PumpGTM and start the outreach in under three minutes.

Why friends of friends are your warmest leads

Your first-degree network is small and you have probably already talked to the people in it who could buy. The ring around it is much bigger. If you have 1,000 connections and each of them has a few hundred of their own, there are tens of thousands of people one introduction away from you, and some of them are exactly the buyer you are looking for.

The mutual connection is what makes the message work. "We both know Ian" is a reason to accept that no cold opener can match.

Step 1: Ask for friends of friends who look like your buyers

I went to PumpGTM and gave it a simple prompt:

Find friends of friends on LinkedIn who look like my buyers.

It searched through my LinkedIn network and came back with a list of people, each with the mutual connection we share. The first pass found a few founders and a head of product.

Step 2: Narrow it to the people you actually want

Founders were close, but that week I wanted to talk to GTM and marketing leaders, so I said so in plain words:

Instead, look for GTM or marketing personas.

The second pass found VPs and heads of GTM, and even founding GTM hires. One example: Nick, the marketing leader at Scribe, reachable through Ian. About 20 people in total, which is plenty to start.

Step 3: Send the connection requests and messages

Finding the list is half of it. PumpGTM also drafted a message that names the mutual connection right after the greeting, and once I said "looks good, send it out" it started the play with all 20 people queued, every one of them a head of growth or GTM.

The sequence it built:

1. Send a connection request.
2. Wait until they accept.
3. Like a few of their recent LinkedIn posts.
4. Send the message, naming the friend you share.

I edited the message to sound a little more casual, and everything after that runs on its own from my LinkedIn account. The same play can follow up on email from the same lead list, and PumpGTM also reaches buyers on X and Instagram.

Is it safe to automate LinkedIn like this?

It runs from your own account at a human pace, with daily limits and warm-up for new accounts. The details are in how PumpGTM protects your LinkedIn account.

If you want to try it on your own network, start the 7-day free trial and ask for friends of friends who look like your buyers. For more ways to build the list, see find hot leads with Claude or ChatGPT and how to find customers from your competitors.

Transcript

Your extended LinkedIn network might have thousands or millions of dollars of value and sales waiting for you, and I've created a very simple AI tool to help find it out. At PumpGTM.com, we connect with your LinkedIn and help you get more sales and marketing, and one of the ways we do this is that we're able to find friends of friends of your connections. So I went to PumpGTM.com. I gave it a very simple prompt to find friends of friends on LinkedIn who look like my buyers. It's searching through the LinkedIn network and it's able to find a few founders, and it's exactly able to tell me who the mutual connections are. So I can just open one of them. So this person looks like a head of product. Here, there's a GTM leader, product and GTM, which is a bit more interesting for me. I'm going to ask it to instead look for GTM or marketing personas, because that's the kind of people I want to talk to right now. All right. It's now able to find VP and head of GTM, which is exactly what I want. Even founding GTM folks. So just as an example, it was able to find Nick, who's the marketing leader at Scribe. It also told me that it is a connection through Ian. It's found me around 20 people, which is good enough to start. And what's also special is that PumpGTM is the only tool that can help me send connection requests and messages to all of these folks. It's drafted this message already for me. I can just tell it, "Yes, looks good, and send it out." It's asking me to start the play, and it's done. If I open it up, I can very clearly see these 20 people added. All of them are head of growth or GTM roles, exactly the kind of people I wanted. And it had also created a sequence for me. So it's going to send them a connection request and then going to send them a message. I can modify this message a little, so maybe I'll make it a little more casual here. Like this, maybe. And I can also go ahead and like some of their LinkedIn posts. So it'll send them a connection request, it will wait for the acceptance, it'll send them likes, it'll wait and send them messages, all automatically without me needing to lift a finger. If you want to tap into your LinkedIn network and find more people to reach out to, get sales, feedback calls, go to PumpGTM.com and try us out. There's a seven day free trial.

Questions founders ask

How do I get sales from my LinkedIn network? Look beyond your direct connections to the friends of your connections who match your buyer, then reach out and mention the person you both know. A shared connection gets your request accepted and answered far more often than a cold message.

What is my extended LinkedIn network? Everyone connected to your connections, the people LinkedIn labels as 2nd degree. It is usually tens or hundreds of times bigger than your own network, and every person in it has a mutual connection with you.

How do I find friends of friends on LinkedIn who could be customers? In PumpGTM, ask in plain words, for example "find friends of friends on LinkedIn who look like my buyers," and narrow it by role, such as GTM or marketing leaders. It returns each person with the mutual connection you share.

Should I mention the mutual connection in my message? Yes. Name the friend you share right after the greeting. It tells the person why you are reaching out and gives them a reason to trust you before they read the rest.

Can I automate connection requests and messages to my 2nd-degree connections? Yes. PumpGTM sends the connection request, waits for the accept, likes a few of their posts, then sends your message, all from your own LinkedIn account at a safe daily pace.

Does PumpGTM only work on LinkedIn? No. It runs outreach on LinkedIn, email, X and Instagram from your own accounts, from the app or from Claude and ChatGPT.