Here's what happens when you post that you're planning to do a website redesign on LinkedIn. Earlier this week Jenn Deering Davis uttered these magic words: "Looking for a contractor or small agency to help with a website (re)design project. Is this you or someone you know? " Here's what happened within 24 hours: 32 emails (half to her personal gmail) 10 inmails 200+ connection requests (she lost count) 22 cold calls 12 cold texts She’s taken 3 meetings so far—all with folks that took the time to find a common connection and get a warm intro. The cold outreach has been pretty awful—mostly just parroting back part of her LinkedIn post and asking for a meeting. In all the sound and fury above, only about 5 stood out enough to *potentially* merit a response. Here’s what the standouts did: 1️⃣ Found a connection. This isn’t always possible, even for humans. But it’s always impossible if you’re running an automated spam cannon. 2️⃣ Read the actual post. Jenn posted that we’re on HubSpot and don’t need copywriting but we are focused on finding a unique design angle. The standouts actually mentioned this. The stressed their design chops and noted the things we *don't* need. 3️⃣ Provided some proof. This is a website redesign. You’re going to have a portfolio where you can point to some similar companies you’ve helped with unique designs. The good ones did this. If your 2025 pipeline plan is to fire off generic outreach based on signals, you’re going to fail. Just being first with some AI garbage isn’t gonna work. You’ve got to use your network, be actually relevant (not just “I saw your post”) and build confidence in that first interaction. This is why we care so much about human-powered pipeline at Gradient Works. If you truly want to build pipeline in 2025 you’ll care enough to do things like use Market Map so you can quickly relate any prospect to an existing customer, use routing to assign accounts to *humans* based on signals and you won’t overload those humans by also dumping them in massive unworkable territories. If you do all those things, then you can actually turn signals into pipeline. Or you can fire the spam cannon and get ignored at scale. Your call. Now let’s find out how much outreach I get because I used the term “website redesign” in this post.
"She’s taken 3 meetings so far—all with folks that took the time to find a common connection and get a warm intro." very telling.
Piyush Patel
5d
I keep getting these emails from a Hayes Davis. I haven't opted out yet. :) valuable content is what people should be sending (along with warm intros of course work also).
Tom Elliott
5d
IMO private learning communities of trusted peers are the answer. You know, like mine for AI: https://practicalai.elliott.ventures LinkedIn's incentives are to clog your mind with noise. Private communities full of signal are the future.
Mac Reddin 🦕
5d
Those 3 meetings coming from warm intros says a lot about where the world of selling is heading if you want to be successful.
Oh and I should add, I now have a good list of web design and development folks if anyone is in the market for a new website - let me know if I can share!
Co-Founder and Head of Marketing at Gradient Works
5dGlad you can make content lemonade out of all these lemons. Seriously though, I was a little surprised at how easy it was to stand out, despite how inundated I was. The folks who took 5 minutes to read my post and then write their outreach based on what I was actually asking for stood out. Because fewer than 10 people actually did that! As you can see from that screenshot, most of the connection requests didn't even include a message. It's similar to when we have job postings. We'll get 200 applicants for an open position, but there are almost always 10-20 that stand out immediately because they took a few extra minutes to make their application relevant to this specific job. Being a human person who tries to be relevant and specific may not always win you the job or the business, but it will certainly get you a shot. Right now, it's easy to stand out by simply being a person who's genuinely trying to start a relationship.