Try OnsaLinkedIn has 1 billion profiles. Your next 50 customers are in there somewhere.
The problem isn’t access — it’s filtering. Every B2B founder I talk to has the same experience: they search LinkedIn, get 10,000 results, scroll through the first 3 pages, message 20 people who seem like a fit, and hear back from maybe 2.
That’s a 10% response rate on a hand-picked list. Which means the hand-picking isn’t working.
After watching how dozens of founders actually search for leads on our platform — and analyzing 74 real prospecting conversations — I’ve mapped out what works at each budget level. Free LinkedIn, Boolean search, Sales Navigator, AI enrichment, and outreach templates. The right approach depends on how many leads you need and how niche your ICP is.
Before you search for a single lead, your own profile needs to convert. When you send a connection request, the first thing people do is check your profile. If it looks like a generic sales pitch, they ignore you.
Headline: Don’t list your job title. State the outcome you deliver. “Helping B2B teams find qualified leads without manual research” beats “CEO at Onsa.ai” every time. Include one keyword your buyers would search for.
About section: Open with the problem you solve, not your resume. Two to three sentences about who you help and what changes for them. Then a brief credibility line — numbers, clients, or experience. End with a low-friction CTA (“DM me if you’re dealing with X”).
Featured section: Pin your best case study, a relevant article, or a short video. This is prime real estate most people leave blank. One strong piece of proof here does more than 500 words in your About section.
Activity: Post at least once a week about problems your buyers face. When prospects check your profile and see relevant content, your connection request acceptance rate jumps from ~30% to 50%+. They can see you actually understand their world.
Most founders jump straight to Sales Navigator without realizing how much free LinkedIn can do. Here’s what’s available without paying anything:
You can filter by: - Keywords (in title, company, posts) - Location (country, city, metro area) - Current company - Industry (broad categories) - Connections (1st, 2nd, 3rd degree) - “People who talk about” topics
You can’t filter by: - Company headcount (the single most useful filter) - Seniority level - Years in current role - Company revenue or funding - Technology stack - Job changes in last 90 days
Free search works if your ICP is defined by industry + geography + job title and you’re targeting fewer than 100 people. A SaaS founder looking for “VP of Marketing at fintech companies in London” can find 30-40 relevant profiles manually.
It breaks down when you need volume or precision. “Head of Sales at Series B SaaS companies with 50-200 employees in the US” requires filters that free LinkedIn doesn’t have.
The free LinkedIn playbook: 1. Search your target job title + industry keyword (e.g., “VP Sales” + “SaaS”) 2. Filter to 2nd-degree connections (warm intros possible) 3. Check each profile’s company size manually (look at the company page) 4. Look at their recent posts — are they talking about problems you solve? 5. Save promising profiles to a spreadsheet
This takes about 2 hours to build a list of 30-40 qualified leads. Not scalable, but good enough for your first outreach campaign.
Boolean search is free LinkedIn’s secret weapon. Most people don’t use it, which means most people get worse results than they should.
LinkedIn supports four operators in its search bar:
AND — Both terms must match. "VP Sales" AND "SaaS" returns profiles that mention both.
OR — Either term matches. "Head of Sales" OR "VP Sales" OR "Sales Director" captures all title variations in one search. This is how you avoid running three separate searches.
NOT — Excludes results. "Sales Director" NOT "recruitment" NOT "staffing" removes recruiters who pollute B2B searches.
Quotes — Exact phrase match. "VP of Sales" matches that exact title. Without quotes, LinkedIn treats each word separately and you get noise.
Parentheses — Group terms. ("VP Sales" OR "Head of Sales") AND ("SaaS" OR "software") NOT "recruitment" — this single search replaces six separate ones.
Copy-paste Boolean strings for common B2B ICPs:
SaaS sales leaders (SMB):
("VP Sales" OR "Head of Sales" OR "Sales Director") AND ("SaaS" OR "software" OR "cloud") NOT "recruitment" NOT "staffing" NOT "consulting"
Marketing decision makers (e-commerce):
("CMO" OR "VP Marketing" OR "Head of Growth") AND ("ecommerce" OR "e-commerce" OR "DTC" OR "direct to consumer") NOT "agency" NOT "freelance"
Finance leaders (Series A-C startups):
("CFO" OR "VP Finance" OR "Head of Finance") AND ("startup" OR "Series A" OR "Series B" OR "venture-backed")
Pro tip: Save your best Boolean strings in a document. Once you’ve dialed in a string that returns clean results, you’ll reuse it monthly as you refresh your pipeline.
Boolean search plus the free filters (location + connections + industry) gets you maybe 70% of what Sales Navigator offers — for zero cost. The 30% gap is company size and seniority filters, which is exactly what Sales Navigator charges for.
If you’re pre-revenue or bootstrapping, here are five methods that don’t require a $99/month subscription:
1. LinkedIn Groups — Join groups where your buyers hang out. Search for industry-specific groups (“SaaS Sales Leaders”, “B2B Marketing Pros”). Members are self-selected by interest. Engage in discussions first, then connect with people who post about problems you solve.
2. LinkedIn Events — Find webinars and virtual events in your space. The attendee list is a goldmine — these people cared enough about a topic to register. Connect with attendees during or right after the event with a relevant comment about the session.
3. Competitor follower mining — Go to a competitor’s company page. Click on their followers or people who engage with their posts. These people are already interested in solutions like yours. Read their comments to understand their specific pain points.
4. Content engagement mining — Search LinkedIn posts for keywords related to problems you solve. People commenting on posts about “lead generation challenges” or “CRM frustration” are signaling pain. Engage with their comment first, then connect.
5. Alumni tool — LinkedIn’s alumni search (free) lets you filter graduates of any university by where they work, what they do, and where they live. If you share an alma mater with your target buyers, this is a warm-intro shortcut most people overlook.
6. Google site search — Use site:linkedin.com/in/ "VP Sales" "SaaS" "San Francisco" in Google. Google indexes LinkedIn profiles and sometimes surfaces results that LinkedIn’s own search buries. Combine with Boolean operators for precision.
These methods are slower than Sales Navigator but cost nothing. For teams prospecting under 100 leads per month, they’re often sufficient.
Sales Navigator’s core value is three filters that free LinkedIn doesn’t have: company headcount, seniority level, and job changes.
These three filters alone transform your search from “everyone who might fit” to “people who probably fit.”
Here’s how each ICP criterion maps to Sales Navigator:
ICP Criteria → Sales Nav Filter → How to use it
Industry → Industry filter → Use LinkedIn’s taxonomy, not your own labels. “Computer Software” covers most SaaS.
Company Size → Company headcount → The ranges are coarse (11-50, 51-200, 201-500) but functional. This is the #1 filter you’re paying for.
Geography → HQ location → Filter by country, state, or metro. Be specific — “San Francisco Bay Area” not just “United States.”
Buyer Role → Job title + Seniority → Combine title keywords with seniority level (VP, Director, CXO). “VP” + “Sales” captures VP of Sales, SVP of Sales, VP Sales & Marketing.
Company Type → Company type → Filter out staffing agencies, educational institutions, nonprofits that clutter results.
Job Changes → Changed jobs in past 90 days → People who just started a new role are 3x more likely to buy new tools. They have budget, mandate, and motivation to make changes.
Where Sales Navigator filters exist but underperform:
Funding Stage — Sales Navigator does have a “Funding Type” filter (Seed, Series A, B, C, etc.), but the data is sparse and disconnected from sources like Crunchbase. You’ll get far fewer results than actually exist. Use it as a rough filter, but don’t rely on it for completeness — Crunchbase is still the gold standard for funding data.
Department Headcount Growth — Sales Navigator has this filter and it works reasonably well for spotting companies with growing teams. The limitation is granularity — you can filter by growth ranges but can’t combine it with specific department growth (e.g., “sales team growing 30%+ while engineering is flat”).
What Sales Navigator genuinely can’t do:
Tech Stack — You can’t find “companies using Salesforce + HubSpot.” BuiltWith or enrichment tools know this, LinkedIn doesn’t.
Intent Signals — You can’t find “companies actively evaluating CRM alternatives.” Bombora, G2 buyer intent, or web scraping can surface this.
Revenue — LinkedIn doesn’t share revenue data. ZoomInfo, Apollo, and similar databases estimate it.
These gaps are exactly where the 3-column ICP framework matters most. Your Column 1 criteria (must-haves) mostly map to Sales Navigator. Your Column 2 criteria (amplifiers like tech stack, intent signals, revenue) often require enrichment — data from outside LinkedIn layered on top of your search results.
Here’s the real workflow that experienced sales teams use. It has three steps.
Use Sales Navigator (or free search) to find everyone who matches your Column 1 criteria. At this stage, you’ll have 500-2,000 companies. That’s too many to prospect manually, and not all of them are actually good fits.
Export or save these results. You now have a raw list.
This is where you add the signals LinkedIn doesn’t have. There are three ways to do this, depending on your budget and technical comfort.
Manual enrichment (free, slow — good for <50 leads): For each company on your list, spend 2-3 minutes checking: - Crunchbase — When did they last raise? How much? Who invested? - Their careers page — Are they hiring for the role you sell to? (Hiring = budget exists) - BuiltWith or Wappalyzer — What tech stack are they running? - Their blog/news — Any recent product launches, expansions, or leadership changes?
Save findings in a spreadsheet. After checking 50 companies, you’ll have maybe 15-20 that tick all boxes. This doesn’t scale, but it’s how you validate your ICP before investing in tools.
Spreadsheet enrichment (cheap, some setup — good for 50-500 leads): - Export Sales Navigator results using tools like Evaboot or PhantomBuster - Use APIs to enrich each row: Crunchbase for funding, Apollo for contact data, BuiltWith for tech stack - Build simple filters in the spreadsheet: “Show me only companies with Series A-C funding AND growing headcount AND using Salesforce” - This takes a few hours to set up but is repeatable
Automated enrichment (paid tools — good for 500+ leads): Tools like Clay automate this with waterfall enrichment — your LinkedIn search feeds through 150+ data providers, and each lead gets funding data, tech stack, hiring signals, and contact information added automatically. Apollo and ZoomInfo offer built-in databases with some of these signals.
The alternative approach is AI-powered prospecting where you describe your ICP in natural language — “Series A fintech companies in Europe with a Head of Payments” — and the AI cross-references LinkedIn, Crunchbase, job boards, and technographic data in a single query. This is the approach we built Onsa around.
Your enriched list of 150-300 companies still needs ranking. Not every match is equally likely to buy right now.
Score based on timing signals: - Hot (reach out this week): Recent funding, hiring for your buyer role, competitor mentioned on their site - Warm (reach out this month): Growing headcount, using complementary tools, active on LinkedIn discussing relevant problems - Nurture (add to sequence): Fits ICP but no timing signals yet
This scoring is what separates “I messaged 200 people and got 5 replies” from “I messaged 50 people and got 15 replies.” The response rate triples when you reach the right person at the right time.
For automated scoring, see our guide on lead qualification.
No single tool does everything. Here’s how the landscape breaks down by what you actually need:
Free tools:
Tool: LinkedIn free search + Boolean. Best For: Getting started, <100 leads/month. What It Does: Basic filtering with Boolean operators.
Tool: Google site search. Best For: Finding profiles LinkedIn search misses. What It Does: Indexes LinkedIn profiles differently than LinkedIn’s own search.
Tool: LinkedIn Alumni tool. Best For: Warm intro sourcing. What It Does: Filter graduates by company, role, and location.
LinkedIn-native (paid):
Tool: Sales Navigator Core. Best For: Solo founders, small teams. Price: $99/mo. Key Advantage: Company size + seniority filters, saved searches.
Tool: Sales Navigator Advanced. Best For: Sales teams of 5+. Price: $149/mo. Key Advantage: TeamLink (network sharing), SmartLinks tracking.
Export & enrichment:
Tool: Evaboot. Best For: Exporting clean Sales Nav results. Price: $49/mo. Key Advantage: Removes false positives from exports, email finding.
Tool: PhantomBuster. Best For: Automating LinkedIn scraping workflows. Price: $59/mo. Key Advantage: 100+ automation templates, no-code.
Tool: Clay. Best For: Waterfall enrichment at scale. Price: $149/mo. Key Advantage: 150+ data providers in one workflow.
Tool: Apollo. Best For: All-in-one prospecting + outreach. Price: $49/mo. Key Advantage: Built-in database + email sequences.
AI-powered prospecting:
Tool: Onsa. Best For: Natural language ICP → qualified list. Price: $50-200/mo. Key Advantage: Describe ICP in plain English, get enriched leads back.
Tool: Clay + AI enrichment. Best For: Technical teams who want control. Price: $149/mo+. Key Advantage: AI scoring + waterfall enrichment.
The right stack depends on your volume. Under 50 leads/month: free LinkedIn + Boolean + manual enrichment. 50-500 leads/month: Sales Navigator + Evaboot or Apollo. Over 500: Sales Navigator + Clay or AI prospecting.
For a deeper comparison, see our guides on Clay alternatives, Apollo alternatives, and how to automate outbound sales with AI.
Finding leads is half the battle. The other half is getting them to respond. Here are templates based on what actually works in our data from 74 prospecting conversations.
Connection request (mutual context):
Hi [Name] — saw your post about [specific topic]. We’re working on something similar for [their industry]. Would love to connect.
Keep it under 300 characters. No pitch. The goal is acceptance, not a sale.
Connection request (shared trait):
Hi [Name] — fellow [shared trait: alumni, city, industry group member]. I’m researching how [their role] teams handle [problem you solve]. Would be great to connect.
Follow-up message #1 (day 2-3 after acceptance):
Thanks for connecting, [Name]. Quick question — how are you currently handling [specific problem]? We’ve been talking to a lot of [their role]s at [their company size] companies and curious if you’re seeing the same patterns.
This opens a conversation, not a sales pitch. You’re asking about their experience.
Follow-up message #2 (day 7-10 if no reply):
[Name] — no worries if this isn’t relevant right now. I put together a [resource: guide/checklist/case study] on [topic] that a few [their role]s found useful. Happy to share if you’re interested.
Offer value before asking for a meeting. The resource should be something genuinely useful, not a product brochure.
What doesn’t work: Any message that starts with “I” or leads with your company name. Any message over 150 words. Any message that says “I’d love to pick your brain” or “Can I get 15 minutes?” in the first message. These get ignored 90%+ of the time.
Response rate benchmarks: Well-targeted outreach with personalized messages: 15-25% response rate. Generic templates at scale: 2-5% response rate. The difference is targeting quality, not message cleverness.
We analyzed 74 conversations where B2B founders searched for leads. Here’s what we found:
Pattern 1: Too broad, then refine. The most common first message is some version of “find leads for me” or “find prospects for [URL].” This always needs 2-3 rounds of refinement. The founder learns what they actually need by seeing what comes back wrong.
One user started with “find Creative Strategists for DTC brands that work with Meta Ads on LinkedIn — list 50 prospects.” The first results included freelancers, agency employees, and people who mentioned Meta Ads once in a post 2 years ago. After refining to “in-house Creative Strategists at DTC brands with $5M+ revenue, currently running Meta Ads campaigns,” the list became actionable.
Pattern 2: LinkedIn URL as starting point. 8.6% of conversations start with users pasting a LinkedIn profile URL and saying “find more people like this.” This is actually a smart approach — instead of defining your ICP from scratch, you start with one perfect customer and reverse-engineer the criteria. What industry are they in? What size company? What’s their title? What tools do they use?
Pattern 3: Geography matters more than people think. Users who don’t specify geography upfront always come back to add it. “Find dental clinic owners focused on dental tourism” became “…in Mexico, Turkey, and Hungary” after the first results included clinics everywhere. Geography isn’t just a filter — it changes the competitive landscape, price sensitivity, and buying behavior.
Free LinkedIn search: Good for your first 30-50 leads. Enough to test whether your ICP converts before spending money. Zero cost, high manual effort.
Sales Navigator ($99/month): Worth it the moment you need to filter by company size or seniority — which is basically the moment you have a real ICP. The headcount filter alone saves you hours of manual checking. ROI positive if you close 1 extra deal per year from better targeting.
Enrichment tools ($100-500/month): Worth it when your Column 2 criteria (funding, tech stack, hiring) are important for targeting and you’re prospecting more than 100 companies per month. The cost is trivial compared to the time saved checking Crunchbase manually for every prospect.
AI prospecting ($50-200/month): Worth it when you want to describe what you need in plain English and get a qualified list back. Best for founders and small teams who don’t have a dedicated sales ops person to configure waterfall enrichment.
The mistake most founders make: paying for Sales Navigator and then still manually checking Crunchbase for every lead. Either commit to free LinkedIn + manual enrichment, or commit to Sales Navigator + automated enrichment. The middle ground — paying for tools but still doing everything manually — is the worst of both worlds.
If you have no leads yet: 1. Build your ICP using the 3-column framework (15 minutes) 2. Run a free LinkedIn search with your Column 1 criteria 3. Manually enrich your top 30 results (2 hours) 4. Reach out to the top 10 with personalized messages 5. Track responses. Refine your ICP based on who responds.
If you have leads but low response rates: 1. Review your current list against Column 2 amplifiers (funding, hiring, tech stack) 2. Remove everyone without at least one timing signal 3. Re-prioritize based on recency of trigger events 4. A/B test your outreach messaging on the refined list
If you’re ready to scale: 1. Set up automated enrichment (Clay, Apollo, or Onsa) 2. Build a repeatable weekly workflow: search → enrich → score → outreach 3. Track conversion by ICP segment to continuously refine targeting
The founders who build pipeline fastest aren’t the ones with the biggest lead lists. They’re the ones who find 150 right companies instead of messaging 2,000 wrong ones. As we saw in 36 interviews with salespeople using AI, the top performers won by iterating faster on targeting — not by working more hours. For a deeper dive into what happens after you find leads, see our guide on automated lead generation with AI agents and AI lead scoring.
Is Sales Navigator worth it for a solo founder?
Yes, if you have a defined ICP with company size as a criteria (most do). The headcount filter alone justifies $99/month. Cancel it once you’ve built your initial pipeline and shift to nurturing.
How many leads should I reach out to per week?
Quality over quantity. 20-30 highly targeted, personalized outreach messages per week beats 200 generic ones. If your response rate is below 10%, your targeting is wrong — go back to your ICP, don’t increase volume.
Can I scrape LinkedIn for leads?
LinkedIn’s terms of service prohibit scraping. Tools that “export” Sales Navigator results operate in a gray area. The safer approach is using LinkedIn’s official APIs or tools that access data through authorized partnerships with data providers.
How do I know if my targeting is working?
Track three metrics: response rate (should be 15-25% for well-targeted outreach), positive response rate (should be 5-10%), and meeting booked rate (should be 2-5%). If response rate is high but meeting rate is low, your messaging is good but targeting is off. If response rate is low, your targeting needs work.
What’s better — finding more leads or better qualifying existing ones?
Almost always better qualifying. Synthetic market research shows that narrower targeting with stronger signals outperforms broad outreach in every B2B context. The economics are simple: 50 leads at 20% response = 10 conversations. 500 leads at 2% response = 10 conversations. Same output, 10x less effort.
How do I use Sales Navigator to find B2B leads?
Start with your ICP’s must-have criteria: company headcount (the #1 filter), industry, geography, and seniority level. Apply these four filters first, then layer on job title keywords. Save the search so LinkedIn alerts you to new matches weekly. Use the “changed jobs in past 90 days” filter to find buyers who just started a new role — they’re 3x more likely to evaluate new tools. See the Sales Navigator section above for the full filter-by-filter walkthrough.
How do I find sales leads on LinkedIn for free?
Use Boolean search operators (AND, OR, NOT, quotes) in LinkedIn’s free search bar to get much more precise results than basic keyword search. Combine with the Alumni tool for warm connections, LinkedIn Groups for industry-specific targeting, and content engagement mining (finding people who comment on posts about problems you solve). See our Boolean Search and Without Sales Navigator sections for detailed tactics.
What is the best B2B prospecting tool for LinkedIn?
It depends on your volume. For under 50 leads/month, free LinkedIn + Boolean search is enough. For 50-500 leads/month, Sales Navigator ($99/mo) plus an export tool like Evaboot ($49/mo) is the sweet spot. For 500+ leads/month, add enrichment through Clay or AI-powered prospecting like Onsa. See our full tools comparison table above.
How many LinkedIn connection requests should I send per day?
LinkedIn limits you to roughly 100-200 connection requests per week (the exact cap varies by account age and acceptance rate). Sending more than 25-30 per day risks restrictions. More importantly, quality matters more than volume — 20 targeted requests with personalized notes will generate more conversations than 100 generic ones. If your acceptance rate drops below 30%, slow down and improve your targeting.
Is LinkedIn better than Apollo or ZoomInfo for B2B leads?
They serve different purposes. LinkedIn is where the profiles live — it’s the source data. Apollo and ZoomInfo are databases that aggregate contact information (emails, phone numbers) and company data from multiple sources. The best approach uses LinkedIn for discovery and filtering, then enrichment tools for contact details and company intelligence. For detailed comparisons, see our Apollo alternative and ZoomInfo alternative guides.
Based on patterns from 74 real lead-finding conversations. Want to skip the manual work? Onsa.ai finds qualified leads from a single ICP description — no spreadsheets, no manual enrichment.