Julien Paltrinieri
What this sequence is for
You need a customer, not an audience. This is the whole system: one LinkedIn search, one connection request, three messages two days apart. No email infrastructure to set up, no content calendar to feed for six months before anything happens.
It works because of one decision inside the first message. The closing question asks how they handle the problem you solve today, rather than asking for a slot in your calendar. Someone who has that problem can answer that in a line.
- BeforeLinkedInBuild the listSearch by role, industry, company size and keyword, then send the connection request.
- Day 1LinkedInEarn the replyTheir name, the specific thing you noticed, what you do and for whom, and one question about the problem.
- Day 3LinkedInEarn the trustOne case study with a real number, and an offer to set the same thing up for them.
- Day 5LinkedInClose the loopClose it yourself, and leave the playbook on the table for whenever the timing is right.
A thousand impressions, no customers
Most people who want customers from LinkedIn start by posting. They write something, an AI tidies it up, it gets a few thousand impressions and eleven likes from other people who also want customers from LinkedIn. Nothing happens. That is the normal first six months of a content strategy, and in most cases the call never arrives at all.
Direct messages skip the queue. Write to twenty-five people you chose by hand and within three days you know whether your positioning holds up, because the replies tell you to your face. Content can absolutely work, and I know founders who have built an entire pipeline on it. But it is a six-month investment, and a six-month investment is not available to you when your runway is eight weeks.
Content pays in six months. A first message pays this week, or it tells you the positioning is wrong, which is also worth having.
Four filters, and nothing else
Open LinkedIn search, switch to people, and use four filters. Role, industry, company size and a keyword. That is the whole list-building step, and the free search is enough for the first few hundred prospects. Sales Navigator gives you more filters and better saved searches, and you do not need it to find your first customer.
Then open each profile before you send anything. You are looking for one thing: something they visibly did that a person in their job would recognise as consequential. A hire, a launch, a funding round, a new market, a post they wrote with an actual opinion in it. If you cannot find that on a profile in ninety seconds, take them off the list. A prospect with no signal is a prospect who gets a weaker version of message one, and a weaker version of message one is worse than no message.
- Role: the person who owns the problem and can spend money on it, not their assistant and not their CEO.
- Industry: narrow enough that one case study is credible to everyone on the list.
- Company size: this decides whether they have the problem at all. A five-person studio and a four-hundred-person company do not.
- Keyword: the word your buyers use for themselves, which is rarely the word you use for them.
- Then send the connection request. No note, or a short one. The sequence starts the day they accept.
The three messages
Each message below is filled in for one invented prospect, a founder called Mara Levin at a company called Trellow, so you can see the structure inside real sentences instead of placeholders. Swap the specifics and keep the order of the moves.
Message one does four things in three short paragraphs: their name, a specific observation, what you do and for whom and which problem you fix, then a question. The question is the part almost everyone gets wrong. Do not ask for fifteen minutes in your calendar, and do not ask whether they are interested. Ask how they are handling that problem today. It introduces you, it proves someone actually looked, and if the problem is real you will usually get an answer.
Message two is a case study. Its only job is credibility, so it needs one result with a number in it, from a team the prospect would accept as comparable, and then an offer to do the same thing for them. Message three closes the loop and says so, which is the thing that makes it easy to answer.
Mara Levin2nd degree connectionHi Mara,Name I just read your post on AI agents becoming operators rather than copilots, and I'm doing something similar for client acquisition.Specific observation
I build Emailx, an AI outreach tool that finds B2B prospects, researches them and writes the first LinkedIn message, so founders who are still selling on their own do not lose the week to it.What you do, for whom, what you fix
How are you finding new clients for Trellow at the moment?Question about the problem
Mara Levin2nd degree connectionA B2B team about your size ran a single LinkedIn account for three weeks and got 98 connections, 31 replies at a 32% reply rate, six booked calls and their first closed customer out of the campaign.Proof with a number
I can show you how I'd set the same campaign up for Trellow.Concrete offer
Mara Levin2nd degree connectionHi Mara, if outreach isn't a priority for you this half, no problem at all and I'll leave it here.Sign-off
If it does interest you but the timing is wrong, I can send you the playbook we've used with more than 20 clients to generate over 100 B2B meetings.Open door
What the replies actually look like
These three threads came out of my own LinkedIn inbox. Names, companies and schools are changed, and the message text is as sent and received, typos included. I am showing them because a template can teach you the structure and only a real reply can show you what the structure buys you, which is usually less drama and more admin than people expect.
Notice that none of the three replies is a yes to a meeting. One is a founder saying they do outbound already, one is a founder asking what I actually want, and one is a founder correcting my read of their business. All three are conversations, and a conversation is the only thing message one is trying to start.
Tom A.Chief Revenue Officer, HR technology1st
Hey Tom, fellow alum here! I saw you chair the Sales Advisory Board at the university, which is pretty cool.Specific observation
I built Emailx to help B2B sales leaders generate pipeline through personalized cold email and LinkedIn outreach, fully automated and without sounding robotic.What you do
Are you currently running any outbound?Question
Hello Julien - Hello fellow alum, yes we do outbound.
Fantastic! Are you happy with the pipeline your outbound is generating today, or is there anything you'd like to improve around reply rates, personalization, or volume?Second question, same shape
improving on reply rates, personalization, or volume is always a goal. Maybe a brief call or virtual meeting in the next couple weeks mgiht be a good idea? Thoughts???
Love it, a call makes total sense. What does your availability look like next week?
Umar S.Founder, AI consultancy2ndHey Umar! I saw your post on AI agents becoming operators, not just copilots.Specific observation That's exactly the shift we're building for at Emailx. We're using AI to automate personalized outreach end-to-end for sales teams.What you do Curious, how are you approaching AI productization for your clients?Question
Since you're focused on productizing AI for businesses, here's a concrete example: one of our M&A advisory clients used Emailx to reach 500+ PE firms with personalized deal teasers. They went from 2% to 7% reply rates in three weeks.Proof with a number Would something like that move the needle for your clients?
Worth one last check-in. If the timing's not right, totally understand.Closing the loop But if you're ever exploring AI-powered outreach for your clients, happy to share what we're seeing work.
Sounds interesting
Tell me more
How can I help you?
Luca T.Sales lead, technology consultancy2ndHey Luca, I noticed you're leading sales at the consultancy and working at the intersection of AI and business transformation.Specific observation
I built Emailx to help B2B teams run personalized cold email and LinkedIn outreach at scale, with full infrastructure included and AI that writes messages that actually sound human.What you do
Are you currently running any outbound to generate pipeline?Question
Hi Julien, we do, not for our direct business, but as a service in our RaaS practice.
We can organize a meet to understand better what you do and if we can help each other on our business.
let me know
Five minutes, then sixty days
When a reply lands, answer it inside five minutes if you possibly can. That single habit moves more deals than any rewrite of message one, because you are catching someone in the ninety seconds where they are still thinking about you. Put LinkedIn notifications on your phone for the duration of the campaign and turn them off again afterwards.
Stop the sequence the moment anyone replies, including a no. Nothing costs a founder more credibility than message two arriving two days after the prospect already answered. Then keep going for sixty days. Twenty-five researched prospects a week, three messages each, replies inside five minutes. The numbers are boring and they work, and the only real failure mode is stopping in week two because eleven people said no.
The part that outlasts the wording
The wording matters less than the three rules underneath it. Every message opens on something the prospect visibly did, every message has one job, and the first question is about how they handle the problem today rather than about your calendar. Hold those three and you can write this sequence yourself for any prospect you are willing to spend ninety seconds researching.
Run this sequence without running it by hand.
Emailx researches each prospect, drafts both channels and stops on reply.
Updated September 19, 2026. Written by Julien Paltrinieri for Emailx.
