How to Steal Your Competitor’s LinkedIn Followers (and Book More Sales Meetings)

"This past May/June/July was crazy for email delivery. We had customers we would warm domains for 3 weeks and then get absolutely no responses on the inboxes."
— Eric Nowoslawski, GTM Expert

"Emails were working about six months ago and then just stopped working."
— CEO, Early-Stage SaaS Company

If you’ve noticed a sharp decline in email outreach performance, you’re not alone.

Why Cold Email Is Failing in 2025

Cold email, once the go-to outbound channel, is becoming increasingly unreliable. Between domain reputation issues, spam filters, and inbox algorithms, even the best-crafted emails are landing in junk folders.

But here’s the good news:

LinkedIn outreach is having a moment.

Why LinkedIn Is the Top Performing B2B Channel Right Now

Over the past 18 months, LinkedIn has outperformed every other channel for our B2B clients—across industries, personas, and deal sizes.

But LinkedIn Outreach Has Its Own Challenges:

🚫 Connection limits: You’re capped at ~100–200 connection requests per week
🚫 Automation detection: Mass-blast messaging is quickly flagged by LinkedIn and recipients
🚫 Soft-sell required: Pushy messages don’t convert. You need to earn attention, not demand it.

Still, when executed correctly, LinkedIn can generate high-quality meetings from your competitor’s warmest leads.

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Three ways to prioritize who you engage on LinkedIn:

1️⃣ Seniority

Focus on contacts who are VP level and above.

2️⃣ Recent activity on LinkedIn

Peter Conforti published a great report about which industries are most and least active on LinkedIn.

You can also filter leads on Sales Navigator based on who recently posted on LinkedIn.

3️⃣ Signals

Identify buyers engaging with your competitors’ content.

How to Ethically Steal Your Competitor’s LinkedIn Followers

Here’s a simple 3-step strategy used by an early-stage AI startup that’s now seeing a 20% lead-to-meeting conversion rate.

✅ Step 1: Identify the Right Signals

Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find leads that meet all three of these criteria:

1. Follow your competitor’s company page

2. Follow their CEO or other execs

3. Engaged with competitor content recently (likes, comments, reposts)

These signals indicate high intent and current pain—they’re shopping, comparing, or at least open to change.

✅ Step 2: Prioritize Seniority and Activity

Don’t waste connection requests. Use these filters:

• Seniority: VP level and above (budget holders)

• Activity: Recently posted on LinkedIn (they’ll actually see your DM)

💡 Pro Tip: Peter Conforti’s report on industry activity on LinkedIn can help you choose which verticals to focus on.

✅ Step 3: Spark a Peer-to-Peer Conversation

Instead of selling, start a smart, relevant conversation—executive to executive.

Here’s what the CFO from the AI startup sent to the buyer (a competitor follower):

“What tools are you using to calculate forecasting?”

That one sentence—tailored and peer-relevant—got a reply in less than 2 hours.

✅ Step 4: Book the Meeting, Not Just the Chat

Because the message was based on real intent signals, the lead replied and mentioned their current vendor (the competitor). A few follow-ups later, a meeting was booked within 24 hours.

Results from This LinkedIn Playbook

• 20%+ conversion rate from signal → meeting

• <24-hour response time when the signal was strong

• No spam filters, no domain warming, no deliverability headaches

Ready to Run This Play?

At Dunbar, we help go-to-market teams consolidate their tech stack and run LinkedIn experiments at scale.

You’ll get:

• Signal-based targeting

• Executive-to-executive outreach

• Repeatable plays to turn competitor engagement into booked meetings

We’re the happy medium between outbound agencies and SaaS.

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By Richard F. Purcell · Launched 2 years ago

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