Strategy · 2026-06-26 · 10 min
How to Build a LinkedIn Outbound Strategy for a Dev Agency
A ninety-day plan for dev agency founders: positioning, target list, profile, messaging, cadence and the review gates that tell you whether to continue or stop.
Most dev agency outbound fails for organisational reasons, not tactical ones. Nobody owns it, the budget is provisional, and it gets reviewed on week six when there is nothing to review.
This is the plan we would give a founder building it in-house.
Before Day One: Two Decisions
Decide the minimum engagement size. Everything downstream depends on it. A £15,000 project and a £150,000 programme require different targets, different seniority and different patience.
Decide the budget you can hold for six months. Not three. If you cannot fund six months of consistent activity plus the sales time to handle the conversations, do not start. We argue this bluntly in If You Do Not Have Six Months of Budget, Do Not Start.
Days 1 to 14: Positioning and Foundations
- Write the narrow claim. One sentence naming the company type, the situation, and the change you produce.
- Rebuild the profile. Headline, banner and about section written for the buyer, not for recruiters. See Profile Optimisation.
- Prepare proof. Two anonymised engagement summaries and one written teardown.
- Define qualified. Write down what counts as a qualified conversation before you have any, so you cannot move the goalposts later.
Days 15 to 30: The Target List
Build 200 to 300 accounts, not 3,000. For each row: company, fit reason, named contact, signal with a date, opening angle.
Sources that work for agencies:
- Job boards for repeated engineering roles
- Funding announcements in your geography and stage
- Conference and podcast speaker lists in your niche
- The follower and commenter lists of tools your ICP uses
See List Building and Target Account List.
Days 31 to 60: Send, Consistently
The cadence that works for one profile:
| Activity | Volume |
|---|---|
| Connection requests | 20 to 30 per working day, up to 150 per week |
| First messages | One per acceptance, written from scratch |
| Follow-ups | Maximum two per thread, seven to ten days apart |
| Engagement | Comment on five target accounts' posts per day |
The hardest part is that this is boring and daily. Consistency beats intensity here, which is the whole point of Consistency Wins Deals.
Days 61 to 90: Read the Data
Now you have enough volume to segment. Split acceptance and reply rates by:
- Company stage and size
- Buyer role
- Signal type
- Opening angle
You are looking for the one segment and angle carrying the results. That combination becomes your default, and the rest of the list gets rebuilt around it.
The Review Gates
Set these in advance so decisions are not emotional.
- Week 4 gate: are invites being accepted at a plausible rate and are first messages getting any replies? If not, the list is wrong.
- Week 8 gate: are there booked calls? If replies are healthy but no calls, the offer or the ask is wrong.
- Week 12 gate: is there at least one live opportunity with a named budget? If yes, continue and scale. If no, change segment before changing channel.
Who Runs It
Three options, honestly compared:
- Founder-led. Highest reply rates, lowest sustainability. Works for the first ninety days.
- In-house SDR. Requires management, training and a defined playbook. Cheap only if you already have the playbook.
- Outsourced operator. Fastest to a working motion, but only if the messages are genuinely researched rather than templated.
Whichever you choose, the person writing the messages must understand the technical work well enough to ask a real question. That is the constraint that rules out most cheap options.
Related: LinkedIn Outbound for Dev Agencies and how it works.