Social-first prospecting: the Extrovert + LGM webinar playbook

Social-first prospecting puts useful LinkedIn comments before the connection request, then gives the relationship time to develop before the first DM. The workflow is Comment → Connect → Wait → Message → Nurture. Extrovert helps organize the engagement; La Growth Machine (LGM) handles the outreach sequence shown in the webinar.

In the July 15, 2025 LGM × Extrovert session, Extrovert founder Oleg walked through this system with LGM cohost Eloise. The event was called “Get 51% reply rates: The Social-First Prospecting Playbook.” Below are the test results, timing choices, message example, and response-handling tactics he shared. Watch the replay and get the slides.

What the 10,000-lead test found

Oleg reported an A/B test across 10,000 leads in Extrovert’s own audience for its low-ticket sales-enablement SaaS. The audience, message, lead source, and sequence stayed the same. The variable was whether the team warmed prospects up with comments before outreach.

Prospect segment	Cold replies	Social-first replies
CEOs	8%	50%
Sales leaders	26%	57%
Agency owners	11%	53%

The reported reply-rate lift ranged from roughly 2.2× to 6.25× across those segments. The webinar’s 51% headline describes the session’s promise; the segment figures above are the results Oleg presented, rather than a calculated overall average.

His explanation starts with familiarity: a prospect has already seen you contribute before your request arrives. Comments also give you another way to stay visible when a DM goes unanswered. Oleg described engagement as a way to help your own posts reach prospects’ feeds, too. Feed exposure is an opportunity, not something you can guarantee for every person.

Prepare a batch you can keep warm

Start with 100–200 prospects, as Oleg suggested, rather than an enormous list you cannot follow consistently. Rotating smaller batches gives you a manageable group to engage with and compare. Batch size alone does not establish LinkedIn account safety or compliance with connection limits.

Prioritize people who are active on LinkedIn. Add relevant coworkers to the warm-up list even when you will only pitch the decision-maker. The aim is familiarity inside the account, without sending everyone the same sales message.

In the session, LGM’s list-building options included people who commented on or liked a post, registered for an event, or followed a company. Eloise also showed list creation from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, LGM’s database, CSV, and CRM sources. Topic activity gives you context for outreach; still check whether the person fits your ICP.

Bring the selected batch into Extrovert’s prospect feed. Oleg’s demonstration used a specific imported list, post summaries, and draft comments so he could work through relevant posts without scrolling an unrelated feed. For an SDR team, this is the get-known-before-you-pitch workflow: keep the people you intend to contact visible before starting the DM sequence.

Step 1: Comment before you connect

Read the post and contribute something relevant. The warm-up loses its purpose if the comment is a disguised pitch or an empty compliment.

Oleg’s timing suggestions varied with the cost of wasting a lead:

• Transactional sales or a large market: one to two weeks, with two to three thoughtful comments. The slides show a one-week starting point.
• Enterprise sales or a limited market: two to three weeks and four to five comments, sometimes extending the warm-up to six weeks.

Space comments several days apart. The slides suggest two to three days; in the discussion, Oleg also described spacing them a week apart. Avoid compressing a like, comment, connection request, and pitch into the same day.

In his Extrovert demonstration, he selected a desired commenting frequency so frequent posters would not crowd out the rest of the batch. The operational goal is to keep contact consistent across prospects, rather than repeatedly engaging with whoever posts most often.

When your prospect does not post

Oleg showed an indirect-post workflow called “posts they’re likely to see.” It surfaced a creator’s post based on the prospect’s previous engagement with that creator. Commenting there can put you in a conversation the prospect may read, even when they have no posts of their own.

This takes more judgment than commenting directly. Check the creator, the topic, and the connection to the prospect before contributing. Previous engagement suggests a possible audience; it does not prove the prospect will see that particular comment.

Oleg reserved this extra work for high-value accounts or a limited market. For a transactional sale with many possible buyers, he suggested moving non-posting prospects into outreach without the same extended warm-up. For valuable accounts, he discussed two to six weeks of indirect engagement, followed by LGM sequencing or manual outreach.

Review the draft in context

In the 2025 webinar, Oleg demonstrated a review-first workflow: read the post summary, read the draft, then edit, regenerate, approve, or skip. In the Q&A, he said he made small corrections or regenerated roughly 20–30% of his suggestions. He estimated about 20–30 minutes a day for his commenting routine once the AI voice was set up.

That review habit is useful when a draft sounds too harsh, misses the post’s point, or adds an opinion you do not hold. Extrovert’s Quick Edit illustration below shows how a short instruction changes a draft before approval.

Current Extrovert offers more than the manual-review mode shown in that session. You can review each item yourself, enable automatic comments for selected campaigns within your filters and limits, or connect an AI assistant to handle priorities and drafts. Choose the level of control deliberately; “nothing posts without your approval” describes Oleg’s historical demonstration, not every current mode.

Step 2: Send the connection request

Once the batch is warmed up, move the prospects into the outreach stage. Oleg showed a handoff from Extrovert to LGM through a CSV file or webhook.

He used a blank connection request. In his tests, after prior engagement, that felt more natural than a note that signaled an incoming pitch. This is a tactic to test in your audience, not a reason to assume every blank request will perform better.

The LGM sequence shown in the session could add a profile visit, follow, or post like before the request. Keep those actions separate from the comment review workflow: LGM ran the configured sequence, while Extrovert organized the ongoing social engagement.

Step 3: Wait after acceptance

Do not treat an accepted request as permission to send an immediate pitch. Keep commenting and publish useful content while the prospect has time to recognize you.

The slide deck gives two starting points:

• Large market: wait three to five days after acceptance.
• Enterprise or limited market: wait four to six weeks.

In the discussion, Oleg also described several days, one week, three weeks, or four weeks depending on the market. Use the timing as a choice to test. When you post consistently, a longer window gives prospects more chances to see your content. When you do not post, Oleg suggested a shorter wait.

He reported that roughly 15–20% of leads messaged him first in this workflow:

“About 15 to 20% of our leads DM’d us first. So even before my first DM, leads DM me first, and this completely flips the script.”

— Oleg, Extrovert

Continue the engagement during the wait. The tactic depends on remaining visible, rather than inserting an empty delay into an otherwise cold sequence.

Step 4: Start a conversation, then explain your agenda

Oleg’s first-DM example was short, lowercase, and pitch-free:

“hey [first name], glad to connect. wanted to ask, are you using LinkedIn as a channel for outbound at all?”

There is no booking link or product explanation in that opener. It asks a question relevant to the buyer’s work. In the demo, LGM’s real-chat mode split the message into two messages, like someone typing on mobile.

The second message explains why you reached out. Oleg noted that some people will not answer a conversational question until they understand your agenda. Give those readers a brief value proposition tied to the question and their pain points.

His preference was relevance over superficial personalization. Referring to a post they commented on is not enough if the message has nothing useful to say about their job.

Follow up without rushing the sequence

The slides suggest seven-to-ten-day intervals; Oleg also discussed waiting twenty days between messages. His examples included follow-ups on day ten, day twenty, and later. Comments and content continue in parallel, so each DM does not have to carry the entire relationship.

Send an insight, resource, case study, or relevant example that gives the prospect a reason to read. Avoid generic “just checking in” messages. If you have nothing useful to send, wait.

Keep posting even with a small audience

Oleg treated content as support for outbound, not only an inbound lead source. His example was a post with 200 impressions: modest reach can still matter when it includes the accounts you want to reach. He suggested posting your own ideas or sharing relevant company content, even before that activity produces inbound demand.

Comments create visibility in notifications. Posts explain how you think and what you work on. DMs open the direct conversation. Each gives the prospect a different way to get to know you.

Handle replies manually

When someone replies, move from the preset sequence to a real conversation. Understand their situation and guide the discussion toward an appropriate demo or signup. Keep commenting during the sales process instead of disappearing from their feed once the DM thread starts.

Oleg also shared a concrete response-writing tactic using Superwhisper:

1. Put your sales playbook, voice, company context, and common objection handling into a custom prompt.
2. Copy the conversation history to the clipboard.
3. Dictate what you want to say.
4. Review the formatted response before sending it.

His live demo used Kondo to copy a LinkedIn conversation. He said the LGM inbox or native LinkedIn inbox could serve the same purpose. The useful part was combining the actual conversation with the sales playbook and his spoken instruction, not switching inboxes for its own sake.

For prospects who never reply, make a separate decision. Oleg removed low-value prospects from the sequence and moved on. High-value accounts could stay in long-term nurture even without a first reply.

Step 5: Keep “not now” prospects in nurture

A good-fit prospect who lacks budget or has another priority is different from someone who does not fit. Keep the former on your radar without repeatedly asking for a meeting.

Oleg estimated that about 70% of Extrovert’s then-paid users came through longer journeys, sometimes lasting six months. Those journeys included replies, signups, following the company, continued content, and follow-ups. The point is to stay useful across that journey, not to assign every conversion to one nurture message.

The slides suggest one touchpoint a month, for months, alongside continued comments. Oleg described doing this manually or through a longer LGM sequence. Useful reasons to write include:

• An industry insight relevant to the prospect’s work.
• A new case study addressing their problem.
• A resource they can use now.
• A significant product update or integration.

Keep the prospect’s earlier answer in mind. A nurture sequence should reflect why they said “not now.”

Measure meetings and revenue, not only replies

At the end of the session, Oleg offered ballpark goals: connection acceptance above 60%, around 20% of prospects messaging first, and roughly three times the previous reply rate. He also said results vary by market and that meetings booked and revenue matter more than reply rate.

Use your own cold-outreach baseline for comparison. Track acceptance, replies, prospect-initiated conversations, meetings, and eventual revenue separately. A reply is a useful opening; it is not a booked meeting or a customer.

Start with one manageable batch, give each stage time, and keep the comments running after the sequence begins. The full session and slide deck show the Extrovert and LGM demos, the Superwhisper example, and audience Q&A.