What counts as a response on LinkedIn?

A reply where the buyer names a problem. Anything less counts as a pleasantry, and pleasantries don't book calls.

The reply that ends at "thanks for connecting" is what I call the friendzone. It feels like progress, it pads your reply count, and it goes nowhere.

That's how a 30% reply rate can sit on top of an empty calendar. If most of those replies are thank-yous, your outreach is busy and your pipeline is dry.

Split your replies into 2 piles before you judge anything. Pile 1 is courtesy, and pile 2 is a buyer telling you what's broken or saying yes to your offer.

Only pile 2 counts.

What number is good at each stage?

3 numbers decide it, in this order: Acceptance, reply, and booked call. Each one has its own good range, and each one breaks for a different reason. 

Acceptance comes first. These are the ranges I'd expect on connection requests a tech founder sends from their own profile: 

• 20% acceptance comes with even mediocre targeting

• 30% comes with really good targeting

• 40% comes when your audience is honed and your profile speaks straight to them

Those swing by industry and by how active your buyers are on LinkedIn. Under 20%, fix the list before you touch the message. I walked through that math in how many people a tech founder needs on their target list.

Reply rate comes next, and here the message decides almost everything. Pitch-slap someone in the first DM and you'll get under 1%, even with great targeting. Valley's data on 30M+ LinkedIn messages lands in the same spot: Cold outreach with no context replies below 1%.

At the other end, about 35% is the most a hyper-targeted founder should ever expect. That top end comes from conversations I've had with Danny DelVecchio of Content on Easy Mode and Brian O'Connor, founder of Outlier Growth. Both run outreach that skips the call ask and puts a lead magnet in the second DM, after a welcome message.

My own best was a 40% response on connection DMs to Oracle executives during the layoffs earlier this year. Every message was personal to that one person, with nothing about their role and nothing that smelled like a pitch. Going past that takes a following of 50,000 to 100,000+.

The third number is yours to measure: Booked calls divided by pile-2 replies. Track it every week, since it's the only one of the 3 that turns into revenue. What happens once that call is booked is its own skill, which I covered in what Sesame Street can teach you about sales calls.

How long before your response rate means anything?

About 30 days per batch. Judge it sooner and you're grading replies that haven't arrived yet.

Belkins tracked 152,636 LinkedIn contacts from March 2025 to February 2026. The median first reply came 5 days after the invite, and the median booked meeting came at 10 days.

The tail runs long, too. 60% of replies landed in the first week, and 91.8% had landed by day 30. 

That's why a founder who rewrites the message every Monday never learns anything. Send a batch, leave it alone for 30 days, then count pile 2.

Why do replies stall before the call?

Because the first DM asks for the call. Buyers dodge meetings because they expect to get pitched, so a DM asking for 15 minutes reads as a pitch with a calendar link.

The sequence I recommend now runs in 2 messages:

1. A friendly welcome 24 to 48 hours after they accept, asking for nothing

2. At least 1 hour after they answer, a free resource offered as a question: "Want me to send it over?"

Asking for an email is an easier yes than asking for a call. The resource still has to hit a problem they're living with this month, which is the "when" of the 5 Ws.

Read how long the company's been in business, how long they've been in the role, and what their company page and Sales Navigator show. A buyer who just put 4 new tires on the car has zero use for yours. Sell to the one on the shoulder with a flat.

There's 1 exception. If you've warmed someone up with several comments on their posts, or you're a big name in your space, you can move faster.

What response rate should an agency or tool promise you?

A number with a definition attached. A promise without one is marketing copy.

Ask what they count as a response. If a "thanks for connecting" counts, pile 1 is inflating the number, and you'll pay for a full calendar you never get.

Then sanity-check the number itself. Valley's own FAQ calls anything above 5% strong on cold outreach, and a hyper-targeted campaign tops out around 35%. A vendor promising 50% on cold outreach from your profile is guessing, or counting pile 1.

If you're comparing agencies, I laid out what to check in what's the best LinkedIn lead generation agency for a B2B tech company. If you'd rather talk through your own numbers, apply to work together.

4 moves to make this week

• Split your last 30 days of replies into thank-yous and problem replies, and count only the second pile

• Pull the acceptance rate on your last 100 connection requests, and fix the list first if it's under 20%

• Rewrite your first DM so it asks for nothing, and send it 24 to 48 hours after they accept

• Log booked calls divided by problem replies every Friday, and watch that number over your reply count

Steve Lewis
CEO
TORC Executive Marketing

Ready to turn these conversations into booked calls? Sign up for my FREE 6-Day LinkedIn DM & Sales Call course: https://form.typeform.com/to/BJ6KhZky

Frequently asked questions

How should a tech founder answer a "thanks for connecting" reply?
Mirror it. Match their length, their greeting, and their sign-off, so your message reads like the same conversation carrying on. If they wrote 1 line and signed off with "Best," send 1 or 2 lines and sign off the same way.

Does a video DM raise a tech founder's response rate?
Yes, once they've already replied in text. Text alone gets about 3% response in my own outreach, and a short video after a text reply moves that to around 20%. Send a video to someone who's never answered and you've wasted the time it took to record.

How much should the free resource in a tech founder's second DM give away?Enough to solve 1 small piece of the problem. I once sent prospects a 20-slide deck that amounted to a full LinkedIn education, and none of them wrote back. The resource has to be useful on its own and still leave them a reason to come back.