i’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and i want to hear what other people’s experience is. i’m currently spending maybe 40% of my prep time on smart lead filtering—really trying to nail down who’s actually a good fit before i even send a first message. the other 60% goes into crafting sequences and testing follow-up timing.
but i’m wondering if i’m allocating my time right. like, if i send a crappy message to a perfect prospect, they’ll probably still respond. but if i send a perfect message to someone who’s not a fit, all the personalization in the world won’t help.
i used liseller’s smart lead filtering last month to really tighten up my icp—focused on company size, hiring patterns, recent funding, revenue stage, that kind of thing. it felt like i was being way more selective. but honestly, my reply rates didn’t move much. i went from ~2% to maybe 2.8%.
then i shifted gears and spent two weeks just testing follow-up timing and message templates instead. kept the same filtered list, but tested sending follow-ups at day 2 vs. day 4 vs. day 7. and that’s where i saw movement—reply rates bumped to about 4%.
so now i’m second-guessing whether all that filtering work was actually the bottleneck, or if the real gains come from nailing your follow-up game. obviously both matter, but if you had to choose one to optimize first, which wins?
what’s your experience? are you seeing bigger gains from stricter filtering on the front end, or from better follow-up sequences once you’ve already made contact?
this is a false choice, but i’ll tell you where the real leverage is: messaging beats filtering every single time. here’s why—even a “mediocre” prospect with a great hook and follow-up sequence will respond. but a perfect prospect with a boring message and weak follow-ups? ghosted.
the filtering work you’re doing is preventative—it stops you from wasting time on total tire-kickers. but it’s not a multiplier. messaging is the multiplier. you can take the same filtered list, completely rewrites your hooks, and watch reply rate go from 2.8% to 6%+.
do minimal filtering (just enough to avoid total spam), then obsess over your message. that’s where conversions live.
okay but here’s the thing—if you’re doing smart filtering (not just demographic filtering, but behavioral filtering), you can actually reduce your follow-up burden because you’re only reaching out to people who are actively in-market.
i set up liseller to pull prospects who’ve recently changed titles, updated their linkedin profiles, or had company news in the last 30 days. that’s not just demographic—that’s intent signal. when i combine that with automated follow-ups via webhook + pipedrive, my follow-up sequence becomes way shorter because people are already warm.
the filtering and follow-up aren’t separate—they’re connected. better filtering = fewer follow-ups needed = faster conversions. you’re comparing them as if they’re opposite forces, but really they’re north and south of the same strategy.
what kind of filtering are you actually doing? just basic firmographic stuff, or are you layering in behavioral signals?
from recruitment, filtering is everything. i can write a solid message, but if i’m messaging passive candidates who aren’t actively job hunting, the best message in the world won’t land. so i filter ruthlessly for people who are actually signaling intent—updated their resume, are open to opportunities on linkedin, have recent experience in my target segment.
then, once i know they’re a fit, i don’t need a fancy follow-up sequence. a simple, empathetic message usually lands. so my experience is the opposite of yours—filtering is the bottleneck that matters most.
but maybe it’s different in sales vs. recruiting. recruitment is about finding people already in transition. sales is about convincing people to transition. that might explain why messaging matters more for you.
that said, the 2% to 2.8% lift you got from filtering is actually solid. you’re reducing wasted time. the 2% to 4% lift from follow-ups is bigger numerically, but it’s also including the impact of the better filtering underneath it. hard to isolate.
one thing i’d caution: aggressive filtering can sometimes miss good prospects because linkedin’s data is spotty. like, you might filter for “companies with 50-100 employees,” but linkedin says someone works at a 30-person company that’s actually a division of a 500-person company. so you lose them.
i’d say do loose filtering (avoid total garbage, avoid competitors, that’s it), then let your follow-up and messaging quality do the heavy lifting. it’s also safer for your account because you’re not burning out your proxy by filtering super aggressively.
too much filtering activity from one account = higher risk of getting blocked. keep it simple, keep it safe.
also, when you’re testing follow-up timing, are you spacing out your sends? if you send 500 follow-ups in one day across 500 accounts, linkedin notices. keep your daily send volume consistent and reasonable, even if it means your follow-up sequence stretches longer. account health matters more than sequence speed.
also, your 2.8% to 4% bump might be bigger than you think. that’s a 40% increase in conversion rate. that’s huge. if you’re sending 1000 messages a week, that’s 20 extra conversations. at typical deal sizes, that’s serious money. so don’t downplay the follow-up work—that was the right call to focus there.
great question, and i think the answer is: it depends on your baseline filtering. if you’re currently sending to everyone, then smart filtering will help. if you’re already doing reasonable filtering, then messaging becomes the lever.
in liseller, smart lead filtering uses behavioral signals + demographic data to surface high-intent prospects. but it’s a tool that gets better the more you use it. most new users filter on maybe 2-3 dimensions. experienced users layer in 6-7 signals. if you’re low on filtering dimensions, that’s probably your bottleneck.
but if you’re already using 5+ filtering criteria and your reply rate only bumped 0.8%, then yeah, your messaging is the problem.
how many filtering dimensions are you currently applying? that’ll tell you if you’ve hit the filtering ceiling or not.
strategically, this depends on your conversion funnel. if your top of funnel (reply rate) is weak, that’s a messaging problem. if your middle of funnel (reply-to-qualified-conversation) is weak, that’s a filtering problem.
when you say you went from 2% to 4% reply rate with better follow-ups, you got a top-of-funnel win. but you never measured whether those new replies were actually high-quality prospects. what if your follow-up sequence is getting more replies from worse prospects? then your cost per qualified conversation actually went up, even though reply rate went up.
i’d suggest tracking “reply rate” and “conversion rate to qualified conversation” separately. that’ll tell you where the real bottleneck is. you might need both filtering and messaging wins to actually move the needle on closing deals.
long-term answer: filtering is a leverage point in year 1-2 of campaign optimization. You can squeeze maybe 1-2x gains from filtering. messaging is a compounding lever that can generate 3-5x gains over time. so invest in both, but messaging should get more of your attention if you can only do one.