Playbooks

Connect, ask one question, follow up every five days: a LinkedIn playbook for technical buyers

A foundry president's agent connected with engineers, asked one diagnostic question of about 33 words, and followed up every five days with a bump, a new angle and a soft close. Of 879 messaged, 293 replied (33%) and 42 conversations ended with a buyer side outcome. This page gives the configuration.

Published by Sellinger AI. Numbers and settings checked on 19 October 2026 against the fact register. Report an error.

engineers and buyers messaged, from 3,345 connection requests (27% accepted): 879
replied: 293 people: 33%
buyer side outcomes, 4.8% of those messaged: 42
median gap between touches: 5.0 days

The scenario

Lamothermic is an investment casting foundry in New York. Its buyers are design engineers, sourcing managers and quality leads at US makers who ignore vendor pitches but answer a peer's sharp question. The agent wrote as the president from his own LinkedIn. See the manufacturing industry page and the case study for the full story.

The configuration

1
Day 0
Connection request
Usually without a note: 149 of 3,345 had one. 27% accepted.
2
On accept
One diagnostic question
A median of 33 words and 81% contained a question. No pitch, no link.
3
Day 5
Bump
One line plus an easy out, such as: if not a priority, no worries.
4
Day 10
New angle
Tariffs, tooling lead times, spare parts, a two minute foundry video.
5
Day 15
Soft close
A line saying you will get out of their inbox. It still drew late replies.
6
Any reply
Diagnose, then hand off
Part, alloy, volume, timeline. Then email, drawings, an NDA or a 15 minute call.

Write as the president: a practitioner and a smart filter, not a salesperson. A polite disqualification counts as a win.
US manufacturing only. Never sales, marketing, HR, consultants, other foundries or personal connections.
Ask about the part, alloy, volume, application and timeline. Mirror the prospect's length, one to four sentences.
Not the right person? Ask who handles sourcing, and for an email.
State capabilities exactly: steels, stainless and bronze; no aluminum, no vacuum melt alloys. These guardrails were added as the campaign ran.

The messages

A thread that found a live quote request
When	Who	Message
Day 0	Agent	Given [company]'s focus on mission critical components for aerospace and defense, I'm curious. Do you ever find it a challenge to source complex investment castings that come fully machined and finished from a single, reliable partner?
Day 5	Agent	Just bumping this. Let me know if consolidating casting and machining suppliers is a priority for you this quarter.
11 hours later	Prospect	I am about to start an RFQ for some castings. Send me email with your contact details.

Prospect and company names are removed.

The result

Reply rate at each touch
Touch	Reply rate	Base
Intro	17.2%	157 of 911
Follow up 1	11.7%	82 of 701
Follow up 2	3.7%	22 of 597
Follow up 3	3.0%	12 of 401
Follow up 4	3.9%	6 of 153

Follow ups lifted the reply rate from 17.2% to 30.9% with 7 negative first replies across 1,699 follow up recipients. 40% of the 42 outcomes first replied to a follow up.

What we would change

Search by named target company, not only by keyword or signal. Named company searches produced 24 of the 42 outcomes.
Do not read intent signal reply rates alone: 57% of replies from that list came from recruiters, vendors and peers.
Test email separately. A June email test of 47 leads got no replies.

Common questions

Why no note on the connection request?

In this sequence 149 of 3,345 requests carried a note, and 27% of requests were accepted. The study does not compare note and no note, so do not read it as proof either way.

How long should the opener be?

A median of 33 words, and 81% contained a question. Short enough to answer from a phone.

Who handles the hand off?

The president took every hand raise by email, a median of two prospect messages into the thread.

Can I run it on email instead?

The small email test in this study got no replies. See the named owner letter playbook for an email sequence that did.

Sources and method

A playbook here is a configuration that ran, with the outcome it produced and the base of every number. It is not a template promise: your audience and offer decide your own rates. Source: Lamothermic case study, Sellinger production data, read only, snapshot 9 October 2026. All 293 replied threads were read by hand.