I get asked a lot of the same questions about LinkedIn, whether itโs in my DMs, on calls with clients or at the end of a live session, so Iโve pulled together the ones that come up most and answered them as honestly as I can. They cover how to attract clients on LinkedIn, how to price and sell, and how to stand out when everyone seems to offer the same thing.
Weโll go throughโฆ
โข What Iโd do differently on LinkedIn
โข Whether I do cold outreach
โข What to do if you donโt have testimonials
โข Whether LinkedIn is still worth it, and whether you need a website
โข How long it takes to get consistent clients
โข Discovery calls, pricing and โthatโs too expensiveโ
โข How to go beyond how-to content
โข What to do when a prospect goes quiet
โข How to stand out, and how to get focused without feeling smaller
โข Contingency deals and getting customers as a freelancer
So, letโs get into it.
1. What would you do differently to attract clients on LinkedIn?
I made two major mistakes when I started.
First, I chased network growth at any cost. I wanted more followers and didnโt care who they were. That meant I built an audience that wasnโt made up of buyers. Itโs taken me years to clean that up, and all those irrelevant followers have been dead weight.
Second, I wasnโt focused on what I wanted to sell. Until 2018, I sold lots of different things. I underestimated how much easier it is to sell the same thing over and over than to sell lots of different things. In 2018 I focused on one offer and got very good at it, and that was the major breakthrough.
If I had to start over and attract clients on LinkedIn from scratch, I’d ignore vanity follower counts and build a tight audience of verified buyers around one single offer.
2. Do you do cold outreach?
Yes and no, because โcoldโ is in the eye of the beholder.
Do we reach out to people we donโt know? Yes. Do we just pitch our services? No, because nobody responds to that. Iโll talk to complete strangers, but itโs never as effective as talking to someone who already knows, likes and trusts you. Thatโs why my focus is on building trust upfront.
3. What if I donโt have testimonials?
This is common when youโre starting out, and in some businesses itโs genuinely hard to get them. Some of my corporate clients, for example, donโt allow me to use their quotes for legal reasons, although I can mention their logo.
3 things you can do instead
1. Document results without naming people: โI did this for a coach, and hereโs the result.โ
2. Collect every small win as you go: Whenever a client mentions a result, write it down. I wasnโt good at this early on, and I wish I had been.
3. Use your professional achievements: If you have no client results yet, show what proves your capability. Iโve seen someone coming out of corporate use 15 years of managing teams, large budgets and delivery as proof until theyโd banked their first testimonials.
4. Is the platform still worth it to attract clients on LinkedIn?
Yes, but itโs a very different game to three, four or five years ago. The people who told you two years ago to just post great content and wait for leads are now saying content isnโt enough. Iโve been saying that for a long time.
The algorithms are more sophisticated and distribution is harder. LinkedIn is only worth it if youโre really focused. If youโre unfocused and chasing shiny objects, it will be tough until you get your seven Ps right (more on those in question 15).
5. Do I need a website?
In 2026, probably not. Itโs helpful, but it isnโt critical. The platforms want people to stay on the platform, and plenty of people sell successfully on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram with no website at all.
One thing is worth knowing. Weโve never been in a situation where what you do on social media shapes your reputation across the whole internet. More people use AI tools such as Google AI, ChatGPT and Claude to search, and social media content is often among the top cited sources in their answers.
So what you post matters beyond the platformโs own audience. A website still has a role in that, but it isnโt essential.
6. How long does it take to attract clients on LinkedIn consistently?
Itโs almost impossible to answer, and Iโll be blunt about why. If you donโt get clear on what youโre selling, why and who will buy it, it could be never.
Thatโs not because youโre unclear. Itโs because you wonโt choose. You canโt sell or market lots of things at once. When you try, it all merges together, you donโt speak to anyone in particular and your service sits in the middle of the road.
Could you get a client from LinkedIn this week? Absolutely. But it would force you to get clear on what I call the five ones:
โข One problem
โข One service
โข One audience
โข One clear message
โข One method or process to follow
7. Should you charge for discovery calls?
I donโt personally charge for them, and what we do depends on how busy we are.
When weโre quiet (summer, or early in the year), weโre more open. We offer free strategy calls and give people plenty of help and advice, because the more conversations you have, the more money you make. Conversations, not pitches.
When weโre busy, we tighten up why people are booking calls, so theyโre better qualified. For example: โIf you want to know how we can help you get your first client on LinkedIn, book a call.โ
I might charge for a strategy session if a company wants to pick my brains for an hour on their go-to-market, but not for a standard discovery call.
One more lesson. Some calls I thought would be a waste of time have surprised me. One looked like pure chitchat and I nearly cancelled it. It turned into a quarter of a million pounds. Random conversations can lead to surprising results.
8. What do you say when asked about price?
I struggled with pricing for a long time, partly because of my working-class upbringing. Even now, with a team of around 30 and responsibility for millions of pounds, ยฃ1,000 still feels like a lot of money to me.
So I decided to publish my pricing. Itโs there for me as much as anyone. When people book a call, they already know what I charge, and it works as a filter. A couple of people who hadnโt seen it have turned up saying they only had ยฃ500, and I could tell them they werenโt at the stage to work with me yet.
If you struggle with pricing, get it out there. If youโre on a sales call, put your service and price on a Canva doc and walk through it. It removes the awkwardness.
I used to discount my price in my head before Iโd said it out loud. If it was ยฃ10,000 in my head, by the time I spoke it had quietly become ยฃ7,400. Publishing the price is an easy way to deal with that.
9. Can how-to content attract clients on LinkedIn?
How-to content is brilliant for building trust and showing you know your topic. But it doesnโt really create demand. Iโm a sucker for it too. If youโre a teacher or trainer, itโs your default.
What Iโve added, as part of my seven Ps, is explaining why things matter: why a problem occurs, why a goal is so important and why my methodology is the best route to it. Thatโs what makes people think differently.
If you want people to buy from you, help them see your way of doing things. If you have a methodology, process or IP, donโt just teach it. Show why it works, why it matters and why it got someone a result. Itโs almost like running a campaign for your approach.
That includes helping people see why they canโt stay where they are. I tell people to stop playing around, stop buying courses and build a value proposition people actually want. When someone says โyouโre right, Iโve been copying influencers and I never had a decent value propositionโ, Iโve helped them see the world differently, and they want to talk to me.
10. They said theyโd get back to me and never did. What now?
A few things could be going on.
They were just being polite. The only way to find out is to ask on the call: โIs this something that would work for you? Can you see how this would work?โ If they hesitate or dodge, they were probably being polite.
The excitement faded. You nailed your message, they saw the value, then they hung up and went back to their day-to-day. If your proposal and follow-up donโt keep the momentum going, they lose sight of the positives and fall back into their comfort zone.
What Iโd do
Get a transcript of the call (AI works fine for this) and find what really motivated them. Then reference those specifics in your follow-up. For example: โYou mentioned you were sick of feast and famine and relying on referrals, and you wanted to move forward. Has something changed?โ
That prompts them to say โno, nothingโs changed, I need to move forwardโ.
11. How to stand out and attract clients on LinkedIn
There are a million versions of me teaching people how to build pipeline. When you sell your expertise on LinkedIn, your true differentiator isn’t slick brandingโit’s your proprietary methodology, what you stand against, and your authentic perspective.
1. Your methodology, process and IP.
2. You. People buy into the person first, then buy from the person, especially in an expert-led business. That doesnโt mean being wacky. It means being yourself.
3. What youโre against. What do you disagree with in your market? Thatโs a strong differentiator.
On LinkedIn, people often put on a โprofessionalisedโ version of themselves. Thatโs the worst thing you can do, worse than dumbing yourself down. Youโll attract people who buy into a version of you that isnโt real.
You only need to be marginally different so people can feel you. I do more live, unscripted content, while a lot of my competitors are heavily scripted and donโt go live. Some people are put off by that and some love it, but itโs genuinely me, and itโs sustainable because itโs instinctive.
12. How do you handle โthatโs too expensiveโ?
Own it.
Iโll say: โIt is expensive. Youโve probably bought ten $49 courses and youโre still no further on, and you want a big result.โ You wouldnโt expect a big result from a small price. If I told you that you could get a 10,000% return from $49, you wouldnโt believe me.
My price is attached to the value I help you achieve. Aligning with Harvard Business Review’s research on value-based pricing, buyers don’t object to premium prices when the economic and strategic return clearly outweighs the initial investment.
With corporates it can be different, because thereโs sometimes a genuine fixed budget. I wonโt necessarily discount, but if I give ground, I make sure to get something in return so itโs a fair exchange.
For example, one client had a tight, fixed budget. I said Iโd work to it, but I didnโt want to chase payments, fill in endless purchase orders or chase an unresponsive accounts department, so I asked whether theyโd pay upfront. They went back to their finance team and did.
So: own the objection, donโt apologise for your price, and if you concede anything, get something back.
13. Would you work on contingency or pay-on-results?
No. Iโve done it once and it wasnโt nice.
It was worth roughly ยฃ60,000 to ยฃ70,000 of revenue to me, on around ยฃ400,000 of business secured, so the numbers worked on paper. We agreed the commercials in writing. It started slowly, then sales came in, and then the client started picking at my share. They asked to go through all our numbers, found nothing wrong and then tried to renegotiate mid-deal anyway.
Thatโs what I donโt like about pay-on-results. You end up squabbling about money. And if the client doesnโt do their part, you make nothing. In another case, which wasnโt contingency, we generated 312 leads for a client who had spent ยฃ8,000 to get them. Every one was expecting a follow-up call as agreed, and they never called a single one. On contingency, Iโd have earned nothing.
Iโve also had people flatter me and then say, โIf youโre as good as I think you are, youโll smash it, so why not do it on contingency?โ I wonโt be played like that. I canโt control what a client does on their side, and usually it means they donโt want to invest and would rather you take the risk. Iโd only consider it for something I really believed in, or with someone I know and trust.
14. If focus is what cuts through, how much of my wider value should I show early on?
This is the number one struggle. Getting cut-through means going from three-dimensional to one-dimensional, and it feels like youโre becoming less. I went through it myself. When I started on LinkedIn I offered websites, social media and all sorts, and my lack of focus was the problem.
I call my answer the Red Bull strategy. Red Bull took on its market in small segments at a time: nightlife first, then extreme sports, then outwards from there.
So go narrow first. Use the five ones until LinkedIn is genuinely working and youโre in profit doing one thing. Then test flexing out. Once youโre profitable, you have the resources to branch out.
Thatโs the opposite of the common advice to go wide, then narrow. At the beginning, you want to remove as much complexity, confusion, friction and as many variables as you can. I do the same today, with lives, a newsletter, a website and different things happening on Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn.
15. How freelancers can attract clients on LinkedIn from scratch
Decide what specific service youโre selling and what problem it solves. If you ask people โdo you need this?โ vaguely, they say no. If you ask something specific, like โdo you need thumbnails designing?โ, you get a real answer.
Freelancing builds a diverse skill set, but a diverse skill set is hard to sell. Pick one thing and become a pro at it. Offer something specific people can say yes or no to, with the friction taken out. For example, converting blogs and webinars into one specific output for a set monthly fee.
The seven Ps
This is what I did, and what Iโd recommend. Write a one-pager that maps your service against my seven Ps:
โข Problem: what you solve
โข Promise: the result you deliver
โข Persona: who itโs for
โข Process: your methodology
โข Price: what it costs
โข Proof: evidence it works
โข Parameters: the scope of your service
Then message people on LinkedIn and ask if they have that problem. Keep it simple: โDo you have this problem? I might have something that could help. Want me to show you how?โ
If your market is small but your sale value is high, you donโt need many people to get a result. A small, focused market is manageable, and a singular focus helps you cut through faster, even though itโs uncomfortable.
Good luck putting these into practice.
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