Sales Navigator costs a hundred dollars a month. Most solopreneurs do not need it.
Here is how to build a quality prospect list using LinkedIn's free search, a little targeting knowledge, and one lightweight tool to capture and organise what you find.
Understand What the Free Search Can Actually Do
LinkedIn's free search lets you filter by job title, industry, location, company size, and degree of connection. That covers the majority of what most solopreneurs need for ICP targeting.
The trick most people miss is Boolean search. You can combine terms to get much more specific results without paying for anything.
Searching "consultant" returns everyone with that word anywhere in their profile. Searching "fractional CFO" OR "fractional chief financial officer" returns only people who specifically describe themselves that way. Add NOT "open to work" and you filter out people actively job hunting who probably are not buying.
You can get very precise with the free search if you know what you are doing.
Set Your Filters Before You Start
Before you run a single search, write down:
- The job titles you are targeting. Two or three specific ones, not broad categories.
- The industries where your best clients come from.
- The geographic areas that make sense for your offer.
- The company size range. If your service works best for companies with 10 to 50 employees, that matters.
Then put those into LinkedIn's search filters. The results you get will be relevant enough to actually work through rather than a random list of names.
The Problem With Just Browsing
You can spend an hour browsing LinkedIn search results and close the laptop with nothing to show for it. No list. No follow up plan. No memory of who you looked at.
This is where most people's prospecting breaks down. The finding part is not the hard part. The capturing and organising part is.
A tool like OutreachOS adds a button directly to LinkedIn that saves any profile to your CRM in one click. When you are browsing search results, you can also import an entire results page at once rather than clicking through profiles one at a time. Everything goes into named lists that you can add notes to and set follow up reminders for.
Add a Second Source: People With Intent
A prospect list built entirely from search results is full of people who match your ICP on paper. That is a starting point.
A stronger list includes people who are actively engaging with content in your space right now. Someone who commented on a post about a problem you solve is not just a match on paper. They have shown you they are thinking about this.
Go to posts from people your prospects follow. Look at the comment sections. The people engaging there are warm in a way that search results are not. You can add these to your OutreachOS lists the same way, and you will notice the response rate when you reach out is usually higher.
Keep Your List Clean and Actionable
A prospect list is only useful if you actually work through it. A thousand names you never contact is not a pipeline. It is a graveyard.
Keep your lists at a manageable size. Add contacts, reach out within a few days, and mark their status. Contacted. Replied. Not interested. Follow up in Q2. Whatever makes sense for your process.
The contacts in OutreachOS stay organised by list, with notes on each person and reminders for when to follow up. The goal is that when you open it every morning, you immediately know who to contact today and what to say when you do.
