Most executives reject LinkedIn  connection requests with fake personalization that could apply to anyone. For example we have common connections or I found your profile to be interesting.  

If you have a premium LinkedIn account, the number of LinkedIn connection requests you can send each day is limited to 95. Each connection request is a limited resource. Like an unrented hotel room, once the day is gone, the resource cannot be recovered. Therefore, you need 95 fresh people to send connection requests to each day and they should be people with a high propensity to be on the buying committee for your solution.

The only way to ensure you are targeting people with the highest potential value is by hand researching each lead. Last year, we did a study for a Fortune 50 company in the technology sector. They purchased a list of 60,000 prospect names from the biggest name in list providers. Then their data scientists narrowed the list down to 40,000 people before giving the list to our research team.

When our research team looked at each person’s LinkedIn profile, we eliminated 18,000 prospects as not being a fit. My favorite example was a company that used fancy technology sounding words in their description but was actually a few guys in the dog crap pick up business. Not exactly a fit for a company that sells large computer systems.

On average, it costs about $1.25 to have a qualified researcher fully vet a prospect. Compare this cost to the time and money you spend chasing a prospect on a prospect list. Now think of the opportunity cost of putting time into a prospect with no potential when you could have invested that time in a prospect with potential.