Does anyone actually close deals from LinkedIn DMs, or is it all spam now?

My inbox is 40 connection requests a week and every single one is a pitch within two messages. I assume everyone else's is too, which makes me wonder whether cold DMs can work at all any more.

If you are closing from DMs in 2026: what does the first message look like? And are you sending 10 a day or 300?

318 inbound DMs and 9 clients last quarter — but all inbound, off the back of posting. I send zero cold DMs and I would not start now.

I close from DMs, but only after commenting on someone's posts for a fortnight first. The first message is then a reply to something they said, not an opener. Maybe 5 a week.

We ran 300/day for two months. 0.4% response, mostly hostile, and the profile got restricted twice. We stopped. Volume outreach on LinkedIn is burnt.

So the answer is: earn the DM rather than send it. That is slower than I hoped and more believable than what I was reading elsewhere.

Same shape as every other channel on this board. The scalable version stopped working and the unscalable version works great.

Respect for posting the losses as well as the wins.