How to Use Claude for Sales Prospecting on LinkedIn

Short answer: add LinkMCP, a LinkedIn MCP server, to Claude as a custom connector, and connect your LinkedIn account to it. Then describe the people who buy from you. Claude searches LinkedIn (and Sales Navigator, if you have a seat) through your account, researches their companies, looks up work emails, and drafts connection requests and messages for you to approve.

People search, Sales Navigator, connection requests and messages go through your own LinkedIn account, so they need a paid LinkMCP plan. In the free trial, Claude can already research the people and companies whose LinkedIn links you paste, search LinkedIn posts by keywords and find work emails.

We make LinkMCP. LinkMCP is an independent product and is not affiliated with LinkedIn or with the other companies on this page. We use their names only to identify their products. Anthropic, the company that makes Claude and Claude Code, does not make or endorse LinkMCP.

What Claude can do for sales, tool by tool

LinkMCP gives Claude 36 LinkedIn tools. These are the ones a seller uses:

Each people search result has the name, the headline, the location, the profile URL and the network distance.

Set it up

1. Add LinkMCP to Claude as a custom connector. The steps are in the guide Claude LinkedIn Connector: Is There One? (2026 Guide). For Claude Code (one command), see How to Connect Claude Code to LinkedIn. For Cursor, see How to Connect Cursor to LinkedIn.
2. Choose a LinkMCP plan and connect your LinkedIn account once in the LinkMCP web app. Searches and messages go through your own account.
3. Check your Sales Navigator seat, if you have one. Ask: "Use linkedin_who_am_i and tell me if Sales Navigator is active on my LinkedIn account."

If MCP is new to you, read LinkedIn MCP Server: What It Is and How to Use One (2026).

A prospecting session in Claude, step by step

1. Describe who buys from you. Give the job titles, the kind and size of company, the region, and what rules a person out.
2. Search. Claude runs linkedin_search_people. To filter by current company, set the filter on LinkedIn's own search page, copy the URL of the results and paste it. Claude runs that search. With a Sales Navigator seat, ask for Sales Navigator, and Claude runs linkedin_search_sales_navigator. Each answer has a cursor for the next page.
3. Research the accounts. Claude reads each company page with linkedin_get_company and its recent posts with linkedin_get_company_posts. For a longer list, it reads up to 10 companies in one call with linkedin_bulk_get_companies.
4. Read and rank the people. Claude reads up to 10 profiles in one call with linkedin_bulk_get_profiles, and what each person posts with linkedin_get_person_posts. Then it ranks them against your description, with one reason for each.
5. Find a way in. Claude lists mutual connections with linkedin_get_shared_connections, or finds a work email with find_email.
6. Approve every message. Ask for drafts first, and say "Do not send anything" until you have read them. Claude asks for your approval before it uses a connector's tool, unless "Allow always" is set for that tool (on a Team or Enterprise plan, an Owner can set it for everyone). Do not choose "Allow always" for the tools that send: linkedin_send_connection_request and linkedin_send_message.

Prompts to try

Use LinkMCP to search LinkedIn for heads of sales and VPs of sales at B2B software companies in Germany. Show 2nd-degree connections first. Give me a table of 20: name, headline, location, profile URL.

Research this company before my call: [LinkedIn company URL]. Read the company page and its recent posts. Tell me what they sell, how big they are and what they posted about lately, in five bullet points.

Read the top 10 profiles in full. Rank them against this description of my buyer, with one reason for each: [paste your description].

For the top 5, which of my connections are also connected to them? Find the work email of each person with no mutual connection, and check that it can receive mail.

Draft a connection request note for each of the top 3, under 200 characters, that mentions one thing from their recent posts. Show me the drafts. Do not send anything.

List my LinkedIn conversations with unread messages. For each one, summarize the last message and draft a reply. Do not send anything.

If Claude answers without LinkedIn data, name the tool in your prompt, for example: "Use the LinkMCP tool linkedin_search_people."

In Claude Code or Cursor: keep the list in a file

Claude Code and the Agent in Cursor read and edit the files of your project. So you can give them your list as a file and get the results as a new file. This prompt works in the free trial:

Read leads.txt, a list of LinkedIn profile links. Use LinkMCP to read each profile and company and to find each work email. Write leads.csv with these columns: name, title, company, company size, work email, email status, profile link. Do not send anything.

The same LinkMCP account works in Claude, Claude Code and Cursor.

What the free trial can and cannot do

• Works in the trial: read profiles and company pages from their links (up to 10 in one call), read what a person or a company posts, search LinkedIn posts by keywords and see who wrote them, and find and check work emails.
• Needs a paid plan with your LinkedIn account connected: people search, Sales Navigator search, mutual connections, connection requests, messages and your inbox.

To test the idea in the trial, paste 10 profile links of people you want to reach, describe your buyer, and ask Claude to rank them and find their work emails.

LinkMCP starts with a 7-day free trial, and you do not need a credit card. In the trial, profile and company lookups, posts and post comments, keyword searches of LinkedIn posts, and email and phone lookups work. People and job searches, messages, posting and Sales Navigator act through your own LinkedIn account, and connecting it needs a paid plan. Starter costs $39 per month. New trials get their first month of Starter for $19.50.

Limits and account risk

• People, Sales Navigator and job searches go through your LinkedIn account. Searches (people, Sales Navigator and jobs together) have a base limit of 300 a day, and the default Cautious tier allows a quarter of that. Searches wait at least 5 seconds between calls, with at most 3 a minute.
• In the default Cautious tier, you can send 20 connection requests a day, at least 30 seconds apart. A new or quiet account starts at 15 connection requests a day. Each active day adds 5, up to the limit of your tier.
• In the same tier, you can send 25 messages and 10 InMails a day. InMail uses the InMail credits of your LinkedIn plan.
• LinkMCP is not a campaign tool. It does not send sequences. Each request is one that you make in the chat.

Any automated use of LinkedIn can put an account at risk, and no tool can promise that LinkedIn will not restrict an account. High volumes and robotic timing are common triggers. The limits lower the risk. They do not remove it. More in our guide on LinkedIn automation risk. All limits are on our security page.

What LinkMCP does not do

• It does not read or change Sales Navigator lead lists or account lists. To work with a group of people, use a search or its URL.
• It searches people, not accounts (companies), in Sales Navigator.
• It does not write to a CRM. Ask Claude for the table as CSV, and import the file.
• For outreach to hundreds of people a week, LinkMCP's daily limits are too low on purpose. How outreach tools compare: Dripify vs PhantomBuster vs Expandi vs HeyReach (2026).

LinkMCP fits when you want to do your LinkedIn prospecting in the AI app that you already use, with your own LinkedIn account.

FAQ

Related

• Find LinkedIn Prospects with AI: Claude, ChatGPT (one search, step by step)
• LinkedIn Lead List with Work Emails: Claude, ChatGPT (works in the free trial)
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator MCP for Claude and ChatGPT
• LinkedIn Candidate Search with AI: Claude, ChatGPT (for recruiters)
• Search LinkedIn and Sales Navigator with AI (docs)