How to Find High-Intent LinkedIn Prospects Without Paid Tools

LinkedIn has a lot of signal available publicly that most outbound teams ignore because they are focused on the database side of prospecting (finding contact information) rather than the signal side (finding people who are currently paying attention).

Here is the manual method for surfacing LinkedIn engagement signals, what you are looking for, and where the method breaks down at scale.

The core concept

When someone publicly comments on a LinkedIn post about a topic in your category, that is observable attention. The comment is public. The person's profile is public. The post is public.

You do not need Sales Navigator to see this. You can find it directly in the LinkedIn feed or by searching for posts on specific keywords.

The manual method

Search LinkedIn for posts related to your keyword themes. Not profiles, not companies, but posts. LinkedIn's search bar has a "Posts" filter tab. Use it.

Search for the specific terms your buyers use when they discuss the problem you solve. Not your product category name, but the problem language. "Enrichment credit waste" is better than "data enrichment." "Outreach timing" is better than "B2B sales tools."

Open posts with meaningful engagement (50+ reactions, several comments). Look at the commenters. Not the people who liked the post, but the people who wrote something specific. Read what they wrote. Is it generic ("great post") or specific ("we ran into this exact problem when switching from Apollo")?

Check their profile. Do they match your ICP on title, company size, industry, and geography? If yes, you have a signal-matched prospect.

Note their name, LinkedIn URL, and the post context. That context is the opener for your outreach.

What you are looking for in the comments

The comments worth acting on have one or more of these:

• A specific problem described with real detail
• A comparison between two options or vendors
• A question about which approach works better
• A statement that mentions a decision in progress
• Engagement on a post about a topic that is directly related to your category

For a deeper classification pass, see what makes a good signal.

Comments that are not worth acting on: "Great insight", "Thanks for sharing", "Agree!", emoji-only reactions. These show activity, not attention depth.

Where the manual method breaks down

At 10 to 20 prospects per week, this is workable by hand. One focused session, two or three good posts, 15 to 25 prospects with real signal context.

At 50 to 200 prospects per week, it is not. The search is repetitive, the profile checks are repetitive, and the context capture is error-prone when done manually at volume.

The method also degrades in freshness at scale. You can check posts from this week manually. Checking posts from the last four hours across ten keyword themes is not a manual workflow.

When to stop doing it manually

When your weekly outreach volume requires more than 30 to 40 new prospects per week consistently, the manual method starts costing more in time than a monitored feed costs in setup.

The signal logic is the same either way: find people who engaged with relevant content recently and match your ICP. The difference is whether a human or a system is doing the monitoring pass.

Richie Reach automates the monitoring pass across client-defined keyword themes, applies ICP gates before enrichment, and delivers the output weekly. The manual method described above is the same logic, just at much lower volume.

See what the automated version looks like: how-it-works.