GTM Crossroads Podcast Ep6: What the LinkedIn Crackdown Means for GTM

In this episode of the GTM Crossroads podcast, the hosts discuss the recent ban of Apollo and Seamless from LinkedIn, exploring the implications for sales tools and prospecting strategies.

They share personal anecdotes, including baking adventures, and emphasize the importance of adapting to LinkedIn's evolving landscape while maintaining ethical practices in data usage.

The conversation highlights the need for a balanced approach to leveraging LinkedIn as a valuable resource for sales and marketing.

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Disclaimer

Please note that the GTM Crossroads Podcast is co-hosted by Harris Kenny (Founder, OutboundSync), Brendan Tolleson (Co-Founder & CEO, RevPartners), and Zach Vidibor (Co-Founder & CEO, Octave). Each episode features discussions on go-to-market (GTM) strategy, revenue operations, and sales execution from industry leaders.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the individual speakers at the time of recording and do not necessarily reflect the official stance of their respective organizations. Statements made during the conversation may be speculative, evolving, or based on personal experience rather than company policy.

This transcript below is provided for reference and accessibility but should not be interpreted as official guidance, policy, or endorsement by any company mentioned. 

Transcript

Brendan Tolleson (00:01.123)
Alright gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Go To Market Crossroads. I missed y'all last week. How did the mayor, how did Rob Jones do?

Zach (00:06.99)
I'm

Zach (00:11.67)
What shall we say? We had fun, he didn't quite fill the void, but we had a blast.

Harris Kenny (00:17.189)
Yeah, attempted coup d'etat is what a lot of people are saying.

Brendan Tolleson (00:19.555)
Did he wear the orange suit or did he, did he?

Harris Kenny (00:24.475)
don't think so.

Zach (00:25.336)
even wear the orange suit. He had the neon sign.

Harris Kenny (00:28.111)
Yes. No, it was fun. And it was a fun like little like kind of like, you know, perspective on, okay, what are we, what are we doing here? What are we know? How is this going so far? And then talked about some content stuff. It was great. And he was talking about like thinking about doing some more podcast content through RP and I think he's totally shown.

Brendan Tolleson (00:47.875)
I don't if you guys, I'm trying to remember when he came out with that. I think it was on Thursday or, have y'all seen his like Kendrick Lamar rendition on LinkedIn? Zach, if you haven't seen it.

Harris Kenny (00:56.347)
Yeah. That's as close to viral as you're gonna get on LinkedIn. mean, that had hundreds and hundreds of...

Brendan Tolleson (01:02.787)
Yeah, I got her 500 and I got a HubSpot to engage. I'll just send it to you. And he just came out with a... If you guys back in your high school days were a Creed fan, he just came out with a rendition of a Creed song for Clay. My... What was it? My... It's off of My Sacrifice. I'll send it to you. It's a banger.

Zach (01:09.08)
I didn't even see that.

Zach (01:24.95)
I mean, fan or not, I mean, that's part of the zeitgeist for sure.

Harris Kenny (01:31.735)
Ciao!

Brendan Tolleson (01:34.111)
So that's that's what I had going on last week guys I would get alerts of a Rob Jones music video while I was on the beach so that that was my week last week which was a lot of fun and anything new in your world over last week?

Zach (01:45.23)
Oh man, I've been kind of fighting a cold, so sorry for the rastiness. If we had recorded this a few days ago, you guys would have suffered through an RFK Junior impression the whole time. But no, nothing exciting over here. Just beating the drum, marching forward.

Harris Kenny (01:55.462)
Ha ha ha!

Harris Kenny (02:02.791)
Yeah, we've had some sickness around our household as well, but I like to over promise and then over deliver. So yesterday my, went to the pediatrician, um, with our four year old and they were like, Hey, can we get a cake pop? You know, after, after we go like, yeah, totally. Like you're doing great. Cause they're not feeling well. You're doing great. We'll pick up whatever you need at the pharmacy. And I was like, you know what? Why don't we make cake pops? Cause my wife always takes them to.

Starbucks to get a K-File. So here I am being like, well, let's make them from scratch. So anyway, like seven hours later, they were delicious, but it was a much bigger time commitment than I realized. I mean, I was up and down in the kitchen literally every hour and a half, like every hour to hour and a half for the entire day, but they were very good. I just had a little one after I just had my lunch. So life is good, but I don't want to bake.

Brendan Tolleson (02:38.627)
You

Harris Kenny (03:01.223)
for a couple days.

Zach (03:02.99)
Did we do multiple flavors or one flavor? How crazy?

Harris Kenny (03:06.279)
Good question. Well, it was triple chocolate, chocolate frosting, chocolate cake interior, and then chocolate dip on the outside. And then, and then all sorts of different sprinkles. Our favorite color is rainbow. So that means there's all sorts of sprinkles. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach (03:21.87)
about jammies.

Brendan Tolleson (03:21.891)
That's when you buy the bullet just pay the eight dollars for the Starbucks kick pop

Zach (03:27.128)
Yeah

Harris Kenny (03:29.445)
You know, I think it was reminding me of my econ like 101 back in college of like, yeah, division of labor.

Zach (03:29.592)
That was like...

Zach (03:36.972)
Yeah, we definitely had that college experience making beer for the first time. like, we're gonna make beer, it's gonna be so awesome. And then like three months later, you end up with shitty beer and you're like, you know what, like eight bucks for a six pack is like a really good deal.

Brendan Tolleson (03:36.995)
I'm gonna go get money, man.

Harris Kenny (03:51.897)
No.

Brendan Tolleson (03:54.083)
We started doing a bread making at our house, which I guess a lot of people did during COVID, but I still do it. And we have some friends that I tell them how long it takes me to make bread, which it's not sourdough, so it's not like days, but it takes about three hours from start to finish. And she's like, why? Like, why would you do that? Just order this on Instacart as at your dorm. Sometimes it's the process, guys, you know?

Harris Kenny (04:23.013)
Yeah, yeah, I'd like to think of it some memories. I'd like to think that there was some, you know, we're in like core memory formation.

Zach (04:32.302)
What's the uh with sourdough? I'm like blank on the name right now the yeast. Is it like the mother you keep or what's starter the starter? My uh my sister she's really into baking too and she like she will like bring her starter with her and she's like if my like she'll travel with it because she's like if my husband lets us die like I'm getting a divorce so I bring it with me.

Harris Kenny (04:37.895)
Mm.

Brendan Tolleson (04:38.269)
it's the starter. Yeah.

Brendan Tolleson (04:52.193)
Yeah.

Harris Kenny (04:52.359)
Ha ha ha!

Brendan Tolleson (04:55.011)
Yeah, my buddy actually just quit his job to start a bakery and sourdough specifically. And like he'll come to mountains with us and he'll bring like all like he has to bring his starter at all times. Similar to what you just described. It's pretty insane. The commitment is surreal. yeah. Well, I don't have a good segue from starter to the topic today. So we're just going to jump right in. There's not a lot happening in the market outside of just our little updates and

Zach (05:08.654)
Yeah.

Harris Kenny (05:10.352)
I had no idea.

Zach (05:16.366)
Hahaha

Brendan Tolleson (05:22.659)
I thought a fun one for us to talk about is what happened with Apollo and Seamless. For those that aren't aware, they got booted off of LinkedIn. And I think it's just a good, not that data point, but just why it happened, because I think it's really relevant to our audience as we think about how do we do prospecting or outreach, how do we do that well in this new world? Because I think there's a lot of takeaways from that, not from Apollo specifically, but what is LinkedIn doing and therefore what are the right actions, behaviors?

that we as revenue leaders need to be mindful of as our sales teams are doing outreach. So I think a good starting point, starting point rather would be for those that may not know what happened, Harris or Zach, you want to take the stage as to what happened and then we'll kind of unpack implications and therefore takeaways for our audience going forward.

Zach (06:13.934)
You want to take the B-Terrorist and then I got some thoughts about game theory.

Harris Kenny (06:16.293)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll do the what I'll do the what? Cause I don't even fully know why, to be honest with you. mean, I have some like scattered data points, but I mean, what happened is that the Apollo. So if you go to Apollo.io, that's the company we're talking about competitor, probably closest big competitor would be like a zoom info alternative. and seamless.ai their company pages were basically blasted off of LinkedIn.

So it's as if they don't exist. And like, if you go to an Apollo employees page, for example, and you look at like their employment experience, the icon next to their job is like a, you know, little ping of a building. like, it's like, it's like you reference the company that doesn't exist. Yeah. They've been canceled. Yeah. I canceled essentially. and like, if you search for it, nothing comes up, but it's, it's just the company pages, on LinkedIn were taken out.

Brendan Tolleson (06:59.939)
or they'll be canceled.

Harris Kenny (07:15.067)
So that's the what Tim Zhang, the founder of them saying that his last name correctly, but he had posted something, something about it a little bit. could talk about that. smart lead had had an experience that was kind of like this six to 12 months ago. So could talk about that. But I mean, I mean the what, that is the only thing that's as far as I know, like really clearly understood the like why and everything. I don't know. And the reasons in the game theory behind it, like we can, we can kind of unpack this and make some guesses, but that's, that's, that's, that's, that's what happened.

Zach (07:44.27)
Yeah, it's an interesting one. Speaking as a former LinkedIner, no, just a, where they're like 10 years ago in sales, don't know much. But I would say like maybe to give some like, you know, this isn't like out of the blue. Like I will say like, you know, I was working there, God, I mean, 15 years ago, more realistically. Back then, before there was Sales Navigator.

We on the sales team, we got to the benefit of being at LinkedIn, it's like we had all that data, we used it ourselves to sale. And it was like a big existential debate at the company at the time, I remember. Are we gonna build sales to, are we going to sacrifice some level of the member experience for the benefit of clearly there is valuable data here? And obviously that ship sailed, Sales Nav is now a, you know.

billion ARR plus business, it's a tent pole of LinkedIn, it ain't going anywhere. But like I do think there is this genuine struggle that they're up against of like, how do we create a vibrant, engaging community and have all these positive network effects that people want to come in, build content, connect with others, do all these things and then.

how do you not turn it into just a spam den where you're just getting blasted by everybody? And it's been something they've been up against forever. so there was like, famously they had a court case that went all the way up to the Supreme Court versus basically people that were scraping LinkedIn data. And there ended up being a ruling that scrapers, you're allowed to scrape public data. And I think what a lot of these companies that they're, again,

The game theory is like, why Apollo is seamless, right? Because there are thousands of actors kind of like flaunting the terms of service and like clearly breaking the rules and even out of bounds of like what the Supreme Court says, okay. But it seems to be they need to like continue like push back on this pendulum. And it's like interesting because there's all kinds of stuff like.

Brendan Tolleson (09:39.587)
This is fun.

Zach (09:57.856)
automating DMs, not just scrape. All of that stuff is that is verboten. And they can detect that stuff. They know it's happening and they're needing to play with this knob and dial of how hard do we drop the hammer versus there is a data asset here.

salespeople and this level, it does drive velocity and momentum and engagement in the community as well, but how do we allow just enough to get through? So it's an interesting, I don't think we've seen the end of it. I'm sure Apollo and Seamless will be back. They're gonna find a way to negotiate. like, the other thing LinkedIn has created, how can you be a serious company and not have a page up? now, LinkedIn has the cards for sure, but it'll be interesting to see.

Harris Kenny (10:46.693)
Yeah, I mean the one other thing I'll just say really quick and then Brendan I want to know obviously what you think but we don't know why Right. I mean this is the issue with I mean the only thing I could imagine that would maybe bother someone there more than my opinions about anything about an automation would be discussion of like Monopoly and antitrust policy but the reality is like there is no alternative to linkedin realistically and so They are not really there are not these like competing. I mean, I'm sure they would argue there is I don't know maybe there is

But what are you gonna use? X, it's not the same thing at all. In a sense, sure, you've got these different networking platforms, but it is what it is, right, for a reason. I think it's in really strong position. And the reality is there's not competition, there's not alternatives. They have a pretty, they can do a lot. They don't have to explain what they're doing, they don't have to fully explain why, and what's the alternative, what are people gonna do about it? And I'm not saying this decision was right or wrong, by the way. I don't know.

I don't even, because the thing is like, we don't even know why we can't even debate like, what was it? What was it that caused them to give them the boot? What is, that was the problem? Like, and so to me that makes it really hard to even like, yeah, know what to do about it.

Zach (11:56.652)
Yeah. I think the, again, all theory, but as I best understand it, like, for people that this is a new issue for them, the like removing of the company page is kind of like, that is a punishment separate from like, what's the crime? I think the crime is that people

Apollo was using their extension that has wide distribution. So like their Chrome extension has millions and millions of users. When you're logged in as an individual user, you are able to see things on a page that are not necessarily deemed public information. And basically, again, I think the,

best theory and I think pretty well supported is like those companies were using that extension basically as a backdoor way to scrape using individual users real cookies so like they're not getting blocked, go scrape private non-public profile data, suck that into their database and then they're obviously reselling that to everybody and I think that's like LinkedIn's like, all right, you're doing, there are multiple like change in this violation and like what can we do to get your attention? Boot your page.

Brendan Tolleson (13:06.849)
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's similar to, gosh, I remember SalesLoft, like one of their first products, which was freaking awesome. If you were in sales, like six years ago, was Prospector and it did a lot of this with LinkedIn. It's the same type of stuff. I think to your point, the most predominant theory that I've seen is really around the Chrome extension and what it's giving them access to. And I think to your earlier point, Harris, like, I mean, there is a reason why Microsoft paid

Zach (13:07.636)
Haha

Harris Kenny (13:08.038)
Yeah.

Brendan Tolleson (13:35.395)
know, however much it was, I it was like $26 billion to have LinkedIn. It is a very strong competitive mode that I don't think anyone has access to that type of data. I think in addition to just like the Chrome extension, there is the user experience. And I think they also want to be mindful of, like they want people to like to use LinkedIn. And the more automation, the more data that's getting out and the more, I have an experience, like the much crap I'm starting to get, it's like, I'm tired of being on LinkedIn.

And so I think there is they need to protect that if they want to continue to have this be that place that people go to from a from a network perspective.

Harris Kenny (14:11.207)
Mm-hmm.

Zach (14:11.406)
And shout out to one of the great acquisitions of all time, Power Move by Microsoft, like 26 billion now, like LinkedIn is a standalone company. be, you know, they wouldn't be Mag-7, but they'd be like, you know, I don't know, Mag-10, like it would be a $500 billion plus company on its own probably. And Salesforce is gonna acquire them for 26 billion stock. And then Microsoft at the last minute said all cash and swooped the deal. What a move.

Brendan Tolleson (14:16.022)
Yeah.

Harris Kenny (14:30.331)
Mm-hmm.

Harris Kenny (14:38.855)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan Tolleson (14:39.55)
Yeah. Well, so let's transition a little bit into we talk about the what and a little bit of the why, but I think that probably the most important thing for a lot of folks that are listening here. So what do I do? Because we, I don't think anyone's denying, as we just said, LinkedIn is a great source as relates to information to get access to the buyer. So what do they do as it relates to what tools should they be mindful of or?

Harris Kenny (14:41.873)
Totally.

Brendan Tolleson (15:05.815)
having to adjust their practices, methods, tools to ensure that they can still use this as a channel by which to engage with the buyer.

Zach (15:15.755)
I

I mean, I think there has to be, I guess maybe some level of recognition of like, LinkedIn is this special place. If we just take, take, take and try and automate the hell out of it and treat it the same way we did email forever, it ain't gonna work. look what happened to email. It's gotten way harder, the walls get higher, it becomes more costly and expensive. And I think people are maybe just starting to treat LinkedIn the same way. that just, the rules of the road are changing. So I think,

I think we all know in our businesses how valuable and strategic that network is and treat it as such. Different channels. I'm not saying don't automate things on LinkedIn or whatnot, but I think the first step is probably going, hey, this is a special, unique, strategic place for us as individuals, us as stewards of our brand and company, and we need to be good citizens here. Otherwise, man, this is gonna suck if we get banned.

If we don't have this access directly to our buyers and this ability to engage in a way that is different than email and complimentary and all these things feed into each other, I'd say for us personally, we're very, very light, I would say. I'm almost scared to admit it out loud, but I do know LinkedIn automation, because I'm personally, I'm like, man, if I got my LinkedIn experience interrupted in any way, it would be the...

blow to our business. I'm extremely cautious there. I don't think necessarily you need to be that cautious, that's probably the first step for everybody is like, what does it mean to you? Treat it as such.

Harris Kenny (16:58.919)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think in this era of founder-led sales, at least in this segment of the market that we're in, definitely, you see people like Adam Robinson and stuff. I mean, they're building big companies off of their personal presence on LinkedIn. so, I mean, I think it's like, what's your risk tolerance to, right? So it's like, what's it worth? And then what are you willing to risk in general? The problem with enforcement on things like this is that the more that they enforce, then the people who are able to figure it out, there's more reward.

You know, it's like anytime, you know, I mean, it's like, you know, they can't keep certain contraband products out of prisons, you know, cause if you crank down on it enough, then they'll be able to, you know, bribe the guards or whatever and you get the stuff inside, you know, and so, I mean, unless you're in like a super max or whatever, you know, it's just, and so there is this cat and mouse game. There's like this ecological balance between the platforms and then the people who court of follow rules and the people who kind of bend the rules and the people who

just blatantly are breaking the rules to the degree to which they're defined anywhere. And so think you have to define, I mean, the reality is like LinkedIn data is very available in lots of places from lots of different providers. I mean, there are companies that literally have cached copies of LinkedIn that they get just by scraping public web. And...

that they then resell and make available in lots of places. And you don't have to install anything. there's a good chance if someone is using any of these modern tools that we talk about every week on here, there's a very good chance that you are unwittingly using data that was extracted from LinkedIn in some way, even if you're not aware of it, right? That said, you can have degrees of separation from that extracted data and separate yourself and separate and like really, really, really reduce your risk, obviously.

Zach (18:37.41)
No. Right.

Zach (18:47.511)
Yeah.

Harris Kenny (18:52.647)
because if you're buying it from someone who's themselves buying it from like a data wholesale or whatever, they don't, you I mean, and the other thing is like, it's not their proprietary information. I mean, like, I mean, I understand like fundamentally that they collect it. I'm not saying people should go steal data from LinkedIn, but it's like, it is not LinkedIn's information that I work for my company. Like they have their, they know that, but it's not like their IP. You know what I mean? It's like a fact about me.

Zach (18:59.426)
Yeah, yeah, I think.

Harris Kenny (19:22.535)
So some of this stuff is kind of blurry of like, and I'm the one that's providing it anyway, users are the one that is furnishing this data in the first place, and now they've built a good platform around that. But to me, the questions of ethics and the lines, and where do you draw the line for your organization, to me it's not super cut and dry. And I'm pretty small C conservative. I also don't do any automation, by the way, at all, and I never have. So I'm not saying people should go out and be super risky about it, but.

I do think it's like a nuanced conversation and it's not as straightforward as like some people bad, some people good, you know?

Zach (19:56.12)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean it's like, there will always be tools and data available. Like it is an arms race. It will be available to your organization. I think yeah, the question is really like how much pain are we willing to put up with?

Harris Kenny (20:09.98)
Yeah.

Zach (20:10.924)
What do we want our experience to be there? How do we want it to be like any other channel? There will be an arms dealer that will sell you the data or sell you the automation. I would anticipate LinkedIn continues to raise that floor of, right, it's maybe way too easy for people to... They know what people are doing. They aren't being fooled. They're making the same calculus of, all right, how much do we need to invest to stop all these actions?

you know.

Harris Kenny (20:41.703)
Yeah, I agree. I I spend a ton of time on the platform. I'm a power user. I post a lot. I DM a lot of different people on it. I comment and engage. It's kind of a water cooler for me in a lot of ways, especially like being a solo founder. That's how I keep in touch with a lot of people. Like I'm a fan. I like, I like LinkedIn. Like I could do with fewer messages, obviously catfishing me into trying to sell me crypto, you know, but I spend time on the platform nonetheless.

Brendan Tolleson (21:06.883)
Yeah, I think we just remind the way I'm thinking about it is it's a data source and it's one of many data sources. And we feel like it is the only one that we rely on. going to be in a lot of trouble. And I think there's a, saying of like married to the mission, but date the process. like, in my mind, it's like, Hey, we are.

all in on this all-bound approach where there is a demand generation. We have to have an inbound motion and an outbound motion, and LinkedIn plays a part in that. But how do you do that strategy effectively? And depending on where you sit in the organization, whether you're the founder, the CEO, you're an SDR, an AE, LinkedIn is part of the toolkit. And so you need to understand the rules of the road as the way in which to engage. And I think what we're seeing is...

We have some automation, I'm not gonna lie, but what we're trying to figure out is how do we do value at first? And we joked even at beginning, it's about Rob's ridiculous videos. But like what that allows for us to do is have content that people wanna engage with that then strike conversation. And so it's taking kind of a reverse approach of how we think about outreach and it's inviting people in to then having that conversation be one that they actually are opting into as opposed to spamming somebody's inbox.

That's one of big takeaways for me is that we just have to remind ourselves this is not the end all be all. And this to me is kind of like the original sin of the apple and took a bite and it probably bit them in the end. so it's just a good reminder of kind of what its place is in the overall strategy. so that's where we've landed on our side.

Zach (22:42.36)
Yeah.

Harris Kenny (22:42.437)
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. We will. know we're to wrap here. I mean, my last thought on this is just like hedging, hedging across the providers using hedging across the channels are using using the public and open web. There's tons of data sources available and with tools like clay, you can take advantage of them. Public records, databases, you know, maps, things like that. I think it's just like not, not putting all your eggs in one basket. And then deciding within that, how much risk you want to take on.

Zach (23:08.684)
Yeah, totally. You guys want to know one kind of cool factoid? So I used to work at this company that was involved. Basically, they were kind of like an anti-bot company. So like, would help.

Brendan Tolleson (23:13.357)
Yes.

Zach (23:22.1)
sites like LinkedIn potentially detect unwanted automation and bots on your site.

perfectly straight line from like one point in the screen to another. How fast is that happening? Like they know like, hey, what is a actual human movement of a mouse look like? And it's like, it's just interesting to like, they know.

Brendan Tolleson (23:53.706)
Hello.

Zach (24:05.236)
all of that stuff. it's like, you know, don't for a second think like we're safe for, this is maybe more a message to like everybody else out there is like, it's a true like crazy cyber war. They know everything and like there is really game three behind it of like, okay, they, costs them compute to like go stop all this stuff. So it's like, to what level do we need to instrument every, you know, the billions of sessions we have a day to detect all these, like there are 1 million things like that they're looking for. And it's just, it's, it's super interesting. It's like, it'll be, it'll be cool to see. And it all gets easier with an eye on both sides too.

Brendan Tolleson (24:36.835)
Yeah, and it's a powerful signal because they caught out two. We asked why they'd caught two, but for every two, there's about 100 that are doing the same thing. And so probably scared the crap out of a lot of folks and we'll start seeing behavior change, I would imagine. But people are always going to try and push the boundary and that makes us ultimately, I think, better. So it'll be fun development. Well, guys, thanks for sharing your insights. This is a fun topic. I know a lot.

This has been top of mind for a lot of people, so hearing your perspective is certainly helpful as we all try to figure this thing out together.

Harris Kenny (25:08.359)
All right, thanks guys.

Brendan Tolleson (25:09.859)
See you.

Zach (25:10.766)
Bye.

Harris Kenny (25:11.591)
See you on Monday.