You open a prospect profile, skim the headline, copy the name, and fire off an email. Ten minutes later you forget who they were.

That habit costs you meetings. A profile holds more signal than most reps ever pull from it. Tenure, title changes, group membership, the way someone describes their own work, all of it tells you whether this person owns a problem you solve.

Effective linkedin prospecting starts with reading before writing. Below is what to look for, in what order, and how to turn each detail into a line that earns a reply.