Bold Session Recap – Social Selling for Agencies

The way agencies generate leads and close deals has fundamentally changed. Traditional outbound tactics—cold emails, mass LinkedIn messages—are yielding diminishing returns, leaving many agencies struggling to fill their pipeline.

We spoke with Senad Šantić, Co-Founder of Zendev and Linkbound, who has spent years navigating the evolving sales landscape. With a background in software engineering and a track record of growing Zendev into a nearly 100-person agency, Senad has firsthand experience in adapting agency business models and sales strategies to changing market conditions.

In this session, Senad shares why the biggest sales opportunities aren’t in cold outreach but in the engagement agencies are already generating. He explains “The Missing 90%” of LinkedIn engagement, how Linkbound turns passive audiences into warm leads, and why founder-led branding is the future of sales.

My background is in software engineering, but I’ve been an entrepreneur my entire life. In 2016 I co-founded Zendev, a software development agency based in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with offices in Mostar, Sarajevo, and Gothenburg. Over the years, we’ve grown to nearly 100 people. Like many agencies, we’ve explored both service-based and product-based business models, reinvesting agency profits into building new products. Our latest venture, Linkbound, was born out of a need we experienced firsthand as an agency.

The sales landscape has changed dramatically in recent years, especially since COVID. Before 2022, the economy was strong, and many agencies, including ours, relied on inbound marketing and referrals, with LinkedIn playing a big role. I was active on LinkedIn, and potential clients often contacted me directly, saying, “Hey, Senad, I know you, but you don’t know me.”

However, in 2023, with rising interest rates and a more challenging sales environment, we had to rethink our approach. Traditional outbound tactics—mass emails, cold DMs—yielded almost no results for us. People have grown resistant to these impersonal, high-volume sales tactics. Instead, we found much better success when we started reaching out to people who had already engaged with my LinkedIn content. That’s when we realized that real sales opportunities were hiding in the engagement we were already generating—we just weren’t tapping into them effectively.

Linkbound was created out of necessity. When the market shifted in 2023, we tested traditional outbound strategies, but they didn’t work. That’s when one of our sales reps started manually contacting people who had liked or commented on my LinkedIn posts. The response was incredible—about 90% of people opened our messages, and 80% booked meetings.

That’s when I realized we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg—just the 10% of people who proactively messaged me. The other 90% engaged with my content but did not reach out. To turn this passive audience into real sales opportunities, we needed a tool that could track and organize engagement, highlight warm leads, and help us reach out in a personalized way. That’s exactly what Linkbound does.

“The Missing 90%” refers to everyone who engages with your content but never takes that next step to start a conversation. They like your posts, leave comments, or watch your videos but don’t message you directly.

Most people focus only on the 10% who reach out first, but there’s a much bigger opportunity in the silent majority. Linkbound helps identify and surface these warm leads, so you’re not just relying on the few who take the initiative—you can proactively reach out to those who are already interested in what you have to say.

Linkbound helps founders and sales professionals by making LinkedIn engagement actionable. Instead of just posting and hoping for inbound leads, you get a structured way to identify, track, and reach out to warm prospects.

The tool connects to your LinkedIn account, analyzes engagement on your posts, and organizes people based on how frequently they interact with your content. It also suggests personalized messages based on previous interactions, making outreach natural and context-driven. This means you’re not sending cold messages—you’re reaching out to people who already know who you are, which leads to much higher response rates and booked meetings.

What sets Linkbound apart from other LinkedIn automation or CRM tools is that it doesn’t just focus on cold outreach or semi-personalized DMs—it helps you engage with people who already know and trust you.

We built a lightweight CRM into Linkbound to track conversations and remind users when to follow up. However, the real differentiator is that Linkbound analyzes past interactions and suggests personalized opening messages based on what the person has previously commented on or engaged with. This ensures that every message feels relevant and warm, rather than another generic sales pitch.

We also have a “Top Network” feature that shows you the people who engage with you the most over time, and a “Posts” view that helps you work with recency—so you can immediately follow up with those who are engaging with your latest content. Soon, we’ll add playbooks that consider everything we know about a prospect—their interactions, company, and mutual connections—to help craft the perfect outreach strategy.

Founder-led branding is a massive advantage in sales. When a founder is active on LinkedIn, they build credibility and trust at scale. Over time, their presence compounds—what starts as a small following grows into an engaged audience, and every post builds on that momentum.

For agencies, this is especially important. Your brand can become a lead-generation machine if you’re an agency founder. Instead of relying solely on outbound tactics, you attract potential clients by sharing insights, experiences, and value.

I believe so strongly in this approach that we built Linkbound around it. When we launched, I knew my audience wasn’t ideal for selling a LinkedIn-focused sales tool, so I co-founded Linkbound with Jasmin Alic, who had the perfect audience—LinkedIn and sales coaches. This kind of audience-driven approach to company building is something I now see as the future.

Sales are shifting toward content-driven relationship management. Traditional outbound tactics are becoming less effective because people are overwhelmed by cold messages. Instead, companies need to build scaled relationships by being visible, engaging with their audience, and creating valuable content.

I realized this through experience, but later found that other founders were saying the same thing. Adam Robinson, for example, has been leading the “Inbound Led Outbound” movement, which focuses on using content to drive warm leads rather than relying on mass cold outreach.

With AI making software development easier and competition fiercer, relationships are becoming the key differentiator. People buy from people they trust, and trust is built through ongoing, authentic engagement—not just one-off cold messages.

To get started with Linkbound, visit our website, linkbound.io. You can see how it works there and book a demo with me.

Since different playbooks are dependent on your business model and sales strategy, I always recommend booking a call so I can help you implement Linkbound in a way that fits your specific needs. If you’re an agency, I can walk you through how we’ve used it successfully at Zendev and how you can do the same.