In this solo presentation, LinkedIn strategist and Evvy AI CEO Joe Apfelbaum outlines a three‑step framework—Greeting, Feeding, and Meeting—to convert cold LinkedIn connections into scheduled sales calls. He begins by diagnosing two common failures: “connect‑and‑pitch” and “connect‑and‑ignore,” likening a LinkedIn network to an untended garden. The first step, Greeting, is a brief, hyper‑personalized, no‑ask outreach that builds initial trust. The second step, Feeding, is a nurturing phase that delivers value before any sales request; Apfelbaum introduces the “5 I’s” (Invitations, Introductions, Information, Ideas, Identity) and provides concrete templates (e.g., event invites, introductions that generate million‑dollar deals). The final step, Meeting, is a low‑pressure, outcome‑focused ask for a 15‑minute call, framed around the prospect’s needs rather than the seller’s product. Throughout, he emphasizes relationship‑first philosophy, the psychology of giving before receiving, and the scalability of the method using his AI‑powered tool Evvy AI. He concludes with a call‑to‑action to request a live demo via text, reinforcing that a single relationship can unlock the next big opportunity.
Chapters
The LinkedIn Booking Machine: How to Turn Cold Connections into Booked Calls Using the Greeting, Feeding, and Meeting Method. Hey, welcome. I'm so excited to be here with you today. My name is Joe Apfelbaum. I'm the CEO of Evvy AI, a LinkedIn AI assistant used by over 23,000 people in 40 countries around the world. Some people call me the LinkedIn whale. Others call me the LinkedIn Daddy. Call me whatever you want. Just don't call me late for dinner. Yeah, it's a real thing. My audience gave me those names. And here's why that matters to you. I spent the last decade living and breathing LinkedIn, booking calls, closing clients, building a business that has served over 1,100 clients and almost entirely from LinkedIn. So today I'm going to give you the exact system I use. I call it The greeting, feeding, and meeting method. 3 simple steps, 1 powerful result. More calls on your calendar, more clients in your pipeline. So let's go. Here's the problem. Most people have LinkedIn. They connect with someone and then they immediately pitch them. You ever get that? Somebody connects with you. It's called connect and pitch. Super annoying, right? Or worse, they connect with someone and then they do nothing. I call that horrible. Hoarding connections. They have hundreds or maybe thousands of LinkedIn connections and zero conversations happening. They're sitting on a gold mine and they don't even know it. Here's what I say. Your LinkedIn network is like a garden. If you plant seeds and never water them, nothing grows. If you try to harvest before you plant, nothing grows. Nothing comes up. But if you tend that garden with intention, I call it booming, you get a pipeline that never runs dry. And that's what I want to show you how to do today, how you tend your LinkedIn garden so calls show up almost effortlessly. Step number 1 is greeting. This is how you connect. This is how you start a conversation. It's how you make the first impression that actually sticks. Most people get this completely wrong. They send a connection request with no message. They send a message that sounds like a robot wrote it at 2:00 AM. Hi, first name. I see we have mutual connections. I'd love to connect. Nobody wants that. Here's what works instead. Number 1, it's personal. Something that I called customize. You reference something about them, their post, their company, their city, their role, something about them. Number 2, it has context and it's short, 2 or 3 sentences max, not a whole proposal. It's a wave. Just wave at them. Hello, just waving at you. And number 3, the third thing is make sure that it builds trust and asks for nothing from them. No pitch, no call request, no link. Just a friendly hello. Here's an example. Hey Sarah, saw your post on building team culture remotely. It really resonated with me. Would love to be connected with you on LinkedIn. Would you be open to connect? Simple as that. That's resonating. That's a greeting. I love greeting people, not just in a connection note, but after we connect with them, I say, hey, thank you so much for connecting with me on LinkedIn. Or a greeting could be simple as happy birthday. Wishing you and your family blessings this year. Are you doing anything special? Something very simple with zero pressure, super personal. I teach my students a phrase, connections first, conversions second. First, you want to have a connection, then you want to have a conversation, and that will often turn to a conversion. The goal of greeting is to start a relationship. When you're genuine with a greeting, people respond. And when people respond, the door opens And that's where step 2 comes in. Step 2 is what I call feeding. This is the most powerful and most ignored step of the entire process. Feeding is another word for nurturing. When you nurture people, they feel good. They feel safe. They feel nurtured. They feel like you like them and they end up liking you more. Feeding is about nurturing the relationship before you ask for anything. That's where most salespeople and entrepreneurs Check out. They go straight from greeting to trying to book the call, trying to close the deal, trying to have the baby. People do business with who? With people that pitch them? Nope. People do business with people that they know, they like, and they trust. That's the reality. And feeding is how you, how you know, like, and trust people fast. I've identified 5 specific ways to feed someone. I call them the 5 I's. The first one is invitations. That's my favorite one. Invitations is inviting people to things. For example, I'm doing an event in Orlando, so I'm going to invite my connections to the event in Orlando after I greet them. Feeding is about giving people something they want. People want invitations to exclusive events, don't they? Don't you want an invitation to an exclusive event? Think about it. Imagine you didn't have access to this event and suddenly I gave you access, but I didn't just push the event on you and say, hey, I'm hosting an event, please come. No, I did it in a way that invokes curiosity. I have specific templates that I give people for the 5 I's, and I help them be able to take their feeding to the next level. I heard Dale Carnegie write in his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, he said, If you want to make new friends, say for example with fish, you're not going to show up to the ocean or to the lake with strawberries and whipped cream and hope the fish come up to you because that's not what fish want. You need to give the fish what they want. Some people call it bait. I don't like looking at it as bait because of the whole switch and bait thing. I look at it as nurturing, feeding, giving people what they're hungry for. People are very hungry for invitations, believe it or not, because if you don't invite somebody to an event, they're going to be all alone. They're not going to benefit from the event. So if I'm attending a webinar, for example, with Evy AI, we have webinars all the time, evyai.com/webinar. If I invite you to a webinar, I'm going to invite you like this. I'm going to say, hey, connection, I'm hosting an event on how to be able to do LinkedIn strategy correctly. If you'd like to join me, it's tomorrow at 1:00 PM. Let me know. I'm happy to send you an invite. There's no cost to attend. And a percentage of connections will be like, I'm available at 1:00 PM. I would love to join you at your event. Or for example, I'm hosting a posting party on Friday at 11:00 AM Eastern. Would you like to join me? We all get together. We all post and comment on each other's posts, but more importantly, we share what we each do for a living to support each other and generate referrals. Think about that. Think about the power that you would feel if you got invited to such an event and you end up closing a deal. Wow. Even if you can't make the event, it's still a powerful invitation. Now there are 5 I's. For example, introductions. I want to be a conduit of blessing. I want to introduce people to each other. I want to introduce you to your most ideal client. Why? Because that makes me happy. I introduced somebody to a guy named Tom. Tom did printing. Tom ended up closing $1 million in business as a result of my simple introduction. The person that hired Tom to do printing also called me and thanked me. He's like, dude, that would've cost me $2 million. I ended up only spending $1 million doing a job that would've costed me $2 million. Thank you for saving me $1 million. So from one end, I made a guy a million bucks. And from the other end, I saved the guy a million bucks. I still made a million bucks for each of them. I feel like a million dollars right now. Think about that. That's the second I. Now we can get into all the rest of the I's, but just to keep it short, know that there's a process for being able to do these things. Information, ideas, identity, and much more. I want to skip to the third step for the sake of time, because this is the step that most people never take. The 3rd step is feeding. Remember we did greeting, feeding, and then meeting. Meeting is where you ask for the call. After greeting and feeding, the step should feel natural, easy, like the obvious next step. Because here's what happened in their mind. They know who you are. They receive value from you. They've seen your generosity. And when you finally ask for 15 minutes of their time, it doesn't feel like a pitch. It feels like a privilege. Think about that. You earned the right to be able to ask for a meeting. Now, how you ask for the meeting can make all the difference between them feeling like you're trying to take and you're trying to give. So for example, if you pick the I called identity and you ask them a little bit about their identity, say, hey, it looks like we've been connected here for, on LinkedIn for a while. And I'd love to learn more about you. Do you work with solo entrepreneurs or with enterprise? And then they reply, I work with enterprise companies. I work with sales teams that are 20 to 50 people, and I help them be able to do X, Y, and Z. You're like, oh my God, I love that. I often connect with sales teams that are 20 to 50 people. Would you be open to getting on a 15-minute call so I could learn who exactly I can refer you to? I'd love to learn more about you. I'd love to get to know you. And the person is likely to say yes. But if you go straight into a pitch saying, oh, you work with 20 sales teams that are 20 to 50, I have the perfect sales assistant that can help you find more people. Do you want to buy it? They're never going to want to do that. Or do you want to do a demo of my software that can help you find more clients? That would not work in the meeting feature because most people are going to backtrack and be like, oh my God, this is the only reason why he's giving me value so that he could sell me something at the end. You need to get to know people. People do business with people that know you, like you, and trust you and vice versa. And so you really need to get to know the person. So ask in a specific way, would you be open to a quick 15-minute call this week or next? That could be simple like that. It could be no agenda other than to explore ways that we can help each other or ways that I can help you in your mission and your goal or whatever it is. You could even add a bridge to it if you want. For example, hey Mark, after our conversation about the sales process last week, I had a few ideas I'd like to share with you. Would you be open to a quick call? Do you get what I'm saying? Notice that I didn't tell them about my offer. Notice that I didn't say, I'd like to show you my program. Don't make it about you. People only care about one person. They only care about themselves. So people don't want to be sold. People want to be helped. They want to be served and they want to buy, but they hate being sold. So when your friend asks you to buy something from them, Suddenly they go from a friend to a sales rep. So instead, what I want you to do is I want you to frame it about their outcome. When your ask is framed around their outcome, not your offer, the conversation rate skyrockets. And here's one more thing about meeting. Don't agonize over whether they'll say yes, because here's the beautiful truth about greeting, feeding, and meeting method. You've already won before the ask. You won when you made them feel seen with the greeting, when you made them feel safe with the feeding. You won when you added value to them. The meeting is just the door. You've already been given the key. So quick recap. Step number 1 is greeting. Short, personal, no pitch. You're planting the seed. Step number 2, the feeding. Use the 5 I's: introductions, invitations, information, ideas, identity. Before you even ask. Step number 3, the meeting. Make a warm, help-focused ask. Frame it around their outcome, not just theory. I've used this method to build 2 multimillion-dollar businesses. I've taught it to thousands of entrepreneurs around the world and the people who follow it, they book calls, they close deals, they build businesses that last. Because at the end of the day, Business is about people, not algorithms, not funnels, not automation. People, relationships, genuine connection. My core philosophy is automate your tech, not your relationships. Boom. Now, before I go, I want to give you a gift. I want to give you a gift of seeing this in action. So if you want to see it in action, send the word demo to 973-841-8868. And I'd love to schedule a time to show you this in action. That's demo to 973-841-8868. And I'll show you exactly how this works, how you can run the greeting, feeding, and meeting method at scale. And remember, I'm Joe Apfelbaum, and I want to remind you that you're one relationship away from your next big opportunity. So let's
