GTM Crossroads Podcast Ep #06: What the LinkedIn Crackdown Means for GTM Strategy
In the sixth episode of GTM Crossroads, RevPartners CEO Brendan Tolleson sits down with OutboundSync Founder Harris Kenny, and Octave Co-founder and CEO Zach Vidibor to discuss the recent ban of Apollo and Seamless from LinkedIn, exploring the implications for sales tools and prospecting strategies.
They also share some personal anecdotes, including baking adventures, and emphasize the importance of adapting to LinkedIn's evolving landscape while maintaining ethical practices in data usage.
Check it out! 👇
5 Minute Rundown:
Apollo & Seamless Get Nuked
Apollo.io and Seamless.ai had their LinkedIn company pages removed, effectively erasing their presence on the platform. Employee profiles no longer display company logos, and the organizations are unsearchable, creating the illusion they never existed.
The incident raised red flags across the B2B space, especially among companies reliant on LinkedIn for outreach and brand visibility.
The Chrome Extension Theory
The most likely cause behind the takedown is misuse of Chrome extensions that allowed Apollo and Seamless to scrape non-public LinkedIn data. These extensions reportedly accessed platform content through the logged-in sessions of users, bypassing standard restrictions and feeding scraped data into massive databases.
This method likely crossed multiple lines in LinkedIn’s terms of service and may have triggered the aggressive enforcement.
LinkedIn’s Spam Dilemma
Go-to-market teams need to rethink how they use LinkedIn. Treating it like email, ripe for automation and scraping, is no longer sustainable. LinkedIn should be seen as a premium channel that requires careful, intentional engagement.
Overusing tools or pushing too hard on automation risks bans, lost access, and long-term damage to brand equity. Teams need to understand the rules and treat LinkedIn as a strategic asset.
What Should GTM Teams Do?
The future of GTM orgs is fewer people with bigger responsibilities. Instead of bloated sales teams, companies will lean into automation, self-serve models, and highly specialized sales roles (think “GTM Engineers”).
This shift means that the humans left standing will focus on high-impact activities, like actual selling, strategic expansion, and customer success.
Diversify Your Data Game
Overreliance on LinkedIn as a single channel or data source creates significant risk. GTM teams should diversify their tech stack and data providers, explore public web sources, and spread risk across multiple platforms.
Tools like Clay and others that aggregate from different databases can reduce exposure while still enabling strong outbound efforts. Treating LinkedIn as just one node in a larger ecosystem offers more stability and flexibility.
Speaking of Clay, check out our webinar with them on how to streamline your GTM efforts by unifying fragmented data, enriching contact records, and automating workflows directly into HubSpot. 👇
