Last updated: August 2026
LinkedIn for building products sales professionals. Part 1 of 8.
Audit your LinkedIn network when it no longer reflects the market and the relationships you actually want around you. That does not mean deleting everyone who cannot buy from you today. It means going through your connections, deciding who to keep, who to keep but unfollow, and who to remove, then being more deliberate about who you add next. Before you remove anyone, weigh the relationship as well as the relevance. That is the whole job, and the rest of this page is how I did it and what I would tell you to check first.
This is for salespeople in building products, lighting and architectural and design (A&D) who use LinkedIn for visibility and relationships, not for people chasing a follower count. If you are weighing a move rather than just tidying up, take the 5-minute readiness check.
What I actually did
About a year ago I removed a large chunk of my LinkedIn connections in a single afternoon. My best estimate now is close to a fifth of my network, possibly more. I did not keep a precise record at the time, so treat that as a recollection rather than a logged figure.
The two groups I removed were overseas contacts with no relevance to the Australian building products market, and other recruiters. Worth being honest about the second one: recruiters tend to be active engagers, so removing them probably explains some of what happened to my reach afterwards, even though they were never the audience I wanted my content to reach.
I would do it again. But I want to be straight about what it cost and what it did not prove.
What LinkedIn confirms, and what I only inferred
Here is where the old version of this page overreached, so let me separate the two.
LinkedIn guidance.** LinkedIn says your content may be shared with a subset of your connections and followers, and that relevance depends on a range of signals across identity, content and activity, including who you connect with and follow. It does not say that pruning your connections alone will push your posts to the right people. **Platform details checked July 2026.
My inference. After the cull, a higher share of the people engaging with my building products content were actually in building products. I believe the two are related. But this was not a controlled experiment. I changed my network and kept posting at the same time, so I cannot tell you the cull caused the change on its own. Read my result as one practitioner's before-and-after, not as proof of how the platform works for everyone.
Keep, unfollow, or remove
The old page gave you two options: keep or delete. That is too blunt. You actually have three.
| Choice | Use when | Building-products example |
|---|---|---|
| Keep and follow | The relationship or the content is relevant and worth maintaining. | A contractor, specifier, distributor, technical manager, former colleague or likely future referrer connected to your market. |
| Keep but unfollow or mute | The relationship matters, but the person's feed content does not. | A former colleague or overseas supplier contact whose relationship has value but whose regular posts sit outside your focus. |
| Remove | There is no remembered relationship, professional relevance or reason to keep access, or the account is spam or a privacy concern. | An unexplained connection from an unrelated market, no interaction, no plausible link to your work. |
The point most people miss is the middle row. If someone's content clutters your feed but the relationship is worth keeping, unfollow them. You stay connected, you just stop seeing their posts. You do not have to remove a good contact to tidy your feed.
The test every connection should pass
Before I removed anyone, I asked three questions about each connection.
1. Can I do business with this person?
2. Can they do business with me?
3. Is there a genuine reason we are connected?
That was my original starting filter, and it works well enough for a recruiter with a tightly defined market. But it is too commercially narrow for most salespeople, because it throws away useful weak ties. So add a fourth.
4. Would I value keeping this professional relationship even if no transaction ever happens?
That fourth question is the one that saves the former colleague, the estimator you rate, the architect who influences specs two steps back from your sale, and the person who might hire you in three years. My current keep rule is much broader than immediate commercial value. I keep anyone I could collaborate with, anyone I have had good dealings with, and the wider industry ecosystem: architects, designers, builders, project managers, estimators, salespeople and other market participants. I keep people I might want to work for, people I want to engage with or be found by later, and anyone I would simply rather not lose contact with.
How I shortlisted, not how I decided
I did not go through thousands of connections one by one. I used filters to build a shortlist, then made the actual call myself. The filters find review candidates. They do not make the decision.
Country. I filtered by location and looked hard at overseas connections with no relevance to the Australian market. A current location is a starting point, not a verdict. Plenty of people overseas still influence Australian employers, suppliers, specifications or careers, so I did not bulk-delete a country.
Industry. I looked at industry labels next. Again, a label is a shortlist tool. Someone tagged in an adjacent sector might carry transferable product knowledge or be one career move away from your market.
Recognition. After the filters, I went through what was left and asked whether I remembered the person and whether there was any reason to keep the connection. If there was no memory and no relevance, they came off.
What to check before you remove someone
Removing a connection is not consequence-free, so a quick check first.
LinkedIn says the person is not notified when you remove them. But any recommendations and endorsements between the two of you are withdrawn, and they are not automatically restored if you reconnect later. Platform details checked July 2026. Before you remove someone, it is worth a glance at your shared history, any recommendations or notes, whether their role has changed, your mutual relationships, and whether they cover Australia from overseas. And ask whether unfollowing would meet the real need instead of removing them.
One more thing the old page got wrong. It treated a connection as a way to harvest someone's phone number and email. Contact details belong to the person who chose to share them, and they are only visible where that member has allowed it. Connection is not permission to use someone's details however you like.
Add the right people promptly
Cleaning up is only half of it. The other half is being deliberate about who you add and when. After a meeting, a call, an industry event or a good conversation at a trade show, send the request while the context is fresh. Leave it a week and it is less likely to happen and less likely they will remember why you connected. The habit is worth more than any one-off cull.
What changed, and what I cannot prove
The honest version: reach fell, and it has not fully come back.
My posts used to reach around double what they do now. Rebuilding took real effort, and reach still sits well below where it was. At the same time, the share of engagement coming from my ideal market rose, roughly from 20 per cent before to somewhere between 30 and 50 per cent afterwards, depending on the post. Treat all of those as my recollections, not tracked metrics.
If you want to judge your own clean-up, use like-for-like content over a stated period and watch two things, not one: your reach, and the share of the right people in your audience. Do not expect a platform guarantee, and do not read one week of numbers as the result.
Quick checklist
1. Decide the goal first: a network that reflects your market and the relationships you want to keep.
2. Use country and industry filters to build a shortlist, not to bulk-delete.
3. Run each connection through the four questions, including the one about relationships with no transaction attached.
4. For a good contact whose content clutters your feed, unfollow rather than remove.
5. Before removing anyone, check shared history, recommendations, role changes and whether unfollowing would do.
6. Add the right people promptly after real interactions.
7. Judge the change on reach and the right audience over a set period, not on vanity metrics in week one.
Where these facts come from
- The LinkedIn platform points (content may reach a subset of your network, relevance depends on multiple signals, removal is not notified but withdraws recommendations and endorsements, and contact details are visible only where the member shares them) are summarised from official LinkedIn Help. Platform guidance checked July 2026. References: Distribution of your content on LinkedIn, LinkedIn relevance: optimizing the member experience, Remove a connection on LinkedIn, Viewing contact information of a connection.
- The cull itself (close to a fifth of my network removed, mainly overseas contacts and other recruiters), the reach change (my posts used to reach around double what they do now) and the ICP-engagement change (from around 20 per cent to a post-dependent 30 to 50 per cent) are my own recollections, not tracked metrics or a market benchmark.
- My broader keep rule and my inference that the cull improved ICP alignment are my judgement as a recruiter in this niche, offered as one person's experience.
If you want to apply this to your own market, the LinkedIn guide for sales reps walks through the full series.
Cheers,
James
I'm a specialist recruiter for the building products industry. James Bowesman runs Specified Select, a boutique recruitment consultancy based in Melbourne.
If you're a sales professional in building products thinking about your next move, or a hiring manager looking to build your team, get in touch at james@specifiedselect.com
This is Part 1 of an 8-part series on LinkedIn for Building Products Sales Professionals. Part 1: Clean Up Your Network | Part 2: Your Profile Should Sell You Twice | Part 3: What to Post and What to Stop Posting | Part 4: The Phone Still Wins | Part 5: Stop Broadcasting, Start Engaging | Part 6: When to Take It Offline | Part 7: LinkedIn for Job Seekers | Part 8: After You Accept a New Sales Role