Key finding
Across 20,855 matured LinkedIn connection requests matched to a company size band, people at companies of 1 to 10 employees accepted 18.9% of cold requests while people at companies of 10,001 or more accepted 25.9%, a 7-point gap running opposite to the common assumption.
What we measured
The folk model of outreach says small-company people are approachable and enterprise people are walled off. It is repeated in every targeting guide and, as far as we can find, measured in none of them.
Reachium's outreach data joins to an enriched B2B company database, and where the target's company carries a LinkedIn employee-count band, acceptance can be measured against it. This study reports acceptance by company size across every matured request where that join exists.
Methodology
Dataset window. Connection requests sent between 8 January 2025 and 27 July 2026, pulled 27 August 2026, matured at least 30 days.
Who is in this subset, stated plainly. 20,855 requests (10.60% of the 196,696-request matured cohort) join through their lead to a company record carrying a size band. The join requires the lead to have been matched to an enriched company, and enrichment is not random. The joined subset accepts at 21.43% overall against the full cohort's 26.97%, so this subset is not a miniature of the dataset and the between-band comparison is the finding, not the absolute levels.
Denominators. Each band's rate is accepted divided by sent within that band. Size bands are LinkedIn's own employee-count bands attached to the company record.
Concentration check. For each band we computed the largest single workspace's share of that band's requests; no band exceeds 33%, so no row below is one customer's campaign wearing a costume.
The findings
| Company size (employees) | Requests | Acceptance | Largest workspace's share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-10 | 4,187 | 18.89% | 29.26% |
| 11-50 | 4,490 | 22.36% | 32.83% |
| 51-200 | 3,278 | 21.57% | 31.54% |
| 201-500 | 1,845 | 21.08% | 29.16% |
| 501-1000 | 1,424 | 21.00% | 25.21% |
| 1001-5000 | 2,975 | 20.61% | 28.27% |
| 5001-10000 | 802 | 23.19% | 15.34% |
| 10001+ | 1,854 | 25.89% | 14.67% |
The two ends invert the folk belief: the lowest acceptance in the table belongs to the smallest companies and the highest to the largest, 7.00 points apart. The middle is not monotonic; from 11-50 through 1001-5000 the bands sit within 1.8 points of each other, and the enterprise lift only emerges above 5,000 employees.
One more measured fact about who gets targeted: companies of 200 or fewer employees received 57.32% of the joined requests, though they are 69.07% of the sized company universe behind this data; companies above 1,000 employees received 27.00% of joined requests against 14.18% of that universe. Outreach in this dataset already over-targets the enterprise, and the enterprise still accepts more.
What this means
The comfortable explanation for avoiding enterprise outreach, "they never accept anyway", is not supported here. The people accepting cold requests at the highest rate in this table work at the largest companies.
The interesting question is why the smallest companies accept least, and the data constrains the theories without settling them. A 1-10 employee company's inbox is its founder's inbox: saturated by every tool, agency, and lender that sells to small businesses. An enterprise employee's inbox is quieter per person, and a connection request carries less implied commitment for someone who is not the buyer. Either story fits the table; neither is measured by it.
What the table does establish is that size-based targeting fear is miscalibrated, and by more than the entire day-of-week effect (1.86 points) that teams routinely optimize instead. Of the targeting dimensions measured in this dataset, only industry (11.13 points) spans more than company size.
In practice
An SDR deprioritizing enterprise accounts on reachability grounds is working from a false premise in this data: the 10,001+ band accepted at 25.89%, the best rate measured, and with the lowest workspace concentration in the table, meaning that result is spread across many senders rather than one team with a trick.
A founder selling to very small businesses should budget for the 18.89% band: roughly one accepted connection per 5.3 requests (100 / 18.89, derived), against one per 3.9 at the enterprise end. Same effort, 37% more requests per conversation (derived from the two rates).
Limitations
Coverage is 10.60%, and the subset is selected. Only requests whose lead matched an enriched company appear. The joined subset's overall acceptance (21.43%) runs 5.5 points below the full cohort, so absolute levels here should not be quoted as platform benchmarks; the between-band comparison is the defensible claim.
Observational targeting. Nobody randomized targets across sizes. Campaigns that target enterprises differ in copy, sender seniority, and offer from campaigns that target founders, and those differences ride along invisibly.
Size bands are self-reported to LinkedIn and change over time; a company's band reflects the enrichment snapshot, not necessarily its size on the send date.
Concentration. Disclosed per band above; nothing exceeds a third of any row. The dataset overall remains concentrated (largest workspace 22.88% of matured requests).
Acceptance is not pipeline. Nothing here says enterprise conversations convert to meetings at the same rate; the funnel study carries the downstream rates without a size split.