Guide
How to reply to “can anyone recommend” posts
Someone posts that they need a supplier and asks for recommendations. Dozens of people reply. This guide covers how to decide whether to answer, where to answer, what to write and what to leave out, so you are the reply that gets a conversation started.
Why most replies get ignored
A post like can anyone recommend a good B2B marketing agency?
is public, so everyone who sells that service sees it. The author opens their notifications to a pile of near-identical comments: DM me
, we can help
, a link to a services page. Most of them get skimmed and none get answered.
The author asked a question. They did not ask for a pitch. The replies that stand out answer the question they actually asked, in the terms they used, with something specific enough to check.
If you are still finding these posts, start with our guide on how to find clients on LinkedIn and Reddit. This guide picks up once you have found one.
Decide whether to reply at all
Not every request is worth your time. Check four things before you write a word:
- Is it a real buyer? Some “recommend me” posts are written by vendors fishing for comments, or by people collecting names for an article.
- Does the brief fit what you do? If they want a tool you do not use or a service you do not offer, staying quiet is better than stretching.
- Is it recent? Most replies arrive in the first day. After a few days the author has usually chosen someone or gone quiet.
- Can you say something true and specific? If your only honest answer is “we do that too”, you have nothing that sets you apart.
The public reply
A public comment is visible to the author and to everyone else who reads the thread, including future buyers. That makes it a good place to be useful and a poor place to sell.
- Answer the question first. If they asked what to look for in an agency, say what to look for.
- Keep it short. Two or three sentences. Long comments read as pitches.
- Be honest about fit.
We work with B2B software companies, so if you are in retail we are probably not the right choice
builds more trust than a generic offer. - Do not put a link or a price in the comment. Many communities treat it as self-promotion, and on Reddit it can get the comment removed.
Where the platform allows it, the public reply works as a signal that you exist. The conversation itself usually happens somewhere private.
The private email
A direct message is the usual next step, but LinkedIn messages and Reddit chats from strangers are also crowded. A short email to the person’s work address often gets more attention because it sits among fewer messages like it.
Work out the company from their profile, find the domain on the company website, and verify the address before you send. Do not guess. Email only the person who posted, or the person who owns the decision if the author is clearly not it, and only about something relevant to their job.
A message that works
Keep to a simple order: refer to the post, state one relevant fact about your work, and ask for something small.
Hi Daniel, I saw your post asking for a PPC agency for a SaaS product with a long sales cycle. We run paid search for B2B software companies and have worked on accounts where leads take months to close, so we measure on pipeline and not on form fills. If it would help, I can send a one-page note on how we would approach your first 90 days. Would that be useful?
Why this structure holds up:
- It proves you read the post. The details come from what the author wrote, not from a template.
- It makes one claim you can back up. Only write what is true of your firm, and only what you would be happy to repeat on a call.
- The ask is easy to accept. A short note or a short call costs the reader almost nothing to say yes to.
- It is short. A few sentences, no attachments and no list of services.
What to leave out
- Invented urgency.
Only two slots left
is easy to spot and easy to resent. - Claims you cannot support. No results, clients or numbers unless you can show them.
- A copy-and-paste opener. If the first line would fit any post, rewrite it.
- Criticism of the author’s current supplier. You do not know the full story.
- Pretending it is a coincidence. Say plainly that you are writing because of their post.
Also include a simple way to opt out and honour it straight away. In the EU and UK, B2B outreach to a work address about something relevant to the recipient’s role generally relies on legitimate interest, but rules differ by country, so check what applies to you. This is not legal advice. Our guide to whether B2B cold email is legal in the UK covers PECR and UK GDPR in more detail.
Follow-up and timing
Speed matters because the request is live now. Send the first message within a day if you can. If there is no answer, one short follow-up a few days later is reasonable, ideally adding something new such as a relevant example. After that, leave it.
The hard part is not the template. It is doing this every day, across several platforms, while also delivering client work. Many firms manage it in-house. Others hand it over.
Buyerflare runs this process as a managed service: it finds recent public requests, finds the decision maker’s work email, drafts a personal reply, has a person review every first email, and sends it in your name from separate, warmed inboxes. Replies go straight to you. It is not a fit for B2C or pre-revenue businesses.