Getting started with Handshake

Handshake is human-supervised outbound infrastructure. It helps you find the right prospects, draft outreach for LinkedIn and email, review messages before they send (by default, every one), and track the conversations that come back - all from one place.

What Handshake is

Most outbound teams face a false choice: Stay manual and slow, or automate and risk sounding generic. Handshake gives you a third option. The platform does the heavy lifting - finding prospects, drafting tailored messages, scheduling sends safely - while you stay in control of what actually goes out and the conversation stays human. If you want the bigger picture of why we built it this way, start with Why Handshake exists.

You use Handshake to:

  • Build an audience of the right prospects.
  • Run a campaign that reaches them on LinkedIn (and email) over a series of steps.
  • Review and approve drafted messages before they send - by default, every one - so nothing off-brand goes out under your name.
  • Track replies, meetings, and results, and report on performance.

Who uses it: The hierarchy

Handshake is built for agencies that deliver outbound as a service, and for in-house sales teams. Everything is organised in a simple hierarchy:

Level Who they are What they manage
Admin The Handshake platform team Everything across all workspaces
Workspace An agency using Handshake Their own clients, seats, branding, billing
Client A workspace's customer The outreach being run on their behalf
Seat One connected LinkedIn (and/or email) identity The actual sending and the inbox

A workspace can have many clients. A client can have several seats (one per LinkedIn identity that sends outreach). Outreach always sends from a seat.

Within a workspace there are also roles - owner, admin, approver, view-only - that control who can change things versus who can only look or approve. See Settings and roles.

Where you log in

Each kind of user has their own portal today, and what you see is shaped by who you are:

  • Workspaces sign in to the workspace portal and see their clients, seats and campaigns.
  • Clients sign in to the client portal and see their own seats, campaigns and results.
  • Seat users sign in to their seat and see the outreach running on their account.
  • Admins sign in to the admin portal and see everything across all workspaces.

In each portal the left sidebar is your map, and a breadcrumb bar at the top shows where you are in the hierarchy and lets you narrow what you are looking at (for example, an agency operator focusing on one of their clients).

We are bringing these portals together into a single unified experience. When that lands, the way you move between clients and seats will get simpler, and this guide will be updated to match. For now it describes the separate workspace, client and seat portals as they work today.

The end-to-end flow

Here is the whole journey, start to finish. Each step has its own page in this guide.

  1. Connect a seat. A client connects their LinkedIn (and optionally email) identity so Handshake can send and receive on their behalf. New seats go through a warm-up so sending volume ramps gently and stays safe. See Seats and account safety.

  2. Build an audience. You describe who you want to reach. Handshake searches LinkedIn for matching people, then qualifies each one against your brief so only the right prospects make it through. See Audiences.

  3. Create a campaign. You set up the sequence of steps - a connection request, follow-up messages, email touches - and point it at your audience. See Campaigns.

  4. Review and approve messages. Handshake drafts a tailored message for each prospect. You review them in the Outreach Hub and approve (or edit, or reject) before they send. The opening LinkedIn connection requests wait there too, under Connection requests, unless you turn on the seat's Autopilot to send them without review. Autopilot starts off so you can see how the notes read. Once you are happy with them, turn it on and let the requests go out by themselves. See Connection requests. See Messaging and the Outreach Hub.

  5. Conversations come back. Replies land in your inbox view. You track interested prospects, conversions, and booked meetings. See Contacts, CRM and meetings.

  6. Measure and report. Dashboards and reports show what is working - reply rates, meetings booked, account health. See Activity and analytics.

Billing, agreements, and feedback run alongside all of this - see Billing and agreements and Feedback, bugs and feature requests.

The golden rule: A human approves the messages

The single most important thing to understand about Handshake is that it does not blast outreach on its own. Every message is drafted for you and waits in the Outreach Hub until a person approves, edits, or rejects it. By default that includes the opening LinkedIn connection requests: They wait under Connection requests unless you turn on the seat's Autopilot, which sends them without review. The one other exception is a reply to a prospect who is ready to book, which can go out at once. This protects the client's reputation and their LinkedIn account.

Protecting accounts (read this early)

LinkedIn limits how much one person can do in a day and a week. Push too hard and the account gets restricted. Handshake protects accounts automatically with warm-up ramps, daily and weekly caps, and human-like pacing - but it is worth understanding so the limits make sense when you hit them. See Seats and account safety.

Where to go next