Yes, and long cycles are the strongest case for it. Here is why, the honest timeline from a real account, and how to measure it without fooling yourself.
The short answer: long sales cycles are the best case for LinkedIn, not the worst. When a deal takes twelve to eighteen months, your buyer spends a year deciding while nobody from your side is in the room. Consistent executive content is the only thing of yours that is present for that entire year. The catch is the same as the benefit: it works on the buyer's clock, and anyone who promises otherwise is guessing.
An enterprise software deal starts long before the first call. A committee forms, promises a decision in thirty days, and is still asking questions nine months later. Evaluations that were meant to take three months run to six or nine. Holidays land, budgets move, someone leaves. That is not dysfunction, that is what buying something this size looks like.
Through all of it, the committee keeps reading. The vendor who stayed visible for those months is the one whose name feels safe when the shortlist finally gets written. The one who went quiet is starting from zero in the final round, if they are in it at all.
One enterprise software implementation partner we run did 3,389 views in their first month. The first six months were slow. In month four the client asked if it was working, and we said not yet, and kept going. By month thirteen the account did 778,000 views in a single month, and one post alone did 404,000. The screenshots are on the proof page.
That shape is normal. Recognition compounds slowly and then quickly, which is exactly the shape of a long sales cycle itself. If you need results next month, this is the wrong tool and we will tell you so on the first call.
Do not measure a twelve month motion with a thirty day metric. What you can watch honestly, month by month: views, who is looking your executives up, connection acceptance from your named buyer list, and conversations started. What arrives later, and rarely announces where it came from: the first call that starts warm, the buyer who says they have been reading for months, the deal where you were on the shortlist before you knew the deal existed.
Nobody fills in a form saying which posts convinced them. If your business only funds what can be traced to a source field, decide up front whether you can live with that, because this will frustrate you otherwise. We report the honest numbers every month and never promise the untraceable part, we just keep showing up until it happens.