Question: We have been asking our sales team to shoot to make 3-5 new strategic connections on LinkedIn each week. Any recommendations to assure that their connection requests are accepted?
While there is never a sure fire way to guarantee that someone will accept your LinkedIn request, there is one thing that I have been recommending for half a decade now to people who want to have more success connecting on LinkedIn.
Ready for it?
Don’t. Be. Lazy!!!
Okay, what do I mean by that? This morning I woke up to 4 LinkedIn requests from 4 people that I didn’t know and that I’m pretty sure I never met. Of the four, 3 of them just clicked the connect button and sent completely generic requests (I’d like to connect with you…). The one that didn’t sent a note that said, “Thank you for considering my connection request. I just finished reading your 2 of your articles on Social Media Today and I really like what you have to say about the future of digital marketing. As a professional marketer I would like to connect so we can keep in touch.”
If you had to guess, how long did that request take to write? My estimate would be somewhere around 2-3 minutes (5 tops). And guess which one I accepted? You got it, the one that took two minutes to tell me why they wanted to connect.
For sales people seeking to connect (or anyone for that matter) on LinkedIn, I can’t begin to tell you how important it is not to undervalue a little personalization. This works amazingly well whereas the generic invite says to me that someone isn’t that interested and is probably either trying to collect connections or spam me some offer I don’t want.
Note: The only time I say it is okay to not personalize a connection request is when it is someone you absolutely know and they know you. A colleague or friend. Even in these cases I usually add a few words, but this is the ONLY exception.
Using LinkedIn is an awesome tool to connect to potential clients and customers, but connecting needs to be done with more thought in order to translate into something meaningful in the long run. Happy Connecting?
What are your tips and tricks to getting people (especially those you don’t know) to accept your LinkedIn Connections?
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Daniel Newman is the co-founder of V3*Broadsuite and is an experienced C-level executive, serving as a strategy consultant for small and mid-sized businesses. He’s also an insight/analyst partner to four Fortune 50 enterprises and previously served as the co-founder and CEO of EC3, a hosted IT and communications services provider. Prior to that, he served as the CEO of United Visual, Inc. in Chicago Illinois.
He is a widely published writer who contributes weekly to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post and industry publications such as Commercial Integrator, Sound & Communication and Corporate Tech Decisions. He’s also author of three best-selling business books including The New Rules of Customer Engagement, The Millennial CEO, and just recently Evolve: Marketing (^as we know it) is Doomed.
Daniel has established a reputation as a leading thinker in topics such as Social, Big Data, Cloud and Mobile. He has been named to many top influencer lists in all of these areas, including recognition by the Huffington Post as one of the 100 business and leadership accounts to follow on Twitter. He is also an adjunct professor of management at North Central College.