A Fatal Omission on LinkedIn
Just as a little background to this story let me just give you a couple of personal facts about my networking on LinkedIn.
I have just short of 3000 connections and I have used in the neighborhood of about 200 invitations in my two years on the system.
I say this to make the point that I have thus received about 2800 invitations to connect from my network. Somebody has to make the invitation in order to connect. Thus, if I’ve only used 200 or so invites, I’ve been invited the rest of the time.
As I have repeated numerous times in all of my posts and materials the key to being successful on LinkedIn is being invaluable.
However in all of the invitations I have received only a small percentage of the people thanked me with an offer to help or provide value to me in return for my connection.
Part of achieving a persona of being a valued resource is to continue to put out that value. One of the most important times to do this is in the act of first contact and when connecting.
The significance of offering value as a thank you for connecting is mandatory if you are to become an invaluable resource. Though you won’t actually die for not doing it, I consider it a fatal omission not to offer such value upon accepting a connection from someone.
The biggest example of this is when someone reaches out to you to connect and there is some obvious potential value to being connected to this person. One of the best, and also the fastest ways to put yourself in a position to do business is reaching out by phone to this individual immediately upon accepting the invitation.
If your thank you message contains an offer of value, (That is not by the way an offer to do business.) your call is much more likely to be accepted. Even if you don’t reach out immediately, your offer to help will likely make a good impression and possibly be remembered when you do get around to doing so or in the case you need this connections assistance.
However, you should be warned. Making calls to connections, especially new ones, can be extremely dangerous. If the call is perceived by the recipient as a prospecting attempt you could get reported and possibly risk problems with LinkedIn management re your account.
This is why I have actually dedicated one of the chapters in my Power Networking Profit System for LinkedIn Course to this very subject.
Be very careful calling on your connections and especially so when that call comes immediately upon making the connection. Done properly these calls can very quickly lead to wonderful opportunities (business, joint ventures, etc). However, done improperly they can lead just as quickly to disaster.
From Flyn
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