Connecting to thousands of people you don’t know gets you more sales leads, opportunities, and addresses for your database!
Finally – let’s look at a few comments I’ve seen about connecting indiscriminately that might actually have more truth in them than the others.
But do they count for you?
Let’s see…
An inequitable distribution
Proponents of indiscriminate connecting are all about how an individual with thousands of connections has a larger platform to push sales.
Got a snazzy DVD for sale – those thousands are potential customers.
There’s an opportunity and a mechanism, so what’s not to like about it?
Unless of course you don’t have something to sell yourself…
Do they really want you to make all those connections?
Sure – but the odds on bet is that most people won’t.
Because really – if each one of their thousands has thousands of connections themselves, the noise goes through the roof.
But it’s still sexy to talk about.
Not an offer of help
And there is very little “help” offered for fellow connections.
The stories I hear are anecdotal – but they involve getting no response from these people, or getting at best a pass through with no quality.
“Individual one that I don’t know, I’d like to introduce you to individual two that I also don’t know.”
Certainly there are some that have done an admirable job of managing a large number of connections, and I consider them the exception. I connect to a couple – and had a great relationship with them before connecting.
In general, I see advice that you should connect to everyone (and them) and isn’t this great, and here’s how you market to these people that now connect to you (including you since you now connect to them…).
And that includes your email address
One actually had this advice in their top reasons for connecting indiscriminately:
Harvest the email addresses of your connections and sign them up for your newsletters and marketing lists.
Yes, that’s right. They want to connect to you so that they have access to your email address and can add you to their list because if you’re happy to connect indiscriminately, you’re interested in all the offers they have to send, right?
But not much about the introductions
Those proponents of indescriminate connecting don’t talk much about the powerful benefits of LinkedIn – of getting introduced to friends of friends.
Because the system doesn’t work that way when your connections are watered down like that.
But hey…
Well, there it is – if you’re in sales, and you think that’s a good way to treat your friends, trusted professionals, and potential customers, go for it.
If you want to share phone book style contact information with others, go right ahead. If you’d like to share private access to inner circles of VIPs, then you better build relationships first – and then connect.
Wrapping up
Next post on this subject I’ll summarize the articles and provide a link to all of them from one place – see you back here.
To your continued success,
steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock
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