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Are you employed in a sales capacity within the financial services industry? Are you an insurance agent or a financial advisor? If the answer to two of these questions is yes, you know about the problem I am about to describe. You attend a party. Someone asks, “What do you do?” Before you can finish your answer, they are disengaging. They cannot get away fast enough! What happened?
There is nothing wrong with you. Because other insurance agents or financial advisors have been in that person’s life before, they have formed a negative opinion based on the earlier person’s behavior. If they conclude advisors and agents are pushy, they have grouped you into this category before you can prove you are different.
This life experience also translates to LinkedIn. The technology might be newer relative to the insurance of investment industries, but there has been enough time to create stereotypes based on the behavior of others.
1. Do not immediately start selling once you connect. Has everyone had this experience? The answer is probably yes. Someone reaches out. Their profile looks interesting. You think: “OK, lets give them a chance.” You accept their invitation. They immediately start selling, starting with “Would you be interested in adding 15 new clients a month…”
Instead: Be polite. Inquire about shared interests or commonalities.
2. Do not send out generic looking invitations. Have you gotten those invites starting with “I was looking over your profile and am impressed by your accomplishments. I want to learn from like-minded, successful people…” Although you might think this is clever, you have no idea how many people are doing the exact same thing. It seems suspicious.
Instead: Personalize the invitation as much as possible. Start by including their name. Mention how many LI connections you share. Mention their job title and firm. Include a reason you feel they will benefit by accepting your invitation.
3. Do not connect and immediately suggest communicating through another channel. You probably had this experience too. You accept someone’s invitation to connect. They immediately write back. (So far, so good.) Soon after, they explain they are rarely on LinkedIn, but prefer conversing though another social media channel, which they specify. The red flag is waving.
Instead: If they rarely use LinkedIn, why did they reach out on LinkedIn in the first place? Stick with the channel both of you have chosen. If it’s LinkedIn, that’s where you message. Connect then drop immediately if they aren’t interested in buying. I note the number of my LI connections on my desk calendar every day. It goes up more than it goes down. I get the feeling some people who connect with the objective of selling me something immediately, drop me immediately if I don’t show an interest.
Instead: This is bad because it discourages the recipient of an invite to “give you a chance” and connect because of previous experiences with pushy salespeople. If you invite someone to connect, plan on staying connected.
4. Do not use an accusatory tone. This sounds so obvious, but people have done it. They send a message. I reply. They send another. I reply. They send another. Because I am busy with other things, I don’t reply for a few days. They write back: “Why have you not replied to my message? Are you ignoring me?”
Instead: For a social media channel built for communication between business people, this is inappropriate behavior. It also comes across as controlling. They get dropped immediately.
5. Don’t ignore people who Comment or send you messages. You post something. Someone likes it or adds a Comment. You ignore their responses.
Instead: Ignoring outreach implies you are not a human, but a service where you have outsourced your LinkedIn engagement. Make the effort to at least respond to comments.
6. Asking for someone’s e-mail address. This is a pet peeve of mine for another reason. There is nothing wrong with asking for someone’s e-mail address. However, it is often included in the “Contact Info” link on your LinkedIn Profile page. This implies they have not invested the time to look before asking.
Instead: Check first before asking. I like to ask their permission before using that channel. One logical reason is they might list their personal e-mail address under contact info but prefer you use their work e-mail address or vice versa. When asking, I like to give a reason why I want it. They might not be that active on LI but check e-mails multiple times a day.
7. Don’t assume you have permission to send unlimited messages. I think messaging on LinkedIn is a communication channel that has not been overloaded. You get lots of e-mails. You get unsolicited phone calls trying to sell you something. People often hit Delete or ignore calls they don’t recognize. LI messaging seems to get more attention.
Instead: If I send out an individual LI message with a link to one of my recent articles, I often mention the frequency. “This is my monthly message…” From time to time, I also provide an “opt out.” “If once a month ever becomes too much, please let me know.” I occasionally get a message saying, “I appreciate your polite approach.”
8. Which invitations do you accept? This question creates an interesting paradox: If you only accept invites from people you know, your LI universe is pretty small. If you accept any and every invitation, you open yourself up to scams and getting sold stuff.
Instead: Years ago, I heard the ‘litmus test was: “Does the sender of the invite have 500+ connections? Are they a 2nd level connection, meaning you have shared connections? I consider a third, “Do they belong to a LI group where I post regularly?” As long as they meet a couple of criteria, I am OK with accepting their invitation to connect.
You need to respect LinkedIn etiquette in order to build a network and build relationships. One of the reasons is that others have not followed the rules and created a climate of suspicion. That climate needs to be overcome by good people like ourselves.
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