Are you married? If so, how many dates did you have before you tied the knot?
I doubt (but please forgive me if I’m wrong), that you got married on that first date?
What has this got to do with LinkedIn?
I’m talking about sending connection requests.
Just as, when you start a new love relationship, it takes a while to get things to a point where you’re talking marriage or even saying those 3 little words. On LinkedIn, it also takes a while to build up relationships.
When you send a connection request to someone on LinkedIn, whatever you do DON’T go straight in for the hard sell. No one will be interested.
Have you seen these types of messages? Someone you don’t know sends a connection request with a direct message saying “Hi *****, would you be interested in..?” or “I thought you may want to know about my latest product/idea/thing?”
Here’s one I received earlier this year – I didn’t reply so I got a follow-up too!
Would you have bought this guy’s products?
What about if he had started by asking me how I was? What if he had talked about something else rather than his product and spent some time building a relationship with me and THEN asked me if would be interested in buying something from him?
Who knows, maybe I would have been his biggest customer this year but not this way.
Going in for the direct sell made me think he didn’t really care about me, that he wasn’t really bothered about selling to me.
So, don’t ‘propose’ on a first date – get to know your partner first!
