Who are your REAL Connections?
I want to impart the importance of networking now, as a new revenue cycle has begun and your connections are busy again. But, do you know who your real connections are, the ones that are in your corner that you need to nurture and stay top of mind?
Who is important that you want to keep close to you, and how can you also reconnect with those people that you’ve lost touch with? LinkedIn makes this easy, it offers advanced tools, filters, and data to help. But, first you need to get organized by taking inventory of your network, both in your outlook contacts and on LinkedIn.
Let us start with the easy part, people that you are already connected with. Connecting on LinkedIn with people is simply not enough. It's time to trim your contacts, weed out the strangers that you accidentally accepted, and focus on building more real influential relationships.
We will do this by taking inventory of all connections, here is the process:
Download your LinkedIn Connections, contacts on your phone and desktop, and contacts in your CRM (if you have one) into one spreadsheet and ask these two questions for each person:
Who in your database knows you, remembers you, and cares about you?
What do you know and remember about that person?
If these people don't remember you, then you will have a hard time reconnecting and getting their attention. If you can't remember the person or the context of your connection to them, you will be starting from scratch. So first, isolate the contacts for whom you can remember a strong, positive story that connects the two of you.
Create a new group for strong connections.
Start a new contact group and name or tag it like "active" or "strong" or whatever word resonates. If you can remember how you met, and the context of your relationship, add them to this group. You will find that what was once thousands of connections will shrink into a few hundred strong ones.
Add the story and context of your reason for connecting.
For each contact that you tagged as a relevant connection, add the context/story of what connected you to them into the notes section of their contact card.
This sounds like common sense, but I would venture to guess that many of us here have never done this. Myself, I am constantly cross-referencing LinkedIn with my address book to suss out how I engaged with someone so that after many years have passed, I still have common ground and reasons to reconnect.
Weeding out contacts to only your real connections allows you to focus on the true connections that you have, and it gives you the opportunity to develop new ones that serve your current purpose. You may even rekindle a few that were forgotten.
We offer a LinkedIn Cleanse℠ where we do a deep-dive in optimizing your LinkedIn profile and leveraging the platform for relationship building. Additionally, we make refreshing your LinkedIn profile and firm bio a part of our individual coaching as well as building out prospect lists and taking actions that advance you forward in each of your relationships and opportunities.