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The Ultimate business compliment or desperate Networking?

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First Impressions

This article is about people messing up their first impression with online antics. There are alternatives so read on to discover how to avoid wasting time online.

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Following up

Having met Dan I felt comfortable connecting with him on LinkedIn. This was in the days when discussions were common in LinkedIn groups and they didn’t all end up following Godwin’s Law.

It’s a great way to build rapport and then a mutually convenient business relationship.  So I was very surprised to receive a direct LinkedIn message saying “We have been connected for a while now and I’m wondering when you are going to send some business my way………my services are detailed on my profile”. I thought Dan might have hit the “email all my contacts with a template message” button. So I left it at that.

God loves a trier, apparently

A week or so later I received another message. It explained that “it seems pointless us being connected unless we had done any business together”.

It went on “If you don’t send me some work in the next 2 weeks I will sever our connection.” I assumed Dan meant on LinkedIn – surely he wasn’t going to send the boys around? I severed our LinkedIn connection in about 5 seconds.

What should I have done?

I should have sent him an email telling him about the time that other people had wasted on LinkedIn, before they asked us to help them, plus their testimonials.

Or perhaps stayed connected out of intrigue?

Yet those would be a waste of my time.

Because I am not Dan’s salesperson and he may never realise that.

I am on LinkedIn so people that I have met or connected with can work together when the time is right. Quite often I am one of the people that gets work out of these relationships. That’s not because I’m “doing a Dan”. It’s because my network was built with a purpose and is choc-full of people that will probably, sooner (want) or later (need), the services I provide, or they have relationships with lots of people that do.

Wrap up; Dan should have spent his time advertising. Which you can actually do on LinkedIn. Even if someone desperately needed Dan’s services it’s impossible for me to connect him.

Top tip; The ultimate compliment in business is not an award. It is someone having enough trust in you that they are confident to introduce you to someone you can work with.

 

Jason Cobine
The Networking Economist
Building Profitable Networks


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