How To Lose Clients And Alienate Them...FAST

You may be guilty of a cardinal online sin. Without knowing it. I once was.

It's like a Jekyll and Hyde thing lurking inside of you.

A personality disorder that's triggered only when you go online. This personality doesn't at all manifest in polite company.

If this personality disorder DID manifest, it would go something like this...

You appear at a networking event. You see your first victim. In a simultaneous movement, one hand reaches for a business card in your inside pocket.

The other hand reaches out to shake the hand of your first victim of the night.

Your legs propel you toward the victim, your mouth engaging to utter these words...

"...Hi, I'm Brad, I do the best goddam price per page on photocopiers, can I do you a deal right now?"

[REPEAT WITH EVERYONE IN THE ROOM AS FAST AS POSSIBLE]

A Real World ONLINE Example...

This, a message received with a connection request.

Sadly, I've seen this many times before. Mostly, I ignore it.

But for the sake of keeping up with trends, I thought I'd test how their "Brad Systems" operated.

Usually, a reply ends the sequence. And the person at the other end reads the reply before triggering the next message in their pre-defined sequence.

Think about the example above - the equivalent of the business card, handshake and first pitch.

So I replied with this:

But then I thought I would dig a little deeper to see if I could prove a sneaking suspicion I had.

I wondered if profile likes this got banned if too many people reported the approach?

And if that was the case, they would soon have a problem.

So I looked at the company page in which they declared they had 2-10 employees.

BUT, company pages also report how many of those are on LinkedIn.

It was 40+ employees!

So I said this:

Now, from what I have seen of the automated approaches, usually a reply does stop the process.

Probably so that a real person can see what was said first, and to avoid an automated message perhaps contradicting what was said...

...But I'll Let You Be The Judge Of That - Especially As They Claim To Be Getting Away From Automated Messages With What They Sent Next...

87% Of People Are Annoyed By, Or, Detest "Connect And Pitch" Tactics

That's right, 1,326 people voted on a poll on this very subject.

It's a tactic that puts the majority off.

But because of the sheer volume of such messages, I do suspect that many of those who voted otherwise did so because they are doing it! The full survey results:

The Blindingly Obvious Conclusions?

Don't connect and then pitch.

It's something that would have you ostracised from real world events if you did that.

So what makes people think it would work on LinkedIn?

What Should You Do?

Again, obvious - but replicate what you do in real life.

By all means search for and find prospective clients on LinkedIn. But focus on those who are themselves actively posting.

Why?

There is no gatekeeper preventing you from conversing with a real prospect

It's polite AND it's also the equivalent of LISTENING. They have said something. You have confirmed you are listening through a comment.

It results in triggering the algorithm - the one that matters - The Human Algorithm.

It also has positive side-effects. Many of those posts you comment on will trigger a profile view.

With a very handy side-effect - it triggers the LinkedIn algorithm which is much more likely to show your posts to them in the newsfeed and vice versa.

And why not increase the chances by connecting too?

But WITHOUT the sales pitch.

Try it. See What Happens!