My Birthday, Their Presents

Last week I accidentally uncovered a new and cool thing you can do to make LinkedIn more effective for you and more valuable for your network. I celebrated a birthday on January 9. Because I have that date on my profile, some greetings began coming in early that morning. On December 2, 2018, when we had our 19th St. Meyer & Hubbard business anniversary the same thing happened.

My first birthday message came in at 4:35 AM. It was from some nice person who clicked on the generic “Say Happy Birthday” button. Nice thought, but it could have been a little more tailored. That would have only taken another minute, but it was early in the morning. As more of these began to pour in, my mind turned to how can I turn these nice thoughts into a value touch?

Here’s what I did and I suggest you consider the same. I found a previous article I had written that had some good and practical ideas in it. Then, I went back through everyone (more than 600 of them) that sent a birthday greeting of any kind with this message: 

 Thanks NAME.

It's a serving the clients day which I hope to continue for many more years. I believe 69 is the new 49. It's people like you and firms like NAME that get me to my desk or to an airplane with great enthusiasm every week. Working in banking is a true gift to me that keeps on giving. Here's my birthday present to you.

 I simply copied it and pasted it back into the greeting message and attached the PDF of the article. To be clear, I didn’t send this exact message to everyone and I was careful to customize each name and the name of the organization. If a client sent a greeting and they were already receiving my posts, I sent a message back of thanks and suggested how much we appreciated them. Also to be clear, the return “gift” was not a product pitch or anything close to it. 

Every morning in your Notifications, you receive the names of folks that are celebrating birthdays and anniversaries. You also see associates that have changed jobs or that have been promoted. These are first level connections that you can send greetings to and that can send them to you. Here are a couple of things to consider:

• When it's someone's birthday or anniversary, don't simply send a generic greeting. That's easy to do. Send something meaningful to them - information they would benefit from - and forward it with a tailored message
• When you come upon a promotion or a job change, is there an article or White Paper that might benefit that person on the next level of their career journey? Attach that with an uplifting note
• When you get something from your network, communicate back, attach something – an article, White Paper, even a short video – which I may do next year for that next milestone day on January 9, 2020

As with everything on LinkedIn, sales or life, this is not a zero sum situation. Don't do this message back thing for everyone or no one. Some days you will be busy and some days you will have time. Do it for the right reason too. If you send the message and your Connection responds with a "Thank You," don't take that as an open door to begin to sell them something. Relax and be selfless.

It took some time to send 612 personalized messages. It was worth it - for me, (the giver) and hopefully for them, (the receiver). When you have a business anniversary coming up or a birthday on the horizon and you’ve included those dates in your profile (I strongly suggest that you do), be ready to with a little ditty and a little value to attach and re-gift something to your network.

Here's to your continued great success.

Jack Hubbard is one of the nation’s most prolific in bank trainers and performance coaches. With more thank 69,000 bankers personally trained and coached, he has presented trust-based relationship development sessions as a keynote speaker, as a presenter for national and state trade associations and as a faculty member for more than a dozen of the nation’s premier banking schools. Jack is also widely known as the "Professor of Bank Prospecting," having created programs for bank to business COI referrals, net-sharing processes and through his bestselling book “Conversations with Prospects.” Jack is also widely respected for being one of banking’s top LinkedIn Social Collaboration experts. He is the host of the popular podcast and webinar series 10 Minutes With. Jack can be reached at 847-717-4328 or [email protected].