Sell! Always in All ways.

Or maybe not.

I think Ryan Serhant coined this term or made it more widely used on the show Million Dollar Listing NY. A recent post by a friend Geoff (@ The Animation Studio) got me thinking more about LinkedIn and the volume of DM's I've (we've all) been getting as of late.

I've been contacted several times over the past few weeks alone, and within 2-3 direct messages the pleasant encounter has turned into a lengthy exhausting sales pitch.

Let's be honest, I'm sure a few of us in sales have logged on at least once, twice perhaps, with the deep down desire of making a nice sized sale on LinkedIn. Maybe more than twice? Perhaps we've slipped into the "if you don't ask you don't get" mentality and thrown a few random connection requests out there hoping for the best.

But here is the thing, I'm sure many of us have gotten online with the hopes of making a magical connection where we would make the biggest sale of our week, month, year or career. Let's be honest, we've all wished this deep down right?

Now let's look at it this way. How many of us have put our wallet next to the keyboard with our credit card handy thinking: "I don't know what it's going to be, but I'm definitely going to make a purchase on LinkedIn today, I just can't wait!". None of you have...and I'm sure nobody has. Yet some of us just can't help but make that one last sales pitch.

Recently, I've tried to be more deliberate with the connections I request and I'm heading into those conversations with a "being of service" mindset. Is there a connection I can make for that person to help them out? Is there something I can do to help them (and no, I don't mean helping them by selling them my widgets). If more of us could "be of service" and go into these conversations with the intent to create a mutually beneficial connection, I'm confident there would be more pleasant responses to our DM's.

-Rav