This morning I opened LinkedIn to find a disheartening message from a new connection…

We are US based IT company, would like to share our experience in growing customer-base in the market. If you’re serious about scaling your business you simply can’t ignore these fundamentals; Social media activity, Video Marketing, SEO, Review Writing, Mobile Apps Marketing and many more tactics. Interested? just reply me back, will get back to you.

Now, I love connecting with people all around the world and since becoming an author and speaker, the volume of requests has grown exponentially. THAT’S GREAT! What’s bad is the number of people that ask to connect and then immediately follow-up with a sales pitch… YUCK!

Here’s my open letter to everyone selling on LinkedIn:

I’m disappointed to see your first message to me was a sales-pitch. I was hoping your request to connect was more about actually connecting and building a long term business relationship where we can help each other.

Talking about relationships…

If you went on a date with someone for the first time and they immediately asked you to marry them what might your reaction be? Would you be likely to say yes?

This approach is exactly what struggling sales and marketing people do. They go for the marriage at first sight, the instant sale, the one night stand, the kill.

So, here are two HARD TRUTHS about sales and marketing in today’s market:

1: People don’t care about your products or services. They care about themselves! They care about their own needs, desires and problems. You have to prove your value by addressing those.

2: Unless people know, like and trust you, they are unlikely to buy from you. Getting to know them, offering value, and building a relationship will achieve that.

If you want better results when it comes to converting prospects to long-term clients and generating revenue, start thinking about how you can truly create a relationship with that new LinkedIn contact.

Ask them something about themselves or their business. Keep it relevant and easy to answer. Position yourself as being interested and wanting to help. Better yet, actually help.

Wishing you success,

Kevin

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