Business Development professionals live and die by their network. Thus, many of us end up living and dieing by our LinkedIn.
LinkedIn’s greatest value is that it provides transparency to the personal networks of my immediate network in the form of 2nd degree connection. This information is often the gateway to the deals, partnerships, and sales we strive for on a continuous basis. Consequently, it’s in all business development practitioners best interest to expand their *true LinkedIn network. After all, the difference between the deal of a lifetime and no-deal could be just one warm introduction. But in order to even identify these opportunities there must be transparency.
A best practice to make sure you’re effectively engaging in this is to schedule …
Continue Reading
I encounter a lot of people who want to “get coffee sometime.”
A lot of them are younger people I haven’t met or brief acquaintances looking for advice or help.
If you fall into this category (vs. a friend/colleague), there are effective ways to go about asking for coffee that make people more likely to meet with you as well as elicit a greater sense of respect for their time.
I’m breaking this down into two parts.
1. How to increase your odds that a busy, cool person will meet with you
2. An effective way to ask for a coffee meeting
Increasing the Odds This Person Will Meet For Coffee
You’ve identified the person you’d like to grab a cup of joe with. Let’s just assume …
Continue Reading
Getting started on twitter can be daunting. What does RT mean? Who do I follow? Is there etiquette on here? Why did @sexylexy46 who follows 45,000 people and is followed by 5 just follow me? I wondered all these things when I started out and did a lot of stupid things in the process of trying to build a digital presence. I have a lot of friends trying to “break in” to the startup scene, so I figured I wrote a post on my learnings to help them avoid some mistakes I made.
This is my unofficial guide of how to get started and build a digital presence on twitter – something that’s really useful for people looking to break into …
Continue Reading
I thought it might be useful to highlight some products I use on the reg for BD.
Rapportive
For those that aren’t familiar, Rapportive is a gmail plugin that populates social profile information attached to an email address in your inbox. It sharpens my BD blade in a variety of ways:
Context/Rapport Building – People are constantly eliciting relevant events or things they’re interested in through facebook and twitter. Rapportive helps me identify these signals which can be used to add a personal touch to an email.
For example, if someone was writing me an email right now, rapportive might inform them that Mashable just covered the newest release of the YP App and the extension of our partnership. This is news they might …
Continue Reading
There are effective practices when asking for email introduction that respect the time and circumstance of all parties. I’ve really come to appreciate these and wish more people approached introduction requests this way.
Here’s how I approach asking for an email introduction:
Step 1: Preliminary Request for An Introduction
You’ve identified that someone in your network is connected to the person you’re trying to reach. Send them a brief preliminary intro request to gauge the strength of their relationship and willingness to connect. An example script:
Hi X,
I was looking to get introduced to Johnny Dealmaker from Project X and saw you were connected to him. Not sure how well you’re connected to him, but if the relationship is strong, I’d really appreciate …
Continue Reading
If there is one networking virtue I wish I knew earlier in my career it’d be consistency. Tell me if this story sounds familiar:
I go to the Crunchtech Explosion Conference. I meet the contact of my dreams and we end up having an awesome conversation. After exchanging information I send a thoughtful follow-up email. I get a response. I’m so in! Time passes and I thrust myself back into my normal routine.
Months later I realize that the company I’d like to do a partnership with is extremely close to the dream contact I met that day. I want to email him for an introduction request, but it just feels weird. We haven’t talked for four months. I wonder if they …
Continue Reading
When I first signed up for LinkedIn I was semi-belligerent. I had no LinkedIn Etiquette whatsoever. Any fleeting interaction seemed like a reasonable excuse to connect with someone. At first the perceived notion of having an escalating professional network felt good. 500+ connections here I come! But when it came time to put these connections to work, I realized how how ineffective this behavior actually was.
I mainly use LinkedIn to see who is inter-connected in and out of my network. This information provides transparency and context which can be leveraged in a variety of ways. Requesting intros and recommendations along with preparing for important conversations are my most typical use cases. This is exactly where my initial strategy fell short. …
Continue Reading
