developing relationships online has some similarities to doing it when you're going face-to-face but some significant new ones that we should discuss the first is how do you start a conversation the easiest way is of course getting referred in so if you understand something about that person asking for an introduction is key how you ask for the introduction has a very special phrase that you should consider adopting and that's using the word benefit now if you ask as a typical sales referral you will come across a sales e is there somebody that I can talk to
you with the business or somebody that you can introduce me to versus do you know of somebody who would benefit from a similar service we were able to provide to you now this word benefit automatically makes it about the other person not directly related to you the second thing to consider is how do you directly go in and to start a conversation with somebody you haven't met before online now LinkedIn is the most common way to start these conversations but how this platform is used is not really for sales it's for education and connecting to
other professional buyers so please start conversations online there's a couple ways to do that the private way is called messages you can start a direct message with somebody I if your third party connected sending them over something that you can pay for through LinkedIn or you can send them a direct message if you have a second-degree connection now the start of the message should be about education it is very common for people to connect online and then use that acceptance of a connection to be like oh they want to get sold to but don't pitch
right away instead show what you know about them and what led you to want to connect them in the first place a really important way to do this is when even connecting on LinkedIn add a custom note this is an extra click to do but if you are not with somebody face-to-face like at an event you should always add a custom message and explain why you're reaching out but don't make it generic people can read through that very easily if it sounds like the same connection request that you would send to a thousand other people
hey I noticed we had a few connections in common it's better not writing anything than writing something generic like that because they know what's gonna happen next as soon as they connect with you you're gonna just start pitching them but as a sales professional your message will have a different flow to it we think of this in the terms of the RRR method make the first opening relevant then give them some form of a reward that it makes them want to talk to you what's something interesting that you have a trend an insight an article
that you can send over and then at the end a request but this request should not be a meeting or for time it should instead be a conversation starter like a request to learn more is there something else that's a priority to you so using the right types of messaging very similar to what you would write in a email but making it short on LinkedIn is going to work in your favor now there's two other ways to start a conversation online and that is by using the more public domain this would be commenting or liking
something that they liked but you can do this in two forms active this requires a response so writing a personal message is a form of an active touch you're calling them out another way to do that is by linking to them and saying at Dan I thought you would find this learning science article beneficial check out the thoughts on paragraph 5 now you're making me want to respond to you directly because you've made it active now a more passive way to do this instead of commenting will just be liking something so giving them that thumbs
up so this thumbs up icon this will show that you also liked what they like they may not connect that you were the person that liked it they may not even see that you've done that but one extra thing I want you to look out for is anybody who's ever posted something on LinkedIn has a little bit of an ego associated with whatever content they've created so if you've actually read what they wrote then this is a really great conversation started now the bar to entry here is not very high you can simply call out
one thing that stood out to you what you liked about it but don't take the easy way out and the reason I'm bringing this up is I've seen a lot of people do this where they'll just copy and paste the title of whatever article that you wrote a really great article called blah blah blah that's generic you could do that to anybody instead actually read what they wrote have an opinion or call out on something that they said and use that to start your conversation online
