Episode 68 How to Get More Prospects to Accept Your LinkedIn Connection Request

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I've had the privilege of being in and around banking for more than 50 years. Lots of changes during that time. We've gone from ledgers to laptops, typewriters to technology. One thing, however, remains the same banking. So people business and I'll be talking with those people that make banking great here and Jack grants with modern bankers. Well, happy Thursday, everybody.

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Hello, Brynne. Hey, Jack. How are you? Good. All is well and it's a very exciting time. You know, we do jack rabbits with Brant every Thursday. And then there's Jack Grant's with modern bankers. Every Wednesday. Yesterday, we had Ron Shevlin on from Cornerstone Advisors. Great, great guy, Great company. Next week, very excited. We have Guy Kawasaki. And then for those of you who have never heard of Guy Kawasaki, he's a branding legend.

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He started out at Apple, worked for Steve Jobs, left Apple, came back to Apple, was chief evangelist, was chief evangelist at Mercedes-Benz, and now is chief evangelist at Canva, a program that you and I use. And you taught me how to use it. It really does democratize design. And he's written 16 books and his newest is Think Remarkable.

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And I had a great opportunity to interview Guy last week, and it'll be on next Thursday, next Wednesday, March 6th at noon Eastern time. And so I'm just absolutely thrilled to. That's a that's a tremendous privilege to have Guy Kawasaki. And I mean, the guy's got 3 million followers on LinkedIn. Brant It's like interviewing Bill Gates. So it's exciting.

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It is. It is. And I'm very much looking forward to listening to that. Yeah, it's straightforward. He's not shy and he tells it like it is. And so it's it's going to be an interesting interview. Well, today we're going to talk a little bit about profiles, our connections, rather, and and how to connect and when to connect and things like that.

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And you've taught me an awful lot about how to get people to accept your connection request. And that's the real key. It's a Seinfeld episode, isn't it? It's not reaching out to connect. It's actually getting people to connect. So today we want to talk a little bit about that. Let's start with your mantras. You have five kind of key mantras that are the foundation of getting people to accept.

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Let's start with detach. You go ahead and tell the five and I'll comment as I can. Yes. So that's great. So actually, even before I say this, let's talk about the number one thing that's broken, which is the connected pitch. Right? And so that will not work. It does not work. I'm sure everyone listening right now has been a victim of connected pitch.

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We don't want to be the victimizer. So our goal today is to help you really get the right connections at the right level to start those trust these conversations. So the first mantra is detach from what the prospect is worth to you and attach to what you are worth to the prospect. You know, Jack, this is really important from a resource perspective, from showing up as that trusted advisor.

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And you taught me, never call yourself a trusted advisor, but when you show up like this, people will start calling you. Yeah, and I really like your idea. And you've taught me a lot about this whole connective pitch thing. I had one today from someone in wealth management that was connected to lots of people that I knew. And so I did my due diligence and I connected.

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He had a good kind of customized introduction and connection request, which I'm sure we're going to talk about. And then right away I accept. And both he's pitching me on on something and I reconnected with the guy. It's I'm not defending him. He's not my friend and none of my connections well, few of my connections or friends, their connections.

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And so this is so critical. And when when you send out a connection request and you truly are selfless, it's that. Larry Levine Authenticity. I really do want to connect with you because I think I can add value to you. And I'd love to get to know you a little bit when you do that and forget about your product, which is what's your point is you have a more strong likelihood of that.

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People are going to actually connect with you. Yeah, they absolutely feel like they they need something. And when you show up with your agenda to make a sale, they know it. And when you show up to really help them solve a problem or even just from promote their content to do something that's meaningful to them, they know it as well.

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The second one, Jack, is slow down your outreach to speed up your outcome. This is one of my favorites. People tend to look at sales often as a numbers game, right? I make enough phone calls if I send enough e-mails and I have found with LinkedIn, and especially the way that we approach this from a relationship driven perspective, that what this is a numbers game, this work, you missed the connection.

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So talk a little bit about your. Yeah, I'm I'm very I'm very, very big on that when someone one of the things you taught me was when someone connects with you, reach back out with a message, but make sure that message doesn't have a bunch of links and videos and things like that. It's okay. Maybe eventually we'd like to do business together, but maybe I want to invite you to a webinar or something like that.

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And by the way, if you want to get an invitation to the webinar, reach back out to me. So what's that slow process of getting to know? It's like, come on, when we dated, you know, you're going to have one date and then ask somebody to marry you. Okay, I did that. But it's it's highly unusual to happen to work for you.

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Yeah, it did 51 years later. But it's highly, highly unusual. So slow down. Yeah. And that leads right into the next one, which is treat the person on the other side of the message the same way you would if they were on the other side of the table. So I'm just gonna say Jack, keep going on that. Well, it's exactly right.

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If you're on a business call with someone and you're across the desk from you, you don't shake hands and then give them three pieces of content or five brochures, You ask them questions, The buyer has the answers, the banker has the questions. And I don't think it's any different. Virtually. We are in a virtual world. But how many of these have we had?

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I've already had three video conference calls, including this one today, so I'm not going to reach out and send you through the chat. 15 different proposals and things like that. That's just crazy. These are human beings and if you really do want to develop a relationship with you, you need to understand if there's a fit here and love that.

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All right. The next one up. I think I skipped one. The next one is rather than sharing content that you want to share, share content. They want to consume. Jack As bankers, I see it all the time. Product, product, product, product. And the only people that are going to want to read that are your colleagues, your competitors, your prospects.

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And clients don't care about products. They care about How can you help them grow their business? How can you help them get lines of credit so that they can expand? They care more about what things that ultimately you may not be talking about, even though you can help. They also care about what's going on in their industry. They also care about events that they may be able to attend.

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Right. They care about what other people in their industry are talking about. So when we are sharing content and don't do it right away, right, like when we are sharing content or sharing content that really matters to them. And so we really have to step outside of ourselves and say, if my prospect read this, would this get them excited to engage?

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Well, this is where you got to get creative. I'll give you an example. So a few weeks ago the Fed decided to keep rates the same. I said on this very program and some people kind of said, that's interesting. So what do you what have you done to take a look at that using your analytical and financial brain to put out some content that says, okay, they kept the rates the same.

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What does that mean for you? And one banker won't mention who is top in the western part of the United States. Took that to heart and wrote a piece of content overnight. Send it to me as he posted it and said, Here is this what you're talking about? That's what I am talking about. Here's another thing that I think bankers really missed the market.

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There are millions of great podcast out there. I'll give you an example. My good friend Neil Stevens down, president of Oconee State Bank down in Georgia, recently did a six part series on his book that he wrote called Leading Life on Life. And so what I've been doing is I've been forwarding those pieces of content, those podcasts out to people, because I think that the subject matter is really important to them.

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It's not about the modern banker, it's not about banking at all. It's about leadership. And that's what bankers need to think about. What are my buyers, What is my market dealing with? What are some issues they're facing? There's so much content out there. Brant It's it's easy breezy to do. I love it. Well, the fifth one is also going to lead into action items, which, you know, this is shift your profile from a resume to a resource.

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Your buyers really want to see you as that trusted advisor. So the very first step in getting accepted connection requests is ensuring that your profile is completely optimized. Jack, you and I've talked a lot about this. I don't want to spend too much time on this today, but if you want folks to accept your connection request when they vet you, you need to really make sure that what they are seeing is that you are a resource, that you bring value and that you're worth connecting with.

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You've said a key word and that's is that it's they are going to look at you and they're not buying anything from you, but they're adding you to their network, which is important. And if your profile isn't complete, to your point, we're not going to talk about it today. They're going to look at and say, you're not you're not a value to my network, to me.

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So they won't do it. But but so optimizing is important. I love the next one you want to talk about, which is timing. When I do get this question a lot, when should I send out my my LinkedIn connection request? Any magic to that at all? Well, so I would say before the pandemic, there were many more studies that showed you in specific timing and it depended on who your audience was.

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So if you were going to the C-suite early in the morning was the very best time. But if you were going to a 9 to 5 or you were probably really good around lunchtime. So right. So there were studies done. But here's what I would say. First of all, you have to ab test your own network as everyone is going to be different.

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But the one sure thing I know is there's a very high level of success in acceptance rates when you are inviting someone that is online right now. So when you are on someone's profile or you're in your inbox and you look at their picture, if there's a little green circle at the bottom right of their profile picture, you're on desktop right now.

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If there's a green dot with a little white circle there on mobile, the fact that LinkedIn tells us that they are on LinkedIn right now is absolutely the best time to set up the connection. Yeah, that's it. That's a great catch. I think that it becomes a lot less random that way. It's so interesting. LinkedIn puts out statistics and you can say what you want.

00:13:29:18 - 00:14:00:25
Somewhere between 15 and 25% of a billion people are on LinkedIn every day. So I like the idea of you finding out and there are other ways to do it, which we're going to talk about. I like finding out if they're on. First of all, it tells me that if it's in the middle of a business day and they're on either their desktop or their mobile device, LinkedIn is very likely a part of their process.

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They've integrated into their into their day, which is really important versus they're not on at all. And God only knows when they're going to get on to accept your your your connection request. So I like that up a ton. Before we move on, I don't want to throw you a curveball, but something did come up in my mind and I had a question on this before.

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We're talking about connection requests. Managing your request is really important. If you try to connect with someone and they don't connect with you, you may end up going into managing your connections and find out that you have a whole bunch of people that you reached out to that have not accepted your your connection requests. What do you recommend when somebody when that situation happens?

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So I actually recommend withdrawing a connection request. Now, LinkedIn will tell you that it's going to be a couple of weeks before you can send it out again. Sometimes that's true and sometimes it's not true. There have been absolutely times where I've withdrawn a connection request and sent it again. Now, if you've sent these connection requests without a message, I recommend like the best thing you do is when you send this again and I'm jumping ahead, right, that that you're going to personalize, customize this.

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But a lot of times people that are not that active on LinkedIn have just missed the fact that you connect. You've sent them a connection request. So withdrawing and sending, again will kind of pop that back up into their radar because they could have been out of town, out of the country, they could have been enabling. However, they may not look.

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So they won't know if if you have withdrawn your request and you try it again, and maybe this time that you do see that there are either the mobile device or the laptop and then you can certainly try it again. But you brought up something really interesting because I want to talk about a couple of other things. But you talked about personalizing the request.

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Yeah, talk about that a little bit because LinkedIn has changed its approach to how many characters you can use, which makes me very sad. Me too. Yeah. I'm going to publicly state LinkedIn made a huge mistake with this. So if you have the free LinkedIn account, you can only send ten personalized messages a month and we're not sure at the number, but it might be 25 connections a week.

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That means you're sending out 50 without a message. I actually think if they were going to do this, it should have been reversed that you you have to send personal messages. What they're doing is, is their create. So what they're trying to avoid is spamming in the connection request. But ultimate only what's happening is they're creating a connection request that then spams you.

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So. So I would rather vet it and know that I'm going to be scammed and spammed before I accept the connection. So if you have premium, you have a lot bigger number and I do appreciate that LinkedIn is trying to reduce the amount of spam, but I think what they're doing is, is you're doing it the wrong way.

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Yeah. And to Brent's point, if somebody spams me and I like to call it LinkedIn spam, if there's no personal message, I'm very iffy about about accepting that connection request. And I got to believe Brant and you might know this better than I when LinkedIn first started 21 years ago, maybe what they want to be is, okay, I've got to get this network going.

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I got to get as many people on and connecting with this many people and they've created in essence, a monster. So I agree with you. I tend not to accept any connection request unless there is a some kind of personal message around it. And it's really, really easy to do. Yeah, absolutely. And we'll actually probably touch on this a little bit again for sure.

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But the next one is finding the right people. And I think that this is a big one because we could actually easily get lots and lots of connection requests. But if they're not the right people, we just end up with kind of all of these empty connections and really it messes up the whole network, right? There are people that are LinkedIn open networkers that will connect to that.

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I don't I connect with the people that if I were in a network, you might want a conversation. Yeah, there I called Ernie Braulio. Ernie Braulio was a pitcher for the Saint Louis Cardinals who was traded to the Chicago Cubs in the worst trade ever in the history of baseball. Ernie Braulio for Lou Brock. Lou Brock is a great baseball card to have Ernie Braulio is there's a million of them and who cares and that's exactly the point you want Lou Brass You don't want Ernie Berlioz because the Ernie Berlioz aren't going to help you and you're not going to be able to help them.

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The loop rocks are the really critical thing. And Bryn, there are easy ways and using filters, etc. to be able to do this. And you're so good at this, maybe you can kind of explain that a little bit on how to find the right people. Well, so there's a few things, right? So we can find the right people based on influencers that share content that attracts your particular audience.

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So like Mike Nichols, for example, is a friend of yours that attracts a ton of bankers. So if you want to engage with bankers, engage with his content and his and the people that are engaging, that's a great place to find the right people. You mentioned search filters. Obviously, that's a fabulous way. Leveraging your social proximity, searching the connections of your connections, right?

00:20:21:01 - 00:20:47:15
So what what bankers do your connections now that you'd like to be? All of these things are really important when really trying to find that ideal prospect. And you need to find out what's the best thing for you. You may find prospects out because they're part of a group that loves groups, right? So you may find prospects that you search in a groups based on your location.

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If you have Sales navigator, you can do some deep diving in that. So really spend a lot of time, first of all, building out who's your ideal customer and then finding them on LinkedIn. And I would also say to those of you watching our friends at Real Pro help you do this really, really well, you can do a lot of different searches there And Unreal Pro There are no first or second degree connections and you'll get the business number, the mobile number, the email address.

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And now what you have is a terrific list through Rel Pro to be able to go out and do two things connect with them on LinkedIn, certainly, and do some campaigns if you if you in fact want to do that. The other thing I hear from bankers all the time is I'm in a niche. I work in medical or for not for profits.

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And boy, it's really hard to find those people when I go out and just look on LinkedIn. This is where creating a Boolean search using your filters can really, really be of great help to you. Well, there's one more that you you like, and I do too. And I have a ton more. well, then you rock and roll, because this is exactly the one I was going to talk about with engage with their content.

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You keep going. You're on a roll. Well, I think the first thing is how do I find it? And while there's no perfect solution, what LinkedIn has done for us with the bell is allow you, even if it's a second degree connection, to go up and ring their bell and then have content find you in your notifications. What you've got to make sure you do, because if it's a second degree connection and you go to their profile, you won't see their bell.

00:22:33:29 - 00:23:00:22
You have to follow them first. Look at how much I've learned from you. You have to follow them first. Then you ring their bell and you have about a 70% chance of seeing their content in your notes locations. I think a lot of people waste a lot of time trying to engage on content from their potential connections by going through their newsfeed and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.

00:23:00:24 - 00:23:22:15
If you do it through rings their bell. Brin You get it in your notes, it in your notifications. Absolutely. Now you have a clean list of people that you've chosen to follow. You're not you don't have and there's no advertising and there's all the other stuff that's in that means I don't believe speed anymore. So I love that.

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So before we connect, we find the right people, ring their bell and engage. If I'm going to go back to leverage social proximity, if you have people in common reach out and ask them, How well do you know them? Maybe you'll get a warm introduction. Maybe that's a way to increase your odds of getting connection, which are almost 100% if you're coming into one market.

00:23:51:13 - 00:24:23:15
So I think all of that is great. Now, we actually are sending out we've done all this free work. All of that was before you ask them to connect. We are 25 minutes in and we haven't even talked about the connection request. Well, I think you have to do enough due diligence versus just doing a lot of click, click, click, click, click and connecting and I've seen a lot of people do that or they upload their outlook list and they try to do it that way and used to be, and it was just a terrible way.

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But what people wanted to do was to make sure they got as much out of their network as as possible. But I think you're right. Doing the right due diligence will help you personally. I sure request it. Go down and look and see who who they're connected with. That's the first thing I always look at because you've got some level of commonality.

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Some people went to Johnson in Wales, York University, some people went to NIU slash Loyola University. I went to college and so I'll look at that. And is there a level of commonality in their posts? Have they posted something about golf or baseball or something that I have dogs, something that I have in common with all those little phrases become very, very important to you.

00:25:13:16 - 00:25:43:27
And I would also say one more thing. What I've learned in personalizing this is don't bury the headline. In other words, if you've got a connection, request or a connection, a joint connection, that's really powerful, put them right up into the into the very first line. Greg Smith is our fellow connection. Tammy, don't bury the headline because people will are human beings and they're only going to look really quickly and they may miss Greg Smith if you don't put it right up there in the headline.

00:25:44:00 - 00:26:15:27
Those are just some things I've learned. Yeah. And if you want to really take that to the next level, talk to Greg first and then you can say Tammy. Greg Smith says hello. We were chatting the other day and your name came up and Matt, now you're not only are you getting the connection, you're getting that perfect. So I love this next thing which this kind of piggybacks into is be clear and concise when you get a message on We did that seven paragraphs long.

00:26:15:29 - 00:26:40:02
I tend to barely read it because I know it's not personal. I know it's I mean, unless it's I know the name really, really well and it might be, but generally, especially if it's a new connection, I want to know. So when you go concise, Gary, you know, Gary says, Hello, We were chatting, your name came up. He thought it made sense for me to reach out and introduce myself.

00:26:40:04 - 00:27:06:17
If you're open, please visit my profile because now it's optimized and if you're open, let's connect. Right? And so that becomes you're clear why you're connecting. Because Gary said two or I really enjoyed the post that you put out the other day. Here is one of the major takeaways I got now. They know you read it right. It was my big takeaway.

00:27:06:19 - 00:27:25:07
Now I'm going to throw out what you talked about earlier. I might go find the podcast on that topic and I'll reach back out and I'll say, By the way, I recently came across a podcast that I had teed up. Don't say you listen to it. If you did that, I had teed up on the same subject. Let me know if you're interested.

00:27:25:07 - 00:27:53:07
I'm happy to send you a link. And now you've got this conversation going, your interview or let's connect and I'll send you the link. So when they accept the connection request, essentially that's your permission to send the link, because that was in the connection request. So that's where you're bringing value that this is sharing content that matters to them, not just the content you want them to know.

00:27:53:09 - 00:28:27:00
And it's the best way. Yeah, I think, you know, you bring up a really good point. I people when I do training tend to say, do you ever breathe? Because sometimes I tend to be a little verbose. You know, there was a guy who's who's a very senior guy now at BMO Harris His name is Kyle Barnett. And I said a long email to Kyle Barnett once, many years ago, and he wrote me an email back and he said, E, t, l, D, and R, and I emailed them back and said, What does that mean?

00:28:27:03 - 00:28:49:14
And he said, Email to Long did not read. And it was a very good lesson for me. And so when I do a connection request, while I can use 300 characters because I have Sales Navigator on there, I don't use them all. I just want people to be able to see, okay, is there somebody in common that he knows he works in banking?

00:28:49:16 - 00:29:15:12
Just little highlights now. You can't do bullet points in the connection request, so you've just got to keep that. You've got to keep that really short. And I love this follow up thoroughly. This is a good idea. You, you, you just keep taking away golden nuggets coming out of you to that. So keep going. Well, I just, you know, we're both connected to and I'm a very, very good friend of Meredith Elliott Powell.

00:29:15:12 - 00:29:35:13
And one of the things that Meredith and I talk about a lot is we're follow up fanatics. It really bugs me. And I'll even say this to my wife. She said, Well, I got to call Fred back because we're building a house. So I got a call and I'll ask her at dinner to call Fred and then I'll ask her before we go to bed, call for it.

00:29:35:16 - 00:29:57:19
And it's like sometimes it really bugs her, but it just bugs me so much when people don't follow up. And so when you get someone to actually trust you enough to say, Yeah, I'll be in your network, I mean, it's a big deal, follow up with them and use either either use a get magical dot com which is great.

00:29:57:22 - 00:30:15:24
You've taught me that or put it a little message together that you can put in the file or on your computer that you can copy and paste. It'll save you a ton of time. And finally, quite honestly, Brant, I think there's two reasons why bankers don't follow up. First, they don't think about it. And secondly, it takes too much time.

00:30:15:26 - 00:30:35:11
So if you have little templates that you could just copy and paste and put the name in Brenda's know that that's how I did it. All she cares is I followed up. So that's my rant for the day I love. And I would throw out something that you really love and probably can't wait till it's on desktop version.

00:30:35:13 - 00:30:59:04
But on the mobile app you can send a little video message. It takes 9 seconds, Right? Jack, Thanks so much for connecting with me on LinkedIn. I'm really excited to have you as part of my network. Please let me know the topics you're interested in. I've got lots of content around this, this and this. I'm happy to send some podcast link over on any of the subjects.

00:30:59:04 - 00:31:19:12
Right. And then I may you. Is there any podcast you listen to? I'm always looking for new podcasts, just have conversations, but do it in video and there's well over a 90% response rate to video and I think it's 70% response rate to audience.

00:31:19:14 - 00:31:40:12
So that's it. That's my list. Well, it was a great list, and I know you've got a blog that I think is already out there on LinkedIn about this subject. So I hope you go out and some some people are visual learners. Some people, you know, are audio learners and some people are experiential learners. Go experience brings content.

00:31:40:12 - 00:31:56:04
If you haven't wrapped around her bill, please go do that because she puts out some some great stuff. And speaking of great always great to see you every Thursday. This was fine print. It was a lot of fun. Jack. I'll see you next week.

00:31:56:04 - 00:32:30:06
Thanks for joining us for Jack Rantz with Brim, brought to you by our good friends at Vertical IQ and Real Pro. We're live on LinkedIn every Thursday at noon Eastern time, helping bankers turn connections into conversations. Don't miss an episode. Visit the modern Bankrate.com slash team be podcast. Leave us a review, if you would. You can also listen to this program and the new Jack Rabbits with modern bankers on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play and iHeartRadio.

00:32:30:09 - 00:32:46:19
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