If you are in business I’m going to assume that you use LinkedIn. If you are in business and you do not use LinkedIn, then you probably aren’t reading this because you sell door to door, and you are using techniques that Don Draper would find outdated.
Here is one of my LinkedIn issues. I sometimes connect with someone I may have met once, or they reached out to me, and then I don’t interact much past that. Has that ever happened to you? I’m going to guess yes.
My dilemma is that then someone will invariably ask me to introduce them to that person. To try and figure out who they are, I look at the person’s profile, where they work, location, who we have in common, their history, and so on. Then I come up with…nuthin’.
I recently discovered a feature on LinkedIn, and have started using it for everyone I connect with. I go to their profile and click on “Relationship” right under their profile.
Then you get a box that opens and you can put in notes, and how you met. You can even tag them for different categories that you can customize. Maybe you want them in a specific industry, or category like “Friend” or “Networking Acquaintance”.
Now when someone asks about them, I can look here and see that I wrote “Met at Boston Chamber of Commerce Breakfast Meeting “, or something like that.
Now some of you who are Linkedin Masters, will tell me this has been around forever and I should go back to selling door to door.
Fair enough.