Rather than think of LinkedIn only as away to meet new people, consider it a powerful tool to maintain contact with old acquaintances. LinkedIn offers a terrific networking advantage to older business people who have a huge list of names in their files going back 30 years.

Use LinkedIn to find people you have lost contact with. There are no restrictions on how many people you can look up if you already know the name and a former company or school. So go back to your old Rolodex and find out where those former clients, co-workers, and schoolmates are now. Then CALL them on the phone. A request to link before calling may be presumptuous at this point. I also believe smaller, very intimate LinkedIn networks are more powerful, so I am not quick to add connections in LinkedIn.

Your long-term contacts could provide a good lead-in for a junior sales person or a business associate. Consider creating a shared, internal, private database of the highest value contacts with all of your collective insights available in detailed notes. Don’t settle for a CRM with only superficial contact info.

I have developed my own database over time that goes way beyond what LinkedIn offers and provides me a measurable competitive advantage. I track people by industry keywords, strategic strengths (turnarounds, commercialization…), by who they know (close friends include CTO of 3M and Dir Engineering at Medtronic), and personal information on their family (wife Robin is gourmet cook.) I can track connections by several hundred filters and rank them by strategic or personal value. If you are not tech savvy, there is a way to do this using a simple Word document of notes per person and keywords. I will cover in my next blog. Read Harvey Mackay if you want a checklist of what to track.

Stay in closer touch in the future. Remember others can also easily find your old connections in LinkedIn and attempt to pre-empt your relationship. In your private database, plant a searchable keyword phrase like “checkMar2012″.

Topics: communications, hidden job market, networking, selling skills, visibility | 2 Comments »

I get 6-10 requests a day to connect to people on LinkedIn. One third of them I know from past interchanges, but may not have spoken to them in months. I always ask everyone by return email to introduce himself/herself or update me by phone and tell me how I can help most effectively. To protect my own business value, I want to screen access to my clients, especially if my name is being mentioned at the same time. Few respond.

Consider this. People in an intimate network where everyone knows each other’s agenda and abilities well are much more likely to help each other. This is true in or out of LinkedIn. If you don’t move the relationship beyond a simple handshake, business card exchange, or connection in LinkedIn, don’t expect much assistance in return.

If you want access to someone’s network or other kinds of help from them, first make a case for why you will be a terrific ally. How clever you are and why you are a “must meet” resource. Your thought leadership.

Honor the other person’s business relationships. At a networking event I watched someone share one of his best client’s name at 3M with someone who wanted to interview there. The lead giver – we will call him Pete – with the best of intentions, called his 3M client and made a case for why the 3M executive should see the job seeker – whom we will call Kate. 3 weeks later Kate had not called, and Pete was embarrassed and annoyed that he had misused the 3M exec’s time. The 3M exec sent a negative reference on Kate to 3M HR without meeting her. He also avoided Pete’s next phone call.

If you want someone to share his/her resources, respect and cultivate the relationships that go with them.

Topics: communications, getting ahead, hidden job market, networking, selling skills, visibility | 2 Comments »

There are lots of books and courses available on how to use LinkedIn with the standard messages and tools. But those courses tend to produce users who think that if being listed in the software is good using it heavily without further thought is better. I disagree.

1. In the Twin Cities Metro there are 4K LinkedIn listings with “marketing communications” mentioned, 59K with “sales,” and 31K with “engineer.” 65% social media participants users use to stay in touch with friends, 47% use social media “for work” and but only 26-28% use it for “career search.” Read the rest of this entry »

Topics: branding + positioning, career strategy, hidden job market, networking, recruiting, resume + cover letter | 3 Comments »