A few weeks ago I was at a conference that Keith Ferrazzi spoke at. I had heard of him, and even have one of his bestselling books, Never Eat Alone, on my bookshelf, I had never read it and didn’t know much about him.
I ordered his other bestselling book, who’s got your back at the conference.
He was a great presenter and he brought up several ideas in questions that I had never thought of and that could have a powerful effect on the future of my company.
He used a story to illustrate this question. The question was who are the most important people to the future of your business?
You need to find the answer to this question.
The people can be your staff, your clients or customers, or mentors, or people who can send others to your business, or outside regulators. You get the idea. Anyone who can help you be successful faster.
Once you’ve identified these people, and the list may have anywhere from 25 to 1000 people on it depending on the size of your company. What next?
The answers to this question focuses your efforts.
The next step that Keith Identified is that you spend all your time and effort on reaching and building a relationship with those people.
People do business and support and help people they know like and trust.
What are you doing to be known, liked and trusted to your audience?
Why am I talking about this in a post about social media marketing?
On my way home from the conference and since then I’ve pondered whose on the list for me and how can I connect with them.
Some of the people on my list I know and have a relationship with already. These I can call and reach out to and spend more time with.
I can also ask these people if they know the other ones I want to connect with and if they do get an introduction.
Ok, so that takes care of the easy ones.
What can I do with the others?
How about using social media to connect with them.
Find their page or profile on Facebook or LinkedIn.
On LinkedIn send a connection request with a personalized message to encourage them to accept.
On Facebook, if they have a business page follow it and contribute to it regularly when appropriate.
Everyone likes interaction on their Facebook pages, and if you’re a regular contributor you can become known to people in companies of any size.
If the person you’re trying to reach has a personal page and it’s active you might reach out to them through it, though I would start with LinkedIn in this case.
On LinkedIn you’re looking for people you have in common with your prospect and LinkedIn will show who you have in common. If you have several connections to them ask one of your connections if it’s ok to use their name in the message you send to them.
The next step is to reach out to them asking them if you can help them. The best way to start a relationship is offering to help if you can.
This approach shows that you want to help them be successful. It’s always better to approach someone offering to help them with an issue they’re working vs asking for their help.
After you’ve helped them get results that they wanted it’s time to start moving the relationship along.
You’ll have to discover what you’re comfortable with and what your connection is comfortable with.
Can you meet for coffee or lunch?
If they are in a different area of the country, look for a chance to be at an event they’re at and spend some time together there. At these events you’re looking for a chance to get to know them not sell.
After you have developed the relationship you have time to work together for the benefit of both of you.
Social media can help you develop these relationships and it can help you maintain and strengthen them with it.
After you have a relationship you can send articles and other information you find that will be of interest to your friend. You can stay connected with what’s going on in their lives and what they are working on so if you can be of help you can offer and strengthen the relationship.
All of this can help move your business to where you want it to be faster.
It does take some time and effort, but if you’ve chosen your list well, these people are the ones you’ve chosen that will move your business forward and they are the critical people you need to know to achieve your goals.
If you want to develop a strategy to make this happen contact Brian at Go Social Experts and see how he can help you reach your goals faster. You can reach him at bhahn@gosocialexperts.com.
Have a great week!