Progressive Learning Session 5 (Consistently invite people you select from a filtered list of LinkedIn candidates).
The secret to building a large network of people who will advocate for one another is to constantly:
- Search for good candidates on LinkedIn and invite them to meet you face-to-face on Zoom.
- Invite those interested in building a relationship-based network to experience the CC by attending a CC workshop.
- Onboard others that are keen to duplicate this process and build their networks.
You may be wondering why we focus so much on LinkedIn.
For example, you may already know many people and wonder why you should meet yet more on LinkedIn.
We highly encourage you to have conversations with those you already know to determine how important building their network is to them.
In many cases, you may already be sporadically interacting with these people. So it is perfect to have a platform like the CC where you can meet more regularly and help them meet like-minded others.
However:
- Research (especially by Professors Mark Granovetter, Adam Grant and Tanya Menon) has shown that most advocacy and referrals come from weak ties rather than those you know well.
- The list of people you already know will eventually run out.
- Many of the people you know may be interested in networking rather than network-building
- We are all about helping you build your network rather than facilitating “networking.”
- LinkedIn is a perfect way of finding others who see the value of network-building rather than just the hard slog of networking.
- Most importantly, your new team members may not know as many people as you do. Therefore their team (and, thus, the number of people that can potentially advocate for you) will grow much faster when they know how to use LinkedIn to find great network-building candidates systematically.
You may also believe that there are better ways of finding people than using LinkedIn.
When you have learned about the great tools and processes we have developed to help you find great network-building candidates on LinkedIn, it will take around 200-250 outbound connection requests to introduce a team of 5 people (we call this Core-5).
- At the rate of 4 connection requests sent every day, this would take you around 2 and half months.
- All up, it would take you about 20-30 minutes per day
- At the rate of 2 connections sent per day, this would take you roughly 5 months
That’s more than fast enough!
If the people you introduced duplicated this, you would have a very fast-growing team of team building advocates.
Success in almost any endeavour involves some degree of tedious activity.
As such, it’s good to evaluate whether you are engaging in activities that predictably produce great results or activities that, whilst enjoyable, produce much smaller results.
In other words, are you engaged in pleasing activities or pleasing results?
Duplication is vital.
The people you introduce must have a system to help them learn rather than spending a lot of time teaching your team members everything.
Just imagine how easy it is to have your team members listening to Podcasts like these rather than you having to teach them everything.
Using the CC system helps create a duplicatable process and keep the workload manageable for everyone.
Using a great calendar booking system such as Calendly can save you a great deal of time and reduce the stress of juggling your diary to fit in with the schedule of those with whom you are booking Zoom meetings.
At first glance, this may seem like others have control of your time.
It’s quite the opposite!
Using an app such as Calendly, you can decide when people can book into your calendar.
Also, apps such as Calendly integrate with your existing calendar apps (such as Google Calendars).
In other words, if you book a time in your Calendar, Calendly won’t double book you.
Here are some of the benefits of using an app (such as Calendly) to provide a link that others can use to schedule time in your calendar:
- First, it avoids the Calendar shuffle!
- I propose a time that doesn’t work for you.
- You suggest an alternative that doesn’t work for me
- How long does this go on, and if done by messaging, how long is the delay before you actually get to Zoom?
- Especially when you are working across international time zones
- People commit to a specific time and duration
- When people commit to a time, it automatically goes into their calendar, and they are much more likely to show up.
- You receive an email when they book in
- This tells you who has taken your request to meet seriously
- You can ask for their phone number for an automatic SMS reminder
- You can add questions for your attendees to answer when they book in (however, use this carefully – you don’t want to sound like you are setting the meeting as a way of selling something)
As more people use Zoom (or an equivalent), using a booking system is becoming respectful etiquette (you are grateful when others make it easy for you and send you a link to book into their calendar).
Here are some tips:
- Don’t procrastinate about setting up a booking system!
- We all have “a million things” on our plates to deal with, and it’s easy to push off setting up a booking system till some time in the future.
- Setting up a booking system is worth prioritising!
- You will see immediate time savings, reduced stress and wonder how you lived without it!
- Don’t put it off too long, or it will become urgent!
- Don’t make your appointment times too long.
- People will feel free to take the entire time – and sometimes you don’t want to spend too much time with some people.
- For example, your meetings can have a 15-minute time slot. You can set up an automatic “buffer” on either side of your standard meeting type.
- For example, you can set up a 15-minute event type that blocks out 15 minutes before and after the event. In other words, you are effectively reserving 45 minutes in your calendar even though your guest only sees it as a 15-minute event.
Using the My Most Trusted Chrome extension is a great way to save you time and help you manage your LinkedIn interactions.
The best way to learn how to install, activate, and use the MMT Chrome extension is to click the “MMT in detail” item in Session 5 of the Progressive Learning mind map.
A word of warning in advance; after you install MMT, don’t forget to click the link to activate the Connect Collaborative version.
