LinkedIn is about Relationships not Volume

I recently linked to research that suggests that email and LinkedIn are two of the most important lead generation tools.

Ok, that ought to come with important qualifications - lead gen performance will differ depending on the market, channels, concentration of buyers/customers, etc. There’s another important qualification - execution.

In particular, I’m going to have a bit of a moan about how some people use LinkedIn for lead generation.

Is it just me, or are other people who are fed up with people reaching out to connect, and then using automation tools to sell to you as soon as you connect with them? I get generic messages such as ‘I’m growing my network’, so I think ‘ok, I’m open to connecting’, I click yes, and straight away a message appears:

‘Hi David Abbott - Professional Speaker, thanks for connecting. Did you know that we’re outstanding at such and such a thing, and if you can just spare 10 mins for a chat I’m sure you’ll want to sign up for our super duper whizzamajig with extra sprinkles on top.’

As often as not, the product/service is clearly not appropriate for me, which they should be able to tell from my profile. When I go down to the pub with friends, they usually call me ‘David’, not ‘David Abbott - Professional Speaker’. This is clearly someone who is treating the whole thing as a massive numbers game, using automation to extract names from profiles and then send connection requests, and using automation to send selling messages to all new connections.

Why on earth would I want to buy from anyone who has so little interest in me and my goals, and only treats me as a number.

Successful LinkedIn lead generation relies on making genuine connections with people; on adding value and not simply being pushy and selling; and on having a genuine dialogue.

Now, I have to be honest, this is an opinion and I can’t back it up with data. I haven’t A/B tested mass high-volume LinkedIn connections verses a smaller number of carefully targeted and curated connections. The high-volume people might be able to point to numbers that show that it works. But do you know what? I don’t care. I know which type of marketer I want to be, and I know what kind of relationships I want to develop with people I might hope will buy from me one day.