Ditch the Pitch

I’ve said it many times in my presentations about building relationships first. When you first introduce yourself to someone, ditch the pitch. We are in a relationship economy. Building relationships is the most important part of business. Even in social media.

Recently I had someone reach out to me on LinkedIn and I accepted the request to connect. The profile was somewhat complete and it included a photo. There were less than 100 connections but thought I’d accept to help the person build their LinkedIn presence. The majority of the time if there is no photo and the profile is bare bones, I do not accept the request. I am on LinkedIn to make connections for my business with other serious business people. If someone hasn’t taken the time to complete their profile and are just looking to harvest a bunch of connections then I won’t accept.

Once I have accepted, it your first communication with me after that is a canned pitch, you will be canned. Here is an example of a recent email I received on LinkedIn from the connection I just described. The subject line was “heyy” (yes it was spelled like that). Note: Company name has been removed

Greetings,

Hope you are doing well, thank-you for adding me to your network. By the way I must complement your profile picture and your impressive profile.

However, I would like to introduce you to my company I work for. Company Name is a Creative Agency. We at Company Name provide effective and powerful branding solutions that effortlessly communicate identity and meaning. Our experience of managing the views of diverse stakeholders and co-coordinating the production process means that we can turn creative ideas into reality with minimum of fuss.

You may be a startup company, an old school non tech savvy organization or a completely professional organization; we have products for you all.

Logos | Websites | Stationary | Social Media

We got it all covered for you. Great turnaround time with 100% money back guarantee.

Web: www.companywebsite.com                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Facebook: www.facebook.com/companyname                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Twitter: www.twitter.com/companyname                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/companyname                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Email to: Marketing@companyname.com

Thank you!

Several things wrong with this; my name was not used – it simply said “Greetings,” the subject line “heyy” like its coming from a close friend, the canned pitch and not even adding their name at the end. This looks like a copy/paste from a marketing piece to me. The first line said impressive profile. If they had really taken the time to look at my profile they would have seen that I already have a “branding solution.”

I responded by professionally pointing out these problems and deleted the connection. Hopefully they will learn from that experience for the future and rethink their approach.

Bottom line, ditch the pitch. I might not need their services but if a proper relationship had been built I would have been a good referral source for them. Take the time to build a relationship. The power is in the work. Nothing comes without the work.