by John Comer, CFP®
You make many contacts during your career. These contacts might become clients, prospective clients, colleagues and centers of influence-or they might drift away. By creating systems to stay in touch with your contacts, you can keep the connections fresh and deepen the relationships over time.
Follow-up meetings, thank-you notes, birthday greetings and newsletters are traditional stay-in-touch vehicles. However, the social networking site LinkedIn allows you to learn about a contact's interests, making it a great resource to help you successfully build relationships. Simply requesting or accepting a LinkedIn connection starts the process. Continuing to stay in touch will help you build on that relationship. Periodically connect with your contacts via LinkedIn to show your interest in them, point out areas of commonality and identify ways you can help them personally and professionally.
For example, here are a couple of LinkedIn "conversations" I've experienced recently:
"Your profile shows your work with the Jump$tart Coalition. I spoke for Jump$tart and really enjoyed working with them."
"You joined the group, Marathon Finishers. I didn't know you ran marathons; I've run three. Let's compare experiences when we get together."
Ideas for Connecting
The LinkedIn home page can suggest ideas for connecting. For your contacts on LinkedIn, the home page will show their new connections, changes to their profiles and groups they have joined. Just seeing someone's name cross your screen can be a reminder to reconnect. Sometimes the content of the update will merit a comment, and sometimes you will want to find something more substantive to connect about. But even a superficial topic can lead to a more substantive discussion if the time is right and the desire to connect is mutual. Superficial comments also bring your name and picture to mind for the contact, reinforcing your relationship.
You can even simply say that you want to touch base and say "hi" if you do not overuse this approach.
You can find additional ideas for connecting by reviewing the contact's profile and connections. Does the contact's profile identify common areas that you have not discussed in the past-education, groups, interests, past employers or connections? Does the contact's profile reflect knowledge in an area of interest that you intend to pursue?
Depending on the topic and your relationship with the contact, decide how you will connect-virtually through LinkedIn, by telephone or in person. If you are not sure the contact remembers you, connect directly through LinkedIn; that will reinforce your connection and give you an opportunity to remind him or her of your relationship.
Keep in mind that a relationship that only exists in the social networking world is not much of a relationship. Over time, you want to bring your relationships into the physical world. If you think a contact has the potential to be a significant resource for you and the topic of discussion is substantive, invite him or her to coffee or lunch. Obviously, this is easiest done with local contacts, but out-of-town contacts can be met at conferences or during travel. Make an effort to meet as many of your contacts in person as possible.
Delegating Relationship Building
Relationship building seems difficult to delegate. However, delegating some of the steps may create a better balance and may also allow for more connecting.
A staff member could be assigned to review your LinkedIn home page once or twice per day. The ideal staffer would know your interests and background in some detail to be able to provide ideas for connecting with your contacts. The staffer could gather ideas for responses to review with you or could be authorized to respond to some connections. However, for your most important connections or for connections with recent appointments, you should review all the ideas before they are sent. It would be embarrassing for a staffer to comment to one of your best clients on something you had just discussed in person.
For more effective delegation of these tasks, develop systems to manage contacts. Some advisers manage the number and type of connections with their key contacts. Commenting on activities in LinkedIn could be integrated into your overall client relationship management system-for instance, setting a goal of two LinkedIn connections (in addition to phone calls, meetings, events, etc.) for all of your best clients. The staffer could track activity for all your contacts and manage to your goals.
A drawback to delegating this kind of relationship building is you could miss out on some opportunities for connections that are more random. For instance, you may not have told your staffer about your interest in marathon running because it has been 15 years since you completed a marathon. You would have missed the opportunity to mention that shared interest with the many runners on LinkedIn. However, delegating may make up for those lost random opportunities by creating a more systematic approach to the connections you do make.
As you think about connecting with contacts, consider the advice my wife received in her first professional job. She was told that her co-workers would be happy to socialize, but that they would not initiate it. Someone has to initiate the connection for any relationship to develop to its potential.
John Comer, CFP®, is principal of Comer Consulting LLC, a marketing firm in Plymouth, Minn. He can be reached at john@jcomerconsulting.com.
Strategic Uses of LinkedIn
Advisers who have moved beyond experimentation have found five strategic uses for LinkedIn in their marketing plans. Evaluate which of these strategies is needed in your business.
- Build relationships-stay in touch with existing contacts by reviewing their activity and sending short notes
- Understand prospects-research prospective clients to identify their interests and their fit in your practice
- Hand-pick specific prospects-seek out prospective clients who match your target market, meeting them through existing contacts
- Attract prospects to a brand-project a consistent and positive image of your practice and its capabilities
- Listen to clients-learn about client financial concerns and your clients' view of your firm
- John Comer, CFP®
Regulatory Requirements
FINRA issued Regulatory Notice 10-06 in January 2010 to provide guidance on blogs and social networking websites. If you are thinking about using LinkedIn as a marketing tool, the regulatory requirements are not particularly surprising or onerous. Where it is regulated, the use of LinkedIn and other social networking is regulated as either advertising, sales literature, correspondence or public appearance. Of course, your broker-dealer may have its own requirements, so review your plans with your broker-dealer.
Using LinkedIn to build relationships is all about individual messages to a specific contact, so it would likely be regulated as correspondence. Correspondence can be sent to only one individual and is retained for review after the fact. That retention would satisfy SEC requirements as well.
Not all LinkedIn use is regulated. Reading content submitted by prospects and clients is not regulated, so using LinkedIn to understand and hand-pick specific prospects would generally not be regulated.
- John Comer, CFP®
