Let’s start with your contacts.  When you exchange business cards with someone, what usually happens?  From my experience, much of nothing.  Unless there was some sort of urgent, expected follow up, a general swap of the cards usually translates into zilch.

Someone has to make the first move, but what do you say?  Occasionally, I’ll get a generic solicitation after a card exchange.  Recently, I got an email from someone who worked for a hotel.  The email was basic, here’s what I do, if you or anyone you know needs a room, call me.  Not very memorable and actually, quite forgettable.  What is the expected response?  That I’ll save that email and when I need to book a room or help someone else book a room, I’ll call someone I really don’t know to stay in a place I’m not familiar with, just because some guy at met at the chamber got my card and sent me an email advertisement?  Not likely.

So, let’s go to the other extreme.  That you should personally take everyone you meet out for coffee or lunch.  There are just not enough hours in the day.  Those who do attempt it eventually run out of gas and stop networking altogether.  And let’s just be honest, you’re not going to want to spend that much time with people you may just not end up liking or wanting to do business with anyway.  You’ll walk away feeling like you wasted your time and wish you would have invested that time with your best friend or a family member.  Plus you don’t get paid to meet for coffee.

Eventually, your business cards get shoved into a drawer, thrown away, or may be neatly organized with no plan to take those contacts to the next level.  Which brings me to the people who “troll” for business.  (*gasp* it’s true, not everyone attends networking events to find business).

The term “trolling” usually brings to mind a literal ugly troll that hangs out under a bridge, but that’s not what I’m referring to.  If you’ve ever spent any time around bodies of water, then you might know that trolling is a technique to catch fish.  Back in the early days of the internet, there wasn’t as much to do as there is now.  IRC chat and message board posting were the order of the day.  Everyone seemed to hang out in chat rooms or on boards.  The term “trolling” on the boards was an ugly description for people who had nothing better to do than to cause disruption and havoc all over these new online communities.

Trolling for business can go one of two ways.  You can fish, using the right technique, or you can be a troll and spoil the concept of creating business relationships with strangers.  I received one such email today.  Someone, who apparently belongs to one of my social networks, sent me an email.  I have no relationship with them and never met them.  This scenario is different than the spam from a foreign stranger, this is someone who is connected to me through mutual group participation.

Let’s take a look at what they sent, as a warning of what NOT to do when contacting someone in your circles about doing business with you.

First, they did a BCC (blind carbon copy) and the “To” line is to some name I don’t know.  What I do know is that it’s not to me or anyone that I know.

Second, the greeting says “Hello ****” - and *** is not my name.  It’s the name of the group I belong to.  Let’s say you belong to a bowling league called The Pinheads.  What I got was the equivalent of someone sending an email that said “Hello Pinhead”. 

The first line says “This program is totally FREE!”.  And that theme goes throughout the email.  It’s free, but I’m going to make a ton of money doing it.  Whatever.

The website they want me to go to contains words like “free” “mall” “power” “biz” and other ridiculous spammy sounding words that let you know that it’s all hype.

It’s the old, put some big names in there to see who they are associated with (um, I could sign up for any affiliate program and use their name to say they are part of my incredible supersonic powermall), how many unlucky souls have mistakenly jumped onto their bandwagon and how many countries they represent, how unique they are, how I have nothing to lose but everything to gain (really?  everything?), and of course that’s it’s free.

Who cares?  *sigh*  *yawn* ad nauseum.

They might get some naive person to sign up for it, who will do nothing with it because it’s dumb, and they’ll fade off into the sunset.

In the meantime, they get everyone ticked off that people from their social circles are sending them spam.  Where does that leave you and me? 

You have a choice.  Stay frozen in fear and do nothing, or send the right message and start building relationships.

What’s your message plan?  Here’s what I do.  If I get a business card, I send them a personal email (which also let’s them know that from time to time, I’ll be sending more) and then add them to my list.  If I’m contacting someone in my social circles, I’ll send a personal email (which also let’s them know that from time to time, I’ll be sending more) and then add them to my list.  It’s fairly simple, and only about one in 99 people I contact ever ask to be removed from my list.  Just remember to send stuff to your list that is interesting and follows the “what’s in it for them” rule.  Like this message.  I just gave you a bunch of great information, for free.  Now you know that I know what I’m talking about, you’re starting to get to know me (if you don’t already), and maybe one day, we’ll do business together.  And I didn’t even have to spam you or take you out to lunch.
Ricci