LinkedIn is the Facebook for business professionals. As such, it is a great place for insurance agents to network and develop leads. At Bee Referred, we do a lot of our sales work through LinkedIn--and if you aren’t actively using it, you should! Spend 15 minutes each day sending connection invitations and 15 minutes on follow up messages. If you persevere, you will see deals close.
A mistake we see being made over and over is not personalizing connection requests. This is something LinkedIn promoters say should always be done (I’m sure you’ve heard this piece of advice before!). And yet, only 1% of connection requests sent to us have a personalized message. There are three reasons why this is a must for you:
1. Provides Background
People want to know your “why”. I often think to myself when I receive a request, “Why does this person want to connect?” It’s usually one of three reasons:
- They are interested in our services.
- They want me to be interested in their services.
- They want to connect with people in my network.
Giving a personalized message on the invitation gives the person a clearer picture of what you are hoping to accomplish or provide. It’s transparent, respectable, and professional. It also just works better. You should see higher rates of people accepting your requests and more engagement with them.
2. Initiates Dialogue
Sending a personalized message gives the other person something to respond to. Without the message, the person you connect with would have to directly message you and initiate a conversation (that won’t happen!). But if you are the one sending that first message via the request, you will see many more responses.
3. Makes Follow Ups Easier
Once someone accepts your personalized connection request, it will show up in your inbox. Without the personal message, nothing will show up in your inbox. To follow up with the person, you would have to scroll through all your contacts, find them, visit their profile, and send them a message. However, by sending a personalized message, you can easily scroll through your inbox and message people directly. It will even show you the date they accepted your request. This makes it easy to follow up later (we personally wait 3+ days before following up with another message).
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