My coach Kim Chernecki is adamant about staying out of the cold call zone.
When I think about cold calling I picture inMail messages from people I’ve never met on LinkedIn. I think about emails that address me by name, but come from someone I’ve never heard of (and with whom I have no one in common, and have an “unsubscribe” button on the bottom….). And of course we’ve all learned not to pick up our phones when it’s a number we don’t recognize.
But staying out of the cold call zone doesn’t mean NEVER reaching out to someone you haven’t met before.
In fact, strategic, intentional reach outs to new people, when you have something valuable to offer, is how you build your network – for podcast guests, clients, partners, referrals, and more.
In my Facebook Live interview with Alaina Shearer, founder of TogetherDigital, Alaina describes how she “went jugular” when marketing and growing her association of women professionals in digital fields. She:
- Looked at a map to determine what cities she could reasonably drive to from Columbus, OH
- Found bars and restaurants where she could host meetups (she had no budget for private space)
- Used LinkedIn to research professional women in those cities with careers in digital
- Messaged them privately, inviting them to her meetup and explaining WHY it was worth coming to
She knew, from personal experience and the response of her audience in Columbus, that bringing together women across digital careers needed to happen. No one else was doing it, and the stories, insights, feedback and support that came from these gatherings was invaluable.
Her “cold calls” on LinkedIn were offering something proven to be highly valuable.
Which is 100% different from the “Thinking about an MBA?” cold call inMail I got. The latter is a templated, mass advertisement. It’s not individually targeted (no, I am not thinking about an MBA), it’s not individual at all other than saying “Dear Eva Jannotta.”
The former is a personal, individual invitation to be part of something. To leave your house, your routine, your usual social or networking circle and connect with other women like you. The invitation comes from the host herself and it’s for YOU.
I get comments from clients like,
- “I don’t want to seem like I’m promoting myself”
- “Isn’t it too forward to reach out like that?”
- “I don’t want to seem like someone who is on LinkedIn all day, sending messages”
… What? Why not? Is that the attitude you bring to a holiday party or in-person networking event? Like, I’ll just not talk about what I do because I don’t want to seem promotional, and I won’t make the first move because yeesh, they might think I’m too friendly, I’ll just eat these cheese cubes really fast so I don’t seem like someone who is trying to meet new people.
Yesterday I “cold-called” (i.e. send connection requests with messages) two women in the Washington, DC chapter of TogetherDigital. Phoenix doesn’t have a chapter, but if the DC one has events while I’m visiting, I want to go!
(Plus, one of these women works at NASA, which delights my inner space nerd!)
I’m not offering much – this “cold call” is to expand my network – but it’s personalized and genuine. I haven’t heard from them yet, and perhaps I never will. But this is exactly what I do to build my network of colleagues, get referrals, find guests for my Facebook Live show, and more.
Nobody wants to cold call. So… don’t. Just pretend you’re in kindergarten, go up to someone (in real life or virtually), and say some version of, “would you like to be my friend and build a fort with me?”
This post is part of my 100 Blog Posts in 100 Days series. View the rest here.
Image by CreateHERStock.
