Leverage your members' networks through LinkedIn

If you're not connected to the vast majority of your CEO members, you're making networking much too hard.

Let's break this down into two components:

1. Looking at the networks of your members and their Trusted Advisors.

2. Convincing your members who are not on LinkedIn or barely using it - to get their entire rolodex into it - and to actively use it across their entire organization.

In this blog post, let's first focus on #1 - looking at the networks of your members.

I'm going to lay-out #1 in a step-by-step fashion that you can use for each existing member. You can also extend this concept to your Trusted Advisors (whether you do it formally or informally). Of course, you have a large and extensive network of Trusted Advisors within your local community (if not, that will be the subject of another post).

STEP 1 - LinkedIn Network Identification

Click on the connections tab of the CEO member. See the example below of my partner -  Brad Remillard's profile  The arrow points at the connections tab.

Now you can look at the rolodex of your members and their Trusted Advisors.

Do they know individuals with whom you would like to establish a connection?

Are there CEOs in your local geographic market you don't know  - and you should know them?

Are there Trusted Advisors, such as lawyers, CPAs, HR Consultants, Strategic Planners, Benefit Consultants, and other high Trusted Advisors whom you should be connecting with since they also have strong networks of CEOs and Presidents?

Now that I've identified a few CEOs and Trusted Advisors whom I would like to connect with, what do I do next?

STEP 2 - Action Items on Targeted Contacts

1. You can send a note through your connection on LinkedIn to the person to whom you would like to be introduced.
2. Your connection will then forward the note to that individual.
3. You could call/email the member in your group asking them to make a formal introduction.
4. You could send an inmail to the person to whom you would like to be introduced.
5. You could send an invite to connect if you have that person's email address (sometimes the email address is very easy to acquire - we'll cover this in a future blog post).
6. You could send a message directly without an email address or using one of your precious few inmails if you are members of the same group.

I would recommend the "warm" or "hot" approach of having your member make a personal formal introduction, perhaps setting up a three-way breakfast to facilitate a hand-off of the introduction.

One key question you've got to answer for every contact you come across is whether the connection is a strong relationship where there is a high degree of trust or if the relationship is more of a "secondary" connection where the "bond" is not particularly high, or perhaps it's just an on-line connection.

Once you've got the relationship established for each connection, then you can determine your method of contacting the individual.

LinkedIn has provided a tool that enables you to see a member's rolodex.

Gone are the days when you have to ask "Do you know anyone who might be a fit for our group?" Now you can look at their rolodex on LinkedIn and the question can be "Could you introduce me to this CEO?"

However, there is one little detail I might have skimmed over: Your members need to be on LinkedIn and they've added a significant number of their strongest network connections. We'll discuss in later blog post how to encourage your members to get onto LinkedIn and benefits that can extend across their entire organization.

I know you're probably more focused in the direct connection to CEOs and company presidents, but don't overlook the connections of very high level Trusted Advisers. These are the folks who work directly with the CEOs and Presidents with whom you would like to establish a relationship.

Many CEO-level Trusted Advisors have extensive networks of strong relationships with CEOs, company presidents, and other CEO-level Trusted Advisors.

You'll find a common pattern among your members as to who they have in their connections (on-line rolodex) for CEO-level Trusted Advisors.

Have you taken the step yet of connecting to each of your members and then systematically going through their connections to see if you've missed an important introduction?

Barry Deutsch

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