Connections and trust

Very few people are actually active networkers like Jeff Goldberg and myself. Most people are kind of just like in their business. They're afraid of networking because networking is a form of public speaking. And 90% of people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy, as Jerry Seinfeld is famous for saying. And so if people are afraid of networking, they're not going to network. If they're afraid of public speaking and they don't even know they're afraid of it— most salespeople are afraid of public speaking. Most salespeople are afraid of asking for referrals. That's why Only 11% of salespeople ever ask for a referral. It's kind of like the same thing, but 80% of people would be happy to give you a referral if you asked them for a referral and you were specific. I think the number is more closer to 93% of people said that they would actually give a referral if you look at the stats, but 80% of referrals turn into meetings. So think about it, whereas with cold calls, only 2% of cold calls turn into meetings. So the question is, how and why do people accept connection requests if you can leverage this idea of connection and trust? Because you already have implied trust on LinkedIn, especially if you're connecting to somebody who is a second-degree connection. Now, there are different degrees of connection. So if I'm connected to you directly, that's a first-degree connection. My connections that are not connected to you yet— I have 24,000 connections on LinkedIn. The ones that are not connected to you right now, they're my second-degree connections because you're connected to me and my connections are connected to me. And so my connections that are not connected to you are called second-degree connections. Very simple, simple concept.