More Clients TV
3 Powerful Techniques For Reconnecting With Old Contacts
In last week's video I talked about the psychology of reconnecting with some of your best old contacts that you've slipped out of touch with, and I gave you a simple strategy for reconnecting based on using LinkedIn and getting in touch by sharing valuable content.
In this weeks video I share 2 powerful techniques that can work just as well, or even better, for reconnecting and adding value at the same time.
Watch this week's 5 minute marketing tip to find out what they are and how to use them.
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Video Transcript
Hi, it's Ian here. Welcome to another Five Minute Marketing Tip. On last weeks tip I talked about the vital topic of getting back in touch with some of your best contacts that you've dropped out of touch with. We talked about the psychology of getting back in touch and I gave you a simple technique to reconnect with people using LinkedIn and connecting by adding value by sending them to a useful piece of content.
Now in this weeks tip I'm going to give you three more ways of getting back in touch that are equally, if not more effective, so I'll see you after this swoosh.
Hi, welcome back, so last weeks tip was all about getting back in touch and I showed you a way of getting back in touch that added value by sharing a piece of content that you've either created yourself or you found. I'm going to give you three more ways of getting back in touch. Each of those also gets back in touch by adding value and you always want to make sure that when you're getting back in touch with contacts who you've got out of connection with that you want to be trying to add value as you get back in touch rather than asking for a favor.
The first way of adding value when you get back in touch is to invite them to an event or something you're going to that you think they will find valuable too. Now the best way of doing this is whenever you get invited to an event yourself, so that could be a conference, it could be a networking event, any kind of thing where you're going to go out, leave the office and go and do something that you might find useful, think about who from your current contact base you could invite to that as a “nurturing the relationship” type activity, and then go back to your contacts that you'd like to get back in touch with and think of who of those folks you think would appreciate going to that event as well. That works really well from a couple of perspectives.
One is they don't even have to come along to the event to appreciate the thought of you inviting them and that means you've got back in touch. The invitation itself gets you back in touch, they might turn it down but they'll be appreciative of the invite and you can then follow up by asking what they're doing now, how things are going, etc., so you've got the conversation going. The second good thing that happens is if you do come along to the event then both of you are outside the normal work environments, you haven't got all the day to day pressures going on so you can grab a coffee or you can sit and chat, stand and chat at a networking event, go off and grab lunch together if it's a conference or whatever. You get a nice piece of time with them to reestablish that relationship away from the pressures of day to day work.
Now the second method is really a step up from the invitation method, it's a way of going overboard to get back in touch with people and that's to organize your own event. I don't mean a conference of course or anything like that, what I mean though is if there are half a dozen or more of your contacts who used to work together or be in some kind of social gathering together or whatever, people who used to know each other and you've all dropped out of touch then you can arrange a get together, a reunion. That reunion could be just drinks in a pub, it could be going out for a meal together, it could be as much as inviting them over to your house for a dinner party type environment.
Either way you are inviting the gang to get back together, you're really adding value because not only are they getting back in touch with you but they're also getting back in touch with all those other useful conducts that they've dropped out of touch with. As the host of course, you then have the opportunity to interact with everyone before the event, as you sort out the invitations at the event to make reintroduction's. There's always a topic of conversation because you're the host and after the event to follow up, see where the things went well, is there anyone that they think you should invite to the next event, etc., etc. It gives you loads of opportunities to get back in touch and you're adding a whole load of value because not only are they reconnecting with you, they're reconnecting with all these other good contacts that they've dropped out of touch with themselves.
The final method for getting back in touch is something I first heard of from James Altucher so if you have not read any of Altucher's books I would particularly recommend his first one, his first big one anyway, Choose Yourself. So do yourself a favor go off and grab that on Amazon. In there you'll find something he calls his daily practice and one element of his daily practice is to exercise your creativity muscle by everyday sitting and writing 10 ideas about something. Those 10 ideas could be 10 ideas for a blog post, or 10 ideas about how to get to work more quickly, 10 ideas for improving my relationship with my children. Of course one thing you can do 10 ideas for is 10 ideas that would be useful to a specific person.
If you're thinking of getting back in touch with someone go and look at their LinkedIn profile, their website, what they're doing in the news, etc., and then brainstorm for yourself 10 ideas that would be valuable and useful to them. You might look at their website and think actually can make some improvements here, or they might write a blog and you can think 10 ideas for great articles for you to write for your blog, or you could look at their business as a whole and you can see that they're expanding geographically and you can do 10 ideas for places for you to go and expand that would be really useful for you. Come up with the ideas, put some thoughts, some research into it, really follow it up, make a good job of it and then make the introduction by giving those 10 ideas.
Apart from the fact that it'll help exercise your creativity muscle and help you be more creative in future, it will also be adding value on that connection. Now if you think it's going to feel a bit weird reconnecting with someone and saying hey, here are 10 ideas for you. Firstly make sure they're not criticisms, they are positively framed ideas. Secondly if it still feels a bit weird saying hey, you can use a phrasing like hey, haven't spoken for a while, it was great when we worked together back in Italy all those years ago, I've been reconnecting with some of my old contacts recently and, as an exercise for myself to help get my creativity juices flowing, I've been thinking of 10 ideas that I think could help each of them in their businesses. The 10 things I came up with for you are bam, bam, bam, hope you find them useful and you give those ideas to them with no thought of how those ideas would pay back or anything, they're there to be really useful to them, but that can really work.
If you read Altucher's book you'll see that when he was trying to get going in business he wrote to hundreds of people trying to beg favors, get to meet them, have a coffee with them and got absolutely nowhere, not a single response. Then he used this 10 idea approach and out of the 10 people he sent 10 ideas to three of them followed up and that got him a gig writing financial articles, which turned into his next business, it got him a gig creating financial software for a big investor, etc., etc. It really does work, people appreciate the thought that you're thinking of ideas to help them and if those ideas are good it builds your credibility and it can trigger all sorts of thoughts with them.
It feels a little bit brief to do it I have to admit, it feels like you're pushing your ideas on them but if you phrase it correctly and gently when you're connecting with them and as I said, you can even say I'm going through an exercise of creating ideas for people when I reconnect with them then it can work and it doesn't feel quite so embarrassing. Eventually people will get used to you sending them 10 ideas if it's something you do on a regular basis.
That's it for this week, hope you found those three ways of reconnecting useful, I'll see you next week.
Ian Brodie
https://www.ianbrodie.comIan Brodie is the best-selling author of Email Persuasion and the creator of Unsnooze Your Inbox - *the* guide to crafting engaging emails and newsletters that captivate your audience, build authority and generate more sales.