I just got this email and felt compelled to share with you. Many business owners using social media are convinced this is what “selling” means. It means, well…this…
I accepted a friend request from this person, and this is what I got in reply. This isn’t selling. This is yelling. This is clinging. This is spam.
What action would you take on this? You’d make sure to visit all the sites that have been suggested, right? You’d make sure to take the time to get back with this person and initiate a conversation, because they obviously have a lot of valuable insight to share, correct?
Or would you, like me, delete it…and probably never talk to this person again? Let me know what you think!
By the way, I greyed out the urls and user name because I don’t feel any need to spread any ill will. I feel most of the time, poor use of social media is just out of ignorance. We all make mistakes. But to the user who sent this to me (surely you recognize this message, lol) no, I wont’ be visiting any of these sites, and sending emails like this isn’t doing you any favors 
Something about the “Let’s network!” line cracks me up though. Just sayin.
How often do you get emails like this? How do you respond?
Yeah, I know what you mean. They say, let’s network, and all their tweets are about them.
I understand why they do it though. We’re all looking for a way to do less and accomplish more. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts when it comes to building relationships – which are huge assets for any business. Even just building enough trust to make one singe sale requires putting aside your own wants and focusing on another person. It’s a hard lesson to learn though (me included), because we are always most interested in ourselves! 
Great way to put it Todd…it’s what true salesmanship is about, putting yourself aside and listening. Selling means caring deeply but also skillfully engaging and helping people solve their problems. Combining the two makes it almost impossible to not make a good living at what you do…but you need both. Relationships are not enough when it comes to business, you have to be able to actually help people as well.
“Let’s network!”
I get these messages all the time on twitter. lol
Ha. Yeah Twitter has it’s own brand of awesome spam. It’s good stuff! Sometimes I find it funny, sometimes it’s just straight annoying. Depends on the day
Good article Charles, as always. I get a fair number of friend requests from folks I don’t know. Many seem to come from a similar sphere of interest; investment real estate. My preference, since I don’t know them personally is to direct them to my business or fan page because that community is focused on the interest that led them to friend me in the first place. I usually thank them for their request and refer them to the fan page and invite their feedback. My preference is they will participate in the dialogues and from their a relationship can develop. My goal would be to keep my personal page limited to true friends (though it is going to take some work to get back since I initially thought, wrongly, that this was merely a numbers game).
Do you have an alternative approach to recommend?
I understand wanting to draw lines between business and family. That’s fair. Just realize that people won’t know this coming in…you’ll most likely always continue getting friend requests. That means you’ll probably always have to be filtering people from one profile to another. I know people that have multiple FB profiles, multiple Twitter accounts, etc for this purpose. For me, it’s way easier to simply have everything in one place. My real friends know what I do for a living and understand I’m going to talk about that also. My clients and business contacts, likewise, understand I have a life and friends outside of business, so they’re not surprised when I talk about my kids on occasion. Both angles have their pros and cons, but to me keeping things separate is next to impossible. And by the way, my name is Chris, but you can call me Charles if you want. ha