20 Ways To Personalize Your LinkedIn Connection Requests

In this video learn 20 different ways to personalize your connection requests on LinkedIn:

Hello. This is Brandon Bornancin, your host of Sales, Strategies, Tips, and Best Practices To Crush Quota. Today, I'm going to share 20 ways to personalize your connection request on LinkedIn. It is no secret that when you're reaching out to prospects on LinkedIn, you need to personalize your connection request. The best way to do that is to be non-salesy, offer value, and then figure out a way to personalize that connection request so your prospects accept your invitation. There's nothing worse than really wanting to build a relationship with a prospect, sending a connection request, and having that declined. That's why I'd like to share 20 ways to personalize your LinkedIn connection requests to ensure maximum acceptance rates.

The first is to take a look at the prospect's role at the company, and personalize their connection request based on their role. If they manage digital marketing at Nike, talk about their role managing digital marketing at Nike. Talk about how you really like the digital marketing at Nike, and you'd love to connect them on LinkedIn. Next, you could talk about the prospect's hobbies and interests. Maybe you saw that the prospect plays indoor soccer every Tuesday and Thursday. You could talk about how you used to play indoor soccer. Talk about something that they're interested. Maybe they love running triathlons or marathons. For instance, I'm vegan. If someone was prospecting me, they could see that I'm vegan somewhere online and talk to me about being vegan and wanting to learn more.

I would immediately ... That ties into my hobbies, my interests. That would immediately motivate me to accept that person's connection request. Look at what they're publishing online, see the hobbies and interests of the prospect, and leverage that in your personalized connection request to connect with them on LinkedIn. The next is leverage mutual connections that you have with your prospect. It's a massive world, and it's two degrees of separation. You could easily look on LinkedIn to see what common connections you have. Maybe you've got 35 different common connections, or 100 different common connections.

If that's the case, you guys run in the same circles. You socialize in the same circles. Mention that you noticed you found that prospect online, you guys have 100 similar common connections, you operate in the same social circles, and that you guys should connect, because I'm sure that there's value that you could bring to each other in the space, or make introductions to other people in your network that would help them out. Take a look at the mutual connections that you have on LinkedIn, common followers on Twitter, common friends on Facebook, and leverage those mutual connections and mention it in your connection request on LinkedIn, and that will definitely improve your acceptance rate.

Next, prospect news. This is a really easy one. Leverage a platform like Seamless, or Google, or Feedly, you name it, and look up if there's any news about the prospect. Maybe they just won an award. Maybe they just got recognized for some big industry recognition because they launched a new software. Or, maybe they were mentioned in Tech Crunch. Whatever it may be, there's going to be news about your prospect out there. Research it and leverage that news to personalize your connection request and get connected. Next, social posts. We're all social creatures. Our prospects are posting socially on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Take a look at all these social posts, look for something that's increasingly interesting, find something that really stands out to you, that's interesting, that's exciting. Pull it out, put it in the connection request, mention it, and leverage their social feeds to help you connect with them on LinkedIn.

Next is blog posts. If the prospect blogs a lot, talk to them and mention them that you love their blog posts. Be very specific too. If they write hundreds of blogs, call out, "Hey, John. I absolutely loved your blog post about the 10 ways to maximize customer success. I found number six highly interesting and something that we're going to implement here at Seamless AI. Thanks so much. Would love to get connected here on LinkedIn. Let me know if any of my connections can ever help you out in any way. I'd be happy to make introductions." That's leveraging ... Hey, when a prospect creates content, it is really, really hard to write valuable content for your audience.

I try to do it every day. It's so difficult and it takes so much time and energy. If your prospect is investing the time, capital, and resources to write content to positively impact their target audience, read it and mention it, and also give them compliments if you found that read of value. That's going to mean a lot to your prospect, because coming from someone that tries to publish a lot of value to my target audience, it's really difficult. When I hear about people really enjoying the value that we try to deliver everyday to them, it means a lot to me, and I'm more open and receptive to accepting new LinkedIn connections. I guarantee you your prospects will as well.

Next, take a look at the contact's education and alma mater. Maybe they went to Stanford, and Stanford had a big football game over the weekend. Maybe they went to Stanford Technology Entrepreneurship, which is a program that I attended. If someone's like, "Hey, I noticed you did Technology Entrepreneurship at Stanford. I loved that program. I loved the professor and prototyping real products and then selling them. You name it." Or, "Hey, Brandon. I saw that you did Technology Entrepreneurship at Stanford. I'd love to chat with you about that was probably a huge success." Whatever it may be. You could talk about anything about the school, anything about the school's sports teams. You name it. If you went to the alma mater, or the education, whatever it may be.

Like for instance, when I lived and interned in Chicago when I was a freshmen in college, I absolutely loved the Booth School of Business, Chicago School of Business, especially to get your MBA and whatnot. Anytime that I connect with someone that went to Chicago, I immediately talk about that, because I loved the school, I loved the studies, the caliber of the education, you name it. Feel free to leverage the education to personalize your LinkedIn connection requests.

Next, the prospect's favorite sports teams. Great example. If someone wants to reach out to me, they could easily find that I am a Columbus Buckeyes crazy nut fan. I love the Buckeyes, I love Ohio State, I love being from Columbus. If you reach out and you talk to me about the Buckeyes, good or bad, even if you're a Michigan fan and you're talking smack, I'm going to be more receptive to accepting that LinkedIn invitation because it's personalized to me and it's talking about my favorite sports teams. Leverage that as a great hack and a tool to personalize your LinkedIn connection requests, and take the time to look up who the prospect's favorite sports teams might be.

Awesome. You could also talk about the local sports teams. Maybe you could see if the prospect was talking about a favorite sports team, but you know they're from, for example, they're from Cleveland. Now, this would be really painful, because the Browns are absolutely horrendous, haven't won one game. You could talk about, if you're reaching out and you know that someone's from Cleveland, you could talk about how bad they are, and how you hope that they get a lot of great round picks. Or, maybe they're from New England. You could talk about Tom Brady being a game-changer, and how much you love watching him play, and how he's amazing. Whatever that may be. You could also leverage local sports teams to personalize your connection request and get that linked in invitation accepted.

Next, instead of focusing on the prospect, the next ten tips to personalize your LinkedIn invitation to get it accepted, focus on the company. One thing you can do when you're researching someone and you want to personalize that connection request is you could talk about the company and their products. If it's Adobe, you could talk about the innovative, game-changing design software solutions, how you use Adobe software everyday. You love Photoshop. You wake up, you breathe Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Creative Cloud, you name it. Talk about the products.

Maybe you're reaching out to Uber because you want to work there, because you want to sell to Uber, whatever it may be, and you're reaching out to corporate Uber. You could talk about how in the past month you've taken 17 Ubers. You love the company, you name it. Maybe you're reaching out to AT&T to sell them an enterprise seven figure deal. You could talk about how you love AT&T's wifi, you love their internet, you love the broadband, you love their cable. You love everything about them and how you would never consider going to Comcast or Verizon, or whatever it may be. Talk about their products and personalize that LinkedIn invitation around their products and some things that you really enjoyed learning about their products, like about their products, or found inspiring and motivating and engaging.

Second with the company. This goes back to kind of the products, but something you admire about their business. Maybe it's their culture, their core values, the team, the products, the people, the industry, you name it. Compliment them and tie something admirable about their business to the LinkedIn invitation request. That will help kind of lower the barrier to ... If a prospect gets thousands of LinkedIn invitations and you're the one that is admiring them and complimenting them about their business, or something about their business, again, it lowers the barriers and increases their ability to want to accept that LinkedIn connection.

Next, you could talk about the company clients. Companies spend so much energy, time, capital, resources in acquiring clients and keeping clients highly satisfied with their products and services. There's nothing more complimentary than talking about how great the work is that the company has delivered for their clients. Let's say you're trying to sell to a marketing and advertising agency. For example, I worked at Resource, which is now IBM Interactive. If I'm reaching out to Resource, I'm going to talk about how amazing all their digital marketing work with Victoria's Secret is, and how they changed the game with the Victoria's Secret supermodel show, and how they took that from TV to online, and talk about some other campaigns that they've done with Microsoft, with Google, you name it.

You want to look at the company's clients and see what you can find that you can relate to and share in the LinkedIn invitation. "I love the work that you're doing with XYZ." Maybe you're reaching out to venture capitalists. "I love how you help profitably scale similar high gross start ups like XYZ." That just shows that you've researched them, you research who they've done work with, and you're tying it in to your personalized LinkedIn invitation request.

Next, you could talk about the competitors. Maybe you see that they're competing with 10 different people. You're going to look at their competitive landscape and pull out three specific competitors. Let's just say you're pitching Nike, and you want to sell them a new digital advertising program. You may talk about their competitors and what Puma is doing, what Adidas is doing, what Under Armour is doing in this space, and then share the ideas that you have to help Nike overcome and dominate the market share from the competitors. That's a great way to tie in research and talking about the competitive landscape.

"Hi, John. I was researching your profile on LinkedIn. Love the work that you do for XYZ. By the way, I have an idea to help you dominate the market against Puma, Adidas, Under Armour." "By the way, hi John. I've got a strategy to help you out-compete Adidas, Puma, Under Armour in the athletic apparel space. Would love to connect here on LinkedIn." Whatever it may be. Again, that LinkedIn invitation, I recommend not being salesy. I would just try to figure out if you could tie in the competitive landscape somehow to personalize that connection request.

Next, company news. You should always be researching the company and what's going on in the news. You want to look at are there any prominent articles, publications, features, big news that have hit the press about your company that the prospect works for? Copy that and tie it in and mention something about that company's press into the personalized LinkedIn invitation. That will help increase your chances of getting accepted because the prospect will see that you researched them. You're talking about a relevant news article, and it will really hit home, show them that you personalize and you researched them, and then that would increase their likelihood of accepting.

Next, the company's social posts. Take a look at the company's social posts and see if there's anything interesting, or inspiring, or engaging, or anything that really stands out that excites you, that you want to leverage to connect with that prospect. Maybe you saw that they just did a big Iron Man Run, or they did a ... Whatever it may be. They had a big company event, they had a big awards ceremony, they're talking socially about a campaign that they launched. Whatever it may be, tie in the social post. "Hey, John. I noticed on Twitter that Nike is talking about the big Nike Iron Man campaign. I absolutely love it. Would love to connect here on LinkedIn. Let me know if there's any connections among my network that can help you in any way. I'd be happy to provide introductions." Whatever that may be, leverage the social posts.

Next, company thought leadership. Take a look at all the publications and thought leadership that the company is writing. We talked about the contact writing great content and complimenting them and mentioning something that you got out of value from that content. Do the same for the company. You can leverage the company thought leadership and compliment that content to personalize the LinkedIn connection and get connected with that person. Next, you could talk about web technologies. Maybe you noticed that the company is leveraging Amazon for web hosting, and 17 other web hosting providers. You could talk about the research that you've done around all the web technologies that that company is utilizing, and then figure out how to tie that in into personalize the LinkedIn invitation.

Online marketing. Take a look at what the company is doing in online marketing. Maybe they're doing a ton of paid search advertising, and you see that they've got roughly a budget of a hundred thousand in paid search media, and you take a loot at all the ads. When you reach out to the prospect, you can mention their online marketing efforts, what they're doing in paid search, in display advertising, in content, in social media. Anything across online marketing, display advertising, you name it. Maybe you saw display advertising ad, a re-targeting ad, a paid search ad, mobile display ad. Whatever it may be, you could tie in what they're doing in online marketing to personalize that LinkedIn invitation and get that LinkedIn request accepted.

Next, the leadership team. You could talk about the company's leadership team. Talk about the great leadership team that they have. Talk about ... Deliver a compliment around their leadership team. Talk about the leadership principles. Anything that you could tie into how great of a leadership team that company has and how you'd love to connect with that person, build a relationship with them. Lastly, mutual connections you may have with the company. Take a look. This is number 20, and I've probably gone over 20, but who knows? Mutual connections that you have with the company. "Hey, John. It's Brandon. I love the work that Nike is doing. I notice I've got 50 friends that are connected to 100 different people at Nike, and I'd love to connect with you to build my personal network with Nike, because I'm just a huge, huge fan."

Whatever that may be, mention mutual connections that you have with the company. We talked about leveraging mutual connections with a prospect, but maybe you don't have any mutual connections with the prospect, so you could leverage your network to tie in who's in my network is connected to the people at Nike, and then I grab those people and mention them, and mention who they're connected to, to connect with the person that I want to build a relationship with. Put that all in the personalized LinkedIn invitation, shoot it out. That, ultimately, are 20 different ways that you could personalize your LinkedIn connection to get your request accepted.

I hope that you found one of the 20 strategies of value so that you can maximize your social selling results, maximize your social network, your social value, and make this next year your biggest and best yet. Look, thanks for tuning in. It's Brandon Bornancin, your host of Sales, Strategies, Tips, and Best Practices to Crush Quota. I'd love to hear in the comments section below how you personalize your LinkedIn connection requests, the type of conversion rates you have from cold invitation to accepted invitation, and anything else that you can share with the network to help them crush selling social selling online. Look forward to it. Have a great day.

About The Author: 

Brandon Bornancin is the CEO / Founder of Seamless.AI where he is on a mission to help you and every professional in the world create new relationships, opportunities and revenue, faster than ever before.

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