Example of a Magic Mail for Non-Sales Related Introductions

Last week I gave an example of a Magic Mail to introduce two people to each other who might do business.

But there will be many times that you want to introduce two people to each other who might be interesting to each other on another level or for other reasons than a supplier-customer relationship.

This is an example of a Magic Mail for people who work for a large company and want to make “internal” introductions.

To: Thomas.Hunter@company-abc.com
Cc: Sue.Allen@company-abc.com
Subject: introduction

Hi Thomas,

I want to introduce you to Sue Allen (in cc). Sue is one of the team members of the Eureca project. As you know the Eureca project faced lots of challenges with legislation changing and some team members being moved to other countries. But you know the saying “a challenge is a way to grow”. And that’s exactly what happened to Sue. Sue got the daunting task to take over part of the project regarding legislation. And she did that really well! I experienced her knowledge myself when I had to deal with the local law in a number of Asian countries. Sue does know very much about this and has built a good network to support her. I definitely recommend her for your next project!

Sue,

Thomas Hunter is one of our international project leaders. I know he has had difficulties in the past finding the right people for his team with regard to local legislation. He is now assembling the team for his next project and I think your expertise will benefit this project. Thomas is a great man to work with. I enjoyed the way he leads his teams: he supports his team members in every way he can and encourages them to take responsibility. He is also very good at delegating decision power to his team members. As you know I find this very important myself. In my opinion he is one of the best project leaders of our company.

In addition of a possible professional match, you will have lots to talk about your shared passion for winter holidays and more specifically snowboarding.

I suggest the two of you get together for a talk.

Thomas, you can reach Sue at: (telephone number Sue)
Sue, you can reach Thomas at: (telephone number Thomas)

Good luck!

Jan

I hope you now understand that you can use a Magic Mail in almost any circumstance where people could benefit from knowing each other.

To your success !

Jan

PS: this example comes from the book “How to REALLY use LinkedIn“. Go to the website to download a free light version of the book, a self-assessment and updates of the book.

Example of a Magic Mail

Last week I mentioned that sending Magic Mails is an excellent way of leading by example to receive referrals.

Some readers asked for an example.

So here is one (from the book “How to REALLY use LinkedIn“)

To: eric.rogers@best-accountant-in-the-world.com
Cc: john.johnson@web-designer-number-one.com
Subject: introduction

Hi Eric,

I want to introduce you to John Johnson (in cc). John is the Managing Director of Web Designer Number One. John may be the guy that can help you out with your new website. They make great websites (on their website http://www.web-designer-number-one.com you find lots of examples and references). I’ve known John for a while and even worked with him at ABC Company. One of the things I will always remember him by, is his ability to offer a solution that satisfies the needs of the customer while staying within the budget. He is really customer focused. I even recall him a few times recommending another solution or even another vendor if he thought it was in the interest of his customer. I definitely recommend him and his team!

John,

Eric Rogers is my accountant and also a personal friend. In fact, he is such a good accountant because he is more focused on people than on numbers! Eric is looking for a new website. And because of our joint experiences and the great job you did for SuperMarket XYZ (I accidentally heard their Marketing Manager bragging about you at the last Chambers of Commerce meeting), I thought you might be the perfect candidate.
I suggest the two of you get together for a talk. Maybe you can do this combined with watching a soccer game? I understood the both of you are fans of Manchester United.

Eric, you can reach John at: (telephone number John)
John, you can reach Eric at: (telephone number Eric)

Good luck!

Jan

 

 

Let’s take a look at the “ingredients” of the Magic Mail:

Header

• To: the person who is the “receiver” of the product, services or help.
• Cc: the person who is the “supplier” of the product, services or help.
• Subject: “introduction”: this makes very clear what this email is about.

You can put more people in the “to” and “cc” field if that’s appropriate. You can also put everybody in the “to” field, but for me this makes it easier to know who I introduced to whom. This is especially useful for your own “follow-up” or “stay in touch” actions.

Body

• First I address the receiver then I address the supplier.
• I always give the reason for connecting the both of them.
• After addressing the receiver I also always address the supplier so he knows something about the receiver and especially about my relationship towards the receiver. This makes it easier for him to find common ground. And to start the relationship on a much higher level than with a “cold call”. In this example I even go a bit further: I go to the “value” level. Both are very customer and people focused. This is a very strong basis to build a relationship on. And especially when a third party with whom they both have a good relationship with points this out (which is me in this case).
• The same applies, of course, for the receiver with regard to the supplier.
• I include what I appreciate about the person, organization, product or service. This way I maintain and strengthen my relationship with every party. Even when there is no future interaction between them, the email was worth the effort as a “relationship building action”.
• I also try to find commonalities on another level than the professional one. In this case they share a passion for soccer and they even support the same team. There is an instant bond. This bond exists most of the time (remember the 6 degrees of proximity), but we don’t always find it in a conversation because we didn’t talk about the areas where we might be related. If you as the connector know about the interests that two people share, tell them. This way you help them to get a flying start.
• Include other references and objective parties if possible. The better the receiver knows them the better the reputation of the supplier. In this example I first referred to the references at the website of Web Designer Number One. Then I gave a second reference: the Marketing Manager of Supermarket XYZ.

Conclusion

• Call to action: I suggest that they contact each other. This means:
– THEY are expected to take ACTION, and there are no barriers to do this, because I (the respected and trusted third party) suggested them to do this.
– I put the telephone number of the “supplier” first, because I want to encourage the “receiver” to make contact. This is more comfortable for the “supplier”. This way I try to decrease the feeling of “selling” something as much as possible. And I open the possibilities of building a relationship and helping each other out.
– They contact EACH OTHER, not me anymore. I step out of the process. I did my part of the job: connecting them. Now it’s up to them. This helps me to spend my time wisely as I’m not the intermediary.
• Telephone contact data: so they can quickly reach each other. If they want to have contact via email, they already have it in the header of the email. I don’t recommend following up on an introduction like this via email. The way is wide open for a personal contact via the telephone.

For some people this example might be perceived as too pushy. Please note that this is an email to two people you already know and have a good relationship with. In this case I am very confident that bringing them together will be beneficial for both of them.

To your success !

Jan

PS: there is a free light version of the “How to REALLY use LinkedIn” available in English or Dutch. Click on the link.

Lead By Example by Sending Magic Mails

Two weeks ago I wrote a blog post about leading by example to get more referrals.

I explained to look for ways to help someone (in this case the person you want a referral from) by introducing or referring them to someone who is interesting to them. In this way they will experience themselves how this works and reap the benefits. Not only will they be more open to help you, but they will also understand how to do it.

The “tool” we advise to use is called the Magic Mail.

The Magic Mail is actually a “normal” email in which you introduce two people to each other.

Why do I call it the “Magic” Mail?

Because the results can be magical!

Its primary function is that the receiver of the email experiences that you took time and made an effort (so it must be important enough). Besides the Know, Like, Trust factor is also transferred, creating the foundation of a potential relationship between the two people.

Of course it depends on the relationship between you and the two people you introduce whether there just a few sparkles of magic or huge fireworks.

To your success !

Jan

Turn Clients Into Word-of-Mouth Machines

This week’s blog post comes from Bill Cates’ newsletter, the Referral Minute (I encourage you to register for it as well since it contains many useful tips). I liked the idea so asked Bill’s permission to reproduce it here so you could also benefit from it.

I just conducted a special referral boot camp for a group of about 50 highly-successful financial advisors (I mean highly successful). One of the advisors shared what he does to generate a steady flow of referrals from his “A” clients.

This advisor turns his clients into Word-of-Mouth Machines by providing them with a continual flow of shirts, umbrellas, and other high-quality, utilitarian items that his clients use on a regular basis. He told the group that “a $50 shirt is a small investment to get your clients to let others know that they are using you.”

I’d like to add emphasis to the words quality and utilitarian. If the items you provide to your clients do not meet both criteria, you are probably wasting your money.

This advisor has created a “culture of referrals” among his clients. They love the work he does and are happy to spread the word in a low-key, easy way.

Isn’t it true that IF we get something from a company, we hardly want to use it because the item SCREAMS “I’m a billboard”?

How does it apply to your organization? What do you give away and will people be proud/happy to use or wear it? Or will they throw it away as seen as they return home?

To your success !

Jan

LinkedIn Labs – Year in Review

LinkedIn encourages its employees to be creative and think of tools that might enhance LinkedIn or that might benefit its users.

One of the ways they do this is by organizing Hackdays. Some of the projects that are shown on those Hackdays make it to LinkedIn Labs. And some make it even to the actual website.

This is the explanation of what LinkedIn Labs are (from their website):

“LinkedIn Labs hosts a small set of projects and experimental features built by the employees of LinkedIn. We share them here as demonstrations and to solicit feedback, but please remember that they are intended to be low-maintenance experiments, and may be added and removed over time based on popularity and support.”

By now there are already a few interesting “products” available on the LinkedIn Labs website, but not on the main website. As a consequence many people won’t have heard of them or will ever hear of them.

So I thought it was a good idea to put some of these “products” in the picture in the next couple months.

The first one is “Year in Review”.

You might recognize this one since you would normally have gotten an email in the beginning of the year with an overview of (some of the) people in your network who changed careers.

The “Year in Review” tool works the same way. In a (visual) overview of pictures from people from your network you see who has changed positions, organisations or started their own company.

You can access it any time: http://yir.linkedinlabs.com

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates (50 pages in the meanwhile!) of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)

How To Remove LinkedIn Home Page Spammers?

A question we get more and more in our presentations and training courses is: “How do I get rid of the people who are littering my LinkedIn Home Page with their spam messages or silly tweets? I don’t want them to mess up my professional network place!”

Actually it is quite simple: when you move your mouse pointer over a status update or other post on your LinkedIn Home Page, on the right hand side the word “hide” appears.

When you click on the word “hide”, the post disappears and instead this message appears: “You will no longer receive updates from this user” (you also have the option to “undo” this action).

(By the way, they are not notified of this action.)

It is important to know that you won’t see ANY updates anymore from this user.
So if you are interested in knowing when someone changes their profile, but not in their (automatically forwarded) tweets, it might be a hard choice.

However, it might be a good idea to contact them first before “hiding” them. Maybe they have set up their Twitter accounts (using other tools) to automatically forward their tweets, without knowing what the effect on LinkedIn is. When you make them aware of it, they might apologize and thank you for educating them! In other words, not every “spammer” is a bad guy/woman 🙂

To prevent other people “hiding” YOU, it makes sense to think about what you want to share with your LinkedIn contacts.

A major tip: don’t automatically forward your Twitter messages to LinkedIn.

Use a tool like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck instead. These tools allow you to post updates to several social networks at once. In this way they help you to save time and be aware of to which websites you send what message.

See also previous blog posts HootSuite Makes Your Professional and Social Networking Life Easier and Track The Response To Your Tweets and Status Updates in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo and other Social Media

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates (50 pages in the meanwhile!) of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)

Want To Professionally Network on a Plane? Use Planely with LinkedIn.

One of my favourite networking stories that I tell in my training courses is how I met Charlie Jones on the plane.

Nowadays it becomes more and more easy to find interesting people who are on the same flight as you.

One of the companies that facilitates this is Planely.

How does it work? There are 3 steps:

1) You let Planely know when and where you are flying.
2) Planely lets you know who you are traveling with.
3) You can reach out to make contact.

Planely now also integrates with LinkedIn. Planely CEO and founder Nick Martin explains, “The really interesting part is that if both you and your Match integrate, then as part of that summary we show you if your Match is 1, 2 or 3 degrees of separation away from you or in any of the same Groups.”

I haven’t tried it myself yet, but it looks interesting!

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates (50 pages in the meanwhile!) of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)

Nielsen Study confirms the Power of Recommendations

Last week I wrote about the Forrester Research Study confirming the power of the Magic Mail.

In the same email from Bill Cates there were also some numbers from Nielsen that I would like to share with you.

The Nielsen study measured the level of trust people have in certain “forms of advertising”.

At the bottom? “Text ads on mobile phones” at 24%. “Online banner ads” rated 37%.
“Emails signed up for” rated 54%.
“Consumer opinions posted online” was a strong second at 70%.
At the top? “Recommendations from people known” at 90%. AKA – a referral.

Of course we all know this, but is nice to have some rational study confim it, doesn’t it? 🙂

Now, if we combine the results from both the Forrester Research Study (emails from people you know are the most trustworthy source) and the Nielsen study (recommendations from people known is the best “form of advertising”), then you understand the power of the Magic Mail.

When you use LinkedIn to prepare yourself to find out who can write the Magic Mail for you, then you understand that doing business almost becomes a no-brainer.

To your success !

Jan

PS: get your free light version and free updates (50 pages in the meanwhile!) of the book How to REALLY use LinkedIn (or in Dutch: het boek Hoe LinkedIn nu ECHT gebruiken)

Forrester Research Study confirms the Power of the Magic Mail

In our presentations, training courses and in “How to REALLY use LinkedIn” we talk a lot about the power of what we call “The Magic Mail“.

In that email you are introduced by a common contact to the person you want to get in touch with.

We already knew from experience that this approach works like magic (hence the name :-)).

Now I’m glad that a research by Forrester confirms what we have been speaking about the whole time.

This is the conclusion of the study sent to me by Bill Cates, President of Referral Coach International (sign up for his referral tips, they are great!)

The Forrester Research Study measured the level of trust people place in different sources of information.

At the bottom of their trust scale was a “company blog” – receiving a trust rating of 16%.
In the middle were such things as “radio” – at 39% – and “social networking site profiles from people you know” – at 43%.
At the top of the list was “email from people you know” at 70%.

70% is already a great number (especially when compared with the other sources!), but it can be higher if the right words are used. More about that in a future blog post.

To your success !

Jan

How Solo Entrepreneurs Might also Benefit from the LinkedIn Lever when Blogging

Last week I shared some insights and numbers to show how a blog might benefit large organizations.

Many readers of this blog are solo entrepreneurs, so they might have felt “left out”.

However it doesn’t have to be the case.

Remember that the power of networking is in the second degree.

How apply this to blogging in a business environment?

These are the steps:

1. Define your target group.
2. Think about other suppliers to this target group.
3. Invite them to start a blog TOGETHER.
4. Make a list of topics and who’s going to write about which topic.
5. Make a timeline and make sure the team has a blog post at least every week.

The advantages are:

• You don’t have to write so much yourself. For example: if there are 5 contributors each if you only has to write 10 blog posts a year!
• You benefit from each other’s network: their network will read it and you will appear on their radar screen. The same thing happens with your network and your fellow bloggers when you post your tips and insights.
• You have partially the same advantages as larger companies when using Twitter, LinkedIn Status Updates and posts in LinkedIn Group Discussions.

To your success !

Jan