What to Message After Connecting on LinkedIn – The Warm Open

Karen Yankovich 0:00
She accepted your connection request four days ago. You know this because LinkedIn told you you opened the message box the same day. You typed “thanks for connecting, and then you looked at it and you deleted it because you heard my voice in your head saying, “Let’s make this real. So you typed something longer, then deleted that too, and now it’s Thursday, and the box is still open in a tab somewhere. And every time you see it, you feel a little worse because, you know, you know, you just-it’s been days now, so you started to not see it on purpose. Here’s what nobody tells you: Thanks for connecting was never the problem. Sending it would have been the same as sending nothing, right? The problem is you’re trying to write a message without a reason, and there’s no good version of that message. None. You could workshop it for a week, so today I’m going to give you the reason, and I’m going to show you the exact message that I sent that turned into a private client. Took me under a minute to write. It asked for absolutely nothing. I’m Karen Yankovich. This is Good Girls Get Rich, and we’re going to talk today about the warm open. So let’s sit in that open message box for a minute because I want you to understand what’s actually happening here. When somebody accepts your connection request, a door opens. That’s all it is, right? A door standing open, which is amazing because it’s how we build relationships. It’s how we start to grow our network full of amazing people. She said yes, right? She’s willing, and and what do most of us do with that open door? We just kind of stand in front of it and look at it, right? We think about walking through it later when we have something worth saying, and and you know, remember, we’re doing this like with all these tabs open on our computer, right? It’s it’s our attention is in 50 different places, so we think about okay, well, at some point I’ll have something worth saying, and and I’ll do it then. And later doesn’t have a time, right? Because there’s always a time when we’re sitting in front of our computer. I shouldn’t say that. There’s never a time that we’re sitting in front of our computer that all those tabs aren’t open, right? So the door just kind of stays open until it doesn’t matter anymore. And I’ve watched so many women do this. I mean, I’ve done it. I have connections sitting in my network right now from years ago, where the entire relationship is request, accept, silence. And I find them like you know how like you you decide you you’re going through your connections, and you’re like, “Let me find five people that do this, right? And then you look at it, and you’re like, “How are there no messages here? Like, I never messaged her, right? Or maybe you message her something, and it’s something cringe because you you were, or for me, like I’m always testing things, right? So that’s not a relationship. That’s just like stats, right? That’s just information analytics, and I and I know what you’re thinking because you have thought of this, you know, kind of hovering over that send button. I’ll just say thanks for connecting because it’s polite. It’s something, and something’s better than nothing. So I just want you to kind of put yourself on the other side of that message for a minute. You open it, it says thanks for connecting, and what do you write back? You’re welcome, right? There’s like nowhere to go with that. It’s a message with no reason to exist. They can feel that, and the door kind of swings shut anyway. You just did it politely, right? You closed it politely. So here’s the point I really want to name, though. A lot of you aren’t silent because you don’t know what to say. You’re silent because you don’t want to seem like you want to say something. Does that make sense? You don’t want to bother her. She’s busy. She’s important. Who are you to take up space in her inbox? And I want to be so unbelievably clear about this. That instinct comes from a great place, right? It comes from your heart. And I know, I I love when you’re working from your heart.

Karen Yankovich 3:40
When you’re when you’re creating strategy from your heart, it’s consideration, it’s respect. Nobody handed you bad character, right? They handed you bad advice. Every networking tip you’ve ever gotten was about growing your network. Connect, connect, connect. I mean, oh my gosh, there’s people that tell me, and I was taught to connect with 100 people a week. Like what? Like nobody teaches the part that comes after the yes, so you’re standing at this open door with like no idea of what walking through it looks like, protecting yourself from seeming pushy, but you’re also protecting yourself from being chosen, from getting that contract, from getting that opportunity, from being put on that board seat or getting the job or whatever it is you’re looking for, so here’s the fix, and it’s not a script because I am not a script or template person because it’s human, right? I want this to be human. The fix is a reason. A warm open needs a reason to exist, a real reason to exist, true and specific, and about the other person, not about you, not about her industry, not about her title, about her, about him, right? Something that happened this week, something that happened this month. She released a book. She spoke somewhere. You heard her in a podcast interview. She wrote a post that actually changed how you think about something. Maybe he got promoted or got quoted or got in. Reviewed, something happened and you noticed. That’s it. That’s the whole secret, right? The message writes itself once you have the reason. The reason is the hard part. And now maybe you’re thinking, but Karen, what if there is no reason? What if I just simply don’t have a reason. What if you like look at her profile, and there’s nothing, no recent posts, no news, nothing to notice? Then maybe she’s not the person to message yet, right? Or maybe it’s not the time to message her yet because there’s not a lot going on, right? Then that’s okay. Watch if it’s somebody you really want to be connected to. Watch, follow her. Turn on the bell. Right. Let her cross your feed if if she’s posting. Right. This is what the ritual is for that we’ve talked about. The 15 minutes a day we all we spend all of August building. Right. When you’re on LinkedIn every day, even for 15 minutes, reasons walk past you constantly. Somebody’s always launching somebody. Something. Somebody’s always celebrating something. Somebody’s always saying something worth responding to. So the ritual is the machine that produces the reason. This episode is what you do when one shows up. But let me just say this: like you often there’s other people like you that don’t that don’t want to post about this celebration stuff because they don’t want to brag, right? Like, did you feel that? Like, did you feel that somewhere in your body? So you you might have to go look for it. You might have to go look for it, right? You might have to again if it’s somebody you really want to be connected to. Throw their name in a Google search. See if anything comes up. Maybe there’s a press release. Maybe there’s a new podcast episode she was just on, right? Check some of her other social media. Search her name on LinkedIn. Maybe somebody tagged you in something, right? So, so don’t just like look at their feed and say, “Oh, there’s nothing here. Move on. Like, if you really want to connect with this person, dive in a little bit, right? Dive in a little bit, and and let me just kind of kill the the fake stuff while we’re here, because there’s a whole industry selling it right, personalised templates. You know the Warren. You’ve gotten them in the. You’ve gotten them right. Hi, first name. Right. I see we’re both in industry. That’s not personal, right? Swapping in her name is a mail merge. We all know that. We all have email lists. We all know how to put a name in a mail merge in an email. The same thing happens with people that are using AI tools on LinkedIn, P.S. 99% of them, if not 100% of them, are against LinkedIn’s terms of service, right? And they suck. They just suck. Nobody wants those messages, right?

Karen Yankovich 7:32
I remember getting a message one time from someone, and I really, really liked the first message. But like you, I let it sat there, and I’m like, kind of, let me think about how to respond because I looked at her profile. I really liked her profile. I thought there was opportunities, and then before I had a chance to respond, which was maybe the next day, she had messaged me again. I’m like, oh, here we go. This is all. This is all like a you know an AI tool that she’s using to just spam me with this stuff. And I was so disappointed. I almost wanted to respond to her and said, “I was really excited to connect with you until I started getting your your non personalised messages, right? You know, even if you just kind of mention her industry, it’s kind of like a fancy mail merge, right? It’s kind of like a mail merge with a thesaurus, right? She gets we get 50 of them a month, 100 of them a month, and we can smell it before we finish reading the first line, real specificity cannot be automated, and that is the entire point of it. And it might sound a little bit like when I’m like saying Google or like I’m taking too much time, but again, I want you to get results. If you’re doing this times five people, I want four of them to be on your calendar. So what’s that? Spend it. So so how I mean that’s a great way to get people on your calendar, right? So getting seen. We talked about a couple of weeks ago. We spent some time on borrowing stages, showing up, right? This right here is what being chosen, getting the actual opportunity is actually built out of one true real sentence to one true real person at the exact right moment. So I want to tell you about a contact that I had. My friend Sylvia. Sylvia was a connection of mine, not a client, not a friend. She’s you know we’ve gotten to know each other now, but she’s a connection. Somebody in my network, the way 1000s of people are in my network, you know, I teach this stuff, so I tend to get a lot of connection requests, especially if I’m speaking in front of a room. The whole room tends to connect with me, right? So, so which I want, which I want, right? So I have probably more connections than the average person, and I wish I could tell you that I know all of them, but come on, you know that I don’t, right? And that’s why it’s important to me that I I build actual relationships, so somehow, and I to to be honest, I it was probably part of the ritual, right? I think I I saw her post something in her feed about a book she had coming out, and I did the least impressive thing you will ever hear recommended on a business. Podcast. I congratulated her on her book coming out. Right, like real fancy message. Right, her book came out and I congratulated her. I said, you know, how exciting! This is amazing. I’m definitely going to pick it up. I love the work you do. I didn’t say let’s catch up. I didn’t say I want to hear more. It was just a straight up congratulations message. No pitch. No let’s hop on a call sometime. I did not pitch this woman because I I walked the talk one real sentence about a real thing that she did and I hit send and I went about my day and then the next day I come back and I see a message from Sylvia and I’m going to read it to you and it said hi Karen love your work I want to work with you later in the year when I wrap up one project and kick off my next project like I want to read that to you again. I sent a congratulations message, a message with no ask in it whatsoever. And what came back was, I want to work with you. I didn’t sell her. There was nothing to say yes to in the message. I didn’t create that demand. I couldn’t have because there was no pitch to respond to. Right, the interest already existed. Sylvia already knew my work.

Karen Yankovich 11:01
She already liked my work. She already had a work with Karen someday, filed away somewhere. But what she didn’t have was the doorway, right? My message didn’t manufacture anything. It opened the door she was already standing behind. And here’s the part that you know should keep you up at night in a good way. I think. How many Sylvias are standing behind doors in your network right now, people who already know what you do, already respect it, already have you filed under. I am going to work with this person someday. They might not message you first. Sylvia didn’t message me first. They’re waiting for the doorway, and you’re four days into staring at a message box, worried about bothering somebody. See how that works. See how that comes full circle. So let’s make this repeatable because a story that you can’t repeat is just like a nice story. A warm open is three things. Three things, and that’s what we’re talking about in this episode today. A warm open, thing number one, a real reason, something she did recently, not her existence, not her job title: Not love your energy. An event, a book, a talk, a podcast, the post, a promotion, something that recently happened. Number two, a specific detail, the thing that proves you actually looked. Name the chapter in the book. Name the line in the post that stuck with you. Quote something from the podcast she was interviewed on, name the thing that she said on that panel. Specificity is the whole difference between attention and flattery. And listen, we love flattery. I love flatteries. Say nice things about me. I love that. That would be amazing. But flattery doesn’t pay my bills, right? Flattery is generic. Attention is money, money getting, money grabbing. Attention is where the opportunities are, and in this world of AI, this specific detail thing is even more important. People don’t even know if you’re a real person half the time, right? Be a real person. Let them know you’re human. Give them a specific detail. And the third thing is zero ask. Nothing. Not a no call. No coffee. No pick your brain. No pick my brain. No link to your calendar. Please don’t do any of those things. And I know that this might be the one to make you nervous because it feels like leaving money on the table. And I’ve had countless conversations with clients about this. But Karen, I have this this webinar. It’s so good, and I really want them to see it. I want it in the hands of more people. I get that, but they don’t know you, right? It’s the opposite of leaving money on the table. The absence of an ask is what makes the reply honest. Sylvia said, “I want to work with you freely because nothing in my message pressured her to say anything at all. If I’d attached an ask, her yes would have been smaller or slower, or maybe wouldn’t have come at all because she’s like, wait, wait, I’m not ready yet, right? And before you send any message to anybody, I want you to run this test. If your message could go to 50 people or even five people, it isn’t a warm open. It’s spam. It’s polite spam, right? I don’t care how warm your adjectives are. If you could swap in a different name and it still makes sense, delete it and go find a real reason, please. Warm open can only have gone to this specific person. Okay, so now, if this were a movie, here’s how the rest of this goes, right? My message was so memorable that months later, Sylvia, unprompted, comes back and hires me, right? Be excellent, be memorable, and they come to you, and that’s the fairy tale, because I want to hear, I want you to hear what actually happened, because it’s better. Later in the year, went on my calendar, went in asana as a task, mine, not hers. The day Sylvia said later in the year, I made a note to circle back because later in the year is not a no; it’s an appointment nobody put on your calendar yet. So I put it on mine, right? I literally have an Asana board where, which are like just follow up, follow up with and with notes as to why I’m following up, right? Specific information, and I.

Karen Yankovich 14:59
When I send that next message, I always look for the green dot. You know what that means? If there’s a green dot next to somebody’s name when you look them up on LinkedIn, it means they are sitting in front of their computer looking at their LinkedIn screen. Okay, I would rather wait. I literally have follow-ups in my and Asana that say, “Look for the green dot, because I want to respond while she’s sitting there, that doesn’t mean she’s going to respond right back. But I do know that means she’s going to see it, right? So I sent the second message, like checking in. So it’s six months since your book came back. Tell me how things are going, right? And that’s when she became a private client. We worked together privately. She has sent me multiple clients since then. It has been an amazing, fun engagement, and she’s somebody that’s amazing to have in my life. And I want to tell you why I’m making such a big deal out of this because I know exactly what the follow up feels like for the women listening to this right now. It feels pushy. It feels like calling in a debt. And she said later, reaching back out feels like saying it’s later. Where’s my money? So you wait, right? She said later, it’s later. Where’s your credit card? You wait until she remembers, right? And later in the year becomes never, not because she changed her mind, but because nobody was holding the thread. That’s the good girl tax on this exact moment. The polite thing and the profitable thing feel like opposites. So you pay for politeness, politeness with the client opportunity that doesn’t appear. They’re not opposites. The follow up is not an imposition. The follow up is the second half of the same sentence. She told me when to come back. Right, circling back wasn’t pushy. It was me taking her at her word. Honestly, that’s the most respectful thing I could have done with what she said. Right. So the warm open isn’t just one message. It’s a thread, and somebody has to hold it, and that somebody is you. And when you do this, when you start doing this today, you start building your pipeline of these things, right? And come on, isn’t it amazing when you look at your calendar and it’s like, oh, it’s time to follow up with Mary, and then you follow up with Mary and she hands you her credit card. Like it’s it’s just you’re just showing up confidently, and not without expectation, absolutely no expectation. They’ll let you know if the time is right or not, right? I’m not here giving you all kinds of tips on how to, you know, how to overcome objections. Right, I’m not giving you any of that stuff. I just want you to stay connected and continue to build these relationships. So here’s your homework, and it’s one message. It’s an easy one. Go find one person who said yes to you and got silenced back. Somebody who accepted your request a week ago, a month ago, maybe even a year ago, right? The door, the door doesn’t expire. Find one true specific reason, something she did. Send her one sentence about it and ask for nothing. And before you hit send, run the test. If your message could go to 10 people or 50 people, it is not a warm open. Make it so specific it could only go to her, and then come back and tell us about it in the LinkedIn for Women community. LinkedIn for Women community.com is where we hang out and talk about these things. Post the reason you found, not the message. The reason, okay? I want to see what you noticed because noticing is the skill, and if you want the whole system, how getting seen turns into getting known, turns into getting chosen, the entire path that Sylvia walked from connection to client, that’s my free bar the stage masterclass.

Karen Yankovich 18:30
Go to karen yankovich.com/masterclass. That’s karen Yankovich.com/masterclass. It’s in the show notes in all the places. Next week we’re going to talk about the other end of this conversation, she said. “This was so helpful, and you said, “I’m so glad. And then the thread went quiet because neither of you said the money part, right? The silence costs real revenue, and next week we’re going to fix it. So I will see you there.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai