Can spam be an opportunity?

LinkedIn is one of my favourite business tools. I’m quite an active member of this business / social network, and as such I have high visibility. This is good, as it opens many doors for me. It can also be annoying at times, because I have some basic expectations from other members of the network after taking the time to familiarise myself with LinkedIn as a tool, over the past 5 or so years. These expectations sometime leave me frustrated, as people who aren’t familiar with the network and the etiquette, are “breaking the (unwritten) rules” of engagement.

I think it is quite a basic requirement, before you reach out to other people (let me repeat: People!) in the network, to at least have your profile filled in: Your name, title, name of current (or past) business you’re affiliated with, and a recent photo. There’s also a basic etiquette requirement, that if you’re reaching out to someone you don’t know, that you at least introduce yourself, and your intentions when making contact (like you’d do in offline circumstances).

This week, I’ve received an invitation from Terrance T. (see below). Same boring message: “Hi Raz, I’d like to add you to my professional Network on LinkedIn.”
Although I HATE these unsolicited, impersonal messages, I always look at the source. I know that many people are still trying to find their feet in Social Media and LinkedIn, and making some rookie’s mistakes. This time, I looked at the profile. All I could see was:

The profile only displayed the name, and country of origin. Nice. Is this a great contact to have?? Not really… Curious, I clicked on Contact Info, to see if there’s any additional information there. I found an email address, which I recognised to be a real estate company. Still curious (and having a bit of time on my hands), I followed the Domain on the email address to the company website. I found their office is 400m away from mine! And Mr. T is their principal!

Within moments of receiving this unsolicited, impersonal, and spammy-looking LinkedIn invitation, I called the man who sent it (on his office phone number, conveniently listed on his company website), and  2 minutes later had arranged a meeting with him to see how I can help him with his social / digital footprint.

Sales opportunities are available everywhere. Once we recognise this to be the truth, we’ll find them….