Social Selling and The Final Four: How to Strengthen Relationships

If you are a fan of college basketball, you know that the following schools made it to the Final Four this past weekend:

• University of Connecticut


• University of Florida


• University of Kentucky


• University of Wisconsin

The Final Four is one of the most popular sporting events in the country. Alumni and fans of these schools are passionate about cheering their teams onto the national championship.

So why not use this as a great opportunity to congratulate your Connections who went to these schools?

The strategy is similar to the promotion/birthday/in-the-news feature in LinkedIn Connections wherein members can send a quick congratulatory note associate with some positive event. It raises your stock with the recipient by letting them know you are thinking of them. Dale Carnegie would love it.

Here is how I did it:

1. Go to “Advanced Search” and select filter criteria as shown below. The resulting page shows all your connections to congratulate.

a) Relationship = 1^st Connections

b) School = University of Connecticut, University of Florida, University of Kentucky, University of Wisconsin

2. Open a second browser window (not just a tab) to LinkedIn.com and click on the “Compose Message” button in the LinkedIn Inbox. Having the names in a second window makes the next step easier.

3. Start typing each person’s name into the To: field. LinkedIn’s auto-fill feature will pop up their name to select.

4. Enter a congratulatory note like this:

Congratulations on your school making it to the Final Four.

Good luck making history.

Your Name

5. IMPORTANT: Remember to UNCHECK the box that says, “Allow recipients to see each other’s names and email addresses”. Otherwise, your connections will know that you are congratulating their competition as well.

As a point of comparison, 1% of my network is from schools in The Final Four. Not bad considering I did not grow up or work in any of the four areas. If you did, your % will likely be higher.

Let me know what % of your Connections made the cut and what sort of responses you get.

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