I Believe That Mutual Opportunity Was The Intent

// January 6th, 2008 // Brain Dump

There are very few times where excitement hits such a peak in business like when two people come together for a brand new business opportunity. You know the ones I’m talking about – the ones where you find yourself talking to someone new, not trying to sell each other something, yet out of the conversation there is the realization how both companies can work together to create a new and bigger opportunity.

At these times the scope of vision becomes far as well as wide, and the bottom line has been moved to the background simply because both parties know that it will be well looked after. What can be focused on is just how big, and how significant this new win-win situation can truly be.

I believe this experience and this excitement is exactly what the early adopters of LinkedIn were expecting and working towards. The chance encounters between connections which at any moment have the potential to develop into significant opportunities – either for ourselves, or someone we know in our respective networks.

Sadly though when you open a website to the public you begin to attract the sellers of the crowd. The ones who join and create large networks of people for the express purpose of selling their goods to you. Now I’m not saying that selling is not important, however, when networking for the express purpose of selling something to someone, it somehow changes the experience in that it is this person out for themselves and their bottom line as opposed to us and our bottom line.

As a LinkedIn Open Networker (LION) I receive many requests on a daily basis to connect with other people. I have no problem open networking, and I accept all requests to connect (well, except for one yesterday from a “crazy” who threw off so many warning bells it wasn’t funny – him no, you yes), but the sad thing is the very small percentage of requests that are from people looking for the excitement of unknown opportunity. Many are sales reps from this company, or recruiters from that company out looking for their next sale to meet their quarterly targets.

More and more we’ve got companies saying yes to their employees using the company client list to connect with their existing or even past customers. Just today I received a connection from someone I don’t know, working for a company I used to deal with, yet from an office in a country I didn’t deal with.

So how does this type of thing happen?

Well, my guess is that this person decided to upload a contact list provided by the company (knowingly or not – an entirely different post all to its own!) and connect with as many clients as possible. Sadly I worked with only the Canadian sales rep, the Canadian warehouse, I was not a significant account on anyone’s radar, and as of a couple months ago the Canadian sales rep knows without question that I am no longer a client of theirs. Yet here I receive an invitation to connect from someone in the US office.

Yes, this could be a completely random situation where this person would have no way of knowing my previous relationship with their company, this could be someone out looking to sell me something based on an old client list, or it could fall anywhere in between.

But what happens to sites like LinkedIn (and Facebook – yes, we’re starting to see it there too) as the numbers begin to increase with people simply looking to sell stuff? What happens when the shift happens away from a mutual opportunity agenda to a personal sales agenda?

I am not saying that there isn’t opportunity found daily by many, many people – it happens and there are still those involved looking for the excitement of unknown opportunity – yet can we really ignore the growing number of people in it to make money for themselves?

I am no expert at selling, or uncovering unknown opportunities – I have experience with both, yet what I know is that it’s the discovered opportunities between two parties that are much sweeter than being sold something from someone else’s agenda.

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