From Connection to Collaboration: Networking Secrets with Ed Forteau

Ed , thank you so much for being here .

So I was a bit of an employer back then , and also like the president of groups and organizations that I belong to . So I always felt like I was a leader and thought that I should be helping and supporting the people that were working with me , and that's just something that I've done all my life .

And so I told them , like why don't we start working more on our warm network and expanding the warm network ? And I came up with this concept called the strategic ally method , which basically expands your warm network so that the thing that you are getting the most clients from networking and referrals you're able to expand that .

Because in the past once you ran out of your warm network , the referrals kind of dried up . And once you talk to everybody in networking groups , again business kind of dried up . And once you talk to everybody in networking groups , again business kind of

dried up . So we created this to expand that , so you basically have a never-ending pool of warm people that you can connect with .

Ultimately , what happens ? Because we're all in business , we end up talking shop .

We do business with people we're comfortable with , and so once you get to a level where you're comfortable with the other person and they trust you , then the next step is just for them to have confidence in the things that you do and the way we approach that is , we let our content do our selling for us .

So we're out there making friends , building relationships , and we're letting our content do the selling of what we do and how well we do it Our work friends , I call them .

They're exposed to this and over time , when they're looking for somebody to help them to solve the problem that we solve , and if we do a good job of identifying those potential work friends that have the actual problem that we can solve , they will naturally ask us to help them without us having to do any selling at all .

You're focused on what you want for them , and I think they feel that in the conversation and as you're building that relationship .

When you go to that , you have growth and you have catch-up , and the catch-up part is people that have birthdays or work anniversaries and new jobs , and LinkedIn makes it very easy for you to reach out to people using that . So you go to that section of catch up and then you just start clicking .

You click for the birthday and it'll give you the birthday message . You click the gift . You want to make sure you include the gift . Some of my clients think it's a little silly to send a gift , but the gift is what makes the whole thing work . So you're just clicking . You're going through five minutes a day .

You're just clicking the birthday message and the gift and about 10 to 20% of those people will get back to you and some of them will start a conversation . Some of them will just say thank you the key to what you do after they get back to you is the important thing . The thing that you have to keep in mind is I'm just making friends .

I'm not trying to sell anybody , so what you don't want to do is just send your booking link or send them a report or ask them , if there's , you say how are you doing ? That's an uncomfortable question , Like you have to think in terms of whatever you say to them , how are they going to respond to it .

So the easiest thing to do is you look at the profile , look at the last couple of posts that they've done and you comment on their last couple of posts . Just say something about what you learned from the posts that they had and maybe ask them a question about that .

Or there's something new in their profile that you didn't see and you ask them about that , and that way you can get them into a conversation just after them saying thank you for wishing me a happy birthday , and then you can ask them , because we're not friends generally , we're just connections . We probably don't know them that well .

Once you get into a conversation , you can start getting into more personal things like what did you do on your birthday ? Did you have cake ? Did you go out to dinner . Did you do this or that ? Now you're starting to get comfortable with that person . They're getting comfortable with you , which is the first step to doing business with anybody .

I've got this solution that I think would help you in your business . Would you like to meet with me for 15 minutes ? Or can I send you a report or all kinds of stuff that we're really not that interested in ? And so what we do is , when we send a connection message

, when somebody accepts it , what we say is thanks for connecting with me and that's it . Then what I do is I do what I call a welcome package . So you say well , you connected with me , and I'm going to do several things . First , I'm going to thank you for connecting with me . Next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go to your profile .

I'm going to look through things connecting with me . Next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go to your profile . I'm going to look through things and I may like two or three of your posts . I might even comment on one of your posts , and then I may endorse one of your skills and then I'm going to sit back and wait .

I know that those have shown up in your notifications . So three likes , that means there's three notifications that showed up and I've endorsed your skills . So another notification and maybe I even commented . So there's a fifth notification . I want to see if you're going to come back to my profile and say who's this new connection of mine ? Who did all of that ?

If you're curious enough to look at my profile , then that's somebody I could probably develop a relationship with now . If you didn't , then I know I may have to do a little bit more work . I'm going to come back to your profile once a week , once a month , once every two weeks , like a post , and see what happens and slowly build that relationship .

I think the biggest problem that we all run into when we're connecting with somebody new is we'll have a really short conversation after we connect . A lot of times there's no conversation at all and then nothing happens .

It's kind of like when you come across somebody in an aisleway and you acknowledge that they're there , like hi , or how you doing , and you respond I'm doing well , or how's your day , it's good .

And then you keep going and nothing else happens beyond that , and I think that's a big problem on LinkedIn , where you miss this opportunity to actually develop a relationship with your connections , where most people don't . Let me ask you as a percentage how many of your connections do you have any type of relationship with ?

So the first thing to do is start to nurture the relationship and then see where it goes From there . What I'm always looking to do is support their content .

So , because it's really the only thing I can do is support their content right out of the gate and let's see whether they're willing to reciprocate , I may have to ask them and I might do that a week or two later . The thing that happens once you start reciprocating each other's content or supporting each other's content , is you become work friends .

It changes the relationship . At that point , the next thing you can ask them is if they would like to have some formal relationship where we're supporting each other's content and after that , somebody that would not normally set a meeting with you is willing to , after you do this for a week or two .

If I were to come to you after we've supported each other's content for a couple of weeks and say , william , would you be open or would you be willing to meet with me on Zoom ? I had a couple of things I wanted to ask you . More than likely you're going to say yes . Think of , if you're working somewhere and a colleague

asked you if you had 10 minutes to talk about something and to come into my office , you're going to agree to that . If you didn't know who the person was , you would say , well , what's this about ? You just start asking questions about what it is . But because you're work friends , there's no questions . Okay , sure , I'll do that .

And that's how you start to really elevate the relationship to a point where you're building trust . They see , because they're looking at your content every day , every other day , they see what you do . It then becomes easy for them to take the next step and say let's collaborate on something . Maybe let's .

I can refer business to you , or we can refer business back and forth .

This is so intentional , ed , and when we first talked about this and you shared this concept with me , it absolutely fascinates me , because you're bringing the intentionality that we would normally bring to a friendship , to a relationship in real life , into the digital space , and I think a lot of people don't know how to do that , and that feels like one of the

big drivers why you wrote this book . Is that right ? It ?

I have clients that have referred way more business to me than I've gotten from them , that have referred way more business to me than I've gotten from them . I've worked with them on projects and gotten more business from that relationship than I have from the client relationship , and I understand that we need to make money today .

We can't wait for months or so before somebody starts referring business to us , but people will do business with you because they're comfortable with you . It's a very predictable outcome when you follow this process . If you do it right , you're going to have one of four outcomes .

They're going to either be a friend and they're going to just support your content , and that's maybe as far as it will ever go . But there's value there because if you like my content and here's a trick , an algorithm trick If , let's say , you and I are connected , and then I'm connected and you and I are also connected by a guy named let's call him Dave .

And so when you like my content because the three of us are connected Dave is also going to see that you liked my content . And , let's say , dave is a person that I want to do business with . So he's seeing you somewhat endorse my content day after day after day .

And because my content is showing up in Dave's feed , because you like it , because we have this three-way triangle going on , eventually Dave is going to reach out to me . Eventually Dave is going to reach out to me and I don't even have to have a connection with him .

But he could be like a regular connection that he's connected to me , but we really don't have this relationship . But you and I have a relationship . You and Dave may have a relationship and I get to piggyback off of that relationship . So that's one of the ways that we can do this .

The other thing is , once you have a work relationship with somebody , it's pretty predictable what the next step in the relationship is going to be , so you can ask them . After we've been supporting each other's content for a little while , this has been working really well . So , william , this has been working really well .

I wonder if there's a way for us to elevate this so we could both benefit more from what we're doing . And I put that in your hands Now . Over time I may be dropping little hints about what we could do , so that sticks in your subconscious . So when I ask you that question , I've kind of primed the answer without having to try to the answer .

Without having to try to . I don't want to

call it manipulative , because this is something that we tend to do when we get excited about stuff . Like I might say , because Dave , we have this three-way relationship , dave and I are working together and I'll say I just started working with Dave and I know you and Dave are connected .

I think what we've been doing together and supporting each other's content resulted in that . So it's kind of like a referral . So I just wanted to let you know I'm really excited . That's a normal conversation to have with somebody .

But if we understand the intent , not the intent , the result of having that conversation is I've already put in your subconscious mind that you could refer business to me by just the way I phrased it . So when I ask you is there a way that we could elevate what we're doing so that we could benefit more from our relationship , in your head .

You already have , oh , referrals , or we could collaborate . I could say that I'm collaborating with some other person that I'm doing this with , so it's pretty predictable what you're going to choose Now .

You may not choose collaboration , referral partner or client , but you'll end up just staying the status quo and remaining a friend and we continue to support each other's content . You're going to win , no matter what you choose . You're going to win , no matter what you choose .

This feels like it's going to take a lot of time , though , and I imagine the business leaders , the business owners who are listening to this , are like great , one more thing to do . How long is this going to take ? Is this like three hours a day , like I don't have three hours a day ? How long does it really take to do what you're describing ?

So let's back off just a little bit . Let this play out . Usually , it takes from the time that , let's say , I connect with someone to the time we start becoming support partners and we're making a decision of elevating the relationship to something else is about a week to two weeks . It doesn't take very long at all . It's a fairly short sales cycle .

There's ways to expand upon this . I call them snowball campaigns , where I'm looking for people in your first level Now that we're work friends , I'm looking at people on your first level my second level I can do this in Sales Navigator that are similar to you , and there are going to be people that are similar to you .

We connect to people that are in the same profession , that do the same things , so there'll be people that have the same problems you have that I'm solving for you or can solve for you .

So I'll reach out to those people that are second level to me , first level to you , and I'll say that William and I have been putting our heads together on a few things and I'm curious , I wonder if you'd be open to connecting .

And so I've used you as the connection point , the person that we're connected to , and I haven't said anything other than we're putting our heads together , we're doing a couple of things , collaborating on a couple of things . I haven't said that you're a client ,

but I have given an indication that there's opportunity for us to work together on something that William and I are seeing success with . So those connection requests get about a 60 to 80 percent acceptance rate . Connection requests get about a 60 to 80% acceptance rate . Now the same thing happens that I mentioned before .

Now that we have this three-way connection going on , when you like or engage with my content , that person is going to see that You're basically giving me an endorsement and you're saying nice things about me in comments .

I'm saying nice things about you I can solve this guy's problem because I picked him out as someone who's got a problem that I can solve , and he's seeing that you're saying Ed can fix this problem , this , this and the other , and you two know each other , that person . I don't have to sell them , I really don't .

They tend to come to me and ask hey , I see that William's been talking about some of the things you do . I'm kind of interested if you could help me with this . It works much better than any type of ad . You can run cold email very low probability things that people are doing right now .

For example , cold email you would have to send at minimum if , if you're really good at it because we do work on cold email campaigns for clients you would be lucky to get an appointment for every 200 emails you send . I don't think people wrap their heads around that number . That means you have a 0.5% success rate one in 200 . It's terrible odds .

If you were to send DMs direct messages to people , you're going to have to send 400 of those to get one appointment .

As I was talking about this stuff in my book , my wife looked at it and she said mainly because they don't know any better way to do it , and we're trying to offer an option that's very , very similar to what they're used to and that's networking and referrals .

This is just an extension of that in a way that you can scale it and control the process and control the process .

You want to get on the solution side of this and that's one thing I appreciate about you . You are constantly leading with that kind of generosity , not just with your clients , but with people that you interact with and meet , regardless of whether they're going to be clients or not .

You take the pressure out of that and I think that's something everybody listening can really take and leverage and begin to implement in their own leadership .

It's a very natural way to meet people and instead of having unconscious , I'd say incompetence in your approach , like priming , subconscious , suggestion things that my wife would say when she first saw that in the book , she said well , that's kind of what . Did she call it ?

Well , not aggressive , I forget the term that she used and I said wait a second , you use this on me all the time without really knowing that you're doing it . If you understand how this has an impact on the other person , then you can apply it in a way that is beneficial to everyone .

Clearly , you could misuse this if you wanted to , but if you really are going at this with the intent that I'm just trying to make a friend and I know that this friend could use what I have to offer , but I don't want to push it on them . I want them to discover it and they will you have to trust that .

They will Just make sure that you're not overstepping the relationship , you're not selling . All the pieces fall into place if you do it right .

Right , how you posture yourself , the language you use , people pick up on those things , even if it's on a subconscious level , even if it's on a subconscious level . And I love the heart behind what you're describing here and how anybody listening can leverage this ,

can begin to implement this for the good of the people that they're interacting with . That will eventually reflect in positivity on their business , their bottom line as well . But that's not the motivation . I want to talk about you for a second , ed , you are a leader today that is at a different place in your leadership journey than you were five years ago .

You're leading at a different level today and three , four or five years from now , your team , your business , is going to need you to lead at a yet higher level . What do you do to stay on top of your game ? What do you do to stay on top of your game ?

How do you level up with the new leadership skills that your team and your business are going to need you to have .

A rising tide lifts all boats and I understand that some people can get impatient . They want to skip steps and I have to . What I tell people when we start working together is I don't know if you're a football fan or not . Oh yeah , but back in the 60s the Green Bay Packers had what they called the Packer Suite . Vincent Lombardi was the head coach .

It was an unstoppable play and I tell people I'm going to hand you the Green Bay Suite . This approach always works . But I'm going to give you exact words to say . I'm going to give you exactly what to say . I'm going to give you exactly what to do , but you have to execute and you can't overthink it . You have to do exactly what's laid out for you .

You can't ad lib , you can't go off script . If people didn't do their exact job in the grain-based sweep and the reason why it works so well is because they just practice it over and over and over and over again , because everybody knew exactly what their job was If you do this exactly the way it's laid out for you , it will succeed .

You'll get the business that you want . You won't have to start worrying about or be up late at night saying I don't have any business right now . Do I run ads ? Do I send cold email ? Do I send direct mail ? Do I pay cold calls ? No , you don't have to do any of that stuff .

This is a very predictable process and once you've built your network of work friends , the business will come in in a steady stream and you can adjust the amount of business that comes in based on how you choose your work friends and how you execute the plan .

I can remember when I first moved to Michigan I had a pretty good coaching business that I thought could travel . So we moved from Minneapolis to Michigan . It didn't travel as well as I thought it was . I was more out of sight , out of mind , even though most of my clients we talk via phone . Because I moved out of state .

For some reason , the relationships got kind of disconnected business every month and trying to make relationships here in Michigan , making new relationships was difficult . This was 20 , 22 years ago and we had bought a house , probably spent more than we should have on it , and we were out of cash . There was no money in the bank account and it was December .

I'm looking at not having any Christmas presents for anybody , but can I pay the mortgage in January ? And there was not enough money to do that or keep the lights on or any stuff . So I got out Yellow Pages books and I started dialing . I asked my wife and my daughters .

She stayed with my in-laws , which are about an hour and a half away from us at the time , and I said I just have to focus and make phone calls . So I'm just smiling and dialing I don't like making cold calls at all but what choice did I have ?

I got down to the 20 , I think it was the 22nd or the 23rd it had no success and I knew I've got to get at least one sale here today , because it's the 24th tomorrow and once we get into Christmas there's not going to be anything .

We're going to be in a position where we have to move , the house will get foreclosed on and I made a sale I think it was like 3 o'clock that day , didn't know the person , but I sent them an invoice , faxed it to them . They filled out the invoice , sent it back for $4,000 .

I go okay , I've got enough to pay rent , I've got enough to pay mortgage right now . But I cut it really close and I've been close to that position before where I thought I'll never be in that position again .

But I think the thing that entrepreneurs don't realize is that what you have right now is no guarantee that it's going to always be this good forever . We have ups and downs and there's things that will happen that we have absolutely no control over , that can disrupt us , but you have to hang in there and have faith and belief that you can make it through .

I think hope . I had a post a couple of weeks ago just about hope . I think hope is what drives the entrepreneur , the hope that things will get better , that things will work out , and sometimes all you have is that and you have to lean on that to get through the tough times .

You are constantly learning and growing , and we've talked about that already . Is there a book that has made a big difference in your journey that you would recommend to everybody listening ? Hey , if you haven't read this , this was a game changer for me .

But it really does talk about the need to get away from the pitching , the selling . It's more of a psychological book on persuasion , but an ethical persuasion , and then , like I mentioned before , having conscious competence in what you're doing .

Once you're able to make that shift and internalize it , then you get away from all the salesy cringey language which repels people and you start attracting more people . And if you can do that , then you'll find both success in your business and happiness .

Yeah , LinkedIn that we're doing with a lot of different professionals , and you'll find really good information there on business building , things that you could be doing , things you could be doing with email also . If you are willing to do that , I think you'll find that there's going to be a wealth of information that will help you build your business .

Second , if you don't have a copy of my newest book , Catalytic Leadership , I'd love to put a copy in your hands . If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom , you can get a copy for free . Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out . My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible .

This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space , in business , government , nonprofits , education and the local church . You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about .

And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader , I'd be honored to help you . Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me . Stay tuned for our next episode next week .