A common mistake in Linkedin is to send a message immediately to all those people who accept your invitations even when they haven’t even said a word yet. Now, why is this a mistake?

1. Sending a second message when you have not yet received a response from the other person and if a reasonable amount of time has passed, is SPAM. Linkedin will detect this behavior and your profile will be penalized giving you less visibility and damaging your SSI (Social Selling Index).

2. Think of it this way: imagine you enter a store to buy something and you stop to look at the window display: you haven’t yet decided if you want to buy or even if you are really interested in the products you are looking at. Suddenly, the salesperson behind the counter comes up to you and gives you a 10-minute speech about the advantages of their products, why you should buy in their store and more. What is your feeling? Positive or Negative? Unfortunately, the feeling, almost in 100% of the cases, is extremely negative, and the reason is simply that you have not asked for anything, you have not even given your OK to try to sell and this is the same thing you do when you send a message trying to sell to someone who has just accepted your invitation on Linkedin.

3. They have only accepted you, they probably haven’t even read the text of your invitation, so why are you trying to sell to them right off the bat without even trying to establish a relationship? The answer: out of anxiety and desperation, the #1 mistake of those who offer services on Linkedin. You are so desperate to sell that you forget the most basic part of selling, which is to establish empathy, listen to your potential client, and then see if there is a real match between what you have to offer and his need (if he has one).

You can learn more about common mistakes on Linkedin and what kind of follow up you should do to your business opportunities here:

Common mistakes in Linkedin invitations

What kind of follow up should I do to those who leave me their email on Linkedin?

Finally, by sending a manual message, you interrupt the operation of LVI. This means that LVI will detect that there has been a manual interaction and will not continue to follow up with people who do not respond. LVI sequences have intervals and a specific technique so that your messages have the best chance of getting a response. The average response rate to invitations and messages on Linkedin is 20%, which means that if you incur in this spamming practice your response rate will drop significantly and you will have less results.

Remember that time is a critical variable when it comes to selling. If you can’t wait long enough for a second message to make sense, you will lose many opportunities simply out of anxiety. LVI is a tool that automates your Linkedin activity taking into account these deadlines, sending messages with optimized intervals so that your messages are not considered spam and you have more chances to get feedback. Why hire an automation tool if you will follow up manually?