Kevin Willett talks about the quantity of your connections not being as important as what you can do for them.

Last week I had a person connect with me on social media. When I sent him a message thanking him for connecting with me and asking him if I could help him, his response was “No, thanks. I am just growing my network.” Ok, where do I start with how wrong this is? How does connecting with me and then choosing to not engage with me help either of us? It’s simple, it doesn’t help. I don’t know anything about him or what he does for a living, so I have no way of knowing how to help him. Obviously, he had no intention of getting to know me or what I do either.

It reminds of when I was a little kid I loved collecting sports cards. Each year I would try to collect every card from the set and my goal was to having the biggest collection in the neighborhood, which I did by the way. I didn’t care who was on the card, if it was part of the collection, I had to have it.

Sadly many people treat their business connections like trading cards. It simply doesn’t work that way.  Connections are not part of a set that you need to collect. You need to take the time to build a relationship with them so they don’t become just a trading card in a shoe box under your bed.

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Kevin Willett is the Author of One Connection How you can grow your business  (and change the world) one connection at a time. The business networking book is available on Amazon. Purchase One Connection on Amazon

Kevin is also the CEO of the Friends of Kevin Networking Group  and the New England B2B Networking Group. Please connect with him on social media to hear about his upcoming business networking events.