It seems lots of people want to connect to the Fearless Competitor and President of Find New Customers.  I get lots of Linkedin invitations, requests for help and blog comments.  So let’s set some ground rules on what I will and will not accept.

• Requests for help — I always want to do these, but if you beg, have misspelled words or a blatant sales pitch, the answer is “no.”  I fully understand that money is tight for many of us, but it does not take money to write well or check spelling.  Take your time, do it right, and I’m here to help.
• Linkedin connection requests - Get a lot of these too. Linkedin has a default message, but if you use it, it tells me you’re lazy. Take an extra 30 seconds to tell me why I should connect with you.  If you do this, I’m happy to connect.
• Blog comments - Love the comments people write on my blog. But again, take your time and write a thoughtful message.
• Tell the truth - There is a certain software company in Florida that told me they had 65 employees. After I joined, they handed me an employee directory with about 23 names on it.  Where’s everyone else? Then they posted to their Linkedin profile that they have 120 employees.  I’m sorry, but just tell the truth. If you have 23 employees, don’t say you have 65 or 120. As Jill Konrath wrote, if you just tell the truth, it’s easy to remember what you said.

Take your time and do quality work.  That’s all I ask.

Join us every Thursday at 8pm ET/5pm PT for Twitter chat about b2b demand generation. Just go to http://tweetchat.com/ and enter hashtag #b2bchat.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple.” He’s also the author of two highly acclaimed white papers, How to Find New Customers and Definitive Guide to Making Quota, as well the ebook, Prospect Driven Marketing. He’s been retained to write a new white paper and holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.

Find New Customers helps business develop and implement programs to improve the way they find and acquire new customers using best practices in lead generation.