You will take real conversations through the steps and record where they stall.
After a few weeks of the daily routine, Wei Ling had a dozen people who had engaged with her comments, a few new connections, some message threads and two meetings in her calendar. What she didn't have was any idea where the others had gone. Some had accepted her request and never answered a message. Some had answered once and stopped. She couldn't tell whether the problem was her connection notes, her first messages or her meeting suggestions.
This exercise fixes that. You take ten real conversations through the steps from modules 3 and 4, track where each one gets to over two weeks, and find the step where most of them stall. Then you change one thing at that step.
Choose ten people who have engaged with you: replied to a comment, commented on your post or viewed your profile after an exchange. Your log from lesson 3.3, A 15-minute daily engagement routine, should give you most of them.
Set up a sheet with one row per person and these columns: name, how they first engaged, current stage, date of last move, what you last sent, and notes. The stages are four: commented (you've had a public exchange), connected (they accepted your request), messaging (they replied to a direct message), and meeting booked.
Put each person at the stage they've reached today. Most will start at commented.
Over the next two weeks, look at each person and ask what the next step is, using what you've learned. Someone who has engaged twice in public is ready for a connection request with a note about your shared conversation, as in lesson 4.1, When to move from comment to direct message. Someone who accepted a few days ago gets a first message that continues the thread, as in lesson 4.2, The first direct message is about them. Someone who has described a problem you help with gets a meeting suggestion, as in lesson 4.3, Suggesting the meeting without the hard sell.
Move each person one step at a time and only when it fits. Don't push someone from connected to meeting in one message because the exercise is running out of days.
Every time you send something, update the row: the new stage if it changed, the date and a few words on what you sent. If someone stops responding, leave them at their stage and note that.
After two weeks, count how many people reached each stage. Here is Wei Ling's tracker as a worked example, with figures from her two weeks:
Commented: 10 people Connected: 7 accepted her request Messaging: 3 replied to her first message Meeting booked: 2
Now look at the drop between each pair of stages. From commented to connected she lost 3 of 10. From connected to messaging she lost 4 of 7, more than half. From messaging to meeting she lost 1 of 3. The biggest drop, both in number of people and as a share, is between connecting and the first message.
Then read the "what you last sent" column for the people who dropped off at that step. Wei Ling found that the four who never replied had all received first messages that ended with a link to an article and no question. The three who replied had each been asked something about their clinic.
Pick the step with the biggest drop and write one change for it. Only one, so that next time you can tell whether it helped.
Wei Ling rewrote her first message to end with a question about the reader's own clinic every time, and to put any article link second rather than leading with it. Her change, written in one line: "Every first message ends with a question about how their clinic handles the problem we discussed."
Arjun's tracker showed a different pattern. Most of his people replied to first messages, but few agreed to a meeting. Reading his suggestions, he saw he'd been offering "a chat about your financial plan", which sounded like a sales meeting. His change was to name the specific question each person had raised and offer 30 minutes on that alone.
Your weakest step might be different again. If few people accept your requests, look at your connection notes. If people message happily but meetings don't follow, look at when you're suggesting them and how.
A finished tracker shows ten named people, each with their stage at the end of two weeks, the date of their last move and what you last sent. Under it you have the count at each stage, the step with the biggest drop, and one written change for that step, with the rewritten message if the change is to a message. The activity below asks you to run the two weeks and write that change.
Track ten conversations for two weeks through each step and write one change to make at the step where most stalled.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).