Complete The Connection

If you’ve ever been connected with another person through the unsolicited efforts of a third-party mutual friend, they took a risk in order to put the two of you together.

In making the referral, that person extended their own reputation (what each of you thought about him or her individually) in the hopes of creating a value connection between the two of you.

Complete the connection by keeping your friend in the loop on the outcome and progress of the new relationship they sparked.

It’s been said that 76% of employees don’t contribute ideas to their companies or add their input to ‘suggestion boxes’ because they don’t believe anything is being done with the ideas they contribute. Employers are missing out on millions of dollars of ideas from internal sources simply because they don’t think to keep team members in the loop regarding their efforts to implement contributed ideas.

Look at mystarbucksidea.com.

It was basically a giant public suggestion box for the most successful coffee brand in the world. They received millions of ideas from customers and non-customers, employees and shareholders to review and consider for implementation. I think the key component to the success of that site was the follow up — Starbucks told the contributors where their idea was in the process. Whether it was under consideration, on hold, or under active development.

Don’t you owe it to your friends to share the same sort of status update?

I can tell you first-hand that completing the connection with a progress update about your new contact will actually yield more connections.

I share ideas with everyone, but I share more ideas with those who reciprocate by sharing their progress and the actions they’ve taken resulting from the ideas I first shared with them.