Another great email question:

Hi Marc,

I have a client who is having difficulty getting reviews for their business. He has even written some recommendations to guide his recommenders and told them to make whatever changes they need  to and still they don’t respond.

He has plenty of reviews elsewhere that talk about how great he was to work with. I told the client that those reviews were just as important as LinkedIn recommendations. I would appreciate any suggestions you might have.

I replied:

If it’s not meant to be, he should move on and approach others who care enough to spend the time and brain cells to help him with recos to succeed further.

Why?

First, LinkedIn reminds them every 2 weeks that they owe you the reco that you requested.

I always believed my theory that 98% of your connections like you and the other 2% love you enough to commit in writing over their name how they have seen your true brilliance in action.

So if you ask the right person for a recommendation, provide them with the outline/essentials of what you want them to say on your behalf, allow them artistic license to add to it, and then review the results.

Befoire you actually publish it, you can ask them to edit, add, change, etc. They should be happy to make that change to get it just right. For both of you.

But if they won’t budge enough to reply, spend the quality time, and/or admire your past efforts in this essential imprimatur of your best skills and traits, go elsewhere. Cut bait.

As I said above it wasn’t meant to be.

Don’t waste brain cells on them, invest in others.