How to improve chances of a networking response?

manpreet Best Answer 3 years ago

This is a fairly common challenge but I'm curious to hear about other people's success stories. I have a good 'network' on LinkedIn (1st degree connections). My network isn't made up of all the folks I've personally worked with/for, but often those who I've come across through non-direct sources e.g. a mention in an article/journal, an active poster on LinkedIn in an area of my interest, a person within my company whom I don't necessarily know but works in an area either closely related to mine or one I have professional interests in.

Recently, I made a connection with a senior executive in my company who accepted my LinkedIn request, responded back saying "happy to help however I can" and referred me (via the LinkedIn response message) to another executive in the company based in a different location. I attempted to reach out to both via internal email to setup some time to get to know more about their business areas, however neither of them accepted my meeting invites/messages.

How do you deal with such situations where the "leaders" don't necessarily appear to be open to fostering the "one team" and "work together" notions that most companies (definitely my company's motto) appear to (or rather pretend to) live by?

As a side note: Anytime I've had individuals reach out to me for advice, I've always been eager to find time to give them all the info/guidance I can. My motivation to do is such experiences as described above where I'm on the other side of the fence, needing help/guidance/support.