Getting Started

Most of these steps are pretty quick and can be done in a matter of minutes. If you'd like a full tour of Connect The Dots, and all its features, attend one of our white glove onboarding sessions.

By the end of step 3: You'll have all your relationships perfectly organized.
By the end of step 5: You'll have multiplied your network intelligence 10x.

Steps to Get Started

Install the Chrome extension and import your LinkedIn contacts
Add an email account (100% optional)
Turn on send permissions
Review your relationships
Customize your sharing preferences
Extend invites to important connectors

Step 1: Install the extension and import your LinkedIn contacts

Visit http://ctd.ai/chrome and download the extension. It's very simple and should take less than two minutes to set up. You sign in with Google or Outlook and click on the Ok button to import your LinkedIn contacts. That's it.

You'll be able to search through your SuperGraph for people, companies, and job titles. Or you can get relationship insights in context as you browse LinkedIn, Gmail, or Salesforce.

What is the impact of importing LinkedIn?
You might have 1,000 LinkedIn connections, and maybe more. Connect The Dots enriches these contacts with a score, email history, contact information, mutual contacts, and career overlaps. You're also surfacing more potential contacts for all the people you're connected to, so everyone's network score grows.

FAQs

If I don't use Google Chrome, is there another way to upload my LinkedIn connections?

Step 2: Add an email account (100% Optional)

You can start with just your LinkedIn contacts. Or just your work contacts. But the best way to get a complete view of your network is to have all three. With three source accounts, your SuperGraph is going to start to feel complete.

What is the impact of adding an account?
On average, connecting a personal email will add 7 years of history and 123 strong & familiar relationships. Connecting a work email will add 2.5 years of history and 128 strong & familiar relationships. The total number of contacts including weak connections is roughly 5,867. Each year you keep a connected account you should expect to see your Rolodex grow by 15%. It should also be noted that there is a multiplier effect with career overlaps. Every additional contact that you know will have hundreds of career overlaps that will match up with the people you're trying to reach.

FAQs

Step 3: Turn on send permissions

When you find someone you want to reach, you want to quickly send an email. Connect The Dots has added Google and Microsoft Send Permissions, so you can use our email editor, and templates, and have the messages sent via your email. They'll appear in your sent items folder and all the responses will come back to your inbox. You can set up send permissions for your personal email, or have your G-Suite or Outlook Admin set up permissions for everyone in your company.

What is the Impact of setting up send permissions?
With send permissions turned on, asking for help becomes simple and frictionless. We'll recommend templates that require minimal customization. You can make dozens of asks, and keep in touch with important people in your network. This will lead to more meetings, faster cycle times, bigger deals, and more career growth.

FAQs

Step 4: Review your relationships

When you log in to Connect The Dots all of your relationships will be perfectly organized and sorted by relationship strength. We recommend clicking on the "people tab" and running through your familiar and weak connections. In some cases you might want to adjust weak connections up to familiar or strong ones. Why would that be?

It’s someone you haven’t communicated with over email in years, but you know each other well
You see them socially or have a texting relationship that is not fully captured

What is the impact of adjusting scores?
This step is 100% optional. The upside is that you invest 20 minutes in improving your data and you might be able to increase your strong & familiar contacts by 30%. This keeps those folks top-of-mind when you're using the app, but it also highlights more places where you can provide insight, influence, and warm introductions to people in your network. There's value in being in the information flow and helping others out where you can.

FAQs

How do we calculate relationship scores?

Step 5: Customize your sharing preferences

For most people, you can skip this step. The default settings are what we recommend. Within Connect The Dots, you share minimal information about the relationships in your network. The strength of your relationship, name, title, and current organization. That’s it.

Privacy is completely in your control. If you don’t want specific Connect The Dot users (and their companies) to see your network, you can make them private or block them completely. Every contact and company in Connect The Dots has 3 options you can specify:

Public - Your contacts will see who is in your network
Private - Private contacts don't show up in your network
Blocked - Blocked contacts and companies can't see your network

To perform on of these actions: 1) Go to your "people" or "companies" list, click on the three grey dots on the right side of your screen, and select which option you prefer. 2) Open the details page for a specific company, and select either the make private or block symbol in the top right corner below your name.

Step 6: Extend invites to important connectors

Once you've got a complete list of all the contacts and companies you've engaged with, the next step is to invite more connectors to the network. By doing so, you are significantly increasing the number of potential contacts you have. The more connectors, the greater the likelihood of opening doors and unlocking new opportunities. Even if you don't know a single person at a specific company, chances are you know people that do; Connect The Dots will help you find a way in.

What is the impact of adding connectors?
On average everyone you invite to Connect The Dots will bring 277 strong and familiar relationships to table. Think of the power of having 100 coworkers on the platform or adding a couple important super-connectors! It a creates a dramatic increase in the number of potential contacts you can uncover or your team can uncover. If you can increase your overall Network Score 2x it makes every subsequent search you do way more powerful!

So the question is, who should you invite?

Your Family: This is a great place to start. Your family wants to help. Particularly if you’re young in your career, your parents' networks could be a huge asset.

Friends & Old Colleagues: Whose network do you want to tap into? Maybe it’s someone who is well connected in your space. Maybe you think they’d find this application really valuable. Earn credit for introducing them to the next big thing!

Customer Champions: If you’ve built a relationship with a customer and they’ve been a great advocate, see if you can get them to join Connect The Dots. This way you can ask for introductions to peers at other companies who they have strong relationships with.

Investors and Advisors: These folks have a vested interest in helping however they can. While they’re often happy to provide introductions, with Connect The Dots you get a complete picture of who they know and a streamlined workflow for making the ask.

Coworkers: Getting your teammates and executives on Connect The Dots is huge! Not only do you tap into their networks, but they’ve got a vested interest in helping you with introductions. The other thing about getting employees on the platform is that over time it helps create a tight alumni network. Note that you can invite as many co-workers as you like. It doesn’t count against your limit.