Building a rapport with someone you’ve never met can be one of the more difficult – but most powerful steps in the sales process, especially if you are engaging in telephonic sales in which you can’t make an in-person connection.
However, unlike ever before, the ability to transform the connection with a prospect from a cold, impersonal lead to a warm, trusting relationship has become increasingly easier, effectively shortening the sales cycle. How? By leveraging social media and the power of commonalities.
The same principle applies in everyday life — If you’ve ever been to a cocktail party in which you don’t know anyone, you know that it is much easier to strike up an engaging conversation if you can quickly find out something you have in common with another attendee. If you both are marathon runners, are members of the same alma mater, or both have a passion for still-photography, for example, you can bond over the mutual interest.
The beauty of social media is that sales people now have the ability to discover these commonalities even before they have an initial conversation through reviewing one’s social media accounts.
It may sound like a simple exercise, however many salespeople have landed accounts based on the relationship formed through a commonality, including one sales associate of a client of mine who used a mutual interest she discovered on LinkedIn to form a relationship and win an account worth over $50,000.
Reagan* (name has been changed) discovered through conducting research on LinkedIn, that a prospect she had been trying to reach was also a member of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America. During their call, Reagan mentioned that she noticed her prospect’s involvement and discussed her participation as well. After a friendly discussion about the society, Reagan learned that the prospect was not in need of her company’s solutions at the time. However, over the course of the next few months, Reagan and her prospect kept in touch via LinkedIn – mostly about news and updates with the society, but Reagan continued to check in on her prospect’s business needs as well. A short time later, Reagan received a message from her prospect that they were then in the need of a new solution and he wanted to discuss his needs with her, based on the trusting relationship they had developed. Reagan ended up winning the account and to this day, they still keep in touch.
Reagan noted that if she had contacted her prospect using her traditional cold calling methods, she likely would have never uncovered their mutual commonality. If it wasn’t for the research she conducted of her prospect’s profile on LinkedIn, she said, account likely would never have closed, and a lasting relationship would not have formed.
The next time you have a sales call scheduled, take five minutes to review your prospect’s social media accounts and see if you can discover a commonality you can leverage to set yourself up for success.