As featured in TEQ Magazine:
Nobody wants to be sold to. Instead, they want to buy from us if we solve their problems. In order to truly understand a prospective customer’s problems, we’ve got to talk to them. Well, not talk “to” them, but talk “with” them… openly.
Side note: One of my favorite sales rules: “Remember, you have two ears and one mouth; spend twice as much time listening as talking.” (Frankly, 10-to-1 would be even better but how much of this behavior can you really expect from extroverts?)
The goal of the conversation is to discover your prospect’s “pain”. Before they will share that, you will have to establish rapport. With rapport, you have the opportunity to build trust. With trust, you have the opportunity to make a sale.
Social media helps you establish rapport in so many ways; just pick you favorite.
Rapport building idea #1:
Before meeting with any new prospect, review their LinkedIn profile to identify potential connection points. Look for a shared college, hobby, sport, past employer, industry association, professional acquaintance, or almost anything else (avoiding, say, shared former spouses and the like).
I was speaking to a CEO group in Baltimore this summer when one CEO asked to share his
story. His company had been trying to crack a key account, making no headway over many years. Finally, the CEO reviewed the decision maker’s LinkedIn profile and discovered that he’d played lacrosse in college. Using email, he asked his sales if any of them had played college lacrosse.
Ka-Ching!
It took a few weeks for that salesperson to connect live with the prospect. Yet, in a “surprising” twist, the topic of college lacrosse surfaced less than 30 seconds into the call; imagine that. It broke the ice, established rapport, and after lots more hard work led to the ultimate sale.
Rapport building idea #2:
When communicating more broadly, a cultural touchstone can provide an equally effective connection point. In his “Randy’s Journal” blog, Boeing (specifically Randy) cleverly riffed on the 20th anniversary of the movie “Back to the Future” to explore the past and future of the airline industry. Like Michael J. Fox (AKA Marty McFly), Randy traveled back in time by tracking down Boeing’s 20-year forecast for passenger air miles from 1952. Then he went back to the future, showing Boeing’s latest 20-year forecast.
I call this framing. If airline industry insiders start to see that same future, it’s a safe bet that they’re more likely to favor Boeing planes over Airbus.
Rapport building idea #3:
Current events, especially anything that’s caught your target audience’s imagination, can provide another powerful connection point.
In January of this year, a hiker on Yosemite Bear 
Mountain happened upon a “full on double rainbow all the way across the sky”. We could hear but not see this guy as he trained his camera on the rainbow and moved to a vista to better capture the entire view. To say that he was incredibly enthusiastic or unbelievably stoned… or both… is an understatement.
Almost 15 million views later, Microsoft realized that this scenario (the double rainbow part) would beautifully illustrate the need for one of their products.
In early September, Microsoft did a humorous sendup of the original, showing us the Crazy Double Rainbow Guy (brilliant move #1 – and he looks pretty much like he sounds) to promote its Windows Live Photo Gallery product. They had their buttoned-down corporate voiceover guy exactly parrot the language of the original (brilliant move #2 – very funny and surprisingly endearing).
Payoff: Imagine a million people voluntarily viewing your commercial and then recommending it to their friends. Brilliant!!! (to quote the Guinness commercial).
So next time you venture into social marketing (say this afternoon), try using one of these technique sto start the conversation.