Selling now is all about the value-add, and not interrupting people to warm them into having a conversation about buying, when it makes sense to them.
To do that, you as the salesman need to be proactive and go out to make conversation with your prospect pool. You need to be able to use tools and your initiative to create authentic, engaging and relevant conversations. Let’s look at how you can begin with 25 social selling conversation starters.
General conversation starters
- Share prospect blog posts or LinkedIn pulse articles
- Comment on prospect blog posts or LinkedIn pulse articles
- Leave feedback on content created by the prospect via DM or inmail
- Ask a direct question to your prospect after reading a post of theirs
- Share prospect articles with your colleagues publically
Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator
You can use a range of filters and searches to find a way to talk to your buyer with common traits, hobbies or interests. You should think about the following;
- Past companies you have worked at, that they may have been at too
- Towns or cities/regions your prospects may have worked at, been to that you have
- Universities and schools you have been to, are they the same as your prospects
- Volunteering information on their profile, do you have something in common
- Targeted keywords, that will identify specific needs or skills your prospects talk about on their profile – related to your problem-solving product/service
- Lead recommendations – LinkedIn will show you the colleagues or similar people to a lead – mention you know their colleague
- Use your existing network, can you reach a prospect through a current connection
- News on the company
- News mentioning the individual
- News around the industry, how does it affect you/the buyer
Recommended: How To Build A Targeted Prospecting List Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Using Twitter
You can be more personal on Twitter which means there is a wealth of topics you can begin a conversation on. For this platform, you should consider the following;
- Reply to content shared on Twitter with your opinion, or a similar article you read recently
- Soft social touches are good, retweets and genuine engagements will lead to conversation
- Look out for tweets on personal interests and hobbies
- Scan their bio for personal information you can relate to and tweet them about
- Use 360social.me to find prospects on Instagram or other channels, comment on their posts this way
- Mention you found their LinkedIn, and have a question
- Comment on the great content they share
- Look for recent events the prospect went to on their feed
- Comment on an upcoming event that is of relevance to them
- Go back to basics, thank them for following you personally
Hopefully, the above conversation starters will help you get the needle moving. We cover a lot of social selling and how to utilise both LinkedIn and Twitter effectively to drive more business and conversations. Feel free to check out our courses here.
