“I want to build an advocate on their side for what I’m selling. And the way that I do that is by finding Easter eggs in my prospect’s LinkedIn profile.” – Nick Capozzi in today’s Tip 737
How do you build rapport on LinkedIn?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Nick Capozzi. Having recruited, developed, and led sales teams across the globe for Fortune 500 companies, Nick focuses on client’s sales messaging and framing them uniquely in their space. Here he is:
Nick Capozzi: I came up in sales in a very unique B2C environment where building rapport quickly wasn’t essential. It was everything. And as I’ve learned more about the B2B environment, an opportunity that I often see missed is the chance to build rapport with the prospect. And the first thing I hear when I talk to people about that is what we’ve seen data that supports otherwise you want to hop right into the agenda. But from my point of view, I want to build an advocate on their side for what I’m selling. And the way that I do that is by finding Easter eggs in my prospect’s LinkedIn profile. And there’s a ton of them, literally a ton.
So whenever I’m about to get on a call to a prospect, I absolutely without question, make sure I have two or three minutes to go through their LinkedIn profile. Where are they based? Where do they go to school? Who are they connected to? That I’m connected to? What accreditations do they have? Who are they following? So let’s say my prospects in Seattle. What do I know about Seattle? The food, the pro sports teams, the festivals, the environment. What do people do in Seattle on the weekends? You’re only selling it to 20 or 25 major us cities. Generally, we know about those cities. Think about it. It doesn’t take long to build up a personal database. Do you have connections to where they went to school? What did they study in school and is irrelevant to what they’re doing today? Or do they have this really unique educational background as a talking point? I see you studied X. What you’re doing, y. What’s that story?
There’s also a ton of major universities right now that offer three-day courses or eight week online courses. “Hey, I noticed you took that contract negotiation course at such and such a school. What was the key takeaway? What’s the best thing you learned from that? I noticed on your accreditation’s that you’re a certified hockey coach. Did you play? I did.”
This is the big one. Take seconds. And look through your mutual connections. We assume it’s industry people, but I cannot tell you how often. And it happens to me multiple times a week, where there was a mutual connection that you weren’t expecting. I’ve talked to people that I had never met before that worked with family members. “Hey, I saw you’re connected to so-and-so. Did you work with them? That’s my brother. You did. That’s my brother-in-law. You’re kidding.” You want an advocate fast. Find that commonality now with all that said, if I’m trying to build rapport with a prospect and they shut me down, I immediately pivot to the agenda. I don’t want to try and drill a well where there’s no water, but I cannot stress how often this works and how effective it is.
People buy from people. They like people like people who like them. If you ask me all sales interactions are B2C. I’d love for you to come over and say hello on LinkedIn.
Scott Ingram: You need to follow Nick on LinkedIn! He creates some of the best LinkedIn videos I’ve seen and if you’ll click over to DailySales.Tips/737 we’ll have a link for you there.
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!