Starting conversations with someone you don’t know can be a daunting task. Even extroverted folks who enjoy meeting new people can have a hard time with this. We talked in class about the usual conversation starter: what do you do? A better starter would be to ask: Where are you from?
I don’t necessarily think it’s bad to ask someone about their hometown or current living location. After almost four years of college, however, I’ve had to give my small speech about being a Texan in Grove City quite a few times. While this can still lead to an interesting conversation, there are times where a more surprising question would be a nice change of pace.
When it comes to conversation starting in sales, I think it would be interesting to try some different starters. I found this list of six great conversations starters that salespeople could use with their customers.
https://salesdrive.info/brilliant-sales-conversation-starters/
I’ve summarized the points below:
- Ask something personal based on the customer’s LinkedIn profile.
- If you are meeting with a specific client, this can be a great way to show you’ve done your research.
- Ask how your customer knows someone else or how they got involved with a project or company.
- Ask a question about a popular piece of content within the customer’s industry.
- You could ask about blogs or websites that are popular within certain industries.
- Checking a client’s social media can give you good clues for this!
- Asking about a recent popular event
- Just avoid religion and politics here. You don’t want to start a spirited debate.
- Comment about what the customer recently did.
- They may have posted about a recent conference or event on social media
- Ask about a customer’s specific job role.
- Always a good question to help you find out more about who your customer is and what they do within their company.
- Ask about any recent announcements from the customer’s company
- Did they just merge with another company? Did the CEO announce an impressive new product growth plan? This will help you get to know your customer’s thoughts on the company providing you with more insight as to how to meet their needs!
Starting conversations can be tricky, awkward, and confusing. With a few of these tips, however, you may find yourself become more and more adept at killer conversations and great sales.
BoweryJE22
Okay so two things.
1. I really like your first point, I’d never have thought about checking a client’s linkedIN to get a conversation starter. They might have some pretty interesting stuff on there, I sure do!
2. About your third point, what kind of popular recent events happen that AREN’T political or religious? Seems like anything big enough to be widely known could have the potential to be polarizing. Did you have something in mind specifically? I could use an example.
Being a Grover and having at least 3 friends, i love coming back to school after a break. There is one thing that i absolutely hate about coming back though. You get asked this question hundreds of time over the next two weeks. “Hey! How was your break?” I do not like this because your immediate response is “good.” That is usually the extent of the conversation other than just switching roles and asking the other person that same question. To be able to see these different conversation starters that elicit intelligent responses.
As a tour guide, I run into this problem all the time. I want to genuinely ask the prospective student questions, but I know the questions I’m asking are so general like, “where are you from”, “what are you looking for in a college”, “how is the college search process going for you.” This is interesting to think of conversation topics and questions that might throw someone off in a positive way.