How To Build Rapport Quickly and Invite Successfully with Cold Market Prospecting
There is a certain skill to learn when approaching Cold Market Prospects and building rapport quickly with them. I know first hand how tedious it can be if you drag out your conversations and rapport building too long before “getting to the point” of inviting them to take a look at your product or business.
Getting your prospects to open up to you about their life struggles or desires is key before you can take the next step in inviting them to look at what you offer. We can’t expect someone to jump at the opportunity of being invited to something if we haven’t touched a pain point for them to see how what you have can benefit or help them in some way.
Trying to “talk ourselves up” or sound impressive to make the prospect interested in what we are saying, is not the approach to take .People don’t care about what we have to offer until they feel that we care enough about them. We will gain more credibility, trust and have the prospect break down their walls instead if we are interested in what they are telling us.
“Be Interested, Not Interesting”!
Mastering the art of becoming a good listener will be one of the biggest assets to your business and life. The way to do this is to ask those open-ended questions! Those questions that help the prospect elaborate on what they have already told you. A Good script for this is to say “Tell Me More About That“? or “How Long Have You Been Doing That“? and no doubt if you use these awesome question, you will find that conversation flows quite easily.
The more open-ended questions you ask and the more genuine you sound and if you are sincerely listening well, people will relax around you very quickly.
The very first thing you want to do when prospecting online or offline, before you go into those open-ended questions is…..Give a compliment!
Offline Cold Market Prospecting:
If you are out and about and you’re looking to connect with people offline, scan their body, what are they wearing, what are they carrying? This is a really good way to be attentive to people which will very naturally lead into giving them a compliment on something you’ve noticed about them.
Online Cold Market Prospecting:
If you are prospecting on social media, look at the persons photos and about section on their profile. Is there anything in there that you resonate with, have common ground with or can see that you could give them a compliment on?
Find a genuine reason to compliment someone and you will instantly have a new friend.
Once you have found a reason to compliment someone, think about the first message you are going to send them! Voice messages these days work far more effectively than texts and that’s because people can hear your voice, hear that you are sincere and trust you more quickly.
Sending long-winded messages will definitely not help, you basically want to just let them know that you have noticed them and want to connect. A quick to the point message is the most effective.
Your message could go something like this:
“Hey Joe thanks for accepting my friend request, I can see that you live in [insert a town or city], I was there on holidays last year and wow its such a beautiful place, you are so lucky to live somewhere so beautiful…..Have you lived there all your life”?
or
“Hey Mary, thanks for connecting, how are you? Your kids are super cute, they look similar ages to my kids! Do you only have the two”?
or
“Hey Jack, wow…great profile, very inspiring! Your profile shows that you are an entrepreneur?…So awesome, how long have you been an entrepreneur for”?
All of these scripts are basic open-ended questions with a compliment attached, I personally find that if I write something similar to this when approaching cold market prospects, that 90% of the time I get a reply……After this, you want to find out a bit more about your prospects, is there a pain or struggle they’ve bought up, or a dream or desire?
We don’t want to draw out our conversations to the prospect, so a great rule of thumb to transition into offering your solution or inviting them to take a look at what you do should be done after 5-7 messages MAX!!! This is where I use to struggle and would draw out building rapport with too much conversation which would of course leave me frustrated and be very time-consuming.
The process of transitioning into inviting the prospect to take a look at what you have will be different for each situation depending on the compliment and questions asked.
A script that converts well that instantly takes the pressure off is:
“Based on your comment about [insert their pain or desire], If you’re open to checking out something that could possibly help with that situation, would you be willing to take a look? This may or may not be for you and that’s totally ok and of course I can’t promise anything, but if your open to taking a look lets set up a time for me to show you”!
If done correctly and at the right moment, this script will instantly help your prospect feel like there is no pressure to say yes to being invited to take a look, but will also help them want to say yes because you have provided an invite to a need or desire they are looking for an answer to.
This is why we need to focus first on getting that information from them about their pains or desires, so we can quickly show them we may have a solution for them.
We will never get good at this though, unless we put it into action. No script or process works properly until its acted on and practiced multiple times. Why not get your team together and role-play similar scripts to this.
I highly recommend that you take these scripts and turn them into your own. If the words used here aren’t the way you would usually speak, then you will of course come across very scripted and people sense that. Being yourself and talking to people the way you usually would, is what creates a genuine connection which can quite possibly turn into a fun business venture together.
Was this of value to you? If so, why not share this with your team and give me a shout out online, I very much appreciate that!
Create Consistent, Authentic, Kick Ass results my friend
Janelle Emma xx
