How to melt the ice with Social Selling?

Social Selling method involves attracting potential B2B clients and building trust with them on social media. Before starting to sell your product or service through messaging, it's essential to break the ice first. This is where succinct phrases, known as icebreakers, come into play. They are used to draw the potential client's attention, making the conversations easier and more natural.

In this article, Olga Bondareva, the founder of the Social Selling agency ModumUp, shares practices on how to transform standard social media sales into non-trivial and warm interactions using icebreakers.

Icebreakers are short phrases designed to initiate the connection as well as strengthen trust and partnership on social media.

Now, we will dive into practical examples.

Let's compare two messages: One without icebreakers and the second with icebreakers.

The first message sounds more formal and pushy; it feels robotic. It could be sent to anyone, as it lacks a personal touch and simply isn't engaging target audience.

It's quite obvious that we used icebreakers in the second example by mentioning the same university. Furthermore, we simplified the language of the message, making it more conversational. In conclusion, we added some humor by including the phrase, "What kind of beast Social Selling is"

The messaging results: the first cold message got a Response Rate (the percentage of responses to the number of messages sent) of 15%, while the second one, with icebreakers, achieved 30%. The target audience and business proposal remained unaltered. According to our agency's benchmarks, a Response Rate ranging from 10% to 25% is considered average, so anything exceeding this range is categorized as high.

There are some recommendations on how to make text more easily understandable: avoid jargon and clichés, simplify complexity, and use a conversational style. This is also one of the icebreakers' techniques.

Next, let's move on to icebreakers that various sales experts recommend for personal messages.

Typically, these messages leave people indifferent or even irritated. Often, they don't finish reading them and send them straight away to spam. To avoid this and hold the potential client's attention, you can use short icebreaker phrases.

Here are more interesting ways to engage with a person in messages from Findymail:

To avoid making the person feel like they are missing out or unaware of something, you can adjust the tone of voice slightly. This way, they won't feel as if they've missed something important or are uninformed.

Begin the conversation by complimenting the person or company's business achievements. You can find this information on the company's website or the individual's LinkedIn profile.

The Lyne.ai advice: Add a personalized postscript to your message. For instance, mention something you noticed on their profile, like where the person lives or which sports team's matches they attend, and amaze them by revealing that you are (what a surprise) also a big fan of the same team.

At the end, we use an icebreaker—a casual postscript that highlights mutual interests.

In a world where communication takes place both online and offline, we compete for the audience's attention. However, many individuals feel uncomfortable and wary when it comes to talking with strangers. That's understandable; they just don't know what to expect. To establish a connection between you and a potential client, try initiating your communication on social media with icebreakers. These techniques will help destroy the dementors of the unknown and create the feeling that you are on the same wave as your conversation partner. Once the ice is melted, your business proposal for partnership is more likely to be met with less resistance and skepticism.