Your Prospect Doesn't Care That You Went to the Same School

When it comes to cold calling or outreach, your prospect doesn't care that you both went to Penn State or that you're both avid golfers. What they do care about is solving their business problems and maximizing the value of their time.

There's a longstanding piece of advice in sales: find common ground with your prospects, whether it's through shared hobbies, attending the same college, or similar life experiences, and use that to open cold calls and emails.

While on the surface this seems like a friendly way to initiate conversation, in my 35 years of strategic sales experience, there's more risk than there is reward to this strategy.

Time is Precious (Obviously)

When you start a cold call by focusing on irrelevant personal details, you send the wrong message.

You're telling your prospect that you didn't — even if you did — take the time to truly understand their business, their specific challenges, and the characteristics you've already uncovered (even if you have) that they share with customers you already serve.

Even worse, this overly-personalized initial touch strategy can often be seen as you starting the call by wasting their time which, of course, is bad for them and bad for you.

Your primary mission as a salesperson in a cold call or early outreach effort is to engage your prospect in a valuable business conversation.

When you lead with personal information that doesn't relate to their business needs, you're not only misusing your time but also showing a lack of respect for theirs.

In the eyes of a busy decision-maker, you've done the equivalent of knocking on their door uninvited and asking to chat about something irrelevant. Don't be surprised if the result is a quick hang-up or an ignored email.

Developing Trust: The Key to Sales Success

The cornerstone of any successful sales relationship is trust.

When you're first reaching out to a prospect, you're a stranger to them. They don't know you, and they certainly don't trust you yet. Trying to initiate a personal conversation too early in the process is like attempting to get into someone's personal space without permission. It feels intrusive because you haven't earned that right yet.

Trust is built over time through consistently ethical and service-driven behavior and by providing value.

Your first touchpoint with a prospect should always be about addressing their business needs. It's crucial to demonstrate that you've done your homework — not on where they went to school or what sports team they root for — but on their company's challenges, industry trends, and potential opportunities. By offering insights that are relevant to their business, you begin to earn a small sliver of their time and attention, and more importantly, their trust.

While personal connections and shared life experiences can and will certainly help deepen relationships later on, they are not the way to open the door.

In the early stages of engagement, your focus should be on how you can help solve your prospect's problems, improve their outcomes, or bring value to their business. It's only after you've demonstrated your ability to do this that a prospect might be more open to connecting on a personal level.

Earning the Right to Personal Connection

Once you've built that foundation of trust, then you can begin to introduce personal elements into the conversation.

At that point, it's perfectly acceptable — and often beneficial — to mention that you both went to the same college or share a hobby. By then, you've earned their respect, and the relationship has shifted to one where personal connections can help strengthen the bond.

However, it's important to recognize that not everyone will want to let you into their personal space, even after trust has been developed. Some prospects prefer to keep the relationship strictly professional, and that's ok.

As a sales professional, you need to respect those boundaries and continue focusing on delivering value in ways that matter to them.

The key is to let the relationship evolve naturally, based on trust and mutual respect, rather than forcing personal connections from the outset.

The Valuable Way Forward

When you're reaching out to prospects, especially cold ones, remember that every minute you take up is a minute they could have spent on something else. Your goal is to ensure that those minutes are worthwhile for them, by providing value that's directly tied to their business objectives.

By leading with business insights, value-driven proof points, and a demonstrable understanding of their needs, you show prospects that you're serious about helping them, not just making a sale. Only after you've earned their attention and respect does it make sense to introduce any personal connections.

By taking this approach, you'll have a much better chance of building trust, developing long-term relationships, and ultimately closing more deals.

In sales, the easy way out — focusing on shared life experiences early on — isn't how your prospect is going to gauge how much time you get.

Instead, focus on business first, build trust, and then, when the time is right, let those personal connections strengthen the relationship.