Finding Common Ground
Surface a genuine shared reference, a place, a role, a challenge, to shift from stranger to peer.
Finding common ground means locating something you and the buyer honestly share, a hometown, a former employer, a headache they have that you have seen before, and letting it move the relationship from cold to familiar. It leans on the similarity-attraction effect studied by psychologist Donn Byrne (1971): people trust and like those they see as similar to them.
To use it, do light homework before the call (their background, their company, mutual connections) and then let the shared thing come up naturally rather than announcing it. On a discovery call, “you’re in Malmö? I spent three years there” does more than any pitch line. If it is manufactured, drop it.
It works because trust is the gate before any argument gets heard, and shared ground opens it fast. The mistake is faking a connection or forcing one that is not there; buyers feel the insincerity and the whole call cools.