Genuine Specific Compliment
A true, specific compliment builds liking fast, while a generic one does the opposite.
Love your website
People say yes more readily to people they like, and one of the fastest routes to liking is a compliment, but only if it is real and specific. “Love your website” is noise. “The way you wrote the pricing page, the bit about no annual lock-in, made me trust you before I even hit the demo button” lands because it proves you actually looked. Specificity is what separates a compliment from flattery.
Use it as an opener or a warm-up, drawn from something you genuinely noticed and can point to. It works because a specific observation signals real attention, which is flattering in a way a template never is. It backfires when it is vague, exaggerated, or obviously a setup for the pitch, because a buyer who smells flattery discounts everything after it.
The liking principle, including compliments as a driver of it, is documented by Robert Cialdini in Influence (1984).