This is a topic that I've been getting asked about a lot —  how to start conversations with people in the DMs. 

You want to know how to talk to people and get them to buy from you, but that starts with developing a relationship with the person first. Making a sale is sometimes an outcome or a side effect of good relationship building.

Serve people without expectations 

Don't start a conversation or a relationship with someone with the intention of making a sale. Because chances are they won't. You will be disappointed every single time and you won’t be able to develop true relationships. 

The entrepreneurial industry can be very, very lonely and building relationships should be something that's important to you — whether you're making money in your business or not. 

Stop thinking about yourself

When you are in a service based industry, you want to be able to help people and change people's lives. You don’t go into it thinking what's in it for me. 

Using one of my favourite dating analogies as an example: you're going into a relationship with a partner, and you're thinking about the long term — marriage and kids — but they're just thinking it will be a good night, you'll end up disappointed because that's not what you expected. That type of expectation is exactly how you ruin relationships.

When you’re building a relationship with someone they will be thinking wow she's talking to me, she's cool, maybe we can be friends, or peers or collaborators or colleagues. Then they find out you were just hoping they would buy your product or sign up for your service and they end up with bad taste in their mouth. 

They will tell people about it. Word of mouth in this industry is SO important. When people have a bad experience, they go on to tell 10 people who tell 10 more people and so on. Of course, when people have a good experience, they do the same thing. 

The benefit of long term relationships in business is client retention. You don't want someone to buy something once and disappear. You want to be able to help them through their journey on a long term basis.

At each level, they will run into new problems and as you grow and evolve in your business with them. Client retention is how businesses scale. That's how people are able to make multiple six figures in their business. It's not because they're signing lots of new people, it's because they have their core clientele that they continue to serve at a higher level. 

What can you do for them?

You've got to go into the conversation without expectations for a sale and you also have to go into this conversation thinking about what you can do for them. 

Go into a conversation with these things in mind: 

• What can I do for you?
• What can I give you?
• How can I just be of service to you without expectation? 

An example of how you can start a DM conversation:

You: Hey, I saw your post about _____ and I have something that can help you and I want to give it to you for free. 

You’re giving them something without expectations for the sake of just being a good person. It’s not a new concept — it’s probably how you make friends in real life. You show up as you are and if you vibe, you become friends. 

Guess what? You build relationships in your business, the exact same way. We just make it than it really is complicated, because we think that business does not involve real life relationships. Your business needs to involve real life relationships if you want to have a business, a brand and a legacy that's built to last. 

From the very beginning, I treat people the same way. It doesn't matter whether they buy from me or not. 

Get to know them 

If you want to invite someone to work with you or you want to recommend a product or service to the, how the heck can you do that if you don't know anything about them?

So many people in the health and fitness industry send cold messages by reaching out to new moms because they assume they’ve gained weight with pregnancy and now they want to get their pre-pregnancy body back. 

But if you took a minute to get to know them, you would learn that in fact they had a very poor relationship with food and they were actually severely underweight and pregnancy was one of the best things that could have happened to them. 

Instead, you’ve assumed they want to lose weight, not knowing that they have been battling with their body on the complete opposite end of the spectrum for years. 

So when you invite them to your weight loss boot camp, not only do you not have a relationship but you just completely crushed them. You were thinking about you and not them. What you recommend doesn’t even make sense for them. 

That’s an extreme example, but it showcases how randomly inviting people to work with you is not sustainable. 

Work within integrity, get to know them and make an informed recommendation — whether that's to work with you or not. 

How do you bring up your offer? 

After you’ve connected with them and you’ve built a bit of a report with them — you’re vibing over Twilight, ect. One of the first things that you can do is ask their opinion. 

For example:

You: Hey ________, I am working on a post for business owners and I'm so torn if I should talk about content or hashtags. What is something between those two that you're struggling with the most right now? 

OR

You: Hey _____, I’ve got a free download coming out soon and I would love to know if you think that this looks good! Can I send it to you and you tell me what you think?

After she checks it out: Wow, this PDF is awesome. I can't wait to start using it.

You: Awesome! What's your favorite part about it because I'm going to work on some content and I want to make sure that it's really good. 

Her: Content repurposing is always such a problem for me because I feel like I never know what to do. 

You: Here's the gold I hope you have a pen and paper ready! Also, did you know that I actually coach people on that? 

I guarantee she will want to know more and you’ll be talking about your offer!

Don’t say: 

Hey ______ you have a business, you look like you could use some business coaching. 

That’s just insulting. When you send a cold message that's exactly what you sound like. 

Hopefully these examples give you a good idea about how to build relationships in the DMs.

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