Build a community and they will come… It’s tooootally that easy, right?

(Hold on, don’t boo me, I’m going somewhere with this.)

In today's noisy sales landscape, trust is everything. Cold outreach is seemingly impossible, so smart sellers are tapping into a new kind of pipeline: their communities.

Whether you call it community building, community-led growth, relationship-based selling, go-to-network, or referral pipeline generation, it all operates from the same basic principle: People buy from people, so sellers have to invest in those relationships.

Being in a LinkedIn group, a Slack community, or hosting your own events can help you connect with potential prospects. Community engagement can be your secret tool for finding warm leads and speeding up deals.

In this blog post, I’ll share the five principles of engagement that Commsor consistently leverages. These best practices will help you create an environment where members are giving and getting value from your brand and each other.

What is community engagement?

Community engagement is the act of member-to-member contributions. When a member engages, they complete a wide range of activities that demonstrate participation in your brand’s space and programs. These contributions could include asking a question, writing a comment, or posting a reaction (like a thumbs up) in your online space. Offline, engagement activities could include attending a meetup or speaking at an event.

How your brand measures engagement may differ based on what activities and programs you offer. You can define community engagement as the number of posts, comments, reactions, badges, and events attended. When building efforts to increase engagement, we focus on tactics to encourage and facilitate member-to-member conversations.

5 principles of community engagement for B2B sellers

Great engagement is all about building value and connections among members. Here are five principles of community engagement for B2B sellers to build trust with their audience.

1. Don't sound like a seller

To drive engagement, you’ve got to understand who your members are and how they want to engage in your community.

Authentic engagement is where you can build credibility as a seller. Sales-y comments or trying to force your product or service on to community members is how you turn people off.

At Commsor, we say that desperate sales reps have a bad case of commission breath. The Golden Sales Rule? Talk to other people the way you’d want to be talked to, which is most likely not how a salesperson would. No one has time to talk about their car’s extended warranty.

If you're new to community building, start by researching your customer base. Work cross-functionally with your friends across the organization and learn about any established customer personas – you know, those profiles that help you and the business understand users' needs, experiences, behaviors, and goals. (Who hasn’t internet-stalked prospects?)

Join interest-based communities to see what your customer base is talking about. Invest in the online platforms they're spending time on. Leverage surveys to understand why members of your community value, need, and want.

Looking at this data is key to uncovering the value that your community brings to its users. Ask yourself — what is the glue that binds our group together? Why should these individuals value each other? What prompts active participation? The clearer you can get on your ‘why’, the more intentional you can be about the value you're providing.

And don't forget, you might be a seller in the community, but that doesn't mean you can't build personal relationships with your peers. Actually get to know other members of the community. The more you get to know them personally, the stronger your community will be.

Connecting one-on-one helps build this foundation. Introduce yourself to members and set up calls to get to know each other better. Don’t make them feel like they’re being interrogated, but ask some questions: What do they need to be more successful at their jobs? What areas of our product do they feel confident in? How can you help? These meetings can be a powerful tool in your sales workflow––as long as you engage via active listening and resource sharing.

2. Make your community the star through active engagement

In a community, the focus should be on the people and their connections. You want to invite participation from everyone, not just the loudest in the room.

And the sellers that are dino-mite at community engagement? They spark conversations, not just attention. You can try:

• Starting discussions
• Asking for opinions
• Inviting customers to share wins

Every interaction you have creates more surface area for warm intros, referrals, or future deals.

The power of community is being around people who get you — people who are having similar experiences, going through the same issues and challenges, want the same information, etc. Our mission with engagement should be to bring those people together and help them find the connections and answers they need.

Focus on empowering and elevating the members with everything you do. When making opportunities for active engagement, think about this question:

“Does this help our community members? Does it empower them? Does it help them connect with one another?”

If the answer is yes, then you’ve got a great idea for community engagement!

3. Lead with value

We like to say that the best sellers have a "give-first attitude."

Community isn't just a support channel to answer questions about your product. It’s a stage. Sellers who share helpful articles, insights, referrals, or new ideas are more likely to gain trust and referrals, so use your captive audience to educate, connect others, and be a legit partner—not just someone looking to hit quota.

Your network is your net worth, so why not spread that wealth around? Find two members in your community who should meet and talk; maybe they have complementary job titles, similar interests…or they’re both really into cheesy dinosaur jokes (hey, it happens!). Introduce them to one another, and step back to let them bond. Facilitating those intros solidifies you as a partner and a resource. Plus, you get to get two cool folks in a room together, which is pretty rewarding.

When brainstorming tactics to encourage engagement, start small. A great hack for spurring conversation is to begin by offering discussion prompts in your online community spaces. These prompts should be fun questions that any member can answer regardless of their expertise level. People can chime in asynch, split off into side conversation threads, or take deeper convos offline to email or Zoom chats.

Engagement opportunities don’t have to be time-intensive. Some members may not have time to participate in an hour-long webinar, but do want to contribute to a simple group question. The nature of your community will guide your prompts.

4. You have to participate, too

If you want your members to be engaged, guess what? You have to engage too!

Being a visible presence in the community will help invite others to be active with you. Especially when first practicing community engagement, it is important to be extra active in your spaces. This means that you should read and engage with the majority of posts that people share, even if you only give a like or reaction.

I’d guess the majority of salespeople aren’t introverted at all, but just in case that’s you – or you’re crowdsourcing how to kick your community engagement up a notch – here are some ideas:

Don’t be afraid to let your personality show. People buy from people, not pitch decks. When you show up as your authentic self, you create a space where trust and connection can grow. The more real you are, the more likely others are to engage, respond, and eventually buy — not just from your company, but from you.

5. Be consistent and thoughtful

You have to be present to stay top of mind. If you're not selling to your prospects, you should be thinking about bringing them into your sphere of influence.

Buyers don't trust strangers—they trust familiar faces. By being present in your community on LinkedIn, in a Slack group, or at events, you create familiarity. This makes your outreach feel like a natural part of a relationship, not just a cold pitch.

To make engagement part of your community’s DNA, you need a plan. Make life easier on yourself (and your team) with a content calendar of thoughtful, well-crafted engagement touchpoints. We recommend building out an engagement plan 2-3 weeks ahead of time; it helps keep things moving forward, and also keeps you from having to wing it, and then getting stuck.

Within your plan, it’s also important to track and measure results. Is the community interacting with your discussion prompts? There’s a win! Is webinar attendance dropping? Better figure out why. Checking the performance data from your activities can help you see what’s working and what isn’t. From there, it's easy to test and learn. 

6. Give your community time to grow

If you’re throwing everything you’ve got at nurturing potential leads by building out your engagement initiatives, but you’re not seeing instant results, take a breath. Sometimes it can take a while to build momentum and give members experiences they can consistently expect, so give it a few months before you start stressing. 

Sellers who win today aren’t cold calling — they’re community-building. Want to map your network and start making warm intros your go-to motion? Commsor can help.