With single best things I always focus on new information. That can be about the person individually, or about their specific line of work. Either way it has to fall in the "New Information" bucket for me. When it's about the person I always want to hear something that wouldn't naturally come up in regular conversation. For example, I dont care that you got a new dog. If that new information is you spent a summer in college teaching base jumping in Peru... Now I'm interested. Helpful pieces on the business side would be; hiring new people, picking up new territory, a new product/service, or some accreditation specific to what you do (IE, you're growing with any of these).  All of these are interesting to me and prove that we share the same mindset.