While I'd agree that it is very important to pay attention to threads in a conversation and capitalize on them in as skillful a way possible to establish rapport, I have to point out that there is an uncomfortable separation between meeting a new person and starting that initial converstaion.
To overcome this, you have to learn to 'read' a person without saying a word. This is often a tall order for AFCs who've been told their entire life not to 'judge a book by it's cover'. It feels wrong to make genrealizations about a person based on their appearance, but this is often the best way to make an at least somewhat accurate assessment of that person; certainly enough to begin a conversation and then mine it for topics that can be molded to communication of personal opinions (i.e. women love to talk about themselves).
It took a while for me to feel comfortable in my ability to assess a person's character from only the outline of what their physical appearance, personal conditions and mannerisms led me to, but once I did I found that I could connect more rapidly and more fully with that person male or female.
For example, I recently closed on my newest home and had to go to the title company to meet with an officer to complete the sale. Upon walking into this woman's office I saw that she was perhaps early to mid forties and had no wedding ring on. She was dressed in a semi-attractive purple blouse that showed just enough clevage not to offend any office sensibilities and had blonde dyed hair as evidenced by her darker roots. She spoke with a bit of authority when we were conducting business, but seemed slightly unsure of herself when just making small talk. On her desk were pictures of her 2 kids, but none of any Father, and next to them were a vase full of what I'd guess were 3 day old roses. It was Tuesday.
From this I could gather that she was divorced (or at least separated) was back in the dating game recently (the flowers and her slightly innappropriate dress for a professional environment), she was confident in her job, but was a little uncomfortable relating socially. Most likely a single mother and had her children in her 20s since one child in her photos was at least in his early teens, leading me to believe she had an imperative for making up for lost time in her 'fun years' now that she was single.
This is just a small amount of information I could have used to initiate an approach from and this from only meeting with her for 20 minutes. There is a whole encyclopedia of info you can learn from a persons appearance and bearing when you have a basic understanding what conditions prompt them. When you see an overweight person, you can immediately tell that they probably eat too much and don't work out. When you meet a 35 y.o. woman who is vivacious and out going, if you understand what most commonly occurs with women during this period of their lives you can learn a lot from her behaviors, speech, mannerisms and appearance.
Obviously this is interpretive and general so of course there is a margin for error. It works often enough to be predictable, but the beauty of reading someone is you don't have to be entirely accurate in your assessments to become endearing to them. In fact in some cases it serves you better to be wrong as you can then perfect a backhanded compliment in doing so. "So you're really not as superficial as you apear to be? Well you had me fooled, but I can see you're of a much different cut of cloth." Don't use those words verbatim, but you get my meaning, it draws her into qualifying herself and even if you're wrong about 2 or 3 assesments you're probably correct in a dozen more that will lead you into a strong rapport. And the ones you're incorrect about are most often the ones that lead her into opinon-self based conversation.