A critical aspect to your success in sales is your ability to
build rapport with your prospects. Rapport means "to have an
unconscious understanding with someone.” It creates a
relationship of responsiveness. Isn’t it true that people are
more responsive to people who are like them or people who are like who
they want to be?
Rapport consists of three things:
1. Affinity – a genuine concern
for the other person. The old saying is true: “People don’t care
how much you know until they know how much you care.” It’s vital
that your prospect know that you have their best interest in mind.
2. Shared reality – you understand where
they are coming from…you have things in common
3. Communication – for this affinity and
shared reality to have impact it must be communicated in some way.
Here are six ways to effectively establish and build rapport
with your prospects:
1. Enter their world
The most effective way to do this is to ask effective
questions about their needs and wants. Don’t assume or try to
read their mind. Ask questions and REALLY listen. Listening
in itself is a great rapport-builder because it is so rare today when
someone really listens to someone else.
2. Give
them incredible value
This can be a gift, a referral, or great service before they
become a customer/client. Instantly you’ll have rapport by
inducing reciprocation.
3. Match their tonality
Mirroring a prospects voice tonality can be a subtle yet
effective way to build rapport. If your prospect tends to talk
very slowly and you’re talking at the speed of light, chances are you
are breaking some of the connection between you. Try to match
tempo, volume and pitch for stronger rapport.
4. Match their word choices (learning
modality)
People’s word choices reveal their learning
modalities. Some people are primarily visual. They
think in pictures, talk quickly and use hand gestures.
Communicate with visual prospects in terms of how things look.
For example, you could ask questions like “What can you see happening
in this relationship?”
Auditory prospects learn best by listening.
They are typically interested in gaining information that includes
details and facts and tend to speak in a steady
tempo. You want to communicate with these prospects
in terms of facts and how things sound. For example,
after you make a recommendation or proposal you may ask “How does that
sound to you?”
People that are primarily kinesthetic tend to talk
more slowly and quietly. They tend operate more from
their gut. Communicate with these prospects in terms of how
things feel. For example, you may ask: “What’s your
sense about this?” or “What would help you feel comfortable with moving
forward?”
5. Match their feelings
People’s
word choices often contain feelings that have a very specific meaning
for them. You may feel that it is more effective to paraphrase
someone’s words in conversation, but this can actually break rapport.
When a prospect says they are frustrated by the way things are
going, it is more effective to ask them, “What about that frustrates
you the most?” rather than “What about that is stressful to you?”
This is because the word “frustrated” contains a specific emotional
picture for them. Being stressed out probably means something
altogether different.
6. Match their body language
This method of building rapport is very powerful because body
language represents 55% of communication (tonality and words make up
the balance). Here you match and mirror things like posture,
gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, breathing and
proximity. As powerful as this approach is, it is also very risky
unless you’re really good at it. Until you feel proficient with
matching body language, stick with matching tones, words and feelings –
those skills will take you a long way in building rapport.
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© 2004 David C.
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