I don’t know about you, but, I have NEVER bought something from someone I didn’t like.

I bet none of you have either, AND we are hard wired to avoid people we don’t like.

And that is WHY, building RAPPORT with people you want to sell to is the MOST IMPORTANT thing you can you do to get your customers to KNOW, LIKE and TRUST you.

We have all heard the statistic, and dubious customers take 7 seconds to form an opinion of you, so no wonder why it’s hit and miss when it comes to connecting with customers.

Rapport building should be natural, if it is not, then it comes across as contrived or fake, and guess what team, no one likes someone who fakes it!

Don’t ever listen to someone who tells you to FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT. Please, just don’t do it. You will end up breaking rapport

The great thing is that building Rapport is something that you can LEARN HOW to do, AND it’s really simple to do so, if you get the basics right.

We build Rapport by using 3 tools, and I call them tools, because you can USE them to improve how you build Rapport.

TOOL #1:

Vocal – Essentially your voice and how you use it.

Vocal communication can be broken down into the following categories, each of which are individual to every person you meet!

• Tone (Pitch)
• Tempo (Speed)
• Timbre (Quality)
• Volume (Loudness)
• Content Chunks (How much information they use to talk with)
• Rhythm
• Origin (Where the voice comes from)

Trying to observe and match these all the time can be quite a chore, so my advice is to use it sparingly at the start and as you go further into the interaction with someone, use more of them, but only as you get more comfortable with them.

TOOL #2:

Visual Communication – Essentially how you use your body.

What language is your body speaking about you. Because we are always observing, you cannot NOT communicate, ever! So it is really important to grasp this as well as one of the most important parts of the communication model.

Body Language can be broken down into the following categories:

• Posture (how your head, spine, shoulders, arms, torso and legs are being used)
• Gestures (how you use your hands)
• Facial Expressions (do i need to explain this one?)
• Blinking
• Breathing (rate and location)

You can use body language simply, to build rapport quickly by matching and mirroring. It is still a shock how many people use their bodies incorrectly to do this, especially when you ask someone if you can help them, but your body language shows that you clearly don’t want to be there, either because you are nervous or are do not feel comfortable selling to them.

TOOL #3:

Verbal Communication – Essentially the Words you use.

Many people think this is the easiest part, well, because, they are just words right?

This common misconception also causes people to break and lose communication because some NLP or SALES GURU has told them that actually it doesn’t matter what they say as long as they use the other two tools correctly!

This can more often than not be the linch pin that can make or break rapport and the tool is broken down into the following categories:

 

• Predicates (Visual, Auditory or Kinaesthetic)
• Keywords (specific idiosyncrasies)
• Colloquialisms
• Universal Experiences

 

Right so these are the 3 tools you can use to build rapport, download the guide below on The 5 Rules YOU need to know to build Rapport like a Ninja!

It shows you how you can use the 3 tools above to leverage out Rapport from every communication you have with people.

Don’t forget to like and share the guide.