Welcome back guys and gals. Clinton Young here with the information I promised you that has the power to change your life; Building Rapport!
One of my sales mentors always used to say that “People do business with people they like and trust”. You’ve got to find a way to “build relationships of trust”.
Let’s say you’re at a networking event and there are some “centers of influence” with whom you’d like to connect. The first thing you do when trying to connect with someone is to look for commonalities and comment on them or ask an insightful question about them. “That’s a great hat, where’d you get it? Did you go to SDSU? So did I… What year did you graduate?”
If there are no clues or if you’re trying to build rapport over the phone with someone you’ve never met, then use something that you feel will have a high probability of having a commonality (weather, sports in the news, company event, CEO in the news, world events – stay away from politics or religion).
Match and mirror their body movements, gestures, expressions, and their voice tone and volume. Remember, people do business with people they like and trust. Think of it like this, their subconscious mind “likes” you based on how similar you appear to them. I’ll speak more about this is a future bonus video on Neuro Linguistic Programming, or NLP.
Once you have build rapport, use the F.O.R.M. technique – Ask them questions about Family, Occupation, Recreation (things they like to do, hobbies), and Motivation (what they value, what inspires them, their passions). Use your intuition and stick with whichever one you feel is most relevant to the rapport that was built.
Find out what they’re passionate about and get them talking about it. If you do this, you’re in there… i.e. children, hobbies, travel, music, philanthropic interests are some great ones. You’ll notice it when you’ve hit on their passion because they’ll start speaking faster and more animated. Just sit back and listen actively nodding yes and “awesome”, “cool”, “wow” etc should be flowing from your mouth.
My mentor also use to say “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”. In other words, we have 2 ears and 1 mouth, so we should listen twice as much as we should talk. People LOVE to hear themselves talk so let them talk! Just letting them talk will put them in a comfortable state which they will then associate with you (it may be uncomfortable to you as most of us aren’t really listening, we’re just waiting for the other person to finish so we can talk).
Maya Angelou said (Paraphrased) “People don’t always remember what you say to them, or even what you did, but they Always remember how you made them feel”.
Your job is to connect with people through building rapport, with zero personal agenda other than truly caring about helping them. Try this and wait to see the amazing relationships that you create and the doors that will open for you.
Stay tuned for a bonus video with more next level tips on building rapport.
Create an excellent week.
