subject: How To Create Rapport With New Contacts [print this page] It's always good to break the sales process down into its basic components:
1) Make them comfortable with you.
2) Find out what they want.
3) Show them how what you have gives them what they want.
4) Get an agreement on the next step.
5) Follow up and leverage satisfaction.
It almost goes without saying, but I will say it anyway, that the most important first step is to "make them comfortable with you." In other words, create some connection with the other person. According to the dictionary, rapport is "an emotional bond or friendly relationship between people based on mutual liking, trust and a sense that they understand and share each other's concerns."
If your contact doesn't feel comfortable with you, then he/she won't be nearly as open to sharing information. And, if we can't get information, we can't "find out what they want." We all have stories to tell about an incident in which we were the buyer and a sales person was rude or self-interested to the point where we decided to terminate the relationship and go somewhere else. The same thing is true of our customers. If they don't feel comfortable with us, if they don't feel that we are interested in them, they form negative impressions of us and consider some other source to meet their needs.
It always amazes me that so many sales people get this wrong. They'll talk about a customer and say something like, "he's a really nice guy," as if that mattered. Their first reaction is to judge the customer by their own feelings about the customer. That's exactly backwards. It doesn't matter how we feel about the customer. What does matter is how the customer feels about us. And, it is the responsibility of the professional sales person to interact with the customer in such a way as to make this particular human being comfortable with us. This is all about your people skills.
The best sales people have finely tuned people skills and are masters at creating rapport with all kinds of people, understanding that it is the essential first step in a successful interaction with a customer. The average sales person never takes the time to study this issue. Instead he/she relies on hit-or-miss people skills developed outside of the job, and views the customer through his/her reaction to the customer. The best sales people, on the other hand, understand that it is their job to create rapport with every customer, regardless of their own feelings. They make it a practice to study techniques on how to improve their skills and implement what they learn.
