Sales and Sales Management Blog

The ability to build rapport with customers and prospects is vitally important. Why? Because, if you have rapport with your customers, they are more likely to trust you, listen to you and communicate openly with you. This in turn enables you to interact more comfortably and work more effectively together. Rapport dramatically increases your chances of winning a sale. Having rapport means that when there are tough issues to discuss, for example price increases, you can more easily find agreement and solutions, and move on.

Classic research by Robert Birdwhistle looked at how face-to-face communication was received and responded to. His figures suggest that your impact depends on three factors – how you look, how you sound, and what you say. His research broke it down: 55% body language, 38% quality of the voice and 7% actual words spoken. Rapport involves being able to see eye-to-eye with other people, connecting on their wavelength. So much (93%) of the perception of your sincerity comes not from what you say but how you say it, and how you show an appreciation for the other person’s thoughts and feelings.

When you are in rapport with someone you can disagree with what they say and still relate respectfully with him or her.

The important point to remember is to acknowledge other people for the unique individuals that they are. Rapport can be described as ‘when two people are like each other, they like each other!’ Rapport builds trust and without basic trust communication can become stilted.

When communication between two or more individuals reaches its optimum it’s said that a perfect rapport has been established. On the other hand, when communicating with a customer or prospect is hard the situation becomes rapport-less. Some people we meet may inspire an instant connection and immediate trust, while another person can be very polite and charming, yet we don’t feel any connection with them and our communication feels unnatural.

When two or more people meet they immediately start an automatic process of comparison with the other. If the outcome of this process is judged that the other person is similar in some way then rapport is established. When people are in a state of rapport they tend to respond easier to our instructions, suggestions and influence. Rapport is often seen as the foundation of all good communication.

We have an inbuilt tendency to conform to the other person’s behaviours and if we instinctively feel that conforming is possible, then we will start the process of building rapport. As people, this process happens instinctively and can be evidenced by sharing the same mannerisms, voice qualities and gestures. This means that when two people are in rapport they show a tendency towards a behavioral compromise.

It’s easy to spot two close friends who share similar gestures, facial expressions, verbal expressions and postures, to such a degree that they could be mistaken as being closely related. This is due to the fact that the long-term mutual rapport creates a strong behavioral bond. Even when these two friends disagree on something, they manage to keep rapport alive.

The process we use unconsciously to build rapport can be replicated with conscious awareness, a useful skill for a Sales person to learn. This process can be likened to matching and mirroring a person’s behavior to create a perceived likeness. When we match a person’s mood, their gestures, facial expressions, we are better equipped to start experiencing how they feel at any given moment. Doing so, we obtain that the person observing us will find mirrored in us their emotional state, their way of living at that moment, and all this will increase the chances that they will see in us someone that they can trust.

If we have built sufficient rapport it then becomes possible to lead a person towards where we would like them to go, or what we would like them to do. At an unconscious level they will know that by refusing it (shown by not matching or mirroring you) they will be refusing to build rapport with themselves. Through unconscious identification they are already convinced that you are experiencing what they are experiencing, therefore anything you will manage to do they will feel that it’s something they can do as well.

There are a number of suggestions that can help your rapport-building skills:

- The quickest way to build rapport is to match the other person’s rate of breathing
- By matching a person’s breathing, you’ll find it easier to match their voice qualities
- If you use peripheral vision (expanded awareness, similar to the one used when driving a car) you become more sensory aware of the smallest details about the other person
- You don’t necessarily need to match each gesture exactly, you can match a pen tapping movement with a foot tapping movement at the same pace
- Never match regional accents and if you are female, some male postures may not look appropriate to match
- Paying attention to the other person really helps build rapport because the more you notice, the more you can match
- Take a genuine interest in getting to know what’s important to the other person. Start to understand them rather than expecting them to understand you first
- Pick up on their key words, favourite phrases and way of speaking and build these subtly into your own conversation
- Finally, notice how someone likes to handle information. Do they like lots of detail or just the big picture? As you speak, feed back information in this same portion size.

Jonathan Farrington is a globally recognised business coach, mentor, author and consultant, who has guided hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals around the world towards optimum performance levels.

Formerly, Jonathan was the Managing Partner of The jfa Group which he established in 1994.  Today, Jonathan is president of The Sales Practitioner with offices in the UK and France, developed the Top Sales Experts Team, manages the Top 10 Sales Articles site, and writes his very popular blog http://www.thejfblogit.co.uk.   

Jonathan has traveled the globe working for some of the world’s largest companies such as Litton Industries, Wang, IBM, the Bank of Tokyo and many others.

And the for me, not only is Jonathan a top trainer and consultant, he’s a friend.