“Rapport is the collapsing of barriers between two individuals” Unknown

“ Can’t we just skip all this basic greeting stuff and get on to closing the sale, that’s where my people have problems selling?” a store manager interrupted during one of my training sessions on “effectively approaching the customer”.

“Its not about closing the sale…its about opening the relationship” I responded, “If the customer doesn’t like you or trust you they won’t buy from you. Sure there are those exceptions when people want something, and you have it, then they’ll buy it from you. However as we’ve said before, you didn’t sell it, the customer bought it! If we want to increase our sales volume, if we want to increase our conversion rates, if we want to increase our multiple sales percentages, then we are going to have to sell. We cannot simply rely on the customer to buy. If we are going to sell more we must learn how to open the sale effectively and establish the trust and rapport necessary to get the customer to open up and answer our questions so we can find out what they need and want. Lets make sure that we are opening well before we worry about how we close.”

To open well we must learn how to develop rapport as it is the fundamental element of successful communication, and for us to be effective in engaging customers; we must understand the principles and tactics of how to create it.

So what then is rapport? Most of us are able to recognise rapport when we have it and we are also able to discern when we don’t have it. The question many of my students ask is how do you create it when there is none to start off with?

How do we get it? Is it something we can create or is it something that just happens naturally? How important is rapport to the sales process? These are some of the questions I will be answering.

The dictionary defines rapport as “the relation of mutual understanding or trust and agreement between people.” It is explained further as, “ being of common perspective, being in "sync", being on the same wavelength as the person you are talking to.” When there is a rapport the barriers between two individuals have been collapsed, they’re on the “same page”, and they are in that “me too” space.

In his formative book on the establishment of rapport, the author Michael Brooks frames it this way, “Being in rapport is the ability to enter someone else’s model of the world and let them know that we truly understand their model.”

So how does one establish rapport?

The first thing to do to begin your deeper understanding of this very powerful means of communication is to “sensitise” yourself and become a “rapport observer”. We need to recognise what rapport looks like so that we can begin to duplicate it.

The key is to see and understand that rapport is not a “state”, i.e. a mental or emotional condition. We need to observe rapport in progress seeing it as a process, i.e. a series of actions, changes, or functions that bring about a result.

Imagine that you were asked to film and direct a documentary on rapport. You would most likely go to a place that was busy with people and film people “doing rapport.” You would capture friends and sweethearts relating to one another, you would film mothers and daughters and fathers and sons, brothers and sisters and anyone else whom you saw in rapport. Being a retailer you might even capture a rapport between a customer and a sales person or a waiter.

Then because you would want to show contrast, you would also film people reacting to one another where there is no rapport or where you see rapport coming unglued. This is your task today. Today your goal is to see how people "do” rapport. Observe yourself and those around you capturing what works and what doesn’t.