The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [106]
Think of your favorite client relationships right now. If you’re business-to-business, answer these questions: How many children do they have? What are their ages and names? Have you been to their home or vice versa? What are their hobbies? Do you know what will make them more successful? Do you know their goals in life? Where are they from? What is their history? That’s real rapport. If you sell business-to-consumer, you need to know what small rapport-building opportunities you can put into place—especially if they are your “better buyers.”
A restaurant, a bookstore, a supermarket, a copy center: I don’t care what kind of business you’re in, you need to make “client rapport” part of the process and every person working for you needs training on this. Role-play this and have a constant focus on client rapport so they’ll know that part of their job is to win people over, to create a bond wherever possible. When you meet someone new, you need to look that person in the eye and be overtly friendly. Ask them how they are. If you sell retail, ask them if they’ve been in your store before. Look at Home Depot. You can ask any clerk where something is and instead of just saying, “Aisle five,” the clerk will take you right to the item you’re looking for—even if she has to walk across the entire store. Wait staff, receptionists, customer ser vice people, and, yes, especially salespeople all need to understand that building rapport is a standard job requirement.
You will find that you close a much higher percentage of sales if you have good, solid rapport with your prospects. According to the Encarta World English 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.” So how do you achieve this mutual liking, trust, and sense that you share their concerns?
Let’s break it down. One thing you can do to establish trust is to make your prospects feel that they are working with an expert. As you learned in Chapter Four, selling breaks rapport (no one wants to feel like you’re selling them), while educating builds it. That is why I have every single company that I work with design a core story packed with data of great value to your prospects. As said, even if your salespeople never actually present the information as a cohesive whole, knowing it and offering it at appropriate times can elevate their status in the eyes of a buyer.
So one of the best ways for establishing rapport is for your sales staff to be more knowledgeable than any other sales staff they could possibly run into. When the salesperson is highly knowledgeable, it translates to “influence.” Here’s a simple example: I was looking for a good book to read for a trip I was taking. The clerk in the bookstore was extremely knowledgeable and well read. I bought three books, all based upon his recommendation. On a broader scale, if you develop a core story and create an orientation to offer your prospects a “community education to business owners to help them succeed,” you are going above and beyond the call of duty and you will be a champion in your market.
Providing information that helps your client succeed helps you build trust and respect. Your clients and prospects will be happy to hear from you. Even better, they’ll start to call you to get your input on decisions they’re making for their business. Here are some other ways to help establish rapport:
Ask great questions. Establish rapport-building questions that your sales team will ask every prospect. Teach your salespeople to use those questions to make a connection, to find common interests. Also, “get personal.” As fast as you can, get into the person’s world. You can start with questions that seem like business questions, but they are personal questions: How long have you been doing this? Oh, really, how do you like it? What got you into it? What did you do before this? These kinds of questions help you create a deeper bond. Remember, every one’s favorite