The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [107]
In consumer situations such as in a restaurant or retail environment, you can ask, “Are you familiar with our store/restaurant/company?” This gives you the opportunity to do a strategic pitch as you learned in Chapter Four, but it can also lead to more personal questions, such as, “Are you from the area?” These are harmless questions, but they connect you to the person in a way that goes beyond just making the sale.
Have a sense of humor. Have fun together. My stockbroker calls me with the “joke of the week” and they’re actually funny. Now the Internet makes it easy to forward a good joke, but don’t be one of those people who sends every little joke. My clients know that if I send them something, it’s going to be really funny. Therefore my emails get opened and answered. When I sold advertising, I would go out of my way, scouring hundreds of jokes to find a great one. I’d sit there and handwrite personalized notes to 30 to 50 big clients and send the joke with the note. Each client probably thought he or she was the only one receiving this because it came with a handwritten note. Again, don’t do this too often; it’s just another rapport-building opportunity.
Commiserate. Misery loves company. If the client wants to complain about anything from business to personal life, be a good supportive ear. You’ll escalate the bonding process.
Be empathetic and care about them. Be more interested in them than anyone else has ever been. There’s a saying, “If you want to be interesting, be interested. If you want to be fascinating, be fascinated.”
Find the common ground. I had a terrible time bonding with one client until we discovered that we both liked the same band. In fact, we grew up listening to the same album. It was like a magic key to unlocking a bond that we share to this day. Find the common ground. Hunt for the things that you can relate to.
Mirror. If you match your body language and tonality to what your prospects are doing and sounding like, they’ll make the subconscious connection that you are like them. For example, if the client leans forward, you lean forward. If the client tilts her head slightly, you can tilt yours the same way.
Exercise
Workshop rapport skills with your salespeople. Ask each person to suggest three ways to establish deeper levels of rapport with your prospects and clients. Naturally, you will get some obvious answers, such as, “Ask good questions” and “Be interested in them.” But, for most companies, this will be the first time you’ve drilled them on what establishes good rapport, and that’s the first step in making rapport building a standard procedure in every sales interaction. You will also find that your best salespeople are doing things that no one else is doing. They’re asking better and more in-depth questions. They’re specifically looking for things they have in common with every prospect.
When you have five or six great methods to establish rapport, do a workshop on each one of them and turn them into procedures so that every salesperson can do them every time.
Revisit this material regularly, drilling your salespeople: How long have they (the client) worked there? How many kids do they have? Some companies keep all this information in a client database, so even a new person can gain all kinds of insights on the client. Other companies have contests to see who can learn the most about their clients.
The bottom line is that rapport can make you bulletproof, increase referrals, boost your closing ratio, and help you become more and more sought out by your clients. Work on this regularly.
Sales Step 2: Qualify the Buyer (Find the Need)
Qualifying buyers means finding out what they are looking for in your product or ser vice and what factors will influence them to buy. In this step you need to learn every thing you can about their existing buying criteria,