How to build rapport on a call and gain a meaningful connection.

Tony Robbins describes rapport as power. It’s a total responsiveness between two people and creates deep connection. You are most likely to have the deepest connection with those people who are more like you, or who you want to be like. It’s that feeling of commonality that will bind you.

We also tend to sell as we buy, so if you’re totally at ease at signing up for something right away, over the phone, you are likely to be totally at ease in a one call close. Whereas if you are someone who needs to think about things before buying, you will very rarely close in one call without adapting your style. You need to sell how your prospective clients buy. Make it about them, not you. Remember that on a subconscious level people like people that are most like themselves, or how they want to be.

Your very first step is to LISTEN. Listen very carefully to how the prospective client responds to you, in the first couple of minutes of the call. I don’t just mean listen to hear (research suggest that we only remember 25%-50% of what we hear, that means that you can miss up to 75% of what your prospective client is saying!) I would like you to start practising active listening, which is the suspension of your thoughts with a view to understanding what you hear. For instance, I know when I am actively listening because I can ‘see’ the words my clients are speaking.

When a prospective client perceives that you are actively listening to them they feel important, understood, appreciated, and respected.

In order to be a good active listener you should:

•       Listen with the intent to understand. This means that you should change your focus from “pitching” your service to a mode where you are truly trying to understand the other person.
•         Focus completely on listening. No multi-tasking! The word active means that you are so engaged in listening to another that you really can’t send an email, check your phone, or anything else.
•         Ask questions. You inquire to be sure that you are really understanding the speaker and to demonstrate that you are listening.
•       Summarise. This technique, above all sets a great listener apart from others. It is one thing to be able to repeat the key points of what was said and that is important, but to reflect what it means back to your prospective client is when they will feel heard and understood at a deeper level.

Be aware of different personality types when on a call;

•    Assertives will often come across as impatient, terse and cool.
•  Expressives will want to interrupt you often, will talk more than they listen and will be very animated.
•  Amiables will listen carefully allow the conversation to drift and will not notice the passage of time.
•  Analytics will listen well but will be formal and will focus on facts and figures.

So you will need to adapt your active listening skills accordingly.

One of the key ways to put a prospective client at ease is to match the pace, the tone, rate and style of speech that they are talking in and engaging with you. Pace, tone and rate will differ between personality types so for example, Assertives and Expressives will be very high energy, fast tempo. They will be very animated, talk very fast and fire a barrage of questions and statements at you. When you first come onto a call with them you will instinctively read the energy from them, match that energy throughout the call.

Amiables and Analytics will engage at a slower, more measured pace. There will be lots of gaps in between you asking a question and them replying because they take great care in how they respond to you and they choose their words very carefully. In the same way as if you were sitting in front of them in a sales meeting, their actions and body language will be very deliberate and controlled, whereas Assertives and Expressives would talk with their hands and be generally very expressive, with very loud and booming voices.

Balance is key here; if you speak louder than your prospective client you may come across as pushy overbearing or rude. Speak softer than them and they will question your decisiveness and whether they can trust you.

An easy way to identify both is to think of Assertive’s and Expressive’s as Extroverts and Amiable’s and Analytical’s as introverts.

Use words that your prospective client uses during the conversation, especially when they use adjectives. Listen carefully for words and phrases that are used a number of times, these mean something to them and resonate deeply. An alternative word may not have the same meaning for them.

Lastly; use their name, as often as possible without it sounding insincere, as it creates a strong bond between you.

Want to know more or need some help? Book in a call with me  here