Communication Archives | Page 10 of 11

When people ask me in sales trainings how they can turn their no’s into yes’s, I get a creeped-out feeling because the underlying assumption is often: How can I manipulate everyone into saying ‘yes’ to my sales pitch? And those are the kind of sales techniques that make sales people feel scummy.

The truth is that you want people to say no if your product or service isn’t right for them and you always want people to know that they can say, ‘no’ if the product doesn’t fit their needs or their budget. However, if you’re hearing a lot of no’s from prospects who really are qualified candidates then there are two underlying problems you need to consider.

The Two Main Reasons that People say ‘No’ are…

Certainty: I’m not confident that your product or service is really the solution I need; and
Trust: I’m convinced about the solution, but I’m not sure you are the right person to deliver it.

Either of these can be deal breakers… or at the least deal delayers, so it’s important to look at where those objections are coming from.

In the 13-week Profitable Business Accelerator course and with many of my private coaching clients we work on exactly HOW you can increase the levels of both trust and certainty in prospects to make it easier for them to say ‘yes’ with confidence.

Increasing Certainty

This affects your prospect’s confidence in your value proposition and reduces rejection on the basis of doubt and fear about your solution.

Indications that you need to work on building more certainty into your presentation are:

Questions about price;
Technical questions about specific features and benefits;
The prospect is looking at different solutions to the problem (rather than different solution-providers)

You can increase certainty in the value of your solution through your elevator pitch and your presentation. You know that you’ve done a good job (or that your solution doesn’t fit) when your prospect’s focus changes from “What will I do?” To “Who will I get to provide this solution?”

Increasing Trust

This relates to your prospect’s confidence in your ability to actually provide the solution. It may be based on their perception of your capacity and expertise, the degree of relationship and rapport they have with you, and their existing relationships with other providers of the same solution.

Indications that you need to work on developing more trust through your presentation are:

Questions about capacity and timing;
Questions about process;
Indications that they are talking to (or plan to talk to) other providers of the same solution.

You should work on increasing the level of trust you engender by ensuring that your appointment-setting script and follow up process builds your prestige and fosters relationship; that you presentation materials highlight your expertise, and by changing your proposal and post-appointment follow up process.

Learning how to build relationships that foster both certainty and trust is vital for your career as an influencer and high performer so if you’re hearing a lot of no’s during your week (sales, relationships, career etc), identify where they are coming from and take the necessary steps to engender more certainty and trust in those around you.

Once you do this, you’ll find it’s much easier to get to ‘yes’ and your sales closing rate will skyrocket.

… but you can change that.

Most people let others off the hook because they want to be seen as a nice person and because we are conditioned to believe that calling people out is neither nice nor kind.

That is absolutely wrong!

Letting people get away with unreliability is one the cruellest thing you can do to anyone of any age because it teaches them to lie to themselves and break promises to themselves.

“Nice” is one of those words people use when they can’t think of anything positive to say, but don’t want to offend someone.

Maybe the following acronym will make you think twice next time you are considering giving someone an easy way out:-

Nothing
Inside me
Cares
Enough to…

tell you you’re behaving badly and hurting or offending others
make sure you realise the consequences of your action (or inaction)
enable you to move forward and achieve your goals
set standards and hold you to them

“NICE” is really a polite way of saying, “I don’t care about you or your life.”

Is that really the person you want to be? Do you really care so little about your family, friends, colleagues, and clients?
…Or have you been brainwashed into thinking that calling someone out is kind, when it’s really killing you, your friends and family.
N.B. I’m not suggesting that you’re nasty to people, but lovingly honest, especially about their excuses.

It’s true, calling people (including yourself) out when they fail to:

Arrive on time (or at all)
Deliver on their promises
Give notice of changes
Complete projects
Take care of themselves

…is not particularly comfortable.

However, accepting those excuses and giving a non-committal response won’t help anyone make the changes they need to make to go the places they want to go.

Should I Let Him Off?

Recently one of my coaching clients showed up for a session unprepared. Normally he’s very diligent about completing his tasks, but this time he hadn’t even looked at them.

My first thought (after hearing about his week and the reasons he hadn’t completed the tasks) was to say, “Well, that’s okay, I’ll let you off this once.” But then I thought about the patterns in his life and business and the reasons he was coming to me for coaching in the first place. Although this was the first time in over six months, he had done this in the context of his coaching, breaking promises to himself was an underlying behaviour.

So I thought…

“Is letting him off the hook really the kindest thing I can do for him? Would I be breaking my side of the coaching agreement if I did so.”

Holding him to his commitment didn’t save me any time. However, the discussion we had helped him to realise some ingrained and unconscious behaviours that were holding him back from achieving his goals.

Carl Jung says, “That which was unconscious, when made conscious ceases to exist.”

When my client returned the following week, with his tasking thoroughly completed, he said this,
“Chandell, I was so furious when you refused to have our session last week! Even after you had talked to me and explained why you were doing so and how holding me to my agreement would actually help me get my outcomes, I was mad inside. As I drove home, I was looking for loopholes to get out of our coaching agreement, but then I realised why you had done this and I saw all the other areas of my life that I was undermining by this sort of behaviour. Thank you for caring enough to challenge me.”

Learning how to call others out when they are betraying their own principles is an important skill, it takes courage, commitment, and caring. It’s one of the reasons my clients work with me.

Have You seen my “The Secret of Making People Want to Work With You” webinar? Check it out here: – https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/secret-people-want-work-you

STOP selling on your terms. START selling on theirs.

Stacey was talking about her ‘failure’ to land a client…

“I must be charging too much or else I said something to turn him away. I thought Jon was ready to sign the contract, but it’s been three days and he hasn’t contacted me yet.

“Wait a minute, Stacey. You can’t just assume that things have fallen through like that. There are lots of reasons why he might not have got back to you. Have you tried calling him?

“No.” Stacey’s voice was glum. “This is what happens all the time. I think prospects are excited to work with me, but then they disappear.”

Stacey was making a common assumption that was killing her results… and her enthusiasm. Maybe you have caught yourself thinking the same thing:

She assumed that her prospects were as preoccupied with this one problem and its solution as she was.

What is Goal Setting?

The truth is that whatever problem you solve for clients is just one aspect of their business. They are busy fulfilling their responsibilities and solving a range of problems so even if the problem you solve is urgent, it’s not the only thing they are thinking about.

How to Handle This Reality and Make Everyone Happy…

Follow up consistently. If necessary use more than one mode of communication. Your desire not to be a pest may be holding both you and your prospect back from achieving your desired outcomes. Presumably you have already had a conversation during which your prospect demonstrated their need of a solution and you explained your expertise in that area. Therefore, you already have a clear invitation to be involved. Don’t back away until they tell you to do so. Silence does not equal rejection.
Ask questions and discover exactly what your prospect needs to make a decision. The chances are that their decision making strategy is different from your own and it’s your job to discover what it is and tailor your communication to meet their style.

These two simple techniques can transform your business results because suddenly you discover that the problem was never your solution or your price, it was ‘just’ a communication problem.

The Importance of Communication in Business… Not Just in Sales

I coach a lot of management and project teams, as well as sales teams because effective internal and external communication lies at the heart of business success… and is responsible for many failures as well.

Here are some of the key elements required for successful communication:

Understanding your own preferred communication styles and strategies;
Identify others’ preferred communication styles and strategies;
Effectively use a variety of communication styles and speak to different strategies;
Ask questions so you discover what people are really thinking rather than assume you know that;

When I asked Stacey how she responded when people seemed to ‘disappear’ and whether she followed them up and asked questions like ‘What do you still need to help you make a decision?’ Stacey’s expression said everything I needed to know.

She was judging her prospects by herself. Since she made decisions quickly after one discussion and hated saying ‘no’ she assumed that silence meant, “I’m definitely not interested but I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

Things might not have changed, but she was facing a real shortfall so she decided to call Jon and ask him if he was still interested in her proposal.

“You were right. He wasn’t trying to shut me off!” was Stacey’s text to me that afternoon.

Communication is just as important in teams… and it’s even more important to know what it takes to get your team members on board since you’ll probably be working on many new ideas and projects over time.

Maybe you only need to hear an idea once before you evaluate it and make a decision, but Sally needs to hear it at least three times… and Jim will need to be reassured constantly that it’s the right move. Once you understand the dynamics you’re dealing with you can build your communication around them and you’ll find it easier to get the support and resources you need.

Communication Makes Good Things Happen

You won’t win every deal, and you won’t get support for every idea, but if you know how to identify other people’s communication styles and strategies, ask good questions that enable others to express their opinions and needs, and have a variety of tools to help you communicate effectively you’ll soon discover that more exciting things happen around you than ever before.

You Are Much More Than You Think You Are…

but maybe you’re choosing to live as though you were even less!

Our words shape our beliefs, and our beliefs affect our behaviours. If you believe that you are:

‘Just a mum’
‘Not good with money’
‘Bad at communicating your desires’
‘No good at selling’
‘Unable to sustain a successful relationship’
‘Just another…’ [accountant, photographer, business coach, web developer, surgeon…]

… then that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in terms of how you see yourself, and how you project yourself to others. The words you use to describe yourself reinforce that projection every time you speak them.

It’s a chicken and egg relationship. Your beliefs affect your outcomes and your outcomes influence your beliefs and you can either let yourself get trapped in that cycle or you can choose to step out of the cycle and evolve into your best self.

Defining Who and What You Aspire to be

You are in the process of becoming what you aspire to be and that raises two questions:

Are your aspirations challenging you to be, do, and have more than you currently are? and
Is there more that you could aspire to?

This is not about creating discontent and dissatisfaction with your life per se. It’s about challenging yourself to lift your vision and live into your potential rather than being trapped by your current circumstances and beliefs. It’s about the reality that whatever you think you are in this moment, you are more than that.

You’ve heard the stories about the amazing feats of endurance, strength, and heroism people perform in moments of urgency. These are all feats that they would never have imagined themselves capable of, but which emerged under pressure. Equally inspiring are the parents and carers who watch the suffering of a child and tirelessly minister to their needs beyond the point of physical or emotional endurance. If asked in advance, most of them would say, “I could never do that.” Yet they do because in the moment they expand their image of themselves.

You don’t have to wait for a crisis to initiate this process of growth, you simply have to make the decision that you are ready to change. My mum demonstrated this possibility thinking once she realised how her language and beliefs were keeping her trapped in her reality.

She used to frame her defeat in words like, “I worked so hard, and look at what I’ve ended up with! I’m just no good with [whatever the specific area of defeat might be].”

Once she realised what she was doing to herself she changed both her words and her thinking to reflect the possibilities in her life.

You Are Much More Than You Think You Are!

Mum had shut off the idea that she could be good at numbers and make enough money to do more than pay the bills in primary school and, of course, money has to do with numbers. Every time she talked to herself she cemented the belief that she “just wasn’t good with numbers.” That belief system was cemented into her behaviour and overflowed into her business and finances.

Maybe for you it isn’t numbers and money, but I’d be willing to bet that you have some beliefs about yourself that are stopping you from taking the actions needed to be the person you want to be and do the things you want to do. In my NLP Master Practitioner trainings we do an exercise based on the principle of “re-identification”. It’s a transformative exercise that helps students think about the:

Words they use to describe themselves and their abilities,
Way those words and phrases affect their actions and decisions,
New words and phrases that describe the person they want to be.

All the students who fully engage in this process notice changes almost immediately in their choices and behaviours which positively affect their results.

If you’ve decided that you’re not good at something or that you have limitations that keep you from achieving your goals, then that decision becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. At the same time, when you change those beliefs you open up new opportunities and outcomes.

By opening yourself up to the possibility that you could do or be something and change the language you use around that possibility you can make choices that will turn that possibility into living truth. The biggest difference between the prosperous business owner (successful parent, author, speaker, athlete, …) and the wannabe is not talent or luck. It’s the choices they made along the way about how they behaved and who they were.

Act as if...

Take a moment to think about WHO you want to be, WHAT you want to have, and HOW you want to behave then CHOOSE the words you use to describe this, words that focus on your aspirations, so that you are open to new possibilities.

My Mum worked hard to change the language she used from the constraint-focus of: “I’ll never be…” to the possibility-focused “I’m in the process of becoming…” or “I’m stepping into…” Using this principle, she would ‘act as if’ she were already the person she wanted to become.

The words you use when you speak to yourself matter as much as, or even more than, the words you use when you speak to other people because you spend much more time speaking to yourself than you do to others. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) acknowledges the reality of the connection between the wiring of our brain and the language that shapes that wiring.

No matter who you think you are, you are far more than you think… so let the words you use to describe the person you are reflect the truth that you are constantly becoming more and opening up new horizons of being and doing.

... Because it is Hurting Your Business

Harry Potter found his invisibility cloak extremely useful… but you don’t want to wear yours.

An invisible business is in big trouble. So is a forgettable business.

So, how do you make yourself and your business memorable?

The answer:

You reach out and tweak the emotional response of your target audience… just about any emotional response will do: anger, fear, insecurity, laughter, happiness, irritation, nostalgia…

Memorability Beats Sophistication

Do you remember any of the marketing jingles you heard years ago?

Every time I clean the bathroom I think of the Spray ’n Wipe ad that starts, “The cleaning it was easy, even though things were real greasy…” I can still hear my Mum singing it… frequently with a few variations that had my brother and I rolling on the floor squealing with laughter… and the laughter still wells up in me, too.

Maybe you remember, “We’re happy little Vegemites…” or “You’ll live much more, with a roller door…” or one of the others. Unsophisticated… maybe. Annoying… perhaps. Effective… definitely.

I’m confident that if I played a few bars of the jingle, I could get you to sing along. Even if you skipped a few words the product would be clear in your mind. I won’t even bet on the outcome, because that would be stealing. I’ve tried it at events and it works every time.

Does Your Pitch Evoke That Response?

It should. And to create that response, you need to strike an emotional chord, and you need to repeat your message regularly… long after you are sick of hearing it.

A response… any response is better than blank stares.

Look, successful politicians have their haters as well as their fans because they stand for something recognisable.

You will know that you’re really onto something that stands out when you start getting hate-mail as well as fan mail.

So the question is… when you share your sales message do you get polite responses or do you get enthusiastic interest and questions?

It’s often not until you start to think about how you want to make your ideal clients feel and what you can do to evoke that feeling that you come up with a marketing message that is truly memorable… because it evokes emotion.

Lead Generation

If you want to close more sales, then your best tool is to have a USP and Elevator Pitch that creates an emotional response in your prospect. Hey, if they throw up when you point out their problem it means you’ve struck a nerve… and they probably won’t forget you in a hurry.

When you focus on the primary emotion your ideal prospects need to feel just before they buy and craft a pitch that evokes that, you’ll get more opportunities to have meaningful sales conversations and that means you’ll end up with more sales.

Maybe you want prospects to feel:-

a sense of trust
warm, secure, and comfortable
challenged
angry or frustrated
confident
or….

Does your current USP evoke this kind of reaction? If not test new variations on every prospect and customer until you find a USP that does. Existing customers like to feel an emotional response too. If you meet this need, you’ll keep them longer. They’re also more likely to refer you to others if they feel enthusiastic (or even angry about their problem) than if they just feel a dogged neutrality.

“We buy on emotion…. Then we use logic to justify our decisions (especially to our spouse or business associates.”

Ask yourself:

If I heard my USP would I get excited about my offer?
Would it evoke curiosity & enthusiasm?

If not, it’s time to revisit your USP this weekend and add some emotional zing. Keep working on it until even your family members are fascinated when you tell them what you do.

It’s one of the first things that we work on in the 13-week Profitable Business Accelerator because it can quickly transform your sales closing rate from 20% or less into 80% or higher and immediately affect your profits.

You can learn more and find out when the next program is starting here:

https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

#TuesdayTips

Understanding how people think isn’t just a good sales technique, it also is a great relationship-building skill that helps in all areas of your life!

I’ve already talked about how Internal Representation Systems (IRS) work and how identifying them can help you communicate better on many levels. This post is focused on identifying the vocabulary clues that reveal the preferred Internal Representation System of the person you are talking to.

One of the objections I often hear about developing rapport is that it is tricky to focus on your prospect’s argument while simultaneously trying to subtly match and mirror aspects of their behaviour, another is that it is impossible to do this when you are talking on the phone since you can’t see the person you are talking to. The exciting thing about using a person’s vocabulary to establish rapport is that it is relatively easy to pick up their preferred Internal Representation System and you can use it in every social situation (except possibly at a noisy party).

What Are the Major Internal Representation Systems?

Visual:

The Visual person focuses on visual predicates that reflect their visual perception of the world around them. You’ll hear visual words like:

See;
Look;
Show;
Reveal;
Illuminate;
Foggy;
Imagine;
Picture;
View;
Dawn;

Auditory:

The Auditory person focuses on the sounds of words, ideas, and proposals. They use words like:

Hear;
Listen;
Tune in (or out);
Ring a bell;
Silence;
Resonate;
Question;
Make music;
Deaf;
Sound;

Kinaesthetic:

The Kinaesthetic person is concerned about sensations and movement. Their vocabulary includes words like:

Hard;
Catch on;
Tap into;
Feel;
Solid;
Grasp;Touch;
Throw out;
Unfeeling;
Make contact;

Auditory-Digital:

The Auditory-Digital person engages in a lot of self-talk and internal processing and the vocabulary they use reflects that internal dialogue, with words like:

Know;
Process;
Consider;
Decide;
Understand;
Experience;
Learn;
Motivate;
Change;
Perceive;

Obviously this is not an exhaustive list, and you will rarely hear predicates drawn from just one representational system in a conversation that is more than a few minutes long, but if you keep your ears open for the general trends you will know which key words to focus on in your response to a prospect or client and you will find that your close rate improves dramatically.

After all, good sales people are constantly improving their skills, and one of the most vital skills in any sales situation is developing rapport with the other person – otherwise you end up with a high return rate once your prospects have a chance to get away from your overpowering personality.

Before we close, I’d like to remind you that your preferred Internal Representation System is not fixed. It can shift over time and even from day to day, so this is a guide, not a box to place yourself or others into. During Confident Closing workshops we use a short diagnostic test to help participants identify their preferred Internal Representation System, but we stress the importance of expanding your vocabulary, and becoming more flexible in this area of communication.

Meta Description: The words you use make up less than 10% of your total communication, yet they are powerful tool in building rapport and understanding the things that matter to your people within minutes of starting a conversation with them.

Book your complimentary 30-minute Discovery Session with Chandell.

By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

#TuesdayTips

At this point in your conversation you want to reflect all the issues your prospect has highlighted as being important back to them. You also want to discuss how your product or service addresses these issues and resolves the problems they are facing in detail. This is not the time for a quick 5 point summary, but is a serious presentation of value. Your specific solution is what the prospect will buy, so you need to remind them of the value that each part of the solution will bring to their business.

Price will enter the discussion, but if you have stacked the value up for them then they price will be seen in the context of the return on investment they can expect – and that return could be in many forms – financial, time, peace-of-mind. Most quality buyers won’t make their decision on price alone. Clearly price is a factor – sometimes a business just can’t afford your solution – but more often then not, if the value is stacked high enough and there is enough convincing proof that it works, then your prospect will find the money needed to purchase.

Pricing and payment plans are just one more way you can customise your solution to fit your prospect’s needs without diminishing your profitability. You’d be surprised at just what people can afford when the payments are split over a few months or some other installment option.

In our Confident Closing Workshops we go over the importance of stacking the value when presenting your solution and helping your prospect to really experience the benefits your product offers. After doing this exercise many of our students go away feeling that they are seriously under-charging their clients once they have stacked up the benefits. Some of them have doubled or tripled their prices and found that they actually get more people taking up their offers.

Have you tried stacking up the value and tailoring your solution for your clients? Did it change their responsiveness to price and their interest in your product or service?

Let us know in the comments.

Meta Description: A tailored solution that solves my problem is almost irresistible for most people. Generic solutions are harder to sell at all, and certainly don’t attract premium prices.

Presenting a Customised Solution

Now that you have built rapport, asked questions, and established your prospect’s need for your product or service it is time to propose a solution before asking for the sale. This is where many businesses fall down and lose their way – they offer every client the exact same options and solutions. This often comes from the excellent idea that you should ‘package’ your services so people understand exactly what they are getting.

The difficulty with this is that your prospect gets the feeling that you are more interested in off-loading whatever you happen to have in your wheelbarrow, than you are in solving their problem – and that makes them defensive and hard to convince.

The Goal of Your Solution

When you actually propose your solution to a prospect your goal is to for them to feel that you have just suggested the exact piece they need to complete their puzzle. You want them to feel that you are proposing something that is tailor made for them, rather than a generic one-size-fits-all solution. When you propose a solution that really ticks all their boxes and meets the needs they have pointed out to you, you signal that you have heard their problems.

It is still your pre-defined package, but you have matched it exactly to your prospects needs, and described it in their language. Now they don’t feel that you have just grabbed a box out of your wheelbarrow and are trying to get them to buy whatever it is that you have too much of – now they feel it is designed exactly for them. Perhaps you have swapped out some coaching sessions for a top-notch presentation they can use, or made another slight tweak that meets their need. Maybe you haven’t changed anything, but by listening and learning have simply described the package accurately in their own language.

Whatever you have done, they have heard you describe the perfect solution to their problem. Do you think people will pay more for a tailored solution that exactly meets their needs, or for a generic solution with more features and benefits in it? I can tell you that the tailored solution always appears more valuable in people’s eyes – just like people are ready to pay more for a meal at a restaurant than they are at McDonalds.

#TuesdayTips

This post is part of a series filling out details on the 5-step sales process [Link to #16]

Building Rapport; [Link to #20]
Asking Questions; [ Link to #21]
Establishing Need & Value-Add; [Link to #22]
Proposing a Solution; [Link to #23]
Closing the Sale. [Link to #24]

I’ve listed them sequentially, but of course you are doing many of these steps simultaneously. While you’re asking questions, you continue to build rapport … and you’ll keep asking questions as you move into establishing their need for your product or service and highlighting the value it brings to them.

Why Ask Questions?

The reason you want to ask questions is to learn about your prospect – to discover the things that are important to them about a product or service, the problems they are trying to solve, their decision-making strategy, and their level of interest. All of this information will help you:

Decide whether your product/service is suitable for them;
Understand which features and benefits are most important to them;
Determine how to present your solution;
See what time-frame you will be working with.

What Kind of Questions Do You Want to Ask?

Your questions should be directly related to the business of the person you are interviewing and phrased in the the language they use, so you’ll need to tweak the following questions for each prospect:-

What do you do? What are you interested in?
For what purpose do you want this?
What would be a successful outcome if we went ahead with this?
Who will make the decision on this matter?
How will you know if this product/service is right for you?
What is important to you about this?
When will you make a decision on this?

– these questions will help you learn about why the person is talking to you, and how seriously they are considering your product/service. In a business context, it is much better to disqualify a prospect quickly than to spend a lot of time talking to someone who is just getting information from you. Of course, you don’t want to be too abrupt about this because people move around, their circumstances change, and they may recommend you to others, but if you discover that they have no intention of buying at this time, you will modify your process appropriately. This is actually very beneficial, because you get the information you need, and you don’t force them into a situation where they are uncomfortable.

One key thing you need to uncover during this process is whether the person you are talking to is a key decision-maker or not. If they don’t have the power to sign off on the deal then you know that you’re dealing with either a gate-keeper, or simply an ideas-person. If you are dealing with someone who is just bringing ideas to the table then you don’t want to spend too much time or energy on them. If it’s a gate-keeper, then your goal has to be to get their attention and interest so that they can introduce you to the decision-makers.

Whatever the situation, asking questions brings clarity and help you get the outcomes you are looking for.

Meta Description: The quality of your life may be determined by the quality of the questions you ask, but the value of your sales certainly will be.

#TuesdayTips

Building rapport is a key skill that makes our relationships run more smoothly in every area of our lives so it’s worth investing some time in thinking about some key techniques that help us establish rapport as quickly and easily as possible.

I’ve written about the entire 5-Step Selling process in another post [Link to #16] so this post just focuses on the first element of the strategy.

Why Do We Need Rapport?

Occasionally people will say something like, “Rapport isn’t important in business. I make decisions on the basis of facts, not relationships.” There’s no point arguing with this perspective so I don’t, but a few minutes later, that same person will say something about ‘just not getting on with’ another person and deciding not to do business with them.

Don’t kid yourself. Rapport matters. It is rarely the only factor in your business decisions (or it shouldn’t be), but it is important. If you are selling to another person your ability to establish rapport will directly affect your success in closing the sale. However, let’s look at the bigger picture: your ability to establish rapport quickly and easily will also make every other negotiation or relationship in your life run more smoothly as well, whether it’s with your spouse, your children, family members, or friends. Rapport makes it possible to work through tense moments in any relationship and create win-win outcomes for everyone much of the time.

How Can We Build Rapport Quickly and Easily?

Most people recognise the importance of building rapport, but their strategy for doing so is rather hit or miss. In my early days, I depended mostly on verbal strategies – finding common interests, experiences and places. It worked reasonably well but it took time – sometimes a lot of time.

A while ago I was working for a company that managed events and I was selling major sponsorships and event space for a particular large project. I called on some existing relationships, pitched to the sponsorship team and my contact signed off on the pitch. He was the head-honcho marketing guy and he signed off on the deal, but the person I actually had to deal with was his Brand Manager, who was coordinating everything.

His Brand Manager wasn’t happy that $100,000 of her marketing budget had been spent without consulting her. So I went in to see her, and the atmosphere was frigid! I tried everything I knew to build rapport with this woman and nothing worked for about 20 minutes, until we eventually realised that we had gone to the same school. Suddenly, her entire face changed, the atmosphere warmed up, and we were able to move forward productively.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) teaches some techniques that help you speed up the process of building rapport – and shorten that time of tension. You won’t always need them, because sometimes you will just ‘click’ with another person, but it’s good to have them in your toolkit for when you do. After all, even great relationships have some tense moments!

We build rapport through 3 main channels of communication: our words, our tonality, and our physiology or body language. Studies show that words account for about 7% of our effect on others; tonality, 38%; and physiology a whopping 55% of our impact. Obviously I can’t cover everything that Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) teaches here, but I’d like to highlight some ways we can use this information to build rapport quickly and discreetly.

Words:

If you listen to the other person carefully you can work out whether their preferred internal representation system is visual, auditory, or kinaesthetic, and you can choose words that match and mirror theirs. Visual people highlight words that represent sight: ‘look’, ‘see’, ‘clarity’; auditory communicators will use phrases like: ‘listen’, ‘hear this’, ‘there’s too much noise’; and kinaesthetic communicators will say things like: ‘Have you grasped that?’, ‘imagine’, ‘it feels right’.

Once you’ve picked up on their preferred system you can choose those kinds of words yourself and mirror them back to your prospect.

Tonality:

Does your prospect speak slowly? Do they speak quickly? Is their voice deep, and produced in the chest or belly, or high, or mid-range? You can identify this and match it back to them (discreetly). You might want to slow your speech down, or speed it up a little to meet their preferred speed. You might also want to change pitch – please note, I’m not suggesting your speak in falsetto just because your prospect is a woman with a high-pitched voice. Always be subtle and discreet.

Physiology:

There’s a virtually endless list of things you can match in physiology. Mannerisms, gestures, posture, blinking rate, … these are just a few of the tools you can use. Once you realise that our physiology makes up around 55% of your communication you’ll probably want to be more conscious of it in yourself as well as in others.

I’ve spoken about matching the other person’s style of communication by carefully observing their words, tonality, and physiology but I want to highlight here that this is a subtle process – not a question of mimicry. You certainly wouldn’t copy everything they did – that would be uncomfortable and would break rapport. You are simply using it to open channels of communication and give your message a greater chance of being heard and considered.

In a sales situation, I might focus on one or two really subtle areas – and I would make sure that my matching tool place outside the other person’s awareness.

It’s one of those skills that is easy to learn, and that improves with time. In Confident Closing we spend one session on it, and many of our students find that they can implement it immediately – in NLP Practitioner Training we revisit it in more detail and the feedback is usually that they are doing it unconsciously most of the time, but that when people sense tension they can make a deliberate effort using matching and mirroring techniques. Generally, even the people who were concerned about the ‘manipulation’ aspect when we first discuss the techniques of building rapport come back to me and say that the thing it really helped them to do was become a better student of other people by listening and observing more carefully.

Meta Description: Rapport is sometimes called the glue that holds relationships together and makes them work. Building Rapport is a key skill for anyone in both their business or personal lives.

#TuesdayTips

The other day I was saddened to hear a parent say to their Scout leader, “I don’t want my child involved in selling items to raise money. My child is no sales person, he’s a good boy.”

I was even more startled to hear the Scout leader respond, “It’s OK. This year we aren’t selling chocolates, we’re just asking for donations.”

The parent was happy, but I was filled with a deep uneasiness. I understand the reluctance to have our children knock on neighbours doors and offer to do chores in return for pay, and I don’t necessarily think we want to be pushing chocolate on people, but do we really want our children to grow up thinking selling is ‘bad’, and sales people are some kind of pariah? I don’t think so! And I really hate the idea that it’s better to ask for a donation than to sell something that has value.

We Are All Sales People - and Always Have Been

The reality is that we are all in sales. We can call it ‘negotiation’, we can call it ‘sharing ideas’, or a million other euphemisms but when push comes to shove every one of us will spend a lot of our lives selling. We sell when we apply for a job, when we communicate and idea or suggest a project at work, when we go on holidays, persuade our kids to do their homework, decide which restaurant to eat at, and a million other times each day.

The real questions are, how well do we do that selling and how effectively do we attract support and co-operation from others? In my opinion, the better your skills and ideas, the greater your responsibility to gain the skills needed to sell them. It’s doing your colleagues, your employer, and your clients an injustice when you can’t communicate your powerful solutions effectively so that others can appreciate them.

Selling Effective Solutions

If you have an effective solution to someone’s real problem, then you should be embarrassed if you withhold the solution. Maybe you don’t think their problem is important. Perhaps you think they should keep suffering with that problem. Or perhaps you are just more concerned that they won’t realise how easily and effectively your produce or service can remove their problem.

Whatever is going through your brain when you decide this person isn’t worth helping, I’d like to challenge you to change it. Maybe your solution costs more than they are willing to pay – but that is their decision to make, not yours.

In my Confident Closing Workshops [Link here] I invariably have students who are worried about the price of their product or service. When we discuss this as a group and draw out the value any given product or service brings to its owners the consensus is usually that it is worth more, not less, than the price it is being sold for. Did you get that? I don’t recall ever having other people say, “That is way too much for anyone to pay!”

How much is your product or service worth? That depends on the size and severity of the problem it solves. Whether it’s solving logistics problems for a large company, helping small business owners become more profitable, or helping obese people lose weight to avoid insulin-dependence, the price people will pay for your solution depends on how painful their problem is.

Price and value are not fixed – they are relative. Your job as a sales person is to stack the value of the solution you are selling so high that your prospect says, (even as he sits down in shock when he hears the figure you set), “Is that all?”

If you are selling a real solution to a genuine problem then you are helping make your prospects’ lives better, not taking money from them.

Do You Still Hate Selling?

Maybe you’re not convinced yet. Try this exercise.

Make a list of all the problems your product or service solves.

List the time and money prospects spend on other solutions that are less effective.

How does your solution stack up? If you can’t find enough value in it, then dig a bit deeper. If you still can’t find the value in it then maybe it’s time to sell something else. But if you’ve come up with a substantial list in support of your product’s benefits (which I hope you have), then it’s time to hold your head high, get out there, and sell it for all you’re worth because of the value it will bring to users.

Meta Description: Selling is part of our everyday life whether we like it or not. The best way to deal with that reality is to become comfortable with your need to sell and develop skills that allow you to sell more effectively.

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… but you can change that.

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Words:

Tonality:

Physiology:

#TuesdayTips

We Are All Sales People - and Always Have Been

Selling Effective Solutions

Do You Still Hate Selling?

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