Sales Skills Tip - Build "Rapport" to help you "Score"

  Written by Peter Roden on Mar 11, 2009 11:49 am

Read More: Phone Skills  |  Sponsoring and Recruiting

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 "A great sales person will never starve - it is worth more than having a million dollars in the bank"  

(George Foreman)

My name is Peter Roden, and I am "The Rapport Guy".

I work with individuals who want to improve their sales skills.  We work on the early parts of the "Sales Cycle" so that they can consistently progress to the latter stages of the cycle that deliver the actual results in terms of securing the sale.

However, to consistently get to the "selling" stages, you must engage your prospect in the early part of your initial interaction, and this is where many people fall short.

It is important that you realize that although a thorough knowledge of your product, and the presentation of this knowledge, is vitally important, it is not relevant until later stages of the Sales Cycle. 

Here's why:

First of all, you should never start to tell your prospect about the benefits of your product or service (and why it is right for them) until they have told you their wants and needs. No matter how convincing you believe your spiel to be, you run the risk of turning them against you - as nobody likes a "know-it-all". Once they dislike you (or lose respect for you), you are probably dead in the water.

It has been proven that most people, when making a significant purchase (and assuming they can buy from alternative suppliers) will not buy from you unless theyLIKE  you. If there is any form of conflict during the early stages of your initial interaction, you may never get the chance to woo them with your knowledge and product benefits.

Why? Because in sales, the biggest obstacle to your "likability" is the fact that there is ALWAYS a level of "tension" when you start to speak with someone for the first time, especially from the customer's side.

THE MOST effective thing a salesperson can do to increase the chances of ever getting to a sale is therefore the management of the tension level.

This is where the skills that I teach come in to play.

I will teach you:

       1.     How to consistently make a good “First Impression”

       2.     How to move on and use further skills to build “Rapport”

... and guess what? Rapport leads to Trust, which in turn, removes the tension and allows your prospect to open up to you. They now feel able to disclose their true wants and needs, and once armed with this information, you can NOW utilize your knowledge and sales skills to show them how your product can HELP them... 

You will learn interpersonal interaction skills - in other words, how to communicate better with different types of people. This can give you valuable insight to how they see the world and therefore HOW THEY WANT TO BE SOLD TO. Yes, you heard me correctly - they will show you how they want to be sold to - and this allows you to adapt your interaction with them so that they feel comfortable with you, and therefore more likely to accept your advice and recommendations at the appropriate time  (i.e. at the latter stages of the sales cycle).

This results in you making more sales at the end of the day. 

In summary:

You must not "turn them off" before you "turn them on"! 

It's not rocket science. If you learn just a few simple new skills, it can make an incredible difference to your overall results.

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