[E223] Effectively building rapport (Q&A)

The best way to build rapport with somebody and to get them to be open and to get them to feel comfortable is that you yourself have to be as authentic and transparent as possible. Welcome to the sales experience podcast, the show for salespeople and sales leaders, where we help you create the ideal sales experience to generate raving fan customers. Grab your notepad and get ready for actionable steps. You can use to change sales from a dirty word to an active service for your prospects. Now for your host, Jason Cutter. I am so glad that you're here. I'm so glad that you're taking the time to hopefully up a level your sales career or your sales team by listening to podcasts like this. Hopefully you've subscribed. If not, make sure to subscribe. And if you like this, leave a rating and a review. And in this episode, I am going to address some. Sales related questions to try to help everybody in sales, do more, be more and sell more with their career and achieve their goals. Now let's go ahead and jump into this episode. So the question for today comes from Nick Nepparini. And I know I said that wrong, Nick, I apologize, but I appreciate the question. So Nick's question, what he sent me was, I think the biggest initial hurdle in any sale is building that Poor and making the customer feel comfortable as this sets the foundation for the rest of the sale. Any tips on going about this in an effective way would be great. So that's a great question, Nick. I appreciate that. That's where a lot of people struggle or they're not sure how to do it. They. Really good at building rapport in other areas of their life. Maybe relationships people they meet random and when you get into a sales role, then it's a different pressure because there's this outcome. There's this result that you want, which is to make a sale to make money to hit your quota to keep your job, whatever that looks like for you. And so it becomes this different pressure and framework that really can mess with people's minds and make them feel like rapport needs to be something different. And this again is why I focus on helping people with the authentic persuasion formula is that you want to do what you always do in rapport in anybody else in any other part of your life when there isn't a motive or a result or a goal that you want to achieve. You want to build rapport like you would remembering that. You and they are both just two humans. So it's one human to another one having a conversation, trying to find some common bond and trying to then move the conversation forward with a little bit of a warm step. And so how do you make them feel comfortable? There's several things that I have seen that works really well, and I know that I have used. The first one is, and I mentioned this a bunch, I mentioned this in the previous one as well, is you want to make sure that you are just genuinely interested and curious about that other person. Building rapport is about asking questions, getting to know that other person, having interesting stuff to talk about. Things to discuss and being able to bring that into the conversation. So I think that's part of it is we've all met somebody who doesn't seem to care. It's really hard to build rapport with them because their walls are up. They're not interested. They're not curious. They don't want to share anything. And so that is rough. The next part in this formula that I would say is super important for a lot of people is that whether you state it or not, or whether you're outward about this or not, the best way to build rapport with somebody And to get them to be open and to get them to feel comfortable is that you yourself have to be as authentic and transparent as possible. Now, this is the overall goal. If you want other people to be open, to share, to feel comfortable, you have to be open. You have to share. You have to be comfortable. A lot of times, depending on what you're doing, especially in a relationship, if you want the other person to feel very open and comfortable, you've got to share things. Usually you've got to share it first. Hey, it's Jason here. We'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to change the way you view your selling role and become a sales professional? Do you have a team that is hungry for new ways to improve and grow? If so, I have various coaching and consulting programs available that might be great tools. To help you achieve your goals to learn more about the ways we can work together and to book your free sales, power call, go to Jason cutter. com. Now let's get back to the episode. So if I were to tell you something about myself, that was very deep, very personal, very authentic, and very transparent, maybe even something I wouldn't necessarily want people to know, but I want to share with you. It's going to set this framework and it's going to build this level of trust in that rapport building where the goal is for me to just share and be open. Now, the reason I say it that way is you don't necessarily have to do that in the rapport step or even during your sales process, but you have to be willing to, and you have to be open and you have to be comfortable. Because if you're willing to go to that place where you would share secrets, or information, or painful experiences in your past, or things that you have failed at And if you're willing to share that in a conversation with your prospects, right? So we're talking about sales here. If you're willing to share those kinds of things, even if you don't share it, you're vibrating at a different level, which will just share this authentic, comfortable level with them, which they won't understand it. They won't pick up on it. This sounds woo, but subconsciously they will go. This person is open and authentic and transparent and comfortable. And so I want to be. And we've met people like that where you just they haven't said anything, but you just feel like sharing everything in the world with them. I feel like I have that special talent because I can talk to somebody and within a few minutes, they're sharing things with me that anybody who's listening is I can't believe they just told you that. And it's not that I'm telling my secrets or my stuff first. It's just that I'm curious and I'm interested and I'm willing to be completely authentic. And that just sets that framework. So I think that's very important to do. The other part, and this is what I see in your question, is that make customers feel comfortable. My question to you and anyone in sales is, are you comfortable, right? Are you comfortable in the conversations, in what you're selling, why you're selling it, what value it has to people? Are you comfortable with your sales process, with how you're talking to people, what you're going to say if they ask you questions? Because generally people will reflect who you are. That's why I was talking about that whole transparency authenticity part a minute ago is because they're going to reflect you. The more open you are, the more open other people are. The less comfortable you are, the less comfortable your prospects are. I know from my sales leadership experience is that generally I can tell a salesperson what they might be struggling. By just listening to what their prospects are saying in response to them or seeing the notes in the file relative to what happened with that prospect. And so if you're struggling with people feeling comfortable, if you're struggling with people moving forward, then that might be an indication that there's something at a deeper level for you. where you aren't feeling comfortable with the process or with who you are or what you're selling or why or does it actually matter? Does it actually help people? And I think that's really the big key. Are you looking for a way to increase your selling effectiveness, break through plateaus and achieve your financial goals through sales? When you use the authentic persuasion method, you will transform from order taker to quota breaker. If you're ready to become an authentic persuader, go to Jason cutter. com to download the free ebook. And if you want to get help on getting there even quicker. For yourself or your sales team, set up your free sales power call, and I will give you some tips and strategies to help in your conversations and also make recommendations on ways that we can work together. When you're ready, go to Jason cutter. com again, Jason cutter. com. You can find all the links you need at Jason cutter. com and also set up your free sales power call. And no matter what, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.