The power of building rapport, trust in sales

I have a cousin named Anita. We are about the same age so I have really known her as long as I can remember. Anita is not technically in sales, but she sells about everyone she runs across with her natural empathy and curiosity — about others.

When I see her, she starts the conversation with questions about what I have been up to like:

• How’s business? What are you working on since we talked? How is AI figuring into what you are doing?

• Where have you traveled lately? Where are you going next? What’s your favorite place to travel to, as I need to plan a trip.

• How are the book sales going? Are you on Amazon? Anywhere else? What has been the most interesting stranger you have met as a result of them reading your book?

• Tell me about your latest music gig?  Who is your teacher? How did you find him?

Truthful rapport

So, as you can tell she is asking good questions with good follow-ups to learn more, and it feels great to have someone ask good questions and let me talk.

The opposite is the basic “how are you” followed by talking about ourselves our product. People want to be listened to and understood. Part of the delivery is a great smile and being genuinely interested. Remember that this type of trusted “opening up” conversation is what we are looking for in sales — the truth.

Another bad move in the conversation is to make it a rapid-fire checklist, much like a quiz for the prospect. How many of these? How many of those? How many workers? This kind of stuff needs to be saved for much later.

We are looking at what the prospects say the story is. If any of those details are important, they will let you know and you can always get them later. Don’t ruin the conversation with details – it’s annoying. You really don’t want to annoy your prospect.

After all these years I certainly know what to expect when I see Anita, and that she is going to be asking me questions — but I love it and am happy to answer and answer and answer. Everyone likes people to be interested in them and to be able to tell their story, what is really going on to someone who is willing to dig in and really listen.

Anita does a lot of things that we recommend to salespeople. If you can show up with a smile, and a genuinely curious demeanor and ask good questions (not a checklist) to find out what the situation really is, you can build that rapport and trust with clients.

Does that mean will they now buy from you? Who knows? It depends on what you are selling and what they need. What trust allows for is to greatly increase your chances of simply getting at the truth — what is the situation. Once you know that you will know whether you are a good fit.

Once you know you have a company that you can help, and you and the customer agree to the savings, it should not be too hard to proceed from there.

Think less about selling something and more about establishing trust so you can find out what is really going on. In other words — be like Anita.