As listening skills improve, so will your ability to build rapport. Today’s tip about rapport building also relies on active listening. To close more sales this time, focus on picking up specific words or phrases used by your speaker.
What words do your prospects use? One group will talk about orderliness. Their words paint a picture of organization, structure, systems, process, and formality. They like conventions, traditions, rules and routines. They speak with complete sentences and full paragraphs.
Other individuals talk about relationships. Their words make connections, bridge people together, create bonds, and involve team work. Peace, harmony, getting along, being together and feeling good are words and phrases that these prospects use frequently. Extending a verbal hug, they invite you to be with them.
Another group of individuals speak with detachment and objectivity. They may use outside research and experts to carry their ideas. Words such as logic, intelligent, smart, thinking and learning are interspersed in their communication. Their sentence structure may even sound academic.
With a different type of prospect, you may hear a lot of emotional words such as excitement, awesome, and fantastic. These people talk about experiences and use lots of adjectives. They enjoy quality upgrades, red carpet treatment, over-the-top events, and super-sized adventures.
Having listened closely to catch these telling words and phrases, your mission is to sprinkle in your reply one or two that match your prospect. The result is an immediate sense of being alike. You’ve created rapport. Now you’re ready to move forward to the know-like-and-trust phase of the relationship and close more sales.
