Coffee's for Closers

8Building Rapport

‘The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy’.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Kerry Johnson, the professional tennis player and author of Selling with NLP (neuro linguistic programming), defines building rapport as ‘the bridge that helps the person you are communicating with find meaning and intent in the things you say’.

What Is Rapport?

It's about making people comfortable, gaining trust and putting people at ease. It is the start of building a relationship.

There are many strategies to build rapport. It is important to note that they will not all be suitable for everyone. The reason being we are all different.

I deliver many talks at sales conferences, often to a room of strangers. I notice that these strangers naturally begin gravitating towards people like themselves. This can be done without anyone actually speaking together; it's simply achieved through body language.

In the 1960s, there was a study carried out by two researchers, Dr Mehrabian and Dr Argyle, and they studied how do people communicate. In the circle provided in Figure 8.1, the three areas represent the following: the words we use, how we sound and body language.

Figure 8.1

The words we use	%
How we say the words	%
Body language	%

Which percentage do you think applies ...