4 Crucial Rapport Building Steps To Increased Sales
Have you ever wondered whether there is any magical formula for generating more business? A simple process you can follow consistently that just gets results.
Well … there is. There are 4 fundamental steps to building strong relationships with clients. They are:
1. Build Trust and Rapport
2. Discover their Needs
3. Create the Desire
4. Empower them into Action
It sounds simple doesn’t it … and is simple in principle. The more familiar you become with this 4 step process, the more opportunities you will discover that you can apply it to.
One Step at a Time
It is imperative that you get completion on each step before moving to the next.
Just like a Baseball player – he can’t get to base 2 until he gets to base 1 first.
What Not To Do
Let’s illustrate what happens when the 4 step process is violated:
Example:
A man rings you up. You have never spoken to him before and he immediately jumps into asking you if are happy with your current home loan. What is your response within your mind? It could be something “I don’t now who this person is and he has jumped straight into probing me on my financial needs”.
In this case he has bypassed step 1 (build trust and rapport) and straight on to step 2 (discover needs).
An even worse situation than this is if he had bypassed both bases 1 and 2 and started his conversation with “Hi … would you like to take advantage of our great home loan offer”. Here again, little or no trust and rapport building is present and he has gone straight to flogging his product! He has no idea about your what your needs are and yet is happy to tell you all about what he can do for you.
Get a Sense of Trust
It’s important to realize that you must feel a sense of trust and rapport between yourself and the client before you start discovering their needs. Otherwise, they may be reluctant to open up and share with you the challenge they need support with. You must understand their needs before you can offer them a solution, otherwise you are “mind-reading” – this becomes a gamble. Only then, when you have created the desire by offering an appropriate solution can you expect them to consider taking action or saying “yes, I would like to proceed”.
Applying the 4 Steps
The 4 steps outlined here can be applied in many different business situations, whether they have a short term focus or a long term focus. Some such scenarios include:
1. Writing an email inviting client to a seminar (short term focus)
2. Ringing the client to organize a face to face meeting (short term focus).
3. Engaging a client in taking up a product/service (medium term focus)
4. Empowering a client to support promoting the business and becoming a valued advocate (long term focus)
What other situations can you think of where you can apply the 4 step client relationship building process?