A skill set that every business owner and entrepreneur must master is the art of building rapport with your prospects. Without rapport, there will be a lack of trust which will eliminate the possibility of converting the prospect to a client. As with most things in life, building rapport is a learned skill, but can be difficult to master if you don’t understand certain fundamentals that you can leverage to your advantage.
- It is important to note that mastering the art of building rapport should be done with the proper intent, and not to manipulate individuals.
- Your goal should be to use these skills to influence people to make the right decision to help them achieve their goals.
Three Ways to Master the Art of Building Rapport
While there are many facets to building rapport with your prospects, we are going to focus on three main ways you can easily build rapport and grow your business.
1. Understand Your Prospects Personality Type
Each and every person you encounter is different and it is important that your approach fits each person appropriately. The foundation of this is knowing what their dominant personality traits are. There are many different personality profile assessments on the market today but one of my favorites is the DISC profile, as it is simple to utilize and to explain. It also has many resources that you can utilize to gain a better understanding of the assessment.
Your first step is to take the assessment yourself to understand what your particular personality is. Take a free version of the DISC here. By knowing who you are, it will help you to identify how you must approach your prospects. If you are an individual who is very direct and straight to the point, but your prospect likes to talk about who you are as a person before discussing business, you will have to adapt your strategy in order to gain their business.
By understanding this simple principle, you will already be ahead of the vast majority of your competition that does not take the time to understand who their prospects are, and simply approaches everyone in the same manner.
2. Understand Your Prospects Problem
What problem do you solve in your business? Believe it or not, it might not be what the customers you are attracting need. If you are solving the wrong type of problem, then you will have a major problem in your business. You must take the time to discover what exactly your prospects need help with. How many times have you gone to a store where you felt like you were simply being rushed into making a buying decision without someone ever addressing what your problem actually was? To discover what your prospect’s problem is quickly, ask probing questions and then listen. You want to get your prospects to tell you as much as they can about the problem they are having so you can provide the ideal solution.
The more you can relate to your prospect in this manner, the greater the impact you will have on their lives.
3. Help Your Prospects Visualize The Solution
To encourage your prospects to buy your solution, you absolutely must get them to visualize it. When people visualize a solution, they take ownership of it. Have you ever heard of someone taking a puppy home for the weekend to see how it goes? How many times have you heard of someone taking the puppy back at the end of the weekend? While it’s a slightly different principle, the impact is the same. When you can create realism in a prospects mind, they want it more and you are increase the level of desire in their mind. How many times do you have a craving for something and then do everything in your power to satisfy it. That is what you are creating when you help your prospects visualize your solution in their mind. This is a skill set that takes practice because you are painting a picture in their mind of the solution you offer. When you master this skill you will find that your conversion ratio will increase.
These skills can be utilized in person or on social media to attract your ideal prospects and ultimately convert them into clients. When you master these skills, you will find that converting prospects that might have been difficult in the past, has become substantially easier.
How do you build rapport with your prospects? What works? What didn’t?
