What Does It Mean To Build Rapport In Sales?

In sales, you build rapport in order to have a relationship of trust and goodwill with your prospect.

What is rapport?

Rapport is a relationship in which people have a mutual understanding and an ability to communicate well together. The relationship is especially characterized by trust and empathy.

For example, if you build rapport with a police officer that has pulled you over for a speeding ticket, he might let you go with a warning.

Or, if a teacher has a good rapport with her students, they’ll feel more comfortable asking questions during class.

In sales, building rapport with a prospect increases your chances of closing the deal.

Why is building rapport important in sales?

1. People buy from salespeople that they like.

More than all the other tips and tricks surrounding sales, getting someone to like you is the best way to make a sale.

A lack of rapport is one of the most subtle reasons that a deal can be lost. Even though every other technical detail of the sales encounter might have gone perfectly to plan—you qualified correctly, anticipated objections, and got all the decision makers on the call—if your prospect doesn’t like you or trust you, they still may not feel comfortable buying from you.

Because, let’s be honest, it feels better to give your money to someone who seems like a decent human being, rather than someone who treats you like just another number in their quota.

People will feel more comfortable buying from someone who they like and trust.

2. Building strong rapport is also essential to learning information about your prospect.

They’ll feel like they can open up and tell you honestly about their pain points.

They’ll tell you why they need the product that you’re selling without being afraid that you’ll somehow use the information against them later on in the sales encounter.

And when you ask for the sale, they’ll tell you their honest objections, which allows for a productive conversation, rather than one where neither side is really saying what they mean.

How does a salesperson build rapport with a prospect?

In the next few sections of the Building Rapport lesson in our Sales Bootcamp, we’ll walk through everything you need to know to build rapport in phone sales, including:

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