By John Doerr, Contributing Editor
Note From RainToday: This article is an excerpt from the RainToday.com Mastering Rainmaking Conversations Ebook, which introduces and takes you through the principles of RAIN SellingSM, an easy to remember, easy to apply sales methodology designed specifically for professional service Rainmakers.
"The farmer, it appears, must not be approached too abruptly. If you are to get his money you must break the news to him gently. You should first talk about horses, soil, and market conditions. This conversation will show that you are interested in things close to him and likewise give you a chance to study his temperament and to learn his likes and dislikes, and discover his weaknesses."
-Clarence Darrow, in The American Mercury, writing about the topic of "Salesmanship"
The concept of Rapport building is not new. You can find book after book written from the 1920's onward that will teach you ‘techniques' for Rapport building with your prospects. For example, you might be told to look around their office and talk about what you see. "Ah, I see you have a big fish on your wall. Are you a fishing enthusiast? I go trout fishing all the time in Wyoming. Let's talk about trout." Unfortunately, many people today, both buyers and sellers, equate the concept of Rapport building with this type of contrived chit chat.
Rapport building is not the planned buttering up of the buyer before a sales person moves in for the kill. The mindset behind this approach to Rapport building is underhanded. Our emphatic response to this approach: don't do it.
Yet the fundamental underlying need for a buyer to connect with a service provider--or at least to generally like him or her--exists and must be attended to. At least, it must if you want to generate new clients and retain your existing ones.
In the RainToday.com research report How Clients Buy: The Benchmark Report on Professional Services Marketing and Selling from the Client Perspective, 26% purchasers of professional services surveyed reported that they have experienced having no personal chemistry with service providers. In and of itself this might not seem like a problem. (Although, who wants to feel that they have cultivated no personal connection with 26 out of 100 potential clients?)
We also learned that 85% of these same unconnected buyers would be either somewhat or much more likely to consider purchasing their services of the provider if some kind of personal chemistry was established.
Building Real Rapport
Many professional service providers are natural "people people" and connect with almost everyone they meet. Many of us, however, feel uncomfortable making initial connections with potential clients, especially when we are meeting them for the first time.
When you look to build Rapport--real Rapport that helps you make a connection with your prospect or client--keep in mind the following advice:
- Be Genuine: Before the first day of school, first jobs, camp, and any family get together dad would always say, "Just be yourself and everything will be fine." Same goes for generating Rapport with clients and prospects. Don't try to be anything you are not; don't create a new persona; and don't adopt a sales-like tone. Just be yourself and relax. Good things will follow.
- Don't Be In A Rush... But Don't Dally: New would-be rainmakers are very sensitive to the time of a potential buyer. They often think, "I have an hour for this meeting and she's a CEO of a mid-sized company. I need to use the whole time to get my points across." From the administrative staff right on up to the CEO, buyers want to know that you're a real person before they will engage your services.
If you jump right in with the "OK, let's get down to business" meeting kickoff before you give everyone a chance to take a breath and say hello, it often creates a tense atmosphere. You have to gauge when to start talking business at the right time; too early and a chilly abruptness fills the air…take too much time chatting and the buyer wonders, "Are we ever going to get going here?" Time the conversation right and you'll be well on your way.
- Dress And Act Professionally: One would think that professional service providers do a good job dressing and acting professionally. Yet in How Clients Buy: The Benchmark Report on Professional Services Marketing and Selling from the Client Perspective just shy of 20% of surveyed purchasers of professional services reported that potential service providers, during their businesses development processes, did not act professionally.
Don't disqualify yourself by using inappropriate language, being too colloquial too quickly, wearing khakis when you are headed to a suit-and-tie company, or otherwise crossing the line of professionalism.
- Balance Advocacy And Inquiry: One of the best ways to establish a true connection with buyers is to balance asking questions (inquiry) with talking or giving advice (advocacy). Talk too much and the prospect will tune out. Ask too many questions and they'll feel like they're getting the third degree. The Rapport building sweet spot is usually somewhere in the middle.
- Actively listen: In the above mentioned research report, the single most prevalent problem that buyers reported encountering with sellers of professional services is that the service providers don't listen. If your prospects perceive you to be not listening to them, building real Rapport will be virtually impossible.
While the heading for this section is "actively listen" it could just as easily read, "actually listen." Many service providers are too caught up in what they're saying or too focused on what they are going to say next. So they're not only not actively listening, they're not actually listening. Tune into what your prospect is saying and tune out everything else, including your email, your pager, and your phone.
Willy Loman said in Death of a Salesman "The man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates a personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want." Sure, not everything worked out for Willy the way he might have wanted it to. He needed a lot more than being well liked in order to succeed.
Many professional service providers, however, should take a page from Willy's book. Being liked won't win you the clients, but it sure does help.
For more information on RAIN SellingSM, check out:
John Doerr is a Principal of the Wellesley Hills Group, a consulting and marketing services firm that helps service companies to grow. John can be reached at jdoerr@whillsgroup.com.
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