Don’t Make a Sale, Make a Connection
Don’t Make a Sale, Make a Connection.
Building Rapport is the art of making a connection with someone, making a friend. This is extremely important during the sales process and it is even more important when the prospect is leery of the product/service that is being pitched to them.
Have you ever met someone for the first time and for some reason you just felt like you have known them your whole life? You just clicked. You seem so alike and never run out of things to talk about. This is the purest example of making a connection. Take note that this doesn’t happen very often but there must be a massive attempt to move away from no connection, no caring, and complete disinterest by the salesperson that will, ultimately, lead to the foreseeable “No Thank You.”
Not everybody has the natural ability to make connections with people. Some are born with it, some have learned it. My wife, my mother, my mother-in-law, my kids… all born with the gift. I’m surrounded by people who just looooooove to talk, lol. Me, not so much. I can do it and I do it every day but it’s not naturally in my nature. My nature is the guy who stands at the back of the room leaning back against the wall perfectly happy to observe other people having conversations. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make you any money.
The first mistake we as owners/managers make in staffing is that we hire a warm body because we need someone to fill a spot and as the saying goes, “I can’t find any good people.” So, we hire someone that may not be the best person for the job. It’s hard to find good staff… I understand… believe me when I say It’s hard to find good staff. I go through the same pains as you do. However, an outgoing, friendly, caring person will always have more success. This is a people business. If they don’t have the ability to communicate or are not aggressively learning how, then I don’t want them interacting with a prospect.
It is just too important.
I am not saying that a person has to change who they are in order to do sales but if they can’t do the job the way we NEED it done, then they can’t continue to do the job. What I am saying is that if they aren’t innately that person then they do have to change who they are at least while they are at work.
