Building Rapport With Customers: 3 Steps To Build Trust In Minutes
Ryan Breneman
Building rapport with clients isn’t as difficult as most people say it is. As long as you know the right steps to follow and what errors to avoid, you’ll master how to build trust in the workplace.
RELATED: 3 Steps To Build Trust In 3 Minutes
In this article:
- About This Episode
- Building Rapport in Sales | The R.O.I. to Improve Your ROI
- Why the R.O.I. Is Important
Building Rapport | 3 Rapport-Building Techniques in Sales
About This Episode
What is rapport building? In the podcast “You Suck At Building Rapport: 3 Steps To Build Trust In Minutes,” Gabe Larsen from The Sales Acceleration Show talks about the best tips to master building rapport with customers.
Larsen also shares with us some of the funniest sales emails he received. It would serve as a good reminder to salespeople across the globe to think twice before hitting that send button.
Cold Calling Definition: The act of making unsolicited phone calls in the hope of doing business with somebody.
Building Rapport in Sales | The R.O.I. to Improve Your ROI
Larsen explains that cold calling is dead. Unless you overhaul your prospecting system, the gap between you and your competitors will continue to increase—leaving you behind in the dust.
In fact, cold calling forces the salesperson to dial a random number and sell them the company’s goods or services without prior knowledge. While a lot of salespeople ask rapport-building questions to get to know the clients, it takes a lot of time and minimizes the chances of you closing the deal.
Larsen abbreviated his three tips on how to build trust in the workplace and with your clients. To establish a good rapport, you need to follow the R.O.I.
R.O.I. stands for:
- Researching the prospect
- Organizing the information
- Igniting conversation
It’s a very simple three-step program you can use and reuse as much as you want to hit your quarterly quota.
1. Researching the Prospect
Building rapport with someone you have no background info on is almost impossible to achieve. Even if you do end up getting them to work with you, it would’ve probably taken you a lot of time to do so.
That’s why you need to do your homework on the prospect if you want to speed up to the point where you’re happily closing the deal.
First, open your company’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. If the prospect is someone your company has talked to in the past, there might be some info about them in your CRM.
Search for the company or your contact person in the system and take notes of whatever helpful information the CRM tool shows you. If you find sufficient rapport-building details, then begin prospecting.
Try not to spend more than a minute on your CRM tool.
If you don’t find the details you’re looking for, proceed to check their social media platforms. These include LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, among others.
Again, search for the company or your contact person. After spending around three minutes, decide whether you have sufficient background information or not.
If you do, then proceed with prospecting. But if you don’t, move on to using key intelligence apps.
Use key intelligence apps for your specific industry then review them. For example, the Charlie App is a software that connects users to other users’ calendars.
Doing so will help you prep on the person you plan to contact. Try to spend no more than a few minutes using key intelligence applications.
If you now have enough data, contact the prospect, if not, then proceed to the last step of the researching process: visiting their website.
Navigate the company’s website and take notes of key information. Obviously, this will help you learn a lot more about the company you plan to contact.
2. Organizing the Information
If you still feel that you don’t have sufficient data even after visiting their website, you have no choice but to proceed with phase two: organizing the information you gathered.
Read through all the pieces of information you collected and list them down on your company’s CRM system. Do this step even if you proceeded with the call during the early stages of prospect researching.
It’s very vital to update the CRM to minimize the research time you spend the next time you do prospecting. If your company’s CRM tool has everything you need, you’ll be able to proceed with the sales call even after just a few minutes of research.
RELATED: 5 Prospecting Myths Debunked
3. Ignite the Conversation
Whether you want to or not, it’s time to start prospecting. After summarizing the information you collected, you should have a clearer idea of who you will be talking to and what they want to hear.
Use the information you collected to create a script that will help you establish a good rapport with your client over the phone. If you want, you can go over your script before going live.
Instead of listing all your good traits, try to state what’s in it for them. Make it clear how the prospect and their company will benefit from your services or goods.
Repeat everything from the top with every prospect you plan to call. Practice it every day and building rapport will soon become second nature to you.
Why the R.O.I. Is Important
Larsen shared with us how he receives a lot of sales emails from his competitors. He jokes about how offensive it was that the sales representatives didn’t even bother to do a quick background check on them.
The sales rep was literally trying to sell Larsen the very same product that he offers. Not only did the sales rep waste their time, but they also made themselves look like a complete amateur.
As a salesperson, you need to understand that you have no second shot at landing a good first impression. Instead of randomly calling strangers and telling them to buy from you, start selecting, qualifying, and targeting your prospects.
Be careful not to spend too much time on research as well. As we said, you’d only want to spend a few minutes doing your homework.
Try to avoid being the type of person who spends half of their day reading the prospect’s press releases and company statements. It’s just as inefficient as not having any background information before prospecting.
These are just some of the things that will help you create good rapport with your prospects. Remember to apply and practice the R.O.I. method every time you have to do prospecting. Not only will it reduce your cold calling time, but it may also lower the chances of your prospect rejecting you. After all, rejection is the biggest thing salespeople fear before they begin prospecting.
Are you having trouble building rapport with your clients? Share your experiences with us in the comments section below!
Up Next:
- The Seven Rules of Cold Calling
- Stop Pitching: Start Solving Problems For Your Customers
- The Sales Cadence Tool You Need To Generate More Leads
