How to build rapport for closing a sale – Jordan Belfort (Wolf of Wall Street)
In this short but important video, Jordan Belfort AKA The Wolf of Wall Street explains why building rapport on a sales call is crucial, but more importantly how to do it the correct way.
Jordan mentions that people often think of building rapport as something you would do if trying to create bond with somebody, in the way you might make friends. The problem with that is you can end up talking nonsense on a call rather than moving towards a sale.
An example of this he mentions is if you walked into a manager’s office and spot a photo on the wall of him fishing, you then start talking about fishing for the next 20 minutes, which whilst on one hand might show a common interest, more likely you could end up annoying them because you are now wasting their precious time.
Building rapport is important because this is one of the ways you can influence somebody, but there is a factor that sits above this which MUST be established at the same time, and that is you should be perceived as the expert.
If they feel they have more expertise in the subject matter than you, they will then try and take over the call. This is fatal because if they take control, it will be almost impossible for you to create certainty in their mind about the solution you are selling them.
So, what should you do? How do you create rapport and demonstrate expertise at the same time?
What you do is ask key questions (ideally with a certain tonality), showing you understand them and feel their pain, and as they respond to your questions, you should listen inventively and acknowledge them audibly and with nods.
The video ends here but what I would like to add to this, is your purpose of asking them questions is not only for rapport, but to really understand what their problem is and to see if your product or service will actually solve it.
If it doesn’t then you shouldn’t be trying to convince them otherwise. If you can help them however, then you would explain or demonstrate how your product or service fixes those specific issues.
Then, not only have you created certainty in your OWN mind you can help them, but they will also instinctively pick up on this which will move them much closer to the sale.
At this point, you can convincingly say something like “With what you have told me I’m 100% certain I can help you, how would you like to proceed?”…and then you shut up and wait for their response.
As well as building rapport, there are ways you can use NLP Sales techniques to not only create that high level of certainty in their mind but do so in a way that they see the solution in your product or service, without you trying to convince them.
I must state that you shouldn’t use NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) to manipulate your prospect, but if you truly believe your product or service is good, then you should look at this NLP sales article that explains how this can be done.
