|
Featured Article
Establishing and maintaining relationships by building rapport. For more in depth information on how to develop skills and details of the business benefits , call us today on:
tel: 01793 875783 |
|
Dear (Contact First Name)
Join Our Mailing List | |
Greetings!
All of us rely on our ability to communicate effectively with our colleagues and clients.
When you understand the people that you work with or wish to work with and the way they communicate, you can make a better connection.
The featured article in this addition is all about building rapport.
Improving rapport, either directly face to face or via our marketing messages, enhances our relationships with colleagues and clients and that is something we all desire.
Enjoy the dance!
Warmest regards
Debbie
Debbie Robinson
Sales and Confidence Coach |
|
| Dance the dance of rapport. |
|
Rapport "the process of establishing and maintaining a relationship of mutual trust and understanding between two or more people, the ability to generate responses from another person." Introducing NLP - Joseph O'Connor & John Seymour
Have you ever noticed how conversation just seems to flow when two people are in rapport? Their bodies as well as their words match each other. Just watch a couple in a restaurant or friends meeting in a pub, they dance the dance of rapport! Picking up their glasses in unison, matching each other's body language and speaking styles - is all part of the dance!
What we say can create or destroy rapport, but interestingly only 7% of communication is the spoken word. Our body language and our tone of voice are more important than the actual words spoken.
Many of us have been taught that if you want to succeed as a sales professional all you need to do is be friendly, polite and knowledgably explain the benefits of your products and service to potential clients.
You might need to wine and dine them, understand what their interests are, if they have a partner, a family etc - that's what rapport is, isn't it?
No, it isn't.
Ok, having an understanding of a client's interests won't do you any harm but rapport is a much deeper communication skill.
Living things do not communicate with language alone. Think about animals and plants that don't have a language, they still communicate with other members of their species and with others outside their species. They do this through non-verbal behaviour, such as changing colour. Well humans communicate non-verbally too!
Have you ever admired someone who just knows when to ask the 'killer question', or when to stay silent, or when to stop pushing their client? If you have, you're about to learn their secrets!
It's all about reading someone's non-verbal communications.
By heightening your sensory perception (your awareness of the senses- seeing, hearing and feeling) you will develop the skills you admire and be able to develop great relationships.
Rapport skills enable you to quickly put others at ease and create trust. These skills allow you to get on with anyone anywhere, greatly increases your confidence and effectiveness. It also makes it easier for others to communicate with you.
Mastering the skill of rapport building requires sensory perception and behaviour flexibility on your part.
The only two limits to your ability to produce results in this area are:
How 'switched on' or aware you are to other people's postures, gestures and speech patterns.
- The elegance with which you can match them in the 'dance' of rapport.
The building blocks for matching are:
Body language
Posture
Weight distribution
Gestures-arms and hands, legs and feet
Facial expressions
Eye contact
Breathing rate
Voice quality
Volume
Tone
Pitch
Tempo
Sounds
Leading - changes the other person's behaviour by getting them to follow your lead, e.g. leading them from slumping, into a more upright posture, or leading them from speaking quietly to speaking more loudly.
Having rapport and being able to lead others makes it easier to achieve mutually desired outcomes such as reaching agreement.
General points about rapport skills:
- The dance of rapport is what we do naturally
- It allows you to join the other person in their model of the world
- Rapport need your flexibility of thought and behaviour
- Notice what happens when people get on well - they tend to match
- Notice the opposite, when people are in disagreement - they mismatch
- Notice when you are not getting on with someone and try matching
- Make it easy for others to communicate with you by practicing rapport
- Liking the other person is not a prerequisite for rapport
If you are prepared to use these skills consciously, you can create rapport with whoever you choose. You don't have to like the person to create rapport; you are simply building a bridge to understand them better.
You will not know that it is effective or what results you'll get unless you try it!
|
|
|
|
|
About Top Performance Coaching
|
 At Top Performance Coaching we are passionate about helping committed individuals and businesses to clarify, define and achieve their goals more quickly and effectively than if they worked on their own.Our goal is to help develop your awareness, improve clarity, increase confidence, motivation and commitment for both personal and business benefit.
Our clients come to us with many and varied challenges and frustrations. They just know that they want to improve and be the best they can be as an individual or as a business but are struggling to find the way forward.
Some clients may be unclear as to what their real goals are, how to get started and how to move towards achieving them whilst maintaining their motivation. Many have life defining decisions to make following redundancy or departmental restructuring and some just need to regain direction and put a 'spring' back in their step and reinvigorate their zest for life!
Top Performance Coaching can help identify what needs to be done and provide strategies to overcome obstacles and setbacks and maintain your commitment and motivation ensuring you achieve your goal.
Read More: Top Performance Coaching
Creating Results
Swindon, Wiltshire
01793 875783
|
|
|
