The NLP practitioner has a certain approach when it
comes to making sales. In essence the approach is about building a relationship
first and then making a sale. You should ask yourself, what is more profitable?
Making one sale through hard selling techniques, burning your client out, and
never selling that person again. Or is a better approach to develop a
relationship with that person. Finding out what they want and what their
problems are, and then providing a solution to their problems. By building a
relationship with your client you will be able to sell them your product and
service multiple times. Overall developing relationships and addressing the
actual needs of your customers is both more profitable and straight out less
work.
The techniques that NLP can teach you will help you to
instantly create rapport with the person that you are talking to. We buy things
from people that we like or that we feel are like us. As a salesperson you will
often encounter people who are quite different to you. The fact is that not
everybody thinks the same way you do. You don’t even have to like the person
you are talking with to create rapport if you use NLP. You also may only have a
very small window to sell something to that client. This is where being able to
create rapport quickly is so important for sales. Once you are in rapport with
someone, then you will have the opportunity to cultivate a relationship with
them. But the first step to sales is always to create rapport.
Rapport is essentially about creating a two way
connection with somebody. It is about establishing a genuine level of trust and
respect between two people. One of the best techniques to create rapport is
known as matching and mirroring. This NLP technique involves copying someone’s
behaviour and values in order to form rapport with that person. You have
probably seen plenty of examples when people are not in rapport. Watch for
example a panel discussion where one person holds conservative political views
and the other liberal. You will see that they are certainly not in rapport with
each other. The way they talk will be different, the pitch of their voice,
their body language and of course their values couldn’t be more different. Then
watch a couple who are in love, and the way that they relate to each other.
There is an effortlessness to people who are in love in the way that they move
in sync with each other. When they go to hold the other persons hand it is
right there waiting for them. They talk easily and comfortably with the other
person, and nothing seems forced. The whole point of rapport building with NLP
is that you don’t have to be in love with the other person in order to
comfortably engage with them. You only have to match and mirror their
behaviour.
One of the best ways to match and mirror someone is to
first mirror their body language. While you don’t want to be obvious about
this. If the other person notices you mimicking them, then rapport will
definitely be broken. You can push this further than you might imagine. People
don’t think much about their own body language. So if you observe them, and
then start to subtly copy them it is very unlikely that the other person will
notice. Remember the matching and mirroring technique always begins with
observation.
Once you have started to mirror their physical
behaviour. Notice the tone of voice and speed at which they speak. This is very
important because if you are a person who talks very loudly and your customer
talks very quietly it is easy to upset them. It is up to you as the NLP
salesperson to adjust your behaviour to theirs. If this bothers you, remember
that there is real power in this approach. Would you rather be effective and
successful? Or act the way you always do and be unsuccessful? I would say that
a successful salesperson will choose the former every time. So alter first the
volume you are speaking to match the other person. Then either speed up or slow
down your speech so that you are speaking at the same speed as the other
person.
Once you have established the same body language and
speech patterns as the customer. Next you want to mirror their breathing. There
is something very important about breathing that reaches us at a very primitive
level. If you are breathing in time with someone you are almost certainly in
rapport with them. Along with this you want to match the other persons overall
energy levels. If the other person is highly energetic then you may need to up
your own energy levels. Generally with sales people it’s the other way around.
You are a bundle of energy and the customer is more reserved. Slow yourself
down and operate at the customer’s energy level.
The great thing is once you have created rapport with
someone. Then you can start to lead the other person. You have to make sure
that you have actually established rapport before you begin leading, but once
you have that rapport then you can start to control the flow of the
conversation. Experiment with leading by altering your body movements and see
if the other person follows you. If not you may have to build further rapport
before you can lead.
Creating rapport with someone is an excellent way to
establish a relationship with them. Matching and mirroring is a powerful
technique you can use to speed up the process. Remember however that there are
other ways of creating rapport too. Observe any keywords and phrases that the
other person uses and try and build these into the conversation. Also it is
important to take a genuine interest in what the other person is saying. Try
and understand things from their point of view. It is vital that you understand
the client before they understand you. You also need to be respectful of your
client’s time, their relationships and their money.
Using rapport can help you to establish a relationship
with anyone. This will greatly increase your chances of establishing working
relationships with many different people and as a result increase your overall
sales. Remember to create a relationship first, and then sell. The impact on
your sales can be massive.

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