When we’re building rapport or qualifying, at the beginning of a sales encounter, we want our clients to like us, so we’re happy to banter or follow the client off onto a tangent. The goal at this point is not to be doing business, but rather to be building the relationship.
When it comes to closing, however, the rapport building is over. There should be no more banter, no overtalking or answering unasked questions. Pauses should be embraced, because the burden of action is on the customer. Responses should be short and clear, e.g., “that’s correct” and “exactly right.”
We build rapport to spend it, not to save it. You should not be building rapport throughout the entire sales process.
There are difficult points in the sales process when you need to ask something of your client, whether that is volunteering their time to sit through a demo or handing over their credit card to close the deal—these are the times for which we’ve built the rapport, when we need the client to trust us, especially when we are testing their patience or asking them to do something uncomfortable.
If you build too much rapport without keeping the interaction professional and moving the ball forward, you’ll end up in the friend zone where the client steamrolls your attempts to steer the conversation, banters at the opportunity cost of doing business, and misses your meetings and deadlines because they think you’re there just to be nice to them.
The key is to balance the rapport like a barometer. There are times when the sales encounter is necessarily high-pressure—this is natural when it comes to spending money.
The key is not to avoid these high-pressure moments. Instead, seek to win the client over in the low-pressure moments of the call or meeting, when you’re talking about the weather or sharing a drink.
Then, when the high-pressure comes, the client will be comfortable enough with your relationship to lean in, rather than clamming up just because it feels uncomfortable or like they’re “being sold.” If you’ve built rapport correctly, your client will open up with you in that moment and tell you their honest objections—then the real selling begins.