It always amazes me how little attention companies pay to the training of their sales teams. Given that the sales teams are the life-blood of an organisation and without them they do not have a business, I am really surprised that companies do not put more energy into making sure that their salespeople have the best possible skills to maximise the company’s income.
It isn’t that companies do not throw lots of money at recruiting and training sales staff. They do. It is just that they do not seem to pay sufficient attention to maximising the skills and potential of the individuals that they have recruited.
Sales is really simple. If you know your product, and most salespeople do, then the only other thing left to do is find appropriate prospective buyers and create sufficient rapport with them in order for them to accept your suggestion to buy your product.
It is this last part where I find most companies neglect to recognise the importance. It is this last part that can be broken down into a process that anyone can follow and anyone can complete successfully EVERY TIME!
As a salesperson, if you do not create rapport, then you will not make the sale. Simple as that!
Whenever you make a sale, then you will have created some level of rapport with the buyer. Rapport has to be there in order for someone to agree to buy something from someone.
Most salespeople know when they have created rapport with someone, they can just feel it. That energetic connection, you know it, that familiar feeling. Yeah, that one!
The problem is that it is hit and miss. Sometimes you will create rapport with someone and sometimes you will not. The chances are that you will not really know why you haven’t hit it off with that person, and that makes it very frustrating.
When I go into companies to train their sales staff many of them tell me that they are very frustrated, they just do not know why the sales are not coming, they feel that they are working hard and doing the sales calls, but the customers just are not committing to buy. This is usually because they are not creating sufficient rapport with their customers. Lack of rapport leads to a poor closing ratio, every time.
Successfully building rapport is a process that is simple to learn and can be learnt by everyone. Building rapport was put into a process by the NLP founders Richard Bandler and John Grinder. Richard and John observed master communicators in the world of therapy and sales. They noticed that with every client that they met they followed the same process in order to get in rapport and they noticed that this process created the same results in every client. When the master communicators were in rapport with their client then the client would accept pretty much any suggestion that they made unconditionally. NLP rapport was born as a result of the magnificent results that were observed.
Learning to build rapport as part of a process is a fundamental part of the Sales Training and Management Training that we provide at Excellence Assured. Our speciality is training in NLP and our results are exceptional! Call us now to discuss your requirements on 0114 2360047 or email anthony@excellenceassured.com
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