How to Build Rapport in Sales Conversations Without Sounding Fake
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Brooke Greening: Okay. So this is where we're gonna make it really practical. And just fair warning, it might be a little clunky at first, but that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong.
Scott Greening: If you're not overly charismatic, if you try to appear that way, everybody knows it's fake.
Brooke Greening: Yeah. And then they start to distrust you.
There is, like, when you actually ask about their business or a retreat that they went on or the group that they're trying to build, whatever it is when it's specific about them, now they can actually open up and answer the question and they get excited about that because now they're beginning to realize, "Oh, you're not just gonna pitch at me.
This can actually be a conversation."
No, no, no, no. If it's public, they want it to be known. So it's fair game.
And this is a little bit different, but I think this is so important for you to understand and establishing rapport, recognizing the problem, whatever it is, if you put people on the defense, if they feel like they have to start defending things, we are losing it.
Scott Greening: Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Sippin' Matcha and Helping You Make More Sales where in about the time that it takes you to enjoy your matcha or beverage of choice. Our resident sales coach, Brooke Greening gives you some good advice that will help you make more sales while at the same time valuing your customers.
And I know we say it almost every episode. I don't think I said it this time, but Brooke is also my wife. Yeah. Which is especially important because tomorrow is our 19th anniversary.
Brooke Greening: Yes. We have been married for 19 years. I don't remember what life was like before you.
Scott Greening: Yes. I'm sure it was much less stressful for you.
I don't ... No, no, no. It's been a great ... Who we had no idea, that's every marriage and that you have no idea what- No idea. ... God is gonna bring you, but we've lived in multiple states. We've added three kids to the mix. We've planted three churches. It's been a lot of fun. And we're on this adventure together, so it's always fun.
Yes. We've been talking Brooke about-
Brooke Greening: I love you, Dr. Greening.
Scott Greening: Oh, thank you. I love you too. So, we've been talking about establishing rapport, and obviously I must have established enough rapport to get you to agree to marry me. But we talked about on sales calls, how rapport is not the same as just being nice.
And that last episode, we looked at four or so ways that it can actually go off the rails. So today, we're gonna kinda give you the positive instruction and something that you can use on your next sales call.
Brooke Greening: Yes, absolutely. And I wanna make sure that you guys hear me on this because it's so important.
When we talk about being able to establish rapport, you don't have to be more charismatic, you don't have to be more outgoing, you don't have to be better at small talk. We just need to be more intentional. We need a better starting point.
Scott Greening: Yeah that's encouraged because we have a good laugh every once in a while about how different our personalities are.
Brooke Greening: And our cadences.
Scott Greening: That's right. That's right. Our pace of speech, all the things that come out when you're evaluating your podcast episodes. But it's encouraging because I'm not you and I'm never going to be you. And if I tried to be you, people would just be like, " Eh, it's a little awkward."
Brooke Greening: No, 100%. When you try to be someone you're not, you can absolutely tell.
So we're helping you today to be able to establish rapport in a way that feels comfortable for you. We're going to give you the guardrails and then you can be able to build it the way that you want. But no, you can't ... If you're not overly charismatic, if you try to appear that way, everybody knows it's fake.
Yeah. And then they start to distrust you.
Scott Greening: Right. So rather than a personality change, you've got a pretty simple framework, three basic steps that people can do to think about how they can establish rapport that avoids those pitfalls that we talked about last time, but actually builds genuine connection and relevance to people's business quickly.
So what's the first part of that? What's the first step?
Brooke Greening: Yeah. So you wanna be able to start with something specific. And so you can say, "I saw, I noticed, you mentioned." You need to be specific.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And so what that means, and you've hinted at this before, but is that you've actually done some homework, right?
Mm-hmm. That you've actually checked someone out before a sales call.
Brooke Greening: Yeah. So we're not saying that you're doing this for hours, we're just saying you wanna be able to see what's going on if they're on LinkedIn, their website, maybe in regards to what they put on their intake form, if you have an intake form.
We're looking for one thing so that we can just ask an intelligent question about their business.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And I know there's even tools and we're not gonna get into all that just on a training that we did recently somebody shared, like they use an AI tool or different things. Yeah. There's lots of things that can actually make this a pretty simple, straightforward process.
So that's the first thing- Yeah. ... is to do a little bit of homework and find something specific. Where do we go from there?
Brooke Greening: Then you make it relevant to why you're on the call. So if you're saying, "Hey, I think, I see that you've been hiring a lot recently, or I noticed you were working with early stage teams, or you mentioned you were trying to grow your sales, we are going to connect it to why we're actually on the call."
That's how we're making that connection and relevance to their business quickly. So specific and then specifically like how it's relevant to the call that we're on.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And so you tend to talk to customers about sales and marketing, so you gravitate towards things that are relevant to those areas. If someone was an accountant or- Yes.
someone was a lawyer or any number of others kind of service-based businesses, they would- mm-hmm. ... more naturally gravitate towards things that are relevant to what they do.
Brooke Greening: Yeah. And so say if an accountant came to me and they were saying, or someone that was involved in taxes came to me and they said, "Hey, Brooke, I need help.
I need help in my sales conversations to continue to grow our business." Then one thing that I would be doing is if we know that it's tax season, one question could just be like, "Hey, I know we're just right in the middle of tax season. What is one of the most stressful things that you face during that time?"
We're just trying to have an intelligent question about them that relates to their business. It doesn't have to be earth shattering. And and it still comes across very friendly and very encouraging, but it's specifically about them and their business. And that's the biggest difference between how's the weather and something about their business.
Scott Greening: All right. So we find something specific, we make it relevant, and then what do we do?
Brooke Greening: Then we ask a real question. So, the example I just gave you, we're not necessarily saying, "Tell me about your business," but we're trying to ask a real question. So you can say, "Hey, I saw that you've been focusing on da, da, da, what's been working well there?
What's been more challenging? I noticed you've been trying to grow your team. What's been the hardest part of that lately? You mentioned you wanted more consistent sales. What's feeling the most frustrating about that right now?" We're just having it specifically to their business about something that they've put out publicly that we're able to talk about.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And I think the key there is that we're still asking questions.
Brooke Greening: Yeah.
Scott Greening: You're not just listing off their resume or whatever, but- No. ... they're not they're not generic anymore.
Brooke Greening: They're not generic. There is, like, when you actually ask about their business or a retreat that they went on or the group that they're trying to build, whatever it is when it's specific about them, now they can actually open up and answer the question and they get excited about that because now they're beginning to realize, "Oh, you're not just gonna pitch at me.
This can actually be a conversation."
Scott Greening: Yeah. And so I know you have helped many clients in that of yours work through this and know how to apply it in their own businesses. What are a couple of examples of people that have really improved and what helped them see, "Oh, this is where we need to go.
Brooke Greening: Yeah. So I can think of ... I, there's a couple of clients. And so one of them is sh- I was helping her and she was really trying to figure out, okay, how do I do this? And she didn't wanna be salesy, she didn't wanna be stalkerish, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But when we started helping her to understand what it actually was, and I was giving her examples of how to be able to do the homework, to be able to ask these establishing rapport questions, she then said, "Wait a minute, Brooke, I used to be a journalist.
This is my homework. This is what I would have to do every time. I would never go and do an interview without doing my homework." She's like, "I get it. I never wanna go into a sales conversation without doing my homework." And then from there, she just took off because one of the, one of the things I enjoy most about being able to help people in their sales training is they already have a lot of skills, but they didn't know necessarily how to implement them in sales conversations.
And so this was one of those examples where she knew how to do that in journalism and then we just had to change it for it to be appropriate to sales. And once she figured that out, it was so much easier for her.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And I would just compliment you in light of our anniversary tomorrow that no, as a coach, you, I think you are very skilled at that of helping people realize, "Oh here's something that I do either in a previous experience that I had or in my natural life that helps me know how to do this in sales conversations."
'Cause many times people like me are like, "Oh my goodness." Like it just is so anxiety causing-
Brooke Greening: Yeah. ...
Scott Greening: these conversations that having a couple of those hooks to, to jump in and say, "Oh, this is you do this in normal parts of your life is helpful." Yes. Yeah. So you said there was two examples. What was the- Yeah.
the other example?
Brooke Greening: So another example I wanna talk about is I was working with her and she loves to talk to people and she's so good at talking to people and getting people to feel comfortable, but she kept telling me, "Brooke, I feel like I'm on plane and I just keep going round and around and around and around in small talk and understanding.
And I don't know how to land the plane. I don't know how to move forward to actually talking about their business." So sometimes she would end up talking to them, they'd have a great conversation, but it'd be like 30 minutes, 20 minutes or so, and then people need to go, they need to be able to move on.
And then she really felt like I didn't actually get to understand what they needed or actually talk about what we could do to help. And so we were able to explain like, "Hey, this is how you wanna be able to do your homework. Like these are the things we're gonna look for and these are the types of questions you can ask."
So I would work with her and help her to just know one or two questions to be able to ask. This is not a long piece of it. We talk about our 70 / 30 rule all the time, like we're not talking a lot in establishing rapport, but if you have one or two questions that are relevant to their business and it's just an intelligent question, you will be amazed at how soon they open up.
And that's what we were able to teach her. So then she didn't have to go around and around and around. She just had two good questions and then I was able to move very smoothly into the rest of the conversation.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And I think it's another example of when you have some intentionality, when you have a plan, you can avoid some of these awkward transition points in the conversation.
And so here's another spot w- in your framework where that comes up. Yeah. So if someone was wanting to do this or okay, I know I've got to do this, like last week I wasn't sure if I liked you so much because the, that was everything I'm doing, but I have a little bit of hope, like I wanna do it. How, what should people do this week?
Brooke Greening: They should join my sales lab. But before that, what you can do on your own is you wanna be able to find one specific detail, you wanna turn that into a thoughtful question, and that's all, that's it. That's all you have to do. So you're gonna do a little research. Like I said, are they on LinkedIn? Do they have a website?
What's going on? Like we're gonna find something, one specific detail, and we're gonna turn that into a thoughtful conversation that again, is relevant to their business.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And I think if you're nervous about this, if you're feeling awkward, I think the key with this is just commit and go for it.
Like even if it's a little clunky, even don't give up halfway through and default into bad, just give it a try, you'll be surprised at how well it goes.
Brooke Greening: Yeah. No, absolutely. Yes. 90% is showing up. Do it.
Scott Greening: All right. So when you s- make these suggestions to people and that we often, you often hear some common questions, some common pushback and maybe some common like mistakes that people make.
I think one of the common ones is this feels sort of stalkerish. Like I don't know if I like that. What's your answer to that?
Brooke Greening: Well, let's not. Let's not stalk people. But if it's public, it's fair game. And I don't mean that in like a manipulative way, but if someone has put something on their website or in social media, that's fair game.
And for us who do a lot of content creation and development and all of that, we really appreciate if someone's actually looked at it and has a question about it. And so we may think, "Oh, is that stalkerish?" No, no, no, no. If it's public, they want it to be known. So it's fair game. If you're sneaking through and trying to figure things out on the backend, then yeah, that's gonna feel weird.
Scott Greening: Yeah. I don't think anyone's ever told you, "Hey, I heard or I saw this on your podcast and you weren't anything by like, oh, fantastic." Like people are actually listening. Like it's good to do that. So another one-
Brooke Greening: like stalker. Right,
Scott Greening: right. Another one for those of us maybe like me who aren't as confident and we think what if I mess up because-
Brooke Greening: mm-hmm.
Scott Greening: I probably will. Yeah. ... What advice, what encouragement would you give us?
Brooke Greening: You probably will because in the beginning you're trying to figure it out and there might be some like objections that you've got going on in your head "Is this really gonna work?" But it, it doesn't even matter if it's a little clunky or if it doesn't come out exactly the right way because what you're doing is you're showing that you care enough about their business that you did some homework.
Now, I would say don't wing it, do your homework and then practice it, practice it in front of the mirror, practice it a few times. But even if it gets a little clunky, it's okay. The more you do it, the easier it will be, and then it will start to sound very conversational, very soon, but just realize what they're realizing in that moment is not, oh, they've just stumbled over their sentence because we're human.
We do that in any part of our world, but what they're realizing is, oh, they actually care about our business. And we always talk about like people wanna be able to work with people that they know, they like, they trust. This is when you're not working so hard to make a connection, you are saying, "Hey, I respect you.
I respect your business and so I have an intelligent question about it. " Just as another example, it was someone who was like an IT security and I was just, I knew nothing about IT security but they had a blog post so I was able to read it and then ask a question about the blog posts. That's what we're talking about.
You don't have to be brilliant in their category, you're not going to be probably. But it just shows that you care. And I am telling you, it completely separates you from your competitor. So when they go and talk to the competitor and their competitor doesn't do any of this, they're thinking, "Yeah but Brooke did."
And so now they're thinking of you while they're sitting in front of the competitor. It's that important.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And it's not a performance. Like you're not memorizing a play or a soliloquy- Yeah. ... or anything like that. You're just trying to have a conversation with someone and- mm-hmm. ... like 95% of the time, if you ask a question that's relevant to their business, people like talking about their business.
People like talk about- Yeah. ... what's going on.
Brooke Greening: And they will open up. You will find more about what's actually like, because our whole goal is what problems are they facing, what kind of frustrations are they, dealing with right now? And so you will be surprised how fast that will open up if you do this.
Scott Greening: Okay. Sometimes what happens because people, maybe there's the trust issue, maybe it's their personality, whatever the case is, but you ask what you think is a great question, and then they give a very short answer. What should we do then?
Brooke Greening: That's great. Let's just validate that and then ask another clarifying question.
So just think about as you're preparing, as you're doing your homework, what could be another question I could ask after this? And some people may. Some, I'm not saying everybody in the world is just like, "Oh, you are a beautiful sales person who's so encouraging." Like that's not necessarily it.
People have different personalities. If it's a short answer, okay, no problem. Let's have one clarifying question and then we're gonna, we're gonna keep moving on. Doesn't mean that you did anything wrong, doesn't mean that they're annoyed. Just, that might be their personality.
Scott Greening: Okay. Now, I think one of the maybe most confusing things, and it can end up being perhaps the biggest error that people have, and even like with the examples above, you're trying to make it relevant or that type of thing, but this is not the time to ask a certain type of question.
And what type of question is that?
Brooke Greening: We are not diagnosing anything at this point. So this is for my this is for like my marketing friends, people who are dealing with websites, whatever it is, if you notice something that you're doing like, you're doing your homework and you're like, whoa, they're, like for us, oh, their website is a little confusing.
Oh, their button doesn't work. Oh their messaging isn't helping them to be able to get more sales calls. Like whatever the case is, this is not the time that we are diagnosing it. We are not saying, "Hey, I looked at your website and I noticed this problem." No, that's not what we're doing. We are saying, "Hey, we can look at their website, we can talk about what their blog articles are or whatever it is and have an intelligent question for them, but we are not diagnosing it because then that turns it back to us and we're gonna miss what we could be learning from them."
So that's a big thing. A lot of people will do that. They'll be like, "Hey, I was looking at this. I noticed this problem." You can use, you can share that later, absolutely because I think people want to know what's going on, but this is not the moment to do it.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And I think for, you help a lot of service providers sort of B2B businesses and so it's easy in all of those circumstances to, to do that the same type of thing you were talking about an accountant or that with tax season.
And the difference is before you were like, like what's stressing you out or that type of question to build rapport, not the question wasn't like did you know about this deduction or did you, you know- Right. ... file, file this form. That may come later if you work with someone. That's not- Right.
necessarily a rapport building thing. And actually, sometimes when people jump in too quick with that, with me, I'm like, "Oh, you're just trying to set me up where now I have to say yes to you because at the end of the call, you're gonna come around and say, what? You don't want your website to fix?
What? You wanna give the government $1,000?" Like- Yeah. Well, no, obviously not. But it's, yeah, it can be very frustrating.
Brooke Greening: And that's why I'm saying we don't do that. And if we do notice something, we are going to use it not in this moment, but we will use it as a helpful, like something to say or, how do I want to say this?
This just happened on a sales call I was on where I was like, look I'm not saying this in regards to you needing to hire me at all. I'm just saying like these buttons don't work and I just want you to know that. That's it. But that's not in the establishing rapport because you're exactly right, Scott.
People will find things that are wrong so that then they can build their case as to why someone should work with you or has to work with you. And this is a little bit different, but I think this is so important for you to understand and establishing rapport, recognizing the problem, whatever it is, if you put people on the defense, if they feel like they have to start defending things, we are losing it.
We are sabotaging our call. We are not serving them anymore. We are going into that manipulation realm and that's not what we're wanting to do. And so we don't do that. Don't diagnose problems in the very beginning of the conversation because it puts them on the defense and that's not going to help you and it's not serving them.
Scott Greening: All right. So we're wrapping up our establishing rapport and obviously this is located within your service framework, service sales framework. I'm understanding like rapport is not just a warmup.
Help us understand how does rapport fit into the broader sales conversation and why does it help you with some of the other parts?
Brooke Greening: Yeah. So it starts to make everything else in the conversation work. So when we were setting expectations, we were helping to build that trust. When we're establishing rapport in a meaningful way that builds connection and relevancy to their business quickly, it allows them to continue to keep trusting us.
We're beginning to start to understand some of the frustrations they're facing because those are what some of our questions are just going to reveal naturally. And so if we don't do this, our conversations are gonna be shallow and then everything's gonna get harder from here on out because our next piece is we wanna be able to recognize the problem and we won't be able to do that, excuse me, if this piece is shallow.
So it doesn't have to take a long time, you don't have to do a crazy amount of homework, but this needs to be able to connect with them quickly and be relevant to their business, otherwise we're not gonna be able to move forward very well. And we're just gonna land on surface level questions and a surface level conversation.
And that is not what drives and motivates people to buy.
Scott Greening: Great. I think that, that helps and sets the stage for the future. I know you like giving us some questions to think about. Yep. What would your question be? What should people be thinking, asking themselves to see if they're actually establishing rapport in this way?
Brooke Greening: Yeah. So I want you to think in your first five minutes of your sales conversation, I want you to ask yourself, did you learn something specific and meaningful about the person you were talking with, about your potential client, or were you just having a nice chitchat? If it's just a nice chitchat and you didn't actually learn something specific and meaningful to that person, then we didn't establish rapport the way that we could, and that can start to build resistance as we continue to move forward in the conversation.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And if people want to know how strong their rapport is how well they're doing in that, and the rest of their process, you've created your sales conversation assessment that people can take and they can find that at buildingmomentum.info/assessment and they can discover what are the strengths of their sales conversations and what are the weaknesses that they have.
Next time, we're gonna be moving into recognizing the problem- Yes. ... and what happens with this, Brooke?
Brooke Greening: This is what I say all the time, but if you get the problem wrong, everything's gonna start falling apart. But if you get the problem right, it makes it so much easier. And so we're gonna start talking about how are we able to recognize those problems that are driving and motivating our customers to want to work with us and wanting to buy.
Can't wait to do it. It's one of my favorite sessions.
Scott Greening: I know that you've said that each of these parts are critical, are important in that, and, you know, you set expectations, and if you don't do that, you're off the rails.
But really, this idea of recognizing the problem is really, if you get that wrong- Yeah. ... You're gonna be, you're gonna be in trouble. So come on back next time, and we'll jump into recognizing the problem. As always, we'd invite you to like, to subscribe, to comment, to share it with other people, to leave a review on your podcast platform of choice that would all be great things, and you can find out more and leave us questions if you'd like at buildingmomentum.info/matcha.
We'll see you next time. Have a great day.
