© 2014 by Noah-Jay Michael
ISBN: 9781456622268
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The information contained in this book is strictly for educational purposes. Therefore, if you wish to apply ideas contained in this book, you are taking full responsibility for your actions.
Although establishing rapport can be easy, a lot can go wrong. This chapter is about what can go wrong and why you might be having trouble establishing rapport. By learning what some of the common mistakes are, you can be aware of them and take care to avoid making these very same mistakes.
Too Many Compliments
It is natural to want to compliment your audience, to encourage them to like you and to be more receptive to listening to you. However, when you slather on the compliments thickly, they quickly sound fake and like a ploy to make them like you.
Once you do anything to arouse suspicion, you will find establishing rapport will be almost impossible. You need to be nice to the person you are talking to but you can be too nice and that comes across as fake.
You want to be believable and that means you need to avoid all appearances of being fake, which is why you cannot be too heavy handed on the compliments.
Once you start using too many compliments, or saying things that are very obviously not true, you transition from a likeable and respected person of authority and right into a shady used car dealer with a fake smile trying to sell a lemon.
Communication is ultimately about the other person receiving and understanding the message you want them to get. When you focus on being too nice, your message becomes lost and that allows the message to become lost. Your focus is on getting your message through, politely and clearly.
Trying Too Hard
Conversational hypnosis is not about coercion and sometimes, you have to realize you will not get what you want. When that happens, you need to walk away.
If you are trying to sell your point too forcibly, you will end up making the other person put up their guard because they will suspect that there is something you want from them. You need to stay even and pleasant and avoid any hint of pressure or desperation in your talk.
Once you come across as desperate, the other person’s warning bells will go off and you will lose the connection. Desperate is bad, so avoid trying so hard to get your point across that you come off as desperate.
Would you buy a product from a salesperson who was practically begging people to buy? No, of course not! You would become suspicious and pass on the product and the same principle holds true here, your desperation will make them suspicious of whatever you are selling or suggesting and they will have already made up their mind to say no.
Not Being Genuine
Remember the example of the salesperson who was just mechanically reading their sales speech and the salesperson who was enthusiastic about the product, talking about how much they love it and why?
You need to be the second person because if you are not genuinely interested or excited about what you have to say, neither will anyone else. If you are not showing genuine interest, your audience will never be able to connect with you or your message.
What happens if you are having a bad day and you have to go into a big sales pitch meeting? You put that bad day behind you and you go in there with enthusiasm, energy, and passion.
You have to be passionate about what you are talking about or selling. You want to engage and interact and people connect easier to someone who is showing emotion, and enthusiasm is contagious!
Even if you have given your speech a hundred times, you give it with as much enthusiasm for the hundred and first time as you did the first time. Your voice, your face, and your body language needs to say you care and you are passionate.
Your lack of emotion, interest, and passion can keep you from establishing rapport.
Mirroring and Matching Errors
We mentioned a few of the mistakes in the prior chapter that you can make with mirroring and matching. If you instantly copy every single action the person you are talking to makes, you will be caught and they will think you are mocking them. Do not rush to copy movements, do them slowly and naturally, and wait a while to even begin to match your body language to theirs.
Never try to mirror or match facial tics or any sort of tic or involuntary motion, which will just come off as if you are making fun of them.
Similarly, if they have a lisp, do not try to mirror and match that or any speech impediment. If they have an accent, it can be tempting to automatically fall into that same accent, and it is easy to do it without realizing you are doing it but you have to pay attention to make sure that you aren't doing that.
The above are the main errors that will either break rapport or make it hard to establish in the first place. Make sure you take care to avoid any of the above when you are speaking to people and you will find that you can make and keep rapport established easier.
It is important that you not only grab your audience’s attention but that you also create an interest for them to keep listening.
You want to create a bond, and that is what rapport is for, but once you establish rapport, you need to keep pulling in your audience so they are hooked. It is kind of clichéd but it is a good analogy so you can compare conversational hypnosis to fishing. You get the fish to pay attention to your bait but if you reel in too early, you miss the fish.
You have to do the same thing with your audience. If you reel in too early, then you lose them. You have to tantalize them with your bait, which is the early part of your speech, the part that hooks them and holds their interest before you reel them in. You can use various methods to help hook their attention, pulling them deeper into rapport.
One such tool to hook them in is to tell part of a story, but not the whole story. You never play your full hand right up front so you tell them just enough to get them interested so they want to keep listening to you.