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Establish and Maintain Bonding and Rapport
By Greg Nanigian in Sales Process

Before a prospect will share pain, you have to establish some level of bonding and rapport with that person. Why? Most people won’t share sensitive information with you unless they like and trust you first.  The Bonding & Rapport Step is the first of the Sandler Sales system described in this book. There are seven steps to this process, but none of them will work if you don’t take care of business here in the Bonding & Rapport Step. In fact, you should maintain bonding and rapport through the sales process and beyond. So let’s focus on it first.

An important, but often overlooked, principle in sales is "follow through."

After you’ve led your prospects through a discussion, to a point where they feel comfortable enough with you to share their pain, you need to keep that pain alive so that you can implement your solution. Prospects get emotionally involved when they reveal their pain and, as a result, are compelled to find a solution.

To start a productive discussion about pain — after you’ve built rapport, bonded, and had a meaningful conversation about goals and problems — ask: “What is the impact of this situation on your company?”

Pain is the gap between where you are and where you want to be. When that gap gets big enough, it can emotionally compel people to take action and make a purchase.

Many salespeople believe that presenting features and benefits is an effective way to sell. It’s completely ineffective.

A testimonial by the president of a leading New England advertising agency.

To uncover pain in the sales process, you must first establish bonding and rapport. Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a communications and behavior model developed in the 1960's, and it has grown in popularity and impact since.

Our weekly live, interactive Teleclass conference calls deliver provide effective sales training in digestible quantities and formats. Listen to Greg Nanigian help a client challenged with moving a prospect forward one week and then her results a week later.

No sales system will work if you don’t establish some level of bonding and rapport so that the individual will feel safe enough to share sensitive information -- and their pain -- with you.

An in-depth understanding of the Principle of Pain— “the gap between where you are now and where you want to be”— can not only help you to sell better but become more effective at buying.