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When you spend time thinking about what it takes to reach a deal with the other side of the table no matter what negotiation styles or negotiating techniques are being used, something becomes clear very quickly. If the other side is not comfortable dealing with you, if they don’t trust what you tell them, then it’s going to take a much longer time to reach a deal with them. What this all boils down to for you is that you are going to have to find some way to reach rapport with the other side of the table during your next negotiation.

What Is Rapport?

If you are going to want to reach a level of rapport with the other side of the table, then you are first going to need to know just exactly what “rapport” is. I think that we’ve all heard this term before, but that does not mean that we know what it means.

I like to define rapport as being something that is above and beyond simple trust. The other side of the table has to trust you before you can start to try to develop a sense of rapport with them. Rapport really comes down to both sides of the table having a level of mutual respect for each other.

In fact, it goes just a bit beyond this. You both have to actually like each other. Yes, you are engaged in a business negotiation; however, you are going to have to like the other side enough to be willing to make changes to the deal that is being discussed for your friend on the other side as the negotiations move along.

How Can You Reach Rapport With The Other Side?

Knowing what rapport is can be an important first step. However, now that you know what it is, you’re going to have to figure out how you can establish it with the other side of the table. To make this happen you are going to have to engage in some serious “out of the box” style thinking.

Building a foundation of respect and friendship with the other side of the table is going to require you to spend time with them outside of the negotiations. You are going to have to identify something that they like to do and then you are going to have to do it with them.

By doing this, you’ll have the opportunity to engage in the small talk that friends have with each other. You’ll both share small details of your lives and what you want to achieve. No, this probably won’t have anything to do with the negotiations that you are going to be engaged in, but it will help both of you to better understand where you are coming from.

What Does All Of This Mean For You?

As negotiators, our goal is to get the best deal as quickly as possible from our next principled negotiation. In order to make this happen, we need to build a sense of rapport with the other side so that we can more easily work with them and we can both quickly make progress towards a deal that we can live with.

Rapport is something that is built on a foundation of trust that we already have with the other side. Having rapport with the other side means that we actually like them, they are our friends. To make this happen we need to invest time in building this type of relationship outside of the negotiations.

I suspect that like most negotiators, there are not enough hours in the day for you to get everything that you have to get done, done. Working on developing rapport with the other side might just seem like too much work. However, it can pay off with such great benefits that the extra time and effort that it requires is well worth the effort. Give it a try and you just might be surprised.

In today’s Web 2.0 world, the use of online web conferences for the purpose of selling or demonstrating a product or service are becoming more and more popular with companies employing a business to business [B2B] sales force. The proliferation of platforms including market leaders Go To Meeting and WebEx with many secondary competitors such as Dim Dim, Glance and Fuze all offer the same basic service and are all vying for market share. These platforms can prove to be a valuable and cost effective way to sell products or services for 3 main reasons: 1) The cost of travel to/from sales presentations is eliminated. Airfare, rental car, hotels and meals are not required. 2) In what used to take up to 3 days including travel to visit a sales prospect can be done in an hour or less. This allows a salesperson to increase the number of sales presentations by up to 15x! 3) A salesperson just needs the skills it takes to speak and present effectively online, which many find much more comfortable rather than speaking in person. This opens the door for many more qualified salespeople requiring less salary than a typical “road warrior” type salesperson further reducing the cost of sale for companies. All this being said, very few sales people know how to effectively use this platform and in the following article I’ll outline why a web conference is NOT a phone sale, the 5 biggest mistakes most commonly made using this platform and how to best duplicate a “face to face” selling environment online.

Selling over the phone is a dying method for selling products & services. National “Do Not Call” lists, voice mail, cell phones, phone screeners and decision makers spending less time in a standard office environment all contribute to the decline in the effectiveness of traditional inside, phone sale. The good news is web conferencing and demonstrations bring something new to the table; visual evidence, convenience & privacy. Asking a prospect to spend 15-30 minutes viewing the latest & greatest product or service that can benefit them is a much easier request to fill than hoping to catch someone at their desk and spit out enough info to avoid being hung up on. Effective web demonstrations are generally set in advance by the use of marketing channels much like a traditional face to face meeting but with much more flexibility in availability since travel & geographic constraints are eliminated. Like the traditional phone sale, the prospect is able to keep a virtual boundary that is lost in a face to face meeting which results in many more prospects agreeing to meet with you…online. The prospect is less fearful that a pushy salesman will show up and cause them to purchase something on the spot. If presented properly, prospects actually feel like your offering them the opportunity to view something of value rather than feel like they are doing a favor by not hanging the phone up. All of the above contributes to a less intrusive, more accepted and increasingly popular sales opportunity.

Many salespeople that utilize this new method of selling don’t realize that because this is not a traditional phone sale that their approach has to be different than what they might be used to with a typical over-the-phone sales pitch. Many salespeople still “show up & throw up” and bombard their prospect with as much information as they can in the shortest amount of time. It’s as if they are still afraid of the hang up and are trying to get across as much information before the dial tone sets in. A web demonstration is the complete opposite and should be treated as such. During a web demonstration, you have earned the prospects undivided attention for pre-specified time to introduce the benefits of your product or service. Another common mistake is salespeople tend to “lecture” over the demonstration. This brings back memories in the prospect’s mind of sitting in class watching a projector or blackboard. Extremely Boring! The goal is to encourage involvement and facilitate a meaningful conversation that will uncover the prospects “hot buttons” or what can be described as a “needs analysis”. If this is done properly, the prospect has given you a road map on exactly to how to sell them! This brings to mind another point. Listen! Listen! Listen! The old saying God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason especially holds true here. If you pay attention to the parts of demonstration that generate the most interest and listen to their questions and comments, the prospect will reveal the key to earning their business. Finally you must respect the prospect’s time. Before any demonstration you should set the time frame of how long this presentation will last. If it runs long because they extend it through questions and conversation, that’s okay! In fact that is what you want, however, if you end up doing most of the talking it better wrap up in the allotted time or you instantly become pest. Today’s sales environment is all about permission, not intrusion. When you set the expectations of the web demonstration you basically getting permission to present your product or service for that appointment time only. Don’t overstay your welcome.

Web Conferencing and Demonstrations will continue to gain popularity as the cost of doing business steadily increases. As a salesperson this is a skill set that is necessary to learn as soon as possible. If done properly, you can earn more money in less time and in many companies never leave your house. Web demonstrations creates a virtual marketplace that is inexpensive and highly effective.