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Welcome, everybody, to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in the history of podcasts, 17 and a half years going strong.
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My name is Brian Neal.
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My name is Bill Kasky.
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We are here every week.
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You hear our voices.
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If you re new, welcome.
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Glad you re here.
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If you re a longtime listener, thankful.
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Had a sales call at our firm, Bill, this week, and my sales team s going through the whole thing.
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I m not much involved with that.
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And they had kind of a last check with one of the partners in the business.
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uh, kind of the, you know, influencer, but not like final guy.
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And as they re talking, he goes to Stephanie, wait a minute.
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Is your husband Brian from the advanced selling podcast?
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She s talked to his company for like eight meetings, like multiple times.
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It just never trans.
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He goes up, don t need to know anymore.
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I m listening to him and bill for 17 years or whatever.
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It s been forever funny.
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So glad you re here.
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There are stories like that all over the place.
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And, um,
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If you ve not checked out the Insider Program, you see the little, if you re watching, you should watch too on YouTube.
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Just go on YouTube, right?
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YouTube?
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Yeah, it goes on YouTube.
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So, you see advancedsellingpodcast.com slash insider program.
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Bill runs live coaching.
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You re not going to get better coaching live anywhere on the planet.
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I can guarantee you that.
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And most of you know, if you re a long-time listener, that Bill and I do hours and hours and days of prep for this show.
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And today, as I logged in to my
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get ready for my prep call, which I was 10 minutes late for.
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When I log into the studio, Bill doesn t know I m here yet, but I can see him.
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And he is, Bill, you ll fill in the gaps here.
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You re unboxing something.
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I tried to take a video of the unboxing process.
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Looked like a smidge of a struggle, but I d like to either share a little bit about, describe what I saw in the unboxing process.
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Well, I didn t know that you could see me, so I was really focused on unboxing this thing.
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And this is a box.
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What it is is a Govee light bar.
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And the idea is that it sits behind it, and you can put different colors up.
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And it s a gadget, to be honest.
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It s nice.
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It s good.
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It s a really good gadget.
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But I mean, I think it s funny.
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And so when I get into something, I m kind of like you.
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I m like, OK, well, this should open.
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Why is this so hard to open?
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And it reminded me of about two weeks ago, I went to Apple to get a dongle from my phone.
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And I got it.
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I bought it for $10, like I always do, and went down.
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And my wife was shopping.
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And so I m sitting down in the store and kind of opening it.
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I m like, how the hell do you open this?
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I m just ripping the hell out of it, finally getting it open.
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And it was the wrong thing.
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So I took it back.
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I said, I m really sorry.
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It was a very nice lady who sold it to me.
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I went, I made a beeline.
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So I m sorry, this is not the right thing.
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She goes, oh, okay, well, let s get you the right thing.
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You know, they re very nice.
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And then she said, she looks at the packaging on the rip.
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She goes, um, do you know that you can just pull this tab here?
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Oh, no, I didn t know that.
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Oh yeah.
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I did pull, I did pull the tab.
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That s what happened.
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Right the hell off.
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We re the same.
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I can t open anything.
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And I get so frustrated.
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And usually it is, usually if I slow down and study and, or, you know, like take it all in at once, there s a very simple, small process.
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I shred boxes all the time.
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It s a family thing.
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You could never be a YouTube, you could never be a YouTube unboxer then.
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I literally, I can t do anything.
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anything that remotely touches opening anything.
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Christmas presents.
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I can t even unwrap presents right.
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Like my family makes fun of me for how I open, you know, take unwrapped presents, you know, and I m trying to get in there.
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And then everyone makes these little suggestions, you know, can I get you a knife there, buddy?
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No, no, no, I got it.
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I got it.
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I m all over this.
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Yeah.
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Like someone watching you unbox the dongle.
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They re like, dude, you know, there s a better way.
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No, no, no, no.
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I got it.
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I got it.
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No, no, no, no.
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I ve unboxed a lot of these.
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go back and give her, here s the wrong dongle.
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Here s the 400 pieces of shredded cardboard that I just tore apart to get to the wrong dongle.
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Oh boy.
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All right.
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Uh, topic today, a topic that
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We talked about it a little bit in the pre-show.
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And there s this thing that we used to teach a long time ago called the rapport wheel.
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And the idea is that we want to establish rapport with our prospects.
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We always have.
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We always will.
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We want to have good rapport.
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When we say something, we want them to trust that it s true.
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When they say something, we d like to trust.
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So trust is a subcomponent of rapport.
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And I remember that we used to teach it, and we used to talk about physicality, tonality, and words.
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So physicality was 60% of rapport.
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In other words, if you re standing up straight and you ve got a nice smile and you re open stance, you re not doing this, you re going to have better rapport.
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Tonality is just your tone of voice.
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And we used to think the words were so important.
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But really, words represent very little of rapport.
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It s more about the physicality and tonality.
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And I don t know that I disagree with that, but I think trust today is a little bit different in that it s our actions that build trust, too, not just how we stand and what we say.
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It s do we do what we say we re going to do?
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If we re going to call somebody and follow up at noon, if we re at 4 o clock, then there s a loss of rapport because there s a loss of trust.
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And to bring the point home, then I was wondering,
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quizzing Brian before about, has the whole, you know, since we re not appearing in front of people as much, we re doing it on screen, does that impact rapport at all?
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Or what we should be thinking about in terms of having rapport, building trust?
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Is it different?
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Is it easier?
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Maybe it s easier.
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Maybe it s harder.
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So that s what I wanted to pose to you.
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I love it.
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So posed.
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Accepted.
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I think it s a great topic, mostly because
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And I said this in the pre-show, one of our pre-show prep sessions, I don t know which one it was, the one that was 90 seconds, it was that one, is I have been a little bit, and I m like self-reflecting here, a little bit dismissive of rapport building.
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in the past.
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And the reason I ve been dismissive of it is because I always felt like the way that people were taught rapport building was contrived, that it was based in a bad intention.
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Like, you know, the super old school asking them about the stuff on the wall stuff, and then just the, you know, the cliche weather stuff or whatever.
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It just always felt fake or forced to me.
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So I kind of shied away from it.
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And it s still a thing.
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And what I love, what you said there, Bill, that I wrote down really big here on my little trusty iPad, is the word trust.
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Rapport is the first step in building trust.
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Yeah, you know Brene Brown, I m sure.
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I ve heard of Brene Brown.
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Listeners may have heard of Brene Brown.
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If you haven t, you should follow her.
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She s really cool.
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And she does a whole thing on trust.
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which is a great definition for it.
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And she talks about how trust is essentially it s granted versus earned.
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So people grant trust.
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You don t earn trust.
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It s granted because you hold the trust for me on my, you see what I mean?
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You re, you re in charge of trusting me.
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I can t, I can t do anything necessarily to make you trust me.
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You have to choose to do that, but I do things.
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And then you decide based on what I do, if you trust me or not.
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And it s, she says, it s a whole long series of little bitty things.
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over a long period of time that build trust, that I can rely.
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She talked about reliance.
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Your behavior, I ve got reliability around your behavior.
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I know what to expect.
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And then it can be shattered in one move, in one thing.
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So it s a really interesting thing.
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And I think rapport is the first step in all that.
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And how many times have we heard people, and we ve probably said it, let s go out and earn their trust.
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All the time.
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And we hear that.
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Let s go out and build credibility.
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Let s go forge a relationship.
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Yeah, very true.
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Right.
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And then when I hear the Bernays take on that, I think, yeah, trust is a result of integrity and doing the right things and showing up and wanting to serve.
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I mean, part of that is our intent.
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Our intent fosters rapport and trust.
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And if our intent s to sell something, to do everything we can to forge relationships and earn trust, then it s false.
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It s faulty.
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It is I think that people that people may disagree with that I m in that camp totally and I have on my board and I put up some some like philosophical principles here in this little document I ve got in front of me and I circled intent and I circled authenticity and to me That s the that s the foundation of rapport building.
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Yeah is carrying intention.
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That is I ve been using a word phrase emotionally neutral and
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going in, I m emotionally neutral.
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I think so many people are taught, hey, I got a demo and he gets a demo.
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I got a great meeting coming up.
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And instantly, we re emotionally charged.
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Yeah, we got to show well, yeah.
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And then we and then we feel extra pressure to build rapport.
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We got to get build a like us we get you know, so I m like overboard trying to get you because I m building trust.
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I m doing it, then I m not myself.
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You know?
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Yeah.
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And how many times are we emotionally neutral or detached
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on the outside, but deep within us, we really frickin  need the business.
100%.
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And we think that we re kidding the world by demonstrating some kind of detachment or emotional neutrality, and we re just kidding ourselves.
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Yeah.
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So the trick, the key, the strategy there is, no, no, no.
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You have to get right internally emotionally neutral, detach from the outcome, be there to serve, obligation to share, understand what their issues are,
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Go there internally and then everything will take care of itself on the outside.
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Absolutely I ve got a little phrase that one a guy that coached me for a while named David Meltzer We talked about him before says I don t know that he made it up, but he says a lot I ve heard other people say it you probably heard the phrase
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Work on being more interested than interesting.
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Be more interested than interesting.
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Was that you?
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I got to let him know that.
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I was seven.
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Quote cards.
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Be casky.
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Be more intro.
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I was seven.
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Everyone s out there riding a bike.
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So I think that s one thing in reportability.
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And I wrote down the word sincere, too.
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Am I sincerely interested in learning your background?
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Here s an example.
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I m going to go a little tactical, too.
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I think report building starts in the research part.
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LinkedIn is a great place to do research on that.
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And when I m looking at research, what a lot of people will do is they ll look for this commonality, which is fine.
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Oh, Bill, I saw you went to DePauw.
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A woman that works for us went to DePauw.
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There s that.
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And that s just real.
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That s just a thing.
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But there may be something more in depth there.
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I had a call with a VP of sales, a chief revenue officer, actually, title wise.
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And she was a chemistry major in college.
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And I was just so curious.
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I m like, before we get rolling, I ve got to understand, how did you go from majoring in chemistry in college to being a chief revenue officer?
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That to me is a great way to build rapport.
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Cause you re going to hear their story.
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And I was sincerely interested.
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I wasn t saying that like, well, I m going to ask her about her.
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You know, people love it when you ask her about them.
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So ask her about them.
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That s not what I ll earn her trust quicker.
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Real quick.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Your energy, forge your relationship.
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I love that.
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We re going to earn and forge and build.
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What are you doing?
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We re forging.
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I m forging.
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Let me go.
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It s so true.
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Isn t it what we do?
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I m foraging.
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I m foraging through that.
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Sidebar, I did go to a forage show.
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I was with a old ag client forage show.
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They cut down grass and.
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Make hay.
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Anyway, OK, that s sincere interest in others.
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I think it s a really good way to build a rapport.
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Yeah.
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OK, so part of the lead up to this was how has Zoom and digital changed our ability to create rapport?
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I ll just share one thing.
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I ve attended some speaking classes over the years, and I attended one last week in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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It s part of one of Grant Cardone s programs, Stages to the Next Stages.
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And one of the things that they were emphasizing there, which I ve heard, but I m not sure.
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You can hear things over and over, but do you really do it?
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And that is the open stance.
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Are you open when you re talking to a group?
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Obviously, we re not standing up on stage like this, although some people do.
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But I ve seen a lot of speakers who close in.
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They re doing this whole thing.
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And that s really a closing up of the,
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So they were talking about open stance.
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And as they were talking about that, I was thinking, well, what about on a Zoom call when all the other person sees is my mug?
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They just see my face.
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And my face takes up 70% of the screen.
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Now, our faces right now are only taking up probably a quarter to maybe a quarter, 20%, 25%.
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We ve pulled focus enough that you can see our hands.
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You can see a little bit of our torso and I m wondering if if it s a better experience if the person can see your let me see your hands, you know, let me see your hand sir And does that does that help rapport if you can see my hands that I m I m actually
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expressing myself with my hands versus just a face.
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Yes, I m 100% in that camp.
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This is where this gets super tactical.
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I think everything about your zoom experience goes into rapport building.
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And you just think about it.
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You know what I mean?
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Like you guys, so I ve got one client, and she knows who she is.
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She does.
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I don t know if she does this with customers, but every session I m with her been with her for four years, every session, she looks like this.
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you can t see what I m doing, but you see her eyeballs and that s all you see.
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And she s sitting back in her chair.
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I don t know what she s doing.
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And she has her company like logo, you know, behind her in the, the, the background thing.
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So, but I m like, no, you gotta be, you know, and it s silly, isn t it?
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It s standing up.
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You ve told her that many times, many times.
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It s like a joke for her with her team.
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Well, now she s just like, yeah.
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It s like, so,
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All those things matter, I think, in rapport build.
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I do.
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The mechanical things, you talk about them, I talk about them, the lighting, the sound, I think all those things go into that experiential rapport build.
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The phrase, how you do anything, is how you do everything.
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If you come into the Zoom room and you re sitting in a crappy apartment, there s stuff all over the place, and you got a baseball hat on your hoodie up,
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and you re trying to build rapport and build trust and forge a relationship, I don t know that that s the best thing to do right there.
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We ve got some ups, like you said, up energy, good lighting, good sound, interest comes through.
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Yeah, so let s assume then that it s the exact same things that it takes to build rapport in the flesh.
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is on Zoom, and that is, let me see your hands.
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Yeah.
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Rest appropriately.
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If you wear t-shirts all day, throw on a button down or throw on a sweater or something, hoodies and sunglasses and backward hats and stuff.
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It s like, come on.
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I know.
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And I know some of you will say, yeah, but that s acceptable now.
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Yeah, but is that what you want to be?
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You just want to be like standard?
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Well, yeah, we ll tolerate that.
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Acceptable.
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Yeah, yeah, I m acceptable.
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Is that what God put you on the planet to be, just acceptable?
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Are you unique and great, and you bring something a little bit special to the table?
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Yes.
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And I know that a lot of the buyers today are 30s, 30s, early 40s, and maybe some of them, I don t care what your buyer does.
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You know, this whole dress to show your brand is unique and strong and powerful.
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You don t have to be arrogant about it either.
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And it can be.
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I wear t-shirts every day.
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Same one, though.
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Same t-shirt every day.
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I had clients, I ve worked with them for four years.
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I can t remember why, but I was on a call with them.
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And I didn t have the BZ thing on.
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He goes, this is the first time I ve ever seen you without a BZ t-shirt, which I took as a compliment.
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He knows what to expect.
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It s part of the deal.
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I m a huge, huge believer that these mechanical things help us build rapport.
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This is silly, but it works.
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One of the recommendations I make, if you do Zoom or Teams, now I know how to do it on Zoom.
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I don t know how to do it on Teams.
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And I ve got a Zoom, and I ve got people coming in.
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It could be customers for a demo.
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I always, always have music playing when people come into the Zoom room.
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Always.
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It adds energy to it.
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It gives something to talk about.
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And people say, that s really nice having music in there.
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There s rapport.
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And then there s a chance to go down a path.
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Oh, I love Allman Brothers.
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I love Prince or whatever s playing.
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Oh, I love a boogie with a hoodie.
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Yeah.
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I mean, if we re truly going to give people an experience of us when we re in
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engaged with them.
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So physical, I mean, you wouldn t probably bring your stereo to a physical meeting.
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But it s easy on zoom.
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And, and that is part of the experience that you and I give our clients.
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And yeah, same way.
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I always have music, especially for for clients when we do training.
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And yes, I ll try to match it up with something like if it s the fifth anniversary of somebody dying,
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Yeah, yeah.
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No, he didn t die.
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Prince or something will play that.
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Why do you think I m doing that?
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It just adds a little bit of value.
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It does.
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It does.
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OK, so lessons from this before we close up here.
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Yep, sure.
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My first lesson is report building starts with you inside out.
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It starts with authentic, sincere intention and curiosity about others, with no game playing, no trying.
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And I love that Bill, we stripped away those action words, build, forge, that sort of stuff, I think has no place in rapport building.
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Yeah, I think one of our future episodes should be
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internal rapport.
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So we are always in pursuit of rapport with somebody else.
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And my question is always, OK, you can t give what you don t have.
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So are you in rapport with yourself?
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And maybe we ll talk about what that means.
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Maybe that s our next episode.
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Ooh, maybe it is.
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It could happen.
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Could happen.
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Make sure you go to our LinkedIn group, if you haven t already, and register, sign up, enroll, whatever the word is there.
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Join, I think.
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Join.
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Yeah, it s easy.
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Uh, go to advanced selling podcast.com slash LinkedIn.
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You can find it right there.
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We d love to have you.
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And also check out the insider program we re meeting this Friday.
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So I m not sure if it s a, when this is released, but go to advanced selling podcast.com slash insider to see
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the next few months agendas.
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Sweet.
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See ya.
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Bye.
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Bye.