Tips for Building That Elusive Business Currency Called Rapport

by Jeffery Gitomer

Published: September 21, 2009

Long Island Business News

Jeffrey, In your presentation you said if you can’t build rapport, don’t start. I deal with attorneys. What is your recommendation if a prospect just won’t build rapport?

Kevin, if an attorney prospect “just won’t build rapport,” it’s because you haven’t asked him the right rapport building questions.  Ask about the toughest case he’s ever had or the reason he chose to get into law, or the most rewarding part about his career. Ask something significant about him.  I’ve never met anyone that won’t spend a minute or two talking about themselves.

Many salespeople make fatal mistakes trying to establish rapport around “things” – the weather, the ball game, the economy or the news.  That’s not rapport; that’s idle chatter. Real rapport has an emotional base to it.  And it comes from the prospect’s personal experience, personal opinion, and personal wisdom.  The key to earning rapport is keeping it light and keeping it positive.  There’s a secret of rapport, and the secret is “the link” – finding things in common that you both know about and like.  The easiest example is children who are the same age or who have gone to the same college.  These are things you can talk about with a smile and then move on to business.

Professional people tend to be self-indulgent people.  When you walk into their offices, their statues, trophies and educational achievements are always in plain view, as are pictures of their family.  Whenever I go into an office, I take a moment to walk around, not just look around. I look at educational achievements, other awards and family photos.  Sometimes the first question I ask is, “How old are your children?” because oftentimes the photograph will be several years old.  Whatever it is that I’m looking at, I try to ask a question that will elicit personal information, personal history or some type of positive emotional response.

That was Kevin’s issue.  How’s your rapport building going?  Do you understand that rapport is the gateway to an agreement?  Do you understand that rapport is NOT small talk or chit-chat?  Do you understand that rapport is the insight you gain about the person you’re trying to build a relationship with and entails giving them a little insight about you in return?  Do you understand that rapport is NOT qualifying the customer, it’s engaging her personally and intellectually?  Do you understand that rapport is a time when the customer is qualifying you?

Here is some additional insight into the rapport-building process:

• Rapport is delicate and must be professionally understood before you can be personally engaging.

• Rapport is exchanging information of personal value.

• Rapport is gaining insight into the person and their personality.

• Rapport is gaining an understanding of the other person.

• Rapport is the ability to begin the engagement process.

• Rapport is a learning time about them, not a bragging time about you.

• Rapport is asking – then creating dialog around the answer.

• Rapport is permission to smile, even laugh, without doing so at someone’s expense.

• Rapport is your opportunity to establish yourself as someone they would like to get to know better and maybe even do business with.

Is there a secret formula for building rapport?  No – but the key actions from you are friendly and approachable.  The key to success is “ask.”

And during the brief time you ask questions and exchange dialog, you may find the LINK.  Something you both like and know about.  The moment the link is realized, rapport deepens.

Maybe it’s a sports team, or a college or a child.  Maybe it’s a vacation spot or a piece of art.  Whatever it is, it’s personal and business gold.  Story exchange, smiles, mutual good feelings and emotional thoughts and memories.

Once you have built some personal rapport, it’s time to segue to business rapport.  Start with a career question – maybe something about length of service, the best accomplishment, goals for future success – and then say something about your business career.

When I finally segue to the business at hand I get right to the point. I tell my prospective customer, “The reason I asked for this meeting was to find out … .”

NOTE WELL: I DO NOT SAY, “The reason I asked for this meeting was to tell you about … .” Subtle, but powerful. Telling is selling.  I want my prospective customer to BUY. So do you.

Some people tell me that trying to build rapport is awkward.  Awkward is not a problem; it’s a symptom. The problem is a total lack of preparation on the part of the salesperson – that would be you.

Maybe if you spent less time boning up on the economy, and did some personal research on your prospective customer, YOUR economy would be better.

For a few more rapport insights go to http://www.gitomer.com/ and enter RAPPORT in the GitBit box.

Long Island Inaugurates Hydrogen Refueling Station

Source: Newsday
Class: SYNDICATED NEWS

SYNOPSIS: $2.2-million station will be used to refuel retrofit vehicles including shuttle bus.

Long Island's newest refueling spot is an exclusive club: It's open only to drivers of hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered vehicles.

The $2.2-million hydrogen fuel station, financed by a combination of local and state funding with partners such as LIPA and National Grid, sits in a parking lot next to the Town of Hempstead's Department of Conservation and Waterways in Point Lookout.

Long Island Needs Plan for Sustainable Future

Great article.  Just wanted to pass it along

by

John D. Cameron Jr. is the chairman of the Long Island Regional Planning Council.

Michael E. White is the council’s executive director.

from

Long Island Business News

The news, opinion pages and blogs of LIBN have been filled with the challenges Long Island is facing, and it seems that the very best of what “Our Island” has to offer is at risk. While we share many of the problems faced by other communities, we have regional challenges that make our plight unique and in some ways more desperate. The Long Island Regional Planning Council is tackling these challenges and will ascertain how Long Island may achieve a sustainable future. If we are to be successful in solving these challenges, Long Islanders must be ready to embrace a future that preserves appealing aspects of our suburban life, recognizes our remarkable assets and creates a community based upon the principles of stewardship and sustainability.

Our distinction as the most highly taxed populace, with the highest energy costs in the continental United States and a lack of housing options to meet the needs of our changing population has resulted in an accelerated loss of our talented and educated work force, particularly our young people. The affordability problems of our young work force are shared by our seniors, a growing segment of Long Islanders. You have heard this before.

“Our Island” also faces an aging and inadequate infrastructure. We cannot build or revitalize our downtowns without adequate sewer capacity and treatment to protect our drinking water. We cannot alleviate our traffic congestion without better transportation and transit choices. The natural resources that attract us to the Island are stressed or even disappearing. Failure to address global climate change and reduce greenhouse gases could bring more unhealthy air and permanent flooding. Our ability to attract and retain quality businesses which employ highly skilled, highly paid workers must be strengthened. These challenges threaten our quality of life and our economic viability.

Acknowledging these challenges and problems as daunting, there is hope that we can still right the ship. The council, with core support from our counties and in collaboration with our towns, villages, cities and an array of stakeholders, is embarking upon a sustainability planning initiative to ensure that not only does Long Island remain an economic engine, but that our quality of life will be preserved and enhanced. Our “LI-2035 Regional Comprehensive Sustainability Plan” initiative will produce an integrated sustainability action plan. It will NOT merely be another study of existing deficient conditions or a vision devoid of a charted course of how and what to change.

Assisting the council is a team of talented planners, engineers, scientists, economists and sociologists headed by Arup, an internationally respected firm, supported by local firms and community-based organizations in conjunction with federal, state and local government. The work product will draw upon sustainability successes from around the world with specific application to Long Island.

First, we will identify and assess the challenges we face in economy, infrastructure, resources and land use. We then will establish goals; develop a series of sustainable strategies with metrics to assess their impact on meeting our challenges; and identify the necessary governmental actions and funding mechanisms required to implement the strategies to reach the goals. Second will be the integrated action plan providing the “how to” and “who needs to do what” to reach a condition of sustainability by the year 2035.

The council is supported in the development of this plan by a Leadership Advisory Cabinet comprised of Long Island leaders in business and industry, institutions, regional government, the community, the environment and nonprofits. The cabinet is co-chaired by Bob Catell and Pat Foye. Supporting the cabinet will be stakeholder resource groups acting as technical advisors in specific thematic areas. The experience and expertise of our cabinet and stakeholder resource groups as well as broad public outreach will ensure that the critical issues affecting Long Island will be addressed, practical solutions proposed, information generated widely disseminated and that the action plan will be implementable.

The critical challenges and associated problems we face are real and significant. It is up to all of us to seize the opportunity to create a sustainable future for “Our Island.”

Posted 

On

PhysOrg.com

 Anyone who has ever stepped barefoot onto blacktop pavement on a hot sunny day knows the phenomenon very well: Black surfaces absorb the sun's heat very efficiently, producing a toe-scorching surface. In the wintertime, that can be a good thing: A dark roof heats up in the sun and helps reduce your heating bill. But in summertime, it's definitely a bad thing: Your house gets even hotter, and your air conditioning has to work harder. In most places, the summertime penalty is greater than the wintertime gain, it turns out, so that's why many people, including U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, strongly advocate switching to white roofs.

It's no small matter. In fact, Chu says that turning all the world's roofs white would eliminate as much greenhouse gas emissions in 20 years as the whole world produces in a year. But some critics point out that in northern cities, the gain in summer could be outweighed by the loss in winter. The ideal situation, then, would be to get the advantage of white roofs when it's hot and black roofs when it's cold.

Now, there may be a way to have both. A team of recent MIT graduates has developed roof tiles that change color based on the temperature. The tiles become white when it's hot, allowing them to reflect away most of the sun's heat. When it's cold they turn black and absorb heat just when it's needed.

The team's lab measurements show that in their white state, the tiles reflect about 80 percent of the sunlight falling on them, while when black they reflect only about 30 percent. That means in their white state, they could save as much as 20 percent of present cooling costs, according to recent studies. Savings from the black state in winter have yet to be quantified.

The team, which the students call Thermeleon (rhymes with chameleon, because of its color-changing property), was one of the competitors in this year's Making and Designing Materials Engineering Contest (MADMEC), a competition for teams of MIT students (or 2009 graduates). Now in its third year, the contest this year was specifically devoted to projects aimed at improving energy efficiency through innovative uses of materials. The final showdown was held Wednesday night, and the Thermeleon team took first place, earning $5,000 in the process.

Nick Orf PhD ’09, a member of the Thermeleon team, explains that he and his teammates originally tried to develop a color-shifting roof tile using a system of mixed fluids, one dark and one light, whose density would change with temperature: the dark substance would float to the top when it was cold, and white would float when it was hot. But the system proved too complicated, and instead they hit on a simpler, less expensive method.

Now, they use a common commercial polymer (in one version, one that is commonly used in hair gels) in a water solution. That solution is encapsulated — between layers of glass and plastic in their original prototype, and between flexible plastic layers in their latest version — with a dark layer at the back.

When the temperature is below a certain level (which they can choose by varying the exact formulation), the polymer stays dissolved, and the black backing shows through, absorbing the sun's heat. But when the temperature climbs, the polymer condenses to form tiny droplets, whose small sizes scatter light and thus produce a white surface, reflecting the sun's heat.

They are now working on an even simpler version in which the polymer solution would be micro-encapsulated and the tiny capsules carried in a clear paint material that could be brushed or sprayed onto any existing surface. The tiny capsules would still have the color-changing property, but the surface could easily be applied over an existing black roof, much more inexpensively than installing new roofing material.

Although they have not yet made specific plans for forming a business to commercialize their concept, Orf says the team members are determined to pursue the project and develop it into a marketable product.

Because the materials are common and inexpensive, team members think the tiles could be manufactured at a price comparable to that of conventional roofing materials — although that won't be known for sure until they determine the exact materials and construction of their final version.

The biggest remaining question is over durability, and answering it will require spending some time to do accelerated testing by running the material through repeated hot-cold cycles.

Hashem Akbari, leader of the Heat Island Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, is a long-time advocate of white roofs as an energy-saving measure. He says that some other groups, including a team at the University of Athens, have done research on the use of color-changing materials for roofs, but that in those tests, "the cost and durability has been a serious issue."

The Thermeleon team hopes to address those concerns. "It's got to stand up to very harsh conditions," Orf says. "Those sorts of tests would have to be done before we'll know if we have a viable product."

Provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (news : web)

USGBC Wants an Environmental Label for Every Building

This article appeared in:

Environmental Leader

Every building in the U.S. should have a label as to its environmental impact, said the U.S. Green Building Council’s president at the Healthy Buildings meeting.  At the same event, IBM told how it is taking green buildings one step further with bright-green buildings, which converges green buildings with intelligence, said an IBM executive, reports Central New York News.

Rick Fedrizzi, president of the U.S. Green Building Council, would like to see a label similar to nutrition labels found on food packaging on the side of every building, that discloses the quality of the air, water and other environmental factors inside, reports Central New York News.  Fedrizzi was the opening keynote speaker at the Healthy Buildings 2009 conference.

Fedrizzi said in the article that indoor environmental quality ranks near the bottom of the nation’s policy issues, and to change that, more research is needed to demonstrate the links between health and indoor air quality. He also noted that green building research attracted less than 1 percent of all federally funded research in 2007.
Jane Snowdon, a key executive at IBM’s Intelligent Building and Smarter City Research at the T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., told an audience at the Healthy Buildings 2009 conference that buildings need to be smarter because they consume 70 percent of the world’s electricity, 12 percent of its potable water and 40 percent of the raw materials used globally, reports the newspaper. T hey also create 136 million tons of waste per year worldwide, she said.

The smart grid would play an integral role in making buildings more energy efficient.  As an example, National Grid, a utility in New York and New England, has applied for $200 million in federal stimulus money to create a smart grid in three states involving 200,000 customers, reports the newspaper.

Christopher Cavanagh, director of new products and services for the utility, told Central New York News that smart meters, appliances and monitoring systems will let consumers choose to consume energy when it’s cheaper — generally at night, or off-peak hours — and let the utility manage demand for energy.

To help building owners garner financial savings from green building practices, a new nonprofit organization was formed earlier this year to support and promote environmental sustainability among property owners and managers nationwide.

The Association of Green Property Owners and Managers (AGPOM) offers several services to members including a cost-effective Green Building Plan, green insurance products that provide discounts for going green, and Green Premium Plus, a program based on renewable energy credits (RECs).

Green Drinks Babylon

A Force for the Sustainable Development and Future of Long Island.

Green Drinks Babylon is a monthly gathering of like-minded individuals committed to shaping our future and making Long Island a greener community. Come out and charge your eco-spirit and make some new connections.

Our 1st meeting is set for Oct 14th, 2009 @ Horace & Sylvia's Publick House in Babylon, NY.

Signup for Free@ Green Drinks Babylon

For more info email me @ emartin@advancedrestoration.com

We have a lively mixture of people from NGOs, academia, government and business.  Come along and you'll be made welcome.  Just say, "Are you green?" and we will look after you and introduce you to whoever is there.  It's a great way of catching up with people you know and also for making new contacts. Everyone invites someone else along, so there’s always a different crowd, making Green Drinks an organic, self-organising network.

These events are very simple and unstructured, but many people have found employment, made friends, developed new ideas, done deals and had moments of serendipity.


Find us on FaceBook.

Orrino Capital Services, LLC

Gino is one of my closest friends. He handles all my insurance needs. Here is his new website.

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