Without rapport,  you can’t do much. 

I know that you’ve heard this over and over and over again, but despite how widespread the idea of rapport is, few people practice it.

Why is this?

For one, it’s one of those things where we say to ourselves, “Oh, THAT? I already know about THAT!”

Another is that it IS pretty simple. It’s not like learning some of the other advanced stuff. It only takes a few minutes, literally, to fully understand it.

But maybe the biggest reason many people don’t practice it is because it’s easy to forget.

Especially when you get into a conversation with somebody where the outcome is pretty important.

Which in and of itself, presents a paradox.

On the one hand, when you’re with your friends and family, the outcome of any conversation isn’t usually that crucial. But that’s where you have the most rapport, built right in.

On the other hand, when you’re trying to get a phone number, or close a sale, or talk about something very important, rapport usually isn’t built in. 

Which means you’ve got to take some time and build it.

But most of the time, we’re so nervous that we simply forget. Forget to set it, and forget to check it.

Which means most people are done before they start.

Whenever we’re talking about anything regarding sales or relationship creating, we usually refer to it as a “numbers game.”

Talk to enough people, and you get what you want. Simple in theory, but often times very difficult in practice.

Even if ten percent of the people you talk to fall in love with you and your idea, that means nine out of ten will not only NOT be in rapport, but they’ll be sending you covert signals of “get the heck away from me!”

I don’t care who you are, but this doesn’t feel good to ANYBODY.

Now, on the one hand, you could FORCE yourself to build rapport. Force yourself to match their body language, rate of speech etc. 

Now, this will significantly increase your success. Maybe even a lot. But you’ll still be talking to a lot of people that want nothing to do with you.

What if there were a better way? A way to project an image where people would WANT to be in rapport with you?

Where all you’d have to do is simply show up, and the work is already done?

Instead of walking up to strangers who are thinking, “Who IS this guy…” they’ll be thinking “Wow! She picked ME!”

Instead of imposing your world on others, they’ll be pre-qualifying themselves to you.

How do you do this?

Frame Control

A few social scientists have made names for themselves doing pretty interesting “experiments.”

In one experiment, they took a bunch of guys all pretty random, and sent them out into the social club scene in a large city.

They followed them with “data collectors” who only asked one question. They would walk around, find people who remembered these guys. They’d flash a quick picture, and then ask the person, as they remembered them, to quickly rank them on a scale of 1-10.

So each particular guy had his own average. But then they had them behave two completely different ways when they walked in the place.

One way was to walk in with shoulders slumped, eyes down. The second way was to walk in with shoulders back, head up and eyes forward.

On the 1-10 scale, the difference was two points. Simply by walking more confidently, 6’s became 8’s, and 8’s became 10’s.

In another experiment, they sent the same group of guys out to restaurants, a bunch of different times each. (This was a long while ago, the study was done in the 70’s).

Each time, the guys said they’d left their wallets at home, and asked if it would be OK to write a check.

In half of the experiments, they were dressed professionally. In the other half, they weren’t.

And just like you’d expect, the professional looking guys had no problems. The casual guys did.