Your marketing plan should take establishing & maintaining rapport into account. It’s perhaps the single most important ingredient to increasing sales. Always has been, always will be.

As you leverage up, ask yourself this question. "Will the new sources of leads that I invariably need to tap, maintain, increase, or decrease the overall level of rapport that I currently enjoy?" You must take this into consideration as you work your marketing plan through a variety of “what if” scenarios.

Will you gain targeting, or lose it as you scale?

Let me tell you a little story.

Earlier this week, I got a call from a salesman after leaving a message about getting my stereo repaired. My expensive, but aging Nakamichi CD player is on the fritz, & I’m virtually tuneless. Not good.

It was a notable conversation for anybody interested in the art & science of persuasion. And in particular, the role that rapport plays in that process.

My apprehension was this.

I bought the unit about 8 years ago, & I’m thinking. OK, this is going to cost me some money. I could probably now go out & buy a new CD player for the same amount. Just getting an estimate is going to cost me.

So the guy calls up, & immediately starts building rapport with me. How does he do it?

After introducing himself, he says, “So you’ve got an MB-1s, awesome unit, what do you listen to?” I tell him, “I’m into rhythm & blues & jazz”. He probes a little to see what kind of blues I dig, & we find ourselves rapping for a bit about how much we both love the music of Stevie Ray Vaughan.

And then without missing a beat, he says “So I suppose you’re wondering whether technology has advanced so far in 8 years that you could replace your MB-1s with a new unit for pennies on the dollar?

I say, “yes”.

And then he goes on to tell me. “Unless you’re prepared to fork out a sizable chunk of change on a relatively high end unit, your going to lose some of the raw analog warmth & character that oozes faithfully from Stevie’s Fender Stratocaster every time you slide a CD into that Nakamichi”.

And I’m like, Wow, thanks for saving my life dude. Talk about a marketing plan.

This wasn’t the only guy I called, but I can tell you this. He was the only one I considered doing business with. And it came down to the rapport that he created.

So what can we learn from this?

First off, let me point out that while this was a personal interaction, you should take the principle of rapport very seriously in your marketing. Can you see the role of targeting in the above example? On a larger scale, this is analogous to the match between your expertise, & your market isn’t it?

The fundamentals are the same.

I liked this guy. Because I liked him, I listened to him. Because I listened to him, I believed him. And because I believed him, I bought from him. Sure it wasn’t a huge purchase. But what happened in those few minutes on the telephone takes place in virtually every sale that you make, whether you’re an active participant in the process, or not.

Most often, your first sources of leads will be the most natural, & the ones you’re most comfortable with. As your marketing plan calls for growth, you need to think about possibly adapting your marketing message a little to any new sources of leads required for growth.

“An Unspoken Relationship!”

You are developing an unspoken relationship with your customers, as a result of both your personal interaction, & every piece of marketing you deliver.

The challenge is this. How do you generate rapport, when you don’t have the expensive luxury of personal contact with all of your clients at every stage of the buying cycle?

Here are a few ideas to contemplate, as you work your marketing plan.

·         Be a person in your marketing. Far too many businesses make the dreadful mistake of coming off as stuffy, corporate, & boring, in the name of professionalism. Your business can be professional, & still have character.

This is just as true in b2b & technical sales, as it is in consumer sales. If you’re involved in the former, I strongly urge you to consider the impact this can have on your success. Just for fun, have a look at how this ad infuses a sense of personality into what would otherwise be a very dry technical subject.

Honestly, if you’re in b2b, you should feel like climbing inside that guy’s brain, & yanking out some of his brilliance!

You have my permission.

One of the best things you can do is deliver your marketing message in the first person. A sales letter is the perfect vehicle for this, but you can & should voice a friendly, rapport-building persona in virtually every kind of direct response advertising you do.

The legendary copywriter Robert Collier sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of goods & services through the mail with his sales letters, in good part due to the sense of warmth & friendship that he injected into his writing. If you haven’t yet studied his work, I highly recommend it.

Do so here.

·         Communicate with your prospects, in their own words. If you’re marketing to engineers, & you know that they use some particular acronyms, use those acronyms. If you’re selling to the CEO, speak in plain English. Just common sense, but so often ignored. If you’re selling b2b, understand that there are multiple decision makers involved. Find a way to speak to them all. Use multiple campaigns if need be.

·         And finally, give your customers more than they expect. It is rare to do business with a company that demonstrates a genuine concern for the actual outcomes that their customers experience as a result of a purchase.

This is very different than simply being committed to the satisfactory performance of your product or service. You build rapport by showing your prospects exactly how what you’re selling “fits in” to what they are already doing.

In the final analysis, your prospects & customers should feel like they know you as a person from your marketing & advertising. More importantly, they should know you as the kind of person that they would call a friend, & look forward to hearing from.

As you grow, your marketing plan should factor the additional costs of either adjusting your targeting to maintain rapport. Or alternatively, your marketing plan can account for lower profit margins. In either case, stay focused on the variables. Isn’t that what a marketing plan is all about!