Chapter 7: Creating Rapport 109
Having Basic Techniques for Building Rapport
Having rapport as the foundation for any relationship means that when tough
issues arise, you can more easily discuss them, find solutions, and move on.
Fortunately, you can find out how to develop rapport.Rapport happens at many levels and you can build rapport constantly
through the following:✓ The places and people you spend time with
✓ The way you look, sound, and behave
When rapport really matters
Fast-moving businesses breed stressful working
conditions. Take the frenetic world of advertis-
ing: highly competitive, new young teams, artistic
temperaments, large budgets, and crazy dead-
lines. In an industry in which people frequently
work all night, mistakes are bound to happen.
In advertising agencies from London to Sydney,
you can be certain that a number of client prob-
lems are brewing at any one time. Media, such
as newspapers and magazines, appear on the
desks of executives the world over, and what
happens when your client’s advertisement
from last week’s issue appears in place of this
week’s new message? All too often, anxious
calls fly back and forth across the airwaves
when the wrong ad appears in the newspapers,
artwork goes astray, and computers crash mys-
teriously taking with them the latest version of
an important design.One of our advertising friends once produced
a customer magazine for a corporate client in
which some of the main photographs appeared
in black and white: they should have been
in colour. In a hurry, he hadn’t checked the
proofs carefully. When the print was delivered,
he called the client, confessed the error,apologised, and took full responsibility for
a costly mistake. As he worked for his own
agency, he knew that if he had to pay for the
reprint, the bill for several thousands of pounds
would come straight out of his own profits.
At the other end of the phone, the young cor-
porate marketing executive’s first reaction on
hearing of the error was that the whole job
would have to be reprinted; she’d discuss it
with her boss and get back to him.Within an hour, the client called back to say that
her boss’s reaction was that it was a genuine
mistake. Because of the good working relation-
ship, the company would accept the job and let
it go out. The boss had remembered the times
when our friend had gone beyond the call of
duty to respond at the weekend and late in the
evening, so that the client achieved a product
launch on time. The boss also valued the time
he’d taken to understand the company’s busi-
ness, plus the advice and experience he’d
shared on using budgets wisely.
And what’s the moral of the story? Simply that
investing time in building the right relationships
is just as worthwhile as getting the job done.