“You will make more friends in a week by getting yourself interested in other people than you can in a year by trying to get other people interested in you.” –Arnold Bennett

I’ve recently added an additional service to my advanced coaching club–one-on-one calls with students. I love these calls for a number of reasons, from getting to know my students better, to further understanding what people are looking for from MaxPersuasion and their study with me. I’m excited about giving my students the ability to really focus on what they’re struggling with or dig in deeper in places that really excite them and where they want to move at a more accelerate pace than other students might be comfortable with.

Part of why I love these calls so much is the phenomenal questions and comments my students come up with. From time-to-time I’m going to work some of the more pertinent ideas into these articles. The sources will always remain strictly confidential as these are private calls.

On a recent call, a club member said he always thought the whole idea of collecting criteria was part of the rapport building process but that from some comments I had made, or which were posted to the board, he was getting the impression that rapport is something different.

Rapport building and criteria elicitation are intrinsically and inextricably linked. I break these two concepts up just to teach them as separate functions so that we all know what goes into each but really they’re two sides of the same coin and in order to be good at one of them, we have to be good at the other.

In order to begin the process of criteria elicitation, you have to have at least a minimal amount of rapport built up. If you don’t, there’s no way you’re going to acquire your affluent client’s deep, core values.

In MaxPersuasion our focus is on high net worth and affluent prospects and clients because that’s where the money is. However, this process works on absolutely everyone. For procedurally oriented people, the first step is a small amount of rapport, deepened by the process of criteria elicitation, further strengthening the rapport. These two actions compliment each other and require each other for them to work.

Knowing how to gain rapport will guarantee your success in eliciting criteria from your high net worth prospects, and in turn you will feel yourself become a powerful persuader as you close the sale.