Home Rapport Modelling Hints Tracing Exercise About Us Courses
How to Establish Rapport through Modelling, Tracing & Leadership
Basically, reciprocal knowledge stands at the foundation of a relationship; i.e. the predictability of some relative answers allows the relationship to remain steady. How can we build a relation with a person we don’t know yet? A good way to create rapport is to mirror the other person's behaviour in such a way as to develop confidence. This can be done through modelling, tracing and leadership techniques. Modelling is the most well known and commonly applied of these three techniques.
Modelling
Modelling simply consists in taking on the positions (conceptually through ideas and physically through postures) you would like your converser to take; through acting in the way you wish they would act and saying the things you wish to hear. It involves asking questions that are able to suggest the answer you want, modelling the behaviour you wish he/she would emulate and showing him/her how to make a positive decision.
By modelling, you're displaying an example and clearly showing people what you expect them to do. With a depressed person who lacks any enthusiasm, you'll model how you feel excited in relation to the subject and what he/she can do for you and for others.  You will be enthusiastic, open and excited, making long pauses in your conversation and allowing the converser to react to your perception of the situation.

Modelling is an excellent technique to employ at the point where rapport is established with another person. It is effective above all when it is necessary to draw it out from a state of mind or from a series of thoughts and to propose it in a more suitable way to the situation. We need it to achieve the results we desire.

When do you Achieve Rapport?
When you model and the customer follows, you have achieved a high degree of ‘rapport’.
The effectiveness of modelling grows essentially from this fact: when a relationship is established, roles are determined progressively. Through modelling you propose roles and create such a positive expectation to stimulate the customer to perform the role you propose to them: that of a satisfied customer who has good rapport with the salesman.
If the converser does not follow you in the modelling process, move directly to mirroring.
Mirroring is another technique to quickly establishing rapport with another individual.
You can employ such a technique when you want to show you understand and agree with the customer's point of view. Through mirroring, you project - through words and body language - that you are on their side, and esteem their point of view.
It has often been said: ‘Customers are worried about what you know, but above all they want to know how much you are worried’.