Ten Tips to Establish Rapport with Your Audience
If you want your audience to listen intently and believe you, you must establish irresistible rapport with them. That means you and your audience are on the same wavelength. They understand you and believe that you understand them.
Build that rapport and the presentation will be a more enjoyable experience for you and your audience. In the absence of rapport, you are wasting everyone’s time.
Start building rapport early in your presentation and reinforce it throughout your presentation. To establish stronger rapport with your audience, use these 10 rapport-building techniques during your presentation.
1.Don’t tell jokes. Jokes tend to ridicule people and thus alienate some members of your audience. Instead…
2. Help them laugh. Reveal your sense of humour and your willingness to laugh at yourself.
3. Tell a self-effacing funny story. Reveal a flaw or embarrassing moment. We trust people who have imperfect lives – like the rest of us.
4. Dress for the role. Look like the expert that your audience believes you are.
5. Look them in the eye. Deliver a phrase to one individual at a time so each person believes you were talking to them.
6. Smile more. That makes you appear confident and friendly. Some people will smile back at you which will help you feel more confident.
7. Tell stories to illustrate your message. Don’t lecture. The most successful marketers, leaders, and speakers use stories to influence their audiences.
8. Speak the language of the audience. Learn the words and issues that are relevant to the audience. For example, do they see themselves as clients, members, associates, delegates, investors or devotees?
9. Talk about concepts and issues they can relate to. Sales reps relate to quotas, production supervisors relate to bottlenecks, engineers relate to tolerances and entrepreneurs relate to cash flow.
Remember that everyone relates to family.
10. Be yourself. Believe in the value of your message. Don’t try to wing it. Be well prepared. Don’t fret about the minor mistakes. Appear comfortable in front of the audience.
©George Torok is the Speech Coach for Executives. He offers private presentation coaching for executives and professionals.
He provides training programs for sales teams, managers and specialists.
Ten Tips to Establish Rapport with Your Audience
What questions and tips can you add about building rapport?
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