Selling Power’s article – Establishing a Relationship – discusses methods for establishing rapport quickly with a prospect.  This ability is critical to successful selling.  The established approach is to mirror the prospect’s “personality style” (or what we call Selling Style).  We teach salespeople how to do this and it is most effective.

However, there is one point that has to be made before mirroring the prospect’s style.  You cannot establish rapport if you are dominating the conversation.  We see this often with highly-extroverted sales candidates.  They attempt to talk through many topics in what appears to be a fishing expedition for a connection.

Bad move.  The prospect has to be speaking if you want to build rapport.  This point is spelled out in the article:

Even if you figure out personality types, sometimes things don’t click. That’s when you need to step back, take a deep breath and quickly evaluate why it’s not going well. Nine times out of ten, it’s because you’re doing most of the talking. When Parkhouse finds herself in this situation, she stops and asks a question that customers can expand on, so the focus is switched to their needs.

“Stop talking,” she says. “Take it slow and pick up cues. Smile. If they don’t smile back, the person’s guard is really up and you need to get them talking.”

Stiles agrees that people will relax if they are doing most of the talking. “When you enter a prospect’s office the scales are tipped against you, and the more you talk the more they will tip. There’s not a good balance,” he says. “The only way you can change that is to get in and out of the conversation as soon as possible.Get the prospects talking. If you’re telling, you’re not selling.”

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Online Media Daily has a news brief regarding the fastest growing social networking sites. 

AMONG TOP SOCIAL NETWORKS, LINKED-IN was the fastest-growing over the last year, according to October ratings released Wednesday by Nielsen Online.

The site geared toward professional users drew 4.9 million visitors last month, up from 1.7 million a year ago.

Other fast-growing social networks included kiddie site Club Penguin, up 157% to 3.8 million users, and Facebook, more than doubling its audience to 19.5 million in the last year. MySpace remained the top social network with 58.8 million users, up 19% from 2006.

LinkedIn was the fastest growing, but it seems like Facebook is the site to watch.  Whichever way it plays out, I would recommend putting your information on both sites.

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