Sales Tips

Building REAL rapport to increase sales & revenue

Post by
Bill verwey
Building REAL rapport to increase sales & revenue

What is rapport, when is rapport, how is it formed and why is it important?

The definition of rapport reads: “A close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned understand each other’s feelings or ideas and communicate well”.

In the context between Marquee Company and New Customers, rapport means you can see it from their perspective and you can easily communicate to them to relieve their concerns and answer their questions about hiring a marquee for the first time.

After speaking to thousands of marquee customers throughout the years, we have learnt that, really, all the customer wants to know on the first call is:

  • What size marquee do they need?
  • What will it look like?
  • What am I hiring?
  • Can I afford it?
  • Can I trust your company?
Answering your customer’s questions, building them quotes and designing floor plans in as short as time as possible is how you build instant rapport. Your customers expect this from you, when they are left waiting for your reply, you are damaging the rapport with the client.

The problem with customer expectations

Now, the problem with customers is that they can have one thousand and one questions, ideas and visions of what marquee hire is. They want to see photos, floorplans and prices instantly, plus they want to be able to compare their options (e.g. know the difference between chair costs).

For you, this can pose a problem as the reality is, every time you have to go back into your system to update or change a quote/floorplan/invoice, it takes up your time. The more time it takes, the less likely you are to do it, especially during peak season when you are already working 80 hour weeks on site!

How 'real-time' customer management helps build rapport

Marquee Tech is different, we allow you to update quotes/floor plans/invoices with your customers in real-time. By this we mean, you can update quotes, floor plans and invoices, live with the customer either from your mobile phone, tablet or computer.

Now, we know from experience that:

The speed in which you respond to an enquiry (under 10 minutes is optimum).
The speed in which you can build quotes (we do this in real-time with customers)
The speed in which you can make a quote and a floor plan perfect for the customer

Directly correlates between either someone who loves you (rapport) and will spend £7k on your marquee or someone who will forget about your company in 24 hours and go with someone else.

So how fast can you build quotes & CADs with Marquee Tech?

Get ahead of your competition

It’s important to know that when a customer is making an enquiry with you for marquee hire, in that moment of time they are really interested in marquee hire and are ready to talk to you. Be the company that talks to them, straight away, when they are ready. If you wait 2 days time, the chances are the customer has moved onto to something else important in their busy life and is not that interested in marquee hire. By being the first company to speak to the client, and, being the first company to build them to-scale floor plans and accurate quotes in real-time, you are 1 step ahead of the competition.

Let your competition send stock quotes to the customer a few days later, it doesn’t matter, the customer will be thinking of you – the company that cares about them!

Real-time means less work for you.

We have all been there, we’ve left an email in our inbox, failed to return a call, didn’t update an invoice or the calendar and now you have a massive pile of work to do! It doesn’t need to be like this with Marquee Tech, because everything can be updated in real-time, your workload becomes smaller.

By working in real time, your customers will love you, you’ll generate more revenue and you’ll have less work.

Tips for maintaining rapport after the first call

  • Keep focused on the customer’s event, what you can do for them and how you can help them.
  • Stay positive, customers don’t want to hear about your long day!
  • Don’t leave your customers waiting, get back to them ASAP, Marquee Tech allows you to update them in real-time, use the technology, don’t wait 3 days time!
  • Send them multiple quotes and floor plan options.
  • Do not send stock quotes via email.
  • Prioritise phone calls over emails.
  • Go through quotes with customers over the phone. If they are using there mobile, ask them to look at the quotes whilst on handsfree/loudspeaker.


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