Building rapport and engaging with your audience is a crucial part of business regardless of whether it is a formal meeting or an informal grouping of people just having a chat. It is important that there is some form of harmony between the speaker and the audience. It has been found out that audiences consider people they feel a connection to to be more trustworthy and therefore higher chances of doing business with them ( Guffey & Loewy, 2014).
Various strategies have been employed along the years by great speakers to build rapport with the audience as it is no longer enough to simply have a good presentation full of benefits that the customer may accrue by doing business with you. It has been proven that the informal things that a speaker does are usually what determine his rapport with the audience and the ultimate success of his business pitch ( Guffey & Loewy, 2014). The first rapport building activity that great speakers do is to try and interact with the people before the presentation begins. This includes introducing yourself to a few people and getting to know their names and what they do. It ensures you have people you can refer to or engage while giving your talk making you seem familiar to the audience which allows them to warm up to you. Proper use of body language also goes a long way in building rapport. Establish eye contact with a few people, for about 5 seconds each, and do this across the room. One can also use slightly bigger hand gestures than they would normally do in a conversation. An open stance while presenting, open palms, a nice smile, is also encouraged and gives the impression that the speaker is welcoming ( Guffey & Loewy, 2014).
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Humans generally like to hear about themselves thus the speaker should take time to use his presentation as an opportunity to serve his audience and not merely sell to them. Mention a few things that show them you have a genuine interest in solving their issues, give genuine compliments if there is something you like about their company, and engage and ask questions to know more about them to enable you tailor your business proposal even better. The more genuine one’s interest appears the more welcoming the audience to the speaker’s proposals. The speaker’s dressing should also always be a bit more formal than the audience but should not be too off such that it distracts the audience. Well dressed speakers are always trusted more and have higher success rates in their business pitches ( Guffey & Loewy, 2014).
There are many other ways of building rapport with an audience with some depending on the type of audience and it is upon the speaker to determine what will work with the particular audience to be addressed. A good rapport enables the speaker to put his message across with a higher chance of success and positive results which is the main goal for any business person or even motivational speaker.
References
Guffey M. E. & Loewy D. (2014). Business Communication: Process and Product. Cengage Learning
