One of my most outspoken clients constantly boasted about his accomplishments. He was a very talented businessman, and he made sure everyone knew it.
I worked with him and his team virtually for a couple of months, without turning on our cameras during our Zoom meetings. I don’t recall why we didn’t, but it was probably to avoid Zoom fatigue.
Building a trusted relationship with someone new is hard to do remotely. Many connecting behaviors are hard to reproduce virtually. It’s especially hard when you don’t see any body language. Thus your confidence and competence need to be established using your tone and knowledge.
After some time of these shallow calls, we made a plan for me to visit and conduct some on-site Salesforce training for his team.
Understanding the type of personality he had, but not knowing exactly how strong our business relationship truly was, I decided to make a bold statement. I was only relatively confident it would work.
As we started with the “I’m looking forward to finally meeting you” statements, I added, “I need to warn you: I’m ridiculously good looking.” Then paused for a dramatic effect. The silence became deafening.
After the shock wore off, he jumped in and proclaimed, “Well, I’m also very good looking! And I’m really good at x, y and z.”
The payoff worked and it was a wonderful bonding moment 🙂
The takeaway
Building a rapport with a client can take many forms. One approach is mirroring their communication style. Although it works better when you are in person, it can work with just audio.