Tom Vizzini

The 4 Levels and 7 Secrets of Rapport

How to connect, move, and influence people before you even open your mouth.

The key to any type of persuasion or influence is the ability to generate
deep rapport INSTANTANEOUSLY.

I first noticed this years ago when I would get deep rapport with someone. I
would get into a feedback loop with them. I could feel my face get red and
my solar plexus get warm. I first wrote this off as a coincidence. Then I
noticed that they were having the same reaction.

Well I knew that I was going for rapport but they sure didn't. I began to
try to get rapport with people from across the room and then with people
that were not even looking at me yet. They all had the same response. They
would blush a little and look around. Some of them would just walk up to
me.
Well this was nothing like the old mirror them so they feel comfortable
technique. It was more like kick the barn doors open I'm coming in!

As you can see there's a whole lot more to rapport than just mirroring. I
was on a plane going to teach a seminar in the Bahamas. They played one of
these short movies and it was about something they call the Chameleon
Effect. Somebody gave some professor $200,000 to walk around and mirror
people. For $200,000 this is what they found out. Some of the time matching
and mirroring someone increased rapport slightly, but a percentage of the
time the person became irritated. This was the end of the study without any
idea on their part about why the person became irritated.

The way we teach rapport is a little different. We teach that the mirroring
is a RESULT of rapport and not necessarily the way to get it. Psychologists
and scientists made an interesting observation a long time ago. They noticed
that people who were in rapport also had similar body movements. In my
opinion, the mistake made was assuming that it was the body movements that
were getting rapport, rather than noticing that they were a result of the
rapport.


It's like saying to exhaust fumes make an engine run. Yes there are fumes
there while it's happening and without them you would be sure that the
engine was not running. That doesn't mean that by shoving exhaust fumes back
in through the exhaust pipe that the engine will run and the car will move.



We have noticed that there are four basic levels of rapport:

1. When you feel more comfortable talking to them.

2. When they feel more comfortable talking to you.

3. When you make a connection on an unconscious level and are able to get a
sense of the emotional state that they are in.

4. When you have a connection, can sense their emotions, and can influence
their emotional state nonverbally by shifting your emotional state.



So now we have four identifiable levels. These are not the levels of depth
of rapport but the skill levels of the person who wants rapport. Depending
on your skill level you'll get various types of connections.

To me rapport is about connection. Most of this connection occurs at the
unconscious level. Of course there is another level of rapport which many
people ignore. It is an energetic level. The premise that this operates out
of is that people connect on an energetic level more easily than they do on
a conscious level.

Okay, what is energy? I don't know and I don't care. I know that most people
have had the experience of thinking about someone, and having them give you
a phone call within just a few minutes. Some have had the experience of
picking up the phone to call someone only to have them already on the line,
because they had called you and your phone never rang. That is because
people make connections on levels other than what we are aware of. Distance
does not play a factor. These connections can be just as strong whether
someone is standing next you or whether they are on the opposite side of the
world. I don't attach any beliefs or theories to this. I just treat it as a
fact.


The results of this belief in the process we've created is that we teach
people how to get rapport BEFORE the other person even sees them. Sound
impossible? Well a lot of our students would have said so before they had
the experience. So far the feedback we have gotten is that this is simply
the most powerful connection that they have ever had.

Let me give you the basic steps so you can understand how moving through the
process could help you build that type of connection.

First, you need to have the ability to quiet your mind. This means moving
your agenda out of the way. This also means that if you're about to try to
take advantage of someone that most likely you're not going to be able to
get rapport. The reason is simple. The connection you make is a two-way
connection. That means that they will feel what your intent is.

Second, train your unconscious to observe what our conscious mind cannot.
Through several techniques that we teach, the unconscious mind gets trained
to pick up minute bio responses. These are responses that are not only seen
but felt. The second part of that is to calibrate to those responses and to
what they mean.

Third, learn the mechanisms of energetic connections. There are many
different mechanisms that all turn the same bolt. Some people use Tai Chi.
Others meditate. Others use some type of ritual. It doesn't matter which
path you take they all lead to the same place. By learning the concepts of
energy, focus and intent, you learn how to actually tap into that energetic
mechanism that leads to connections.


Fourth, learn to step into someone else's reality and safely leave yours
completely behind. In order to understand other people it is easiest if you
do so without any of your personal filters in the way. As long as you cling
onto what you think and believe, you'll have a hard time connecting. That
doesn't mean that you have to go down to their level. I think of it in a
musical term. If you have two pianos playing the same note all you have is
two pianos playing the same note. Two different notes can create a harmonic
chord.



Fifth, one of the most amazing things that I have learned is that when you
connect to someone in a very clean and neutral state, how much information
you can gather. It's like you become a thermostat. You can actually sense
the states that other people are in. We use this when we teach modeling.
Most people don't actually know what they're doing when they perform a
skill.
By using this step we can actually track the states that someone goes
through by feeling them. A golfer goes through five emotions in every golf
swing. When you ask golfer how they do it , they will tell you 15 different
techniques, but will never be able to actually describe the emotions they go
through. Learning how to track these is a useful skill, because even a
moment of doubt can ruin a golf swing even in a world class golfer.

Sixth, you can shift other peoples emotions without saying one single word.
To do this you have to be able to learn to control your emotions. Imagine if
you could shift someone's state from neutral to curious, and then from
curious to intrigued, and from there to fascinated. Where would that be
useful? I don't know, but it sure sounds like a good time to hand that
person your business card. What if you could move someone from depressed to
neutral? It would sure save a lot of time. What if you take someone from
neutral to the feeling like they have just spotted an old friend in the
crowd.

Learning to control your emotional states and move between them smoothly so
that you can maintain the connection is a very powerful skill. I think the
main reason that so many people spend so little time on rapport is because
they have fallen into the old model of mirror and connect. This is not only
about controlling your emotional state but projecting it in a way to
influence one person or a group.

The seventh part to me is the most interesting. How to maintain that
connection and adjust it. We teach several techniques and one of my
favorites is the Golden Bubble Technique. It gives you the ability to
include who you want inside the rapport and exclude others. I've always been
fascinated by how most people are interested in pushing people away rather
than pulling people in, and the technique for generally removing someone has
been dubbed Smurfing. The reason for this is the original visualization was
taking someone you didn't want around surrounding them with a blue bubble,
coloring them blue, imagining they were very cold and then shrinking them.

Earlier I talked about harmonic resonance. This would be like playing a
chord and then assigning a sour note to the person you didn't want around.
Very highly effective. Very non-confrontational because when they leave they
think it's their idea.

You ask about what the advanced skills are. Well believe it or not there are
skills more advanced than what I've outlined here. These are just the basic
skills we teach. On our website there are testimonials from people who have
some pretty amazing stories. Everything from making people spin around and
walked up to them to one guy sitting in a bookstore and getting rapport with
people and then saying to himself "mmmm this coffee is good" and then having
them immediately set down whatever book they were reading and go buy
coffee... At least five times. At some point you have to rule out
coincidence.

You can start with the basic rapport skills on the Magical Rapport tapes
which include the Golden Bubble, Smurfing, and more; explore the advanced
techniques with Advanced Rapport Mastery; or learn everything we have talked
about with the special 5 Tape Rapport Deal which includes the Magical
Rapport tapes and Advanced Rapport Mastery and learn all of these amazing
skills!

--
Tom Vizzini
Real Skills for the Real World
www.essential-skills.com
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