business to be open. And for it to be open, profitability is essential! People do not buy without trust. And people do not buy unless they perceive value in your offer. Properly equipped Service Advisors can influence your profitability which ensures that you remain in business. Achieving the three aforementioned KPIs in particular are all bi-products of human performance. We need to equip Service Advisors in particular with the right skills to influence Profitability, influence Customer Satisfaction and influence Retention. What is important to remember (and is also super obvious!) is that before you make a profit - you need to sell something. And before you can sell - you need to build rapport. this statement. But it is really not as simple as that. What I have discovered is that rapport is a far deeper topic than just the aforementioned statement. Before you read on, ask yourself honestly, " How do you define rapport? " Ask your Service Advisors how they define rapport. What you will discover is that there are different opinions and ideas on what rapport means to different people. The best definition I have found for rapport is, " A feeling of total responsiveness with another person " . Rapport cannot be underestimated. It is an extremely important factor to understand and master. My next question is, " How do we build rapport? " Rapport is built by asking questions to discover commonality. This process then leads to total responsiveness and engagement. Remember, people like people who are similar to themselves. Rapport = Relational. No Rapport = Transactional. Ensuring the Service Advisors are trained on personality profiling and can adapt to the customers communication style is an essential component to the success of building rapport. 2. RAPPORT Many Trainers and Managers will say to " just build rapport and the customer will buy " . Perhaps you agree with 26 Every day, our Service Advisors are meeting new customers for the first time. What is important to remember is that one needs to earn the right to enter the rapport stage. To do this, one must execute a great first impression.