There’s only so much you can do about your major gift prospects’ passion and excitement about your work.  But there’s plenty you can do about your prospects’ connection to you.

Creating rapport is a key ingredient of relationship-building.  Thanks to the research conducted by the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) community, we know that physiological “matching” builds rapport.

Speech Pattern

Many of us naturally change the pace of our speech to get more in-tune with that of our conversation partner (without mimicking, of course). That is one element of matching. And it’s a good one.

Blinking and Breathing

 Here are two less obvious ones:

• Blinking at the same rate as your prospect
• Breathing at the same rate as your prospect

 Experiment with one at a time, and find the one with which you are most comfortable.

 Give these rapport-building techniques a try, and let us know how it goes.

 P.S.  “Mirroring” helps build rapport in any context. It’s not just for major gift work.