Last night I was at one of Melbourne’s 5-star hotels for an evening seminar. Mel had dropped me in to save on parking woes (we’re only 6km away), so after we finished I called her and waited outside (undercover, watching the lovely much needed rain!) until she arrived.

One of the sales techniques I’ve learned, both through specific sales courses and also through crewing Tony Robbins events, is about rapport, and how effective it can be in communicating with other people.

Like most people, much of the time I’m unaware of specific rapport triggers working — although I did consciously notice someone was in rapport with me a few weeks ago during a casual conversation, as I watched them match/mirror some body movements and expressions during our conversation (even some deliberate movements I did, and watched them follow!).

Anyway, back to the hotel. As I was waiting out the front of this 5-star venue, I sat unobtrusively to the side of the main doorway.

During the time I waited, 3 women emerged from the hotel, along with the concierge, to grab a taxi out to the airport.

There were no taxis nearby, although from my 10 minutes of waiting, there would undoubtedly be one coming along soon, as I had already noticed. However, there happened to be a brief lull in the taxi-passing-by department whilst the group waited.

The female concierge took the time to make “small talk” with the 3 women until a taxi showed up. It was interesting to watch this conversation!

Firstly, the 3 hotel guests. They were all very conservatively dressed in business clothes for their night flight to their next destination. All 3 were quiet, and, if I was to make a judgement, I’d guess they were in Melbourne for business or pampering/shopping (business trip, based on their luggage). And, they had been staying at a hotel with a rack rate of around $600 per night.

Regardless, the first question the concierge asked the 3 was about going home, and assuming they didn’t enjoy their time away from home. I don’t remember it verbatim, but it was something like, “I bet you’re glad to be going home.”

The guests, all still very quiet and polite, actually shook their heads to say no, that they enjoyed Melbourne, and yes, they like home, but they did like it here too.

The concierge seemed to miss picking up on the quiet/polite/business-like manner of the guests. “Oh yes, she said, Melbourne’s such a great party town!”

It probably is for the concierge, but the conversation — from an outside observer’s perspective — seemed to be fairly mismatched: firstly, the concierge wrongly assumed the guests didn’t like it here all that much, and then presumed they did in fact like Melbourne because it’s a party town.

Not getting much of a response from the guests, she pressed on, asking where the group were heading. After finding out the international destination (Singapore), she exclaimed “wicked!” and asked if they had some room in their luggage for her to tag along.

Despite my guess that “wicked” would probably not be part of the regular vocabulary of the guests, they did seem to perk up a little when the concierge wished she was travelling to Singapore with them.

However, along came a taxi and it was time for farewell.

Watching all this, the one thing I noticed is that the concierge’s questions were based on her own view of the world — which is quite normal. But her view of “glad to be getting home” and “party town” didn’t get much reaction from her 5-star guests, and didn’t seem to resonate at all. In this case, I think she’d have been better placed asking more open-ended questions to have a nice conversation, letting the guests talk about their own views and their time in Melbourne.

This certainly worked at the end when she subconsciously appealed to her guests’ sense of pride in living in Singapore (flattery), they perked up a bit hearing that someone else was envious of their home town and also wanted to go there tonight.

She fell into rapport when she talked about what interested her guests.

An interesting observation watching someone out of rapport, and then, just briefly, finding a little rapport as the conversation ended.