Yes and no. Given the variables of two individuals’ personalities, it seems a daunting task to establish a connection. At the same time, most of us like to make connections and something so simple as a shared interest, family situation or history can take you a long way.

I know one account manager in the north woods who liked to take his account contacts hunting. As he put it, “Once they’ve killed with you, the bond is made.” That approach will not be available to most but, given his location, it’s an effective choice. What it does show is how creative the rapport-building ideas that relationship managers can come up with.

If you look up sales and rapport on the Internet these days, the acronym you see most often is NLP, which stands for neuro-linguistic programming. NLP involves such things as mirroring a person’s posture and their tone of voice. I’m sure some of that works—there’s too much research that says it does. On the other hand, it has always seemed to me a bit manipulative. And if the contact with whom you are trying to establish rapport has also read any of the articles or books, you can find yourself quickly embarrassed.

To help your account managers establish rapport with your account contacts, I suggest hiring them for rapport-building skills. I know relationship managers who have trained to be better rapport builders but, in my experience, most of the best account managers seem to have been gifted with the ability—either through nature or nurture. When you are interviewing these people, they usually make a connection with you because that is who they are. No connection, no rapport-building skills. And, all other things being equal, these are the sorts of folks to hire as relationship managers.