There are a number of ways to quickly develop rapport with folks at work, whether they’re clients or internal partners. In this post I’m going to write from the perspective of Behavioral Economics and Positive Psychology and focus on deepening client relationships. This is a long-term strategy. It’s about becoming a trusted advisor, not making a quick buck. You may not make a dollar today, but you’ll make many more dollars tomorrow by following these ideas.

This post is about my personal preference to build rapport with clients by always doing the right thing for them or as the Atlassian team says, “Don’t fuck the customer.” Behavioral Economics is focused on influence, not taking the client’s perspective. And this is how I quickly gain trust with other people so I can become a trusted advisor, develop social capital and be more effective at work. The goal of Positive Psychology is to have optimal mental health.

Behavioral Economics says we have two types of relationships, transactional and social. Transactional relationships are win/lose, social relationships are win/win. In business, we start out in a transactional relationship and where we want to be is in a social relationship. In my experience, the best way to make the transition from transactional to social is by showing in words and deeds that I care more about doing the right thing for the folks I’m working with than I do about selling them anything.

There is a caveat, you have to genuinely care more about meeting the other person’s needs than you do about selling, you have to put the client before your company. The idea is to build a solid foundation for a relationship by demonstrating caring in words and deeds, but you can’t pretend to care, you have to genuinely care. Faking authenticity is very difficult and if the other person feels you aren’t being genuine, things will likely go badly.

Be intentional, intent is powerful. When I work with a client, I let them know that my intent is to make them more successful at their jobs, because that’s the role I’m in. I do that by showing them best practices and always doing what’s in their best interest, even if it conflicts with my self-interest, at least in the short term. In the long term, both parties are likely to be more successful.

Be confident. No one is going to see you as a trusted advisor if you don’t believe you’re a subject matter expert. The quickest way to gain confidence is to act as you have it. Fake it until you make it is a proven technique in Positive Psychology to build confidence. However, faking it isn’t enough. You have to put in focused effort to become a subject matter expert. Before your meeting ensure that you feel confident with your understanding of the subject matter by doing some research and at least gaining a high-level overview. Take notes and record the call if possible. Then use the recording as a feedback loop. Listen to calls and try to find ways to improve.

If you discover a solution to a client’s problem that doesn’t help you or your company, say it’s recommending a competitor or an off the shelf software package and you share that info with the client, it’s a demonstration of your caring for them. Most people won’t step out of their comfort zone to do this. It’s a risky strategy to those who haven’t worked this way. It’s most effective to use this strategy early in the relationship, but it will help you build trust across the life of your relationships.

Social relationships mean both people are invested in each other’s needs, that fairness is at the center of the relationship and over time you can build up social capital. That is you can build up goodwill with your clients and create social obligations. In social relationships, we naturally seek out win/win solutions. And we aren’t perfect, social capital creates a social burden and can be used to help others overlook mistakes we make and it allows us to make asks that are more likely to get a yes.

How do we to make the transition from transactional to social relationships? You have to change the way you think of your clients, to think about them more as friends who you want to help rather than businesses you want to profit from. Changing the way we think about things is a challenge for most of us, it takes practice and focused effort. It’s simple but requires dedication, time and practice. One tool we can use comes from Positive Psychology and is called reframing. The idea is to pay attention to our thoughts and alter them just a bit and over time, that change in thought will become our new reality. Then we repeat this process until we have adapted the desired perspective.

Let’s say I want to change my behavior around asking other people for help. I’d start by paying attention to the chatter in my head around asking for help. I might start out with the message, “I’m a strong independent person who doesn’t need help, I don’t want to take the chance of being let down.” Let’s say my goal is to change my perspective to, “If I don’t ask other people for help, then I’m robbing them of that good feeling I get when I help other people.” I start with a small change, “I’m a strong independent person who doesn’t need help and I get that I’m being selfish for not asking for help, so I’ll ask for help with things I could do myself, so if people let me down, it won’t hurt as much.” As I put my thoughts into action and I take chances and ask for help, I keep iterating on this until I adopt my goal perspective. So far we’ve talking about internal changes we can make and actions we can take to build closer relationships. These ideas will work in most any context, work, family, friends, as long as you genuinely care for the other person and ensure your words and deeds match up.

We want to be in social relationships with our clients and build up social capital because it gives us influence. Influence is the beneficial side of manipulation. Manipulation has negative connotations because it’s often used for the benefit of the manipulator and to the detriment of the manipulated. With influence, we try to change the behavior of others for their benefit. Once again, we are taking actions that benefit the person we are in a social relationship with. If you try to manipulate someone against their best interests it will likely come back to you in a way you don’t like.

People value things they create more than things they buy, this is the Ikea effect. We know from research that even if all you do is assemble something, you will assign it a higher monetary value. Partner with your clients and have them participate as much as you can. You want them to feel like they have ownership in the thing you are collaborating on because they’ll value it more. That’s why if I offer to edit a client’s writing, I call it optimizing, not fixing, editing or whatnot. I don’t want to imply that there’s anything wrong with what they did, just that I want to make it optimal.

You want to make it easy for the other person to think nice things of you. Every time someone gives you an enthusiastic YES, their brain releases dopamine and after about 5-7 yeses they start feeling closer to you, and they start to trust you. A yes is a metaphor for any sort of positive interaction. The idea is to provide massive value before asking for anything that might benefit you. This is a social capital shortcut. Your goal should be to make the time you spend with your clients, the most valuable time in their day. Make your time with your clients about them, not you.

Avoid choice overload or the Home Depot effect. It’s better to give clients a few good choices than 100 choices. You want to reduce the friction they have between wanting to do something and doing it. If a client is having a hard time deciding on something, see if you can schedule a call to help them narrow down their choices and help them move forward.

People tend to default to the first options presented to them. Opt in/out is a good example. Most people will leave the default on an email list signup, whether it’s opt in or opt out. Present your desired perfect state first, then other options if it’s a good idea. Just keep the number of options low.

Scarcity is a powerful motivator, the less there is of something the strong the desire for it is. False scarcity is a common tactic used by marketers everywhere but nowhere more than on the internet. Even when you know how it works, it still pulls you in to buy. Just last weekend I went to book a hotel room and one that looked nice only had one room left, so I booked. Then I found out it was a room in a shared condo with a shared bath. No thanks. I was able to cancel it and then did a better job of looking at my options. False scarcity is manipulative, things like count down timers, limited offers, and deal expiration all create scarcity.

Lastly let’s talk about framing or priming. You can make people more receptive by putting them in a more beneficial mental state. You don’t know what kind of day the other person is having and if you can do something to brighten up their day at the start of a meeting, it can influence the outcome of the meeting. Getting them to think a happy thought can cancel out the soul-crushing commute they had today. Your goal is to get your client to think about something that makes them happy, it could be their children, a recent trip, a hobby they love, etc. Even showing a picture of a cute animal can put someone in their happy place. I do research on clients before a call, I look for anything that we have in common or anything positive I can bring up about them or their company. Our brains focus more on how things start and end than what happens in the middle. Start and end meetings on a high note, starting on a high note sets the tone for the meeting, ending on a high note, gives people a lasting positive impression.

We’ve talked about a broad set of topics and if one or two of them ring true to you, then start using them to get better results. As a side benefit, you’ll likely feel better about yourself by working this way. Knowing how and why we do what we do helps us to be better people, to have better relationships and to have a more satisfying life.