If you really want to look at improving your rapport skills in depth, you could buy a book that would help but just to get you started ...

Rapport Building Skills

Make effective small talk. Most people like talking about themselves so asking questions that will encourage them to talk about things they like is a good beginning.

Matching body language. Experiment with a friend. Subtly match body language to create rapport. Try out what happens when you deliberately mismatch body language too! A good example of this is when you go to someone at the end of the day to talk and they are packing up to go. If they don’t want to be delayed they will use body language to tell you this!

Matching Voice. If you are trying to calm someone who is angry or aggressive, you would speak quietly and calmly. You might also use language like ‘I can see you feel strongly about that’ or ‘I’ll get that sorted now’ .

Watching someone you think has good rapport skills. We all know people who have a knack of connecting with people right away. (S)he will probably consciously or subconsciously be using rapport building skills. Watch him/her in situations where they meet someone new, are encouraging a shy person to speak or calming down a difficult person. What do they do?

The other skills we are looking at like good listening and empathy are all part of rapport building too.