Train Honestly in the Real World

The short answer to the training question is simply the more you practice using the skills, the more you will find that you don’t need to practice using the skills. It will happen naturally.

The trick to getting this right is to break patterns down into little chunks and just start using them. If you make a commitment to using a pattern several times in a conversation you will, all of a sudden find yourself:

• Understanding the impact the pattern has
• How to steer the conversation to get the pattern into the conversation
• Getting comfortable thinking on a different level
• And often finding “outs” for when someone queries why you are talking the way that you are talking

But most importantly you will build the attitude that makes the difference.

Only Perfect Practice Makes Perfect

Take it the right way, imagining yourself using the patterns is better than nothing. Saying the patterns out loud in front of a mirror is even better. Practising with a study buddy is really useful. Logging on to chat rooms, forums and eGroups to practice your patterns in real time is good as well. But if you really want to get good at hypnotic language you just have to get out there and flap your gums at some unsuspecting innocent member of the public.

If this is an issue for you perhaps a good place to start is Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed. As part of this course you will see me work with a student to develop and install their hypnotic persuasive PERSONALITY. You can then build and develop your own. But what is even better is that you can then read the notes that show you all the sneaky persuasion tricks I use with the audience. You will get to see the effects being used with the audience with written notes to explain how they work and explanations about how you can practice, develop and use the same tools for your particular circumstances.

With this course you learn to develop a persuasive personality as well as see active demonstrations of a huge amount of hypnotic persuasion skills with a live audience and how you can use them for yourself.

Here is the email:

What’s In It For Me?

There is one thing that these guys can do that will dramatically increase their results. If they would just look at this from the prospect’s perspective and write the email from that standpoint they would get a much better response.

Read the email and notice that it is just about the company, what they do, what they are seeking and how I can get in contact with them. None of this is speaking to me about my needs and how these guys can fix it for me.

If you are serious about persuasion then you are serious about seeing things from the other person’s perspective and willing to engage with them about that.

A Foundation Persuasion Process

What if you were to step into the head of the person you are trying to persuade and give them the message based on the befits to them? Here is my version of the email these guys were actually trying to send me:

To be fair I don’t like this method of selling and I personally would not respond to this version of the email either. But I am hoping that you see the world of difference between the two emails.

The real key to persuasive ability is to be able to get into the heads of your prospects and communicate with them from that standpoint. Persuasion Skills on Steroids is the course that will give you the tool to do that effectively. Click through and find out more here: 

In old style sales techniques there is a common pattern. Here are a couple of examples:

• Do you prefer it in black or red?
• Would you rather pay by cash or card?

You may notice that this type of question excludes all other possibilities other than the ones being offered. For example in the first version a green version or the option of not preferring any is not offered. Simply you are being led to the solution the sales advisor is looking for.

You can expand these questions to include more options, for example:

• Which colour do you prefer?
• How would you like to pay for that?

And use them in other contexts, for example:

• Shall we go for a meal or to see a film tonight?
• Or if you have already decided you want to go see a film, “What film shall we go to see tonight?”

In sales these are called alternative closes. But what if just by tweaking them a little we could use it in a much broader context? I’m not saying it is possible, but if it were what would you use it for?

If you were to examine my previous paragraph again here is what is happening:

• The first sentence is a preframe. I have restricted the direction of thought to just talking about sales.
• The second sentence opens out the possibilities to much more than just the thing I deliberately preframed in the first sentence. This has the effect of making things feel expansive. First I closed everything down… this is about sales and then expanded things to include a much wider possibilities.
• The third sentence displaces me from the idea. You can’t argue with me about the possibility because I’m not actually saying if it is possible, just asking you to hypothesise. I then ask you to create your own benefit statements to pull you in the direction wanting it to work or reading on.

A simple version based on the examples about might include:

• I don’t know if there are any other colours available, but if they were, which colour would you prefer?
• Cheque and cash are our preferred payment solutions and is there a different option that you would prefer?

But this misses the real beauty of this concept. In my longer example about we closed down the option, opened it up again and then completely changed the topic of conversation, did you notice?

Have a read of this article again and see how many different patterns there are that you can use.

If you want to discover how easy it is to develop this approach to covert, conversational, hypnotic language patterns have a look at Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed where I deliver a course and then deconstruct all the patterns I use on the students. You can find out more here:

Dramatically increase your sales by applying NLP to your sales team

One of his primary applications and outcomes for the course was to be able to motivate his sales team to far greater results.  From his course Martin applied a variety of NLP Techniques and the results were absolutely astounding.

Results through NLP Techniques

Martin found that his team were taking more calls, converting more sales and were actually having more fun. He took his team from meeting sales targets to exceeding them and on occasion doubling them.  In the long run Martin also found that the attrition rate for his team had fallen whilst several team members went for and secured higher level jobs.

“The sales operation was based on outbound cold calling in a highly competitive industry.  The sales agents face a great deal of rejection.  The dialler is set on automatic so there is a constant throughput of calls and agents have little or no time to recompose themselves between calls.

As the call centre is an outsourcing operation the parent company is very demanding and is constantly looking for results.  My team were constantly under the threat of redundancy with the parent company threatening to take the project in-house if we didn’t reach sales targets.  Many of the agents considered the dialling lists poor quality and the sales targets unachievable.  As with a lot of call centre sales operations the turnover was high.

My intention on going on an NLP practitioner course was to turn this around.  Whilst on the course my whole focus was on how I apply this material to my team.  I left with lots of really great ideas and was raring to go.  I was really taken aback with the results that I got once I’d implemented these ideas.”

NLP Training applied to a Sales Team

The following is a précis of some of the ideas that Martin implemented.

NLP Identity, Values and Beliefs

Martin took the whole of his team into a meeting. He got them to build a cohesive identity of an ideal salesperson and the perfect sales team in that context. He then got them to discuss who they were, what was important to them and their beliefs in that context. Martin then spent time reframing and connecting their personal vision with the ideals that they had come up with.The results of this created a much stronger bond between the agents as well as a clearer sense of purpose and a dramatic change in behaviour.

NLP Anchoring to Change Emotions

Martin noticed that several agents, however resourceful before a call would go into an un-resourceful state when they made a call. Initially he took a few agents and anchored them to clicking a pen top for a confident, happy and resourceful state. Several of the agents grew exceptionally attached to those pens. After some thinking Martin took a different tac. He took the agents and anchored that confident happy and resourceful state to a different trigger. He anchored the state to the beep that came through on the headsets to signify a call coming through from the dialler. This meant that as soon as a call came through the agents were in a confident happy and resourceful state.

Anchoring is a complex subject and is not often taught well. If you want to find out more about it you would do as well as to have a look at this article where you can find out a lot more information and discover ways of becoming very skilled with NLP Anchoring Techniques.

Hypnotic Language Patterns in Sales

The final element of Martin’s work with his team involved scripting the introduction and training them in objection handling. Using NLP language patterns Martin changed the introductions to the call. He introduced a big benefit statement, an anticipation loop closely followed by a presuppositional question. This meant that the sales agents were actually getting further into a lot more calls.Martin also got his team to brainstorm a lot of the common objections and then he fed them NLP hypnotic language patterns to deal with each objection. Using some of the facilitation and training elements that he learnt on his NLP Practitioner Course Martin actually make the agents feel like they came up with the patterns themselves. This meant they had ownership over the issue and several agents started keeping a book of really effective phrases.

Using NLP Techniques for Sales Effectiveness

Going on a good NLP Practitioner Course will give you a whole load of techniques that you can use in many different ways. The real issue that is having an attitude and the methodology that will allow you to come up with the techniques you need for the context that you have.The results happened because Martin had the ability to take what he had learnt and apply them to the situation that he had. A good NLP Practitioner Course instead of giving you lots of techniques will show you how to apply a methodology that creates results.

Business NLP, not just Sales

In this application we looked at sales but the same techniques would work in many different areas. Imagine a customer service team; all the same elements above could be applied to them. How about a team of hairdressers? You could apply all the same techniques to any customer facing team. In fact consider a board of directors looking to affect a change within their organisation; you could apply all these elements to them and the areas that they might lead.The issue is not the techniques it is all about creating the flexibility of mind and the methodology. You then apply this to your situation and create the techniques to use. Training and developing the attitude and methodology as well as the technique is where a good NLP Practitioner Course differs from other courses.

Objection Busting Hypnotic Language Patterns

The person I was speaking with, I’m going to call her Sally, told me that she routinely faced a particular annoying objection in her job. Sally works as a recruitment consultant and she is often faced with HR people telling her that she has to be on the “approved supplier” list to do business with the company. When Sally asks how to get on the list she is told that the suppliers are reviewed and new suppliers are added at some time in the future (normally between one and six months) and that she should contact them company closer to that date.

Assumptions Based in Behaviour

On the Advanced Persuasion Patterns Programme one of the things I drum into the students is to hold a particular question in mind when dealing with people.

“What does this person have to believe for them to say or do what they are doing?”

The answer to this question gives you a huge insight into what is driving them and how you can change it. Based on the behaviour of the person Sally was talking to I would guess that they consider Sally to be equivalent to their current supplier. I would also suspect that they are procedures orientated or at least prefer not to change things for the sake of it.

To cut it down even further what this person is saying to Sally is, “We have some that supplies us what you supply. They are good enough at it because they have passed all our criteria and we don’t need to go through all the bother of finding a new supplier until we have to in (x) number of weeks’ time.”

How Does Knowing This Help?

If you can understand what people are really saying on this level it is then easy to sway them. In this particular case it would be fair to say that the easiest way to switch this person around would be to make the pain of maintaining the system worse than changing. So for example if Sally knows that her service routinely saves or makes an extra thousand pounds every month for this size of company and their approved supplier process is reviewed in three months the company will have lost three thousand pounds before they have even looked at the problem. Now the question is only about how you present the information.

 Can I Check I Understand this Properly?

Normally people tend to be routed in the subject they are discussing and not necessarily in the consequences. So when I am looking to make an impact and I want them to really get into the consequences of their actions I will use a pattern that is designed to let you throw them into the aspect of the situation that you want them to look at. It is the simple phrase, “Can I check I understand this properly. What I think you are telling me is…”

For example in this case I would say, “Can I check I understand this properly. What I think you are telling me is that your company is prepared to routinely throw away three thousand pounds on a whim?”

The reaction I am looking for is shock and then a question asking me to explain. This opens up the conversation enough for me to start making a pitch and if I have the right numbers, installed some confidence in me and the product I have probably got onto the approved supplier list and made the sale as well.

Why does it Work?

It tends to work because the front end of the phrase is not confrontational, it is just about checking your understanding. If you start with the issue it can be quite confrontational. For example:

“You are willing to throw away three thousand pounds rather than talk to me?”

Against:

“Can I check I understand this properly? I think you are saying that you are willing to throw away three thousand pounds rather than discuss solutions with me?”

 How Else Can I Use This Pattern?

The concept is easy. Just look for what is the underlying truth that is creating the belief, comment or behaviour. Then look for something that makes it more painful to stay the same than to change. Then just present the pain using a “Can I just check I understand?” phrase.

Here are a few I’ve heard or used. You will find that in each of the examples I have contrasted what I “think” they are doing against a solution. This is another effective way of using this as a pattern.

Parent: Can I check I understand this right, you would rather spend the next hour moaning about your homework instead of getting to finish it right now in time to watch your favourite programme?

Complaint: Can I check I have this correct you would rather that I very publically and visible complain to the department of trade and industry and you lose not only my custom but also everyone that I speak to rather than go and find a manager who can sort the issue out right now?

Manager with a company facing difficult times: Let me check that I understand. You would rather face redundancy rather than make the effort to turn the company around and save our jobs?

You may already see that there are multiple uses for this pattern and the reality is that once you start thinking in a systematic way about what is actually going on the conversation there are a whole range of ideas, concepts and strategies that you can use to develop the conversation to where you want it to go. If you are studying hypnotic language patterns re-read the three examples and notice the embedded commands. This sort of pattern is great for inserting embedded commands.

To develop this properly you need to consider personality profiling from both verbal and non-verbal behaviour. You might also consider NLP language patterns that move the conversation forward as well as patterns that change the direction. On top of this you need to understand how your emotional state impacts the situation. If you want the inside track on how to develop these skills quickly to the point where you are using them unconsciously and without having to think about it then you might want to click through and learn more here.