• To the optimist, the glass is half full.
• To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
• To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
• To the marketer, the glass is a handy new special beverage container solution to your drink related problems
• To the hypnotist, the glass is just a metaphor for how you store all your fluid knowledge deep inside now…that’s right
• The NLPer just asks which glass specifically and then models your answer
• And the Persuasion Artist would just drink and then talk you in to buying them another

Want to develop the attitude of a Persuasion Skills Artist?

If you want to learn how to install the attitude, develop the skills and stay motivated to achieve massive results for both yourself and others click through and find out more about the only NLP Practitioner Course I am running in the foreseeable future.

How False are Your Memories?

You can only evaluate your memories from your current standpoint. Consider for a moment a person who loves his job and has been in the company for twenty years being made redundant. In my hypothetical example let’s just say this is a devastating result for him and he might look back on the day he was made redundant with a whole lot of negative emotion.

Suppose that because he worked for twenty years that he gets a big redundancy pay out and after a bit of adjustment he starts a company and a few years later finds himself rich, his own boss and enjoying life enormously. Would it be fair to say that he might look back on being made redundant in a whole new light based on his new experiences?

NLP the Study of the Nature of Subjective Reality

There is a lot of debate on what NLP is and isn’t. I would suggest that depending what you take the subject as will make a huge difference as to what you get from it. One definition of NLP is that it is the study of subjective reality. I like taking this a step further and say that it is art of manipulating the nature of subjective reality. I like this idea because it gives you a whole lot of things you can do.

If you understand the way that we create our reality you can use that knowledge to change the way you and others can change that reality. Let’s take that idea into some more tangible possibilities.

Belief Changes

Our beliefs really shape out world and how we interact with it. If you knew how beliefs are created, supported or changed then you have the opportunity to change them for yourself and for others. For example:

• As a manager you might tweak the beliefs of your team so they enjoy working together and want to perform well.
• As a sales professional you might adjust the beliefs that you prospects might have about your products and those of your competitors.
• As a therapist, coach or hypnotist you might help your clients to develop more empowering beliefs and let go of limiting beliefs.
• As a parent you might help you child develop beliefs that empower them to learn, grow and develop.
• And just as a person how useful would it be to you to be able to tweak your own beliefs to create your world as a better place for you?

NLP Techniques and Belief Changes

Your beliefs are just part of the nature of your subjective reality and to some degree are based on your experiences. If you had a way of taking your experiences and changing the meaning of them you could change your beliefs.

Here is a simple example. Let’s say a new sales person has decided that she is useless at sales. And she cites the countless number of failed sales calls as an example of how bad she is as sales. Then she cites the few sales that she did make as dumb luck or part of the numbers game.

What if you could suggest to her that all the times she has failed to get the sale was all just a combination of luck, the numbers game and her learning the sales process. And that the sales that she has made have all been made because she did something right to facilitate that sale. Do you think this switch would make a difference in her attitude and long term create completely different results for her?

Imagine being able to do this for yourself. Imagine doing this with others. A lot of NLP is about how to create these sorts of changes. This is one of the key themes that will run through my September NLP Practitioner Course. Click the picture and find out more.

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.

The EnTrance to an Empowered Self Image

You might already recognise the fact that all the meaning you encode on your world is only created inside your head. For example let’s say a person misses their train to work. They might take this to mean that

• They are so disorganised that they don’t deserve to have a decent job.
• They deserve to take the day off because they are so hard worked that they can’t get to the station in good time.
• The train company doesn’t run an efficient service
• It as a sign that they should change jobs.

I guess you can think of a lot more as well. As you can see this all of these meanings are created inside the head of the person and none of it has any real existence outside their head. The only thing that is “real” is the fact that they missed the train. Everything else is meaning that the person has placed on the event.

The Gravity of Beliefs

The logical extension to this is that all our beliefs are the meanings that we create from emotionally charged events or from repeat viewings of similar events. For example I know gravity exists because every time without fail that I try to pick up both feet from the floor at the same time I fall over. On the same grounds I have a belief that falling over hurts. I only had to fall over once to form this belief because it was a significant emotional event the first time it happened. In this way I have encoded meaning to many things that have occurred in life.

The gravity and falling over hurts beliefs perhaps might not need changing but what if through some set of circumstance through your life you created any of these beliefs:

• I don’t deserve a good job / a loving relationship / a healthy body
• I will never be good at cooking / maths / sports / my job
• Money is the root of all evil
• All (x) are (y) eg. All tradesmen are crooks, all men are rapists etc.
• Spiders are scary
• I could never talk to a crowd

Again all these beliefs could be created through a sequence of events, but they are all just created in your head. Think of the power you would have if you could change these beliefs in yourself, think of the power you could have if you could help others change their beliefs as well. Some might find this a daunting task, but the reality is that many beliefs can be changed quickly and easily. This video will show you how this is possible:

If you want to know how to do this overtly for yourself or with clients as well as covertly in a persuasion context such as sales, dating, management, parenting the place to learn is Advanced Persuasion Patterns, the most comprehensive download course on hypnotic persuasion skills. Click through and find out more:

How Tony’s NLP Pattern Works

Recently I deconstructed a pattern used in a speech by Tony Blair. I love Tony’s pattern because the sequence of representations it sets up. The pattern takes any opposition to your views and instead of bypassing the objections it reframes them. Then by using a negative tag question it forces you to agree with the statement.

Here is the original article about NLP Techniques and Politicians where you can see Tony use this pattern.

Here is the article with the deconstruction of Tony’s Hypnotic Language Pattern 

 The Key to learning Hypnotic Persuasive Language

An easy way of getting really good with hypnotic language is to just play with it. As soon as I have found a pattern the first thing I do is find as many different places and contexts I can use it in. I am very luck in that I have the NLP Company website, The Persuasion Skills Black Book facebook page and the Persuasion Tips twitter account where I can just write out patterns.

In fact I encourage you to post comments on the site, on the facebook page and on twitter just to practice your patterns. The game is to continue a conversation with each other but using patterns. Anyone that does this will be richly rewarded with an almost instantaneous boost to their understanding and application of hypnotic language patterns. Another great place to practice is forums. I highly recommend setting up a few profiles on NLP Forums and just through some patterns into conversions and notice how little they are picked up even by the people that have a lot of NLPness in them.

A Worked Example

You will have already noticed that JKC, a graduate from my Advanced Persuasion Patterns course sent me the video and the original deconstruction. You can see from his email in the original NLP article how much he has taken from doing it but have a look at the fun he is having in his latest email. Also note he his learning, adapting and playing with this pattern to make it his own.

 Dear Rintu

Thank you for featuring my analysis of Blair’s speech. I enjoyed reading the FB comment too because I noticed some of what was mentioned and learned from the rest.

Thank you also for the pattern deconstruction.

Some people think that RB is caustic but those interested NLP language are advised to listen to his audio’s because he uses language exquisitely and it is because of his skill with language that we can put aside value judgements about his personality and use his excellence as a learning tool. I accept fully that those who find RB’s language abrasive also appreciate his artistry with language. Who could not?

I didn’t suggest people should listen to RB for his personality, those learning NLP are advised to do so for analysis and it is for this reason we should do so regardless of our personal feelings. I fully accept that those opposed to RB’s personality share my love of language. Who could not?

I appreciate that some people find politics boring but I am not suggesting people listen for the boring bits, we should listen to politicians for their language patterns and that is the reason why we can pay attention when politicians speak, without party loyalty colouring our judgement of the content. I fully accept that people opposed to Blair share my detestation of politicians as a class. Who could not when their agendas are so opaque?

These don’t exactly fit the frame of the pattern but as I am playing round and having fun it doesn’t matter, having fun is important, be it round the green taking chips or taking chips round the green it’s not winning the game that’s important more than winning the games is and that means constantly improving skill wins over all and wins constantly improve with skill. There’s nothing more right than being right now right about learning and playing well because playing well is fun and learning is easy with the resources you provide.

Isn’t it amazing how language has many uses? It amazes me always how I am learning many things and how many things there are to learn and people there are to learn from and learning is iterative as long as you learn everyday and everyday you learn more as I intend to from you.

Really Rintu, you are a great inspiration to those who love language and when you find new markets for your books and books to market you will help more people be pervasively persuasive and contextually congruent in their perfecting perfectly the many ways in which to influence in harmony with aligned objectives and receive no objections as objections diminish in correlation with reading the Black Book.

I had so much fun writing that. Dr Suess has nothing on me!

Thanks again.

Best.

JKC

P.S. My friend lost his job the other day. I immediately sent him your job hunting book because it contains many useful things, not all of them obvious to those who are not aware of the many helpful ways language can be used. Thanks Rintu.

Altering Perceptions

We had a lot of nice ambiguity over who he meant by RB. JKC has told me who he meant and it is definitely is not me. He only connected to my initials after he had sent the email. Interestingly when I read the email I automatically thought he did mean me to the point that when JKC told me it took me several minutes to realise that the email could be read in a completely different way.

Whilst this happened by accident this sort of ambiguity is a great way of developing trance states with people. A structure that I often use is pacing my subject’s reality deliberately using double meanings that I know they will read one way so at the relevant point I can give them a different meaning. When I do that well it drops people into very deep trances as they reassess everything I have said to them in that conversation.

Obviously this is a quite scripted, well thought out beforehand approach. One place I use this approach is my preamble before any hypnotic coaching working. Let me know if you would like the scripts as I could write an article on this if there is enough interest.