NLP is About Modelling What Works

There is a specific play in poker that is a great model for making sure that things go your way. Let me explain the poker move first and then we will move it in to how it works for 121 therapy / coaching / persuasion situations.

If you are on the Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed Course you might want to analyse this article in terms of the covert persuasion tactics that are running through it. If you are on the Advanced Persuasion Patterns Course have a look at how the metaphors are constructed and the processes I am installing in the reader. As always read first for content, then for process and at least once more with the, “How can I use this?” question running.

 Poker is a Unique NLP Accelerated Learning Environment

Here is a fairly normal technique used by poker players that has great uses both in and outside a card room. It is a way of winning even when you have a losing hand. The first part starts by having a certain type of image.

In poker a tight player is one that only plays when they have good cards or the right situation. In general this is a good image to have and it makes you appear more threatening when you do play a hand. So long as people have not seen you play too often you can create a tight image just by not playing many hands for a while.

You then wait for the right situation and the right cards although the cards don’t really matter. The right situation is when you are one of the last to act, several people have bet but not raised. You pretend to look at your cards and make a substantial bet.

You may win the pot right there as you might have frightened the other players away. But let’s assume that one or more players have called your bet and stayed in the hand. The next three cards are dealt and then there is another round of betting.

Now if one of the other players bets you might actually have to look at your hand and see if you are connected and then play a different strategy. But to show you the rest of the technique let us assume that the other players don’t bet. Regardless of your hand you put out another big bet. The other players should fold and let you have the pot.

If they match or raise you then you know that they have a good hand and you then need to look at and think about the hand you are actually playing. But if they have not connected then you will win the hand right there. This play is called continuation betting. Let’s look at why this works.

Two Ways to Win, Make the Change or Collect the Information

At the beginning you are looking for a situation where you represent the authority on the table – remember tight player, last to act after you have all the information from the other players, no one has raised (so they have weak hands). You raise the bet signifying that you have a winning hand. It doesn’t matter what you have, you have represented strength whilst everyone else is showing weakness. You might win the pot outright at this stage because of this.

After the next three cards come down there is another round of betting. If no one bets again they are signifying weakness. By making a substantial bet again you are making it very difficult for anyone to stay in unless they have actually made a big hand. Either way you are in a strong position, they either concede the hand to you or they tell you that they have a strong hand and you can make a decision based on that. The statistics say most starting hands are weak by the second round of betting, obviously you are representing the lucky position where your good starting hand has got even better.

By the second round of betting you have had two opportunities to win the pot and if you don’t you will have had a lot of good information on the other players that are still in the hand. And remember this is completely independent of the hand you have been dealt. Your only issue is watching the other players and assessing if they have a good hand or not.

Let Go of What is in Your Hand

Collect Information on What Other People Have in Their’s

Let’s translate this to outside a poker room into another type of situation.

Imagine a situation as a coach or therapist and you make your client work really hard even before they see you. Perhaps you telephone screen them and they have to submit some homework on the relevant issue before they are allowed to book the appointment. And throughout this you are constantly reinforcing the idea that you are very busy and in demand so they have to be really serious about wanting this result as well being prepared to work really hard etc.

Once in the room you start by asking them to tell you about the homework that you had set them. As soon as you can confirm they have done any of it you ask them based on the homework they have been doing what has changed about the problem. If they have not done any of the homework you might ask them what has changed so they no longer felt the need to do the homework.

Please note the frames and the presuppostions in both responses are the same and we don’t care what they say because we have it covered either way. NLP Jargon Junkies would call this a double bind.

That was your first bite at stacking the deck for your client. Perhaps as you then get into the session you suggest a technique to try. Check the language in this introduction;

Obviously I have stripped a lot of the fluff away so that you can see the patterns cleanly. So this is now another stacking of presuppositions in favour of your client changing. Once you have had a go at the technique you might just ask the “change” question again; “Now we have completed the technique, what has changed for you?”

If things have changed then you ratify and make the change complete. If they say nothing has changed you might start a whole new set of patterns. For example, “That’s right you haven’t noticed any change yet. That’s because we have to do xyz to complete the process and then you will notice that you are (insert the changes that you want them to see). If that makes sense (pause until they nod or say yes) let’s get on with completing the change.” ”

I am hoping that you can see how I am stacking the deck in favour of my client making the change again. It doesn’t matter how your client answers the question they will still be moving down the path to change.

The whole point is that so long as you keep your client going down the path eventually they will have to concede and make the change or give you more information as to what is stopping them at which point you just deal with the objection.

Deconstruct What Works and Ask Yourself; “How Else Can I Use That? “

You may have recognised that I have taken the reader through a sequence of representations and that there is more going on in this article than just the simple imparting of some information.

There are several levels of content. For example there is the content about playing poker, the content of how you can handle coaching or therapy clients, there is content about the specific language patterns that I use. There is a deeper level of content that is about how I am using a poker metaphor to explain a coaching or therapy technique. And then there is the level of content that is about how I am explaining the more covert elements of this article. If you like learning on multiple levels then the Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed Course is a perfect way to learn. Find out more about it here:

Derren Brown – Poker Episode

In the episode Derren took a woman who has never played poker before and in the space of a week got her to a level where she played off against professionals in a tournament. She was unlucky in the last hand and almost beat the lot of them.

It appeared from the episode outside of the basic rules all the woman was taught to do was ‘reading’ the other players and deciding whether they were bluffing or not. She then bet based on this information.

The questions I am asked generally revolve round, is this possible and could I train someone to do this. The short answer is yes. The slightly longer answer is there is a lot more going on than just this and that there is a lot more that NLP has to offer in playing poker.

NLP and Poker

If you have studied NLP to any level I would highly recommend taking up poker as a way of sharpening up your NLP skills. Trust me, I do a considerable amount of personal development and would say I have learnt more about NLP in my first three months of playing poker than I have in the last couple of years.

Most of my playing is online rather than face to face at the moment, so I will talk about how much NLP development can happen just through learning to play the game on a computer.

Accelerated Learning

The obvious point is that poker has rules; there are odds and statistics that are worth learning, betting strategies and styles to look at.

As with most things there are also no definitive rights or wrongs in how you play the game and an important element is not to fall too far into a predictable playing style. As such you can imagine how much there is to learn and how much is written about the ‘correct’ way to play. Poker is a game based on imperfect information, changing situations and combat stress.

NLP has a lot of key tools related to accelerated learning and picking the foundation skills as well as sorting out how you want to play the game can be rapidly accelerated through the use of foundation level practitioner skills all the way through to advanced modelling techniques where you get into the mindset of professional players.

Beliefs, Self Esteem and Image

NLP has a lot of tools that you can use to change beliefs, and self image, but how does this link to poker? Well, you might want to consider the difference in playing with the belief and intention of winning against just being social. Remember either could be the best mindset to be in depending on the context, but just think about the way you make decisions and how much this changes dependant on your how you are thinking about yourself.

Here is a simple example of three mindsets and how you could get three different decisions from it. Let’s say the person across the table has just put in an over the top bet.

If you are running a pattern of low self esteem you might be intimidated and give in at this point assuming that he has a strong hand.

Another low self esteem decision might be “How dare he try to intimidate me” attitude and you raise him throwing all your chips in creating a stand off situation.

Now another option might be keeping a cool rational head: you consider his previous betting patterns (stage of tournament, chip stack, bet size, player position, previous plays, playing competence, board rationality and the thousand and one considerations), if you are playing in the real rather than the virtual world you might consider all the non verbal signals he has given off, you look at your hand and work out the probabilities of him having a better hand. And based on all this information you decide on your line of play.

Even in my brief amount of time playing poker I have come to the conclusion that poker players bring their beliefs about themselves and their world right to the table and then operate from them. How well would you be making decisions if you had a deep rooted fear of failure? Imagine you had the tools and technology to be able to tweak they way you think before sitting down at the table? All good NLP practitioners have this ability.

Real Time Emotional Control under Pressure

Poker is about forcing the other players into positions where they have difficult decisions to make. If you like, giving them the opportunity to make poor decisions. Whilst you are doing that, all the other players are trying to do this to you as well. In practice what this means is that you have to maintain a positive state sometimes under some very difficult circumstances.

Consider this set of circumstances. You are leading the way with far more chips than anyone else left on the table, the cards come down and you know you have an exceptionally strong hand. You play well fooling the other players in to betting huge amounts and then the last card comes down and through blind chance…a one in a million freak circumstance you lose the hand. All of a sudden you are now sitting in last place with hardly enough chips to carry on and the guy sitting opposite is smiling smugly at you despite the fact that you played well.

This could happen to you several times in one game and you would have to pick yourself up and play on despite the set back.

Let me give you another circumstance where maintaining tight emotion control is critical. Imagine yourself on a roll. You have several good hands and you look like you are dominating the table and Lady Luck is sitting on your shoulder smiling every time the cards are dealt. It is possible that your playing style could get looser, more extravagant and less thoughtful.

Either way being able to separate from you emotions and play in a controlled, centred way is critical to the game. NLP gives you all the tools to do this. It is rare to find such a good opportunity to test and refine these skills in a real environment.

The Sexy Stuff

Reading People

A lot is said in NLP about being able to read people, build rapport with them and understand on a moment by moment basis what they thinking. There is a lot of good information on Rapport and Sensory Acuity all over the internet as well as on my website so I will not go into detail here, just give you a few ideas as to how you can apply these skills directly to poker.

When you go on a practitioner course you will learn a variety of rapport techniques, so if this doesn’t make sense go and ask a good NLP practitioner or call my office.

NLP practitioners are taught to build rapport with individuals and groups. If you build rapport with the whole table you will have an inside track as to the general ebb and flow of the game as well as picking up lots of sensory information about whole group.

Betting on your hand is a form of communication and being connected to the general murmur of conversation has direct impact on how you are looking at each individual. Are they putting in bets that are consistent with the rest of the table, is this an automatic response or a cover for a strong hand? Are they betting strong against the flow because they have a strong hand or just to give the appearance of a strong hand? Is what they are saying verbally congruent to the what they are saying with their body language or how they are playing?

Now when looking at a specific player in a specific situation it is impossible to not give out non verbal signals. The trouble is knowing what they mean. So there are two aspects to reading people at a poker table.

The first is a thing I will call calibration. Basically watching for verifiable events and noting what signals someone gives off with them. For example many people lean forwards when they have a hand to play and will lean away from their cards when they are bluffing. An online version is people that take a lot of time before calling a bet are usually bluffing and those that take a long time and raise a bet generally have a strong hand. Whilst lots of people have these patterns it does not follow that the person sitting opposite you is a conformist. The only way you can tell is by observations over a period of time looking at clusters of behaviour.

The key to watching people is to notice what they do at the point of decision or action. Ideal times to watch someone are when they first see their cards, when they make any action like a bet or a raise and when someone else makes an action that they will have to respond to. And all of this is within the context of the general ebb and flow of the table dynamics.

NLP will give you processes that allow you to watch multiple people and make some broad assessments of what their non verbal cues actually mean. By taking some time, applying this to a poker table, you will soon get the idea of how better to read a table and the individuals on it.

Manipulating Bets

How easy would poker be if people always did what you wanted them to? It might get boring but you could certainly make a lot of money. NLP has a lot of strategies and process that can help to gain an advantage and influence betting styles. Here are a couple of examples:

Anchoring is an NLP process that is about associating certain states or feelings with an external response. This is a naturally occurring phenomenon. How do you react when you hear a favourite song on the radio? How do you feel when the alarm clock goes off every morning? I am guessing that for most people they react in a fairly consistent way to some external stimulus. Suppose, for a moment, that it was possible to make someone feel bad about their hand whether it is strong or not: there is a lot of use for this in playing poker. Imagine you are bluffing and you want the other player to feel bad about their hand…in fact so bad that they fold and leave you the pot. Here is how to do it:

Throughout the game, just notice when the other player has a strong negative emotion, situations like they suddenly lose the hand, they get dealt a bad hand, they get to a showdown and the other player turns over a much stronger hand and so on. You will see people go through these sorts of emotions all the time on a poker table. Whenever you see this negative emotion I want you to do something specific and unique. It might be tapping the table in a particular way, or tilt your head and look at them in a specific way, or perhaps say a particular word or phrase…it doesn’t matter what, just so long as it is the same each time and it is obviously subtle enough to not provoke comment.

Very soon the negative state and your actions will get associated in their mind on an unconscious level. From that moment on you can fire this anchor by making the action and the player will feel bad without knowing why. Now when you want them to fold you just fire the anchor at the appropriate decision point.

This is just one NLP technique and how it is applied to poker. We haven’t even started talking about embedded commands, inducing trance states, covertly installing a losing mentality in your opponents, setting an intimidating table image and the host of other NLP applications that you can use on a poker table

Being able to remain calm, focused and being able to read what is really going on is the foundation of how to get an NLP edge to playing poker. If you want to see how effective you can be with just this I highly recommend watch the Derren Brown episode we started the article with.

Any good NLP practitioner will be able to guide you through how to use these processes even if they don’t play poker themselves. Alternatively contact me or any of my graduates for further ideas.

If you are already well versed in NLP I highly recommend playing poker as a way to develop your seriously grow your skills in a high pressure but fun environment.

If you have any thoughts on this article or any real life stories of using NLP and Poker please feel free to leave a comment below or on our Facebook page.

Learning NLP Techniques

I don’t have an NLP Poker course, I don’t think I am a good enough poker player and I don’t need any more competition at the table. But what I can do is teach you NLP in such a powerful way that you can teach yourself to apply it in any context including poker. Here are two whys you can do just that.

Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed

This is my latest and best course. In it you get to learn hypnotic language patterns, you get to see how I use them covertly on an audience and then you get to deconstruct my thinking so you know how and why I used the patterns that I used. This is easily the quickest way of learning really powerful patterns so that you have them totally ingrained and using them unconsciously like a master. Click through the picture and find out more:

The Persuasion Skills Black Book NLP Practitioner Course

After three years I have been coaxed back to running a practitioner course. So if your preference is face to face training then click through and find out more about this course.

Getting the Edge

Some poker players have a very mathematical way of playing the game. They work the probabilities and they will make the bet every time so long as they have an edge. In the long game they will always win. Here is a simple version of what I mean:

Let’s say we bet on a coin flip, so we both have a 50% chance of winning. But let us also say that somehow you have got me to agree that every time I win you will pay me £1.00 but every time you win I will pay you £1.01. Over time we will both win and lose the same amount of times, but over time you will become considerably richer I would become considerably poorer. A poker player works on the same basis and looks for that edge on each play. So long as you can do this correctly over time you will always eventually win. You may not win every hand, the rules of probability won’t allow that, but in the long game you will always come out ahead.

The concept I am about to share with you gives you that edge over life, the universe and everything. I am even going to show you examples demonstrating how people are putting this into action and winning in the most fun and fraught ways. But take this the right way though you will see in one of these videos that the game being played was dangerous to the point where people were possibly going to be murdered. The man using this strategy was exceptionally brave and I don’t know if I would have had the courage to have done the things you will hear about in the video.

NLP Presuppositions - Behavioural Flexibility is the Key

Dependant on the whims of your NLP Trainer there are a random number between nine and sixteen presuppositions of NLP. At least I have not seen any more or any less. If anyone has please feel free to leave a comment about their “find” with someone that cares. One presupposition that is usually quoted is something like, “The person with the most flexibility in the system has the most influence.” This idea will give you an edge each and every time. And that means over time you will get what you want. All you need to do is learn to develop the concept.

So far all we have done is look at this conceptually so let us ground this into the real world and look at a few examples:

Deep Meaningless Sex

When I was at university I met a guy who seemed to be able to pick up women non-stop. He was the king of the one night stand and being young, packed full of teenaged angst and hormones I desperately wanted to know how he did it. Eventually I asked him and he said that he just walks up to women and very politely he just tells them that he finds them attractive and would they like no strings attached sex tonight. I was amazed. He told me he occasionally got slapped or a drink poured over him, most of the time he got a no, but EVERY night he eventually got a yes. As I have gotten older I have found lots of ideas and strategies that make this approach much more successful but even at this level this guy had the gumption to just do what no one else would and he was getting the results he wanted.

The Heart of Religion

A person very close to me has a great frame on her religion, Hinduism. Her basic idea is that people should be the best they can be at whatever they are doing. And if they fulfil that criteria then they are being a good Hindu. So, for example you are fully immersed reading this article, understanding concepts and working out how you are going to use these ideas. This would make you, in the moment a good article reading Hindu. It would not matter what your beliefs and faiths are. If you are adamant that you are an atheist, this would just make you a good Hindu atheist.

Perhaps you can imagine the fun and jolly japes that happen when the Mormons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses or any other religious conversation brigade came to the door. My friend would be one of the only people in the neighbourhood that would invite them in. She didn’t actually try to convert them to Hinduism as in her eyes they already were and because they had such strong faith they were very good practicing Hindus. They just practised their Hinduism in a Mormon / Jehovah’s Witness / Christian way.

She would listen to them, ask questions, point out the connections with the Hindu faith and how they are being great Hindus. She would take on their religious observances and point out that she does them as a practicing Hindu. She would bless them for trying to save her soul. She tell them they will be reincarnated into a higher plane for their actions and that they may well consider this heaven. And as they became better Hindu Mormons that they will discover heaven on earth and quote passages from the bible alluding to that concept. She would let them know the more strongly they held to their religious faith, the solidly they held to their Christian beliefs the better a Hindu they were becoming.

It didn’t matter what anyone would say my friend had a bigger Hindu frame to place round it. I was amazed with just how often people entered her house with an agenda and left wanting to explore more about the Hindu faith.

Avoiding People Talking to You

Here is one young woman that has really got this behavioural flexibility thing totally worked out. As soon as you see her technique you know it will work in hundreds of different circumstances.

One Man Fights the Klan with Love and Wins

This video is an amazing story. This is the ultimate in behavioural flexibility. I had never heard of the Reverend Wade Watts until I saw this video and now that I have he has become a real inspiration for me. This is an incredibly powerful example of what you can do when you have the behavioural flexibility.

Developing the Attitude

One thing I think helps developing behavioural flexibility is in any given situation asking yourself, “How else can I interpret this situation?” If you spend a few minutes daily reframing what people say, finding alternative meanings and interpretations to situations you will suddenly find yourself doing this as a natural ability. From there your behavioural flexibility is just based on how prepared you are to use these alternative frames.

On the Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed Programme I demonstrate on a student the exact process you can use to install a persuasive personality that has the authority, the agility, humour and skill to use spur of the moment behavioural flexibility. And I also give you detail instruction on how you can do this for yourself and for others. You can  find out more when you  click through the picture below:

A Powerful NLP Pattern that makes other Patterns Work

My last article was about accidentally making a young woman completely infatuated with me. The article before that was, even though ten minutes earlier she was completely resistant, about how I managed to get someone to completely obey my commands. In this article I will show you how I made several people around a table  follow my commands  and how that led to my total demise.

What one thing would make this a powerful article for you?

All of this has come about because I have been going through Dark Side 2, Kenrick Cleveland’s new persuasion skills programme. One of the things that makes the Dark Side 2 such a great persuasion skills programme is that it is not just about a bunch of patterns, although they are all there. It is about being strategic and understanding how these pattern works so you can use them in ways that suit you and get you most leverage in any situation.

STOP PRESS

For a limited time the Dark Side 2 shopping cart is open. Here is the link where you can find out and buy the course now.

What is the one thing you can take on to realise just how powerful this programme is?

Last Friday I was listening to one of the Dark Side audios where Kenrick outlined a simple but really powerful strategy. My version that I took away was in any given situation ask yourself the question, “What is the one thing my target can believe that will make them do what I want? From there you can find many different ways to presuppose that belief.

When I heard this the way Kenrick describe it I was desperate to just try it. The thing is that this is an incredibly powerful idea. Instead of trying to get someone to do what you want you are installing the beliefs that let them come to that conclusion naturally. Just as one idea, if you could install a belief in the need for your product you would not have to sell it, people would just come to buy. It would not be fair to use Kenrick’s examples so let me explain how I used the idea as a way of illustration.

Accelerated Learning is About Finding Opportunities to Practice

The first things I needed was an environment to practice in. I decided that I would play poker that evening. Poker is a game of people played with cards. A novice player is concerned about the value of the cards they are holding. An intermediary player is concerned about the value of the cards their opponent is holding. A good poker player is concerned about the value of the cards they can get their opponent to believe they are holding. This is a perfect environment to practice your new persuasion techniques.

I started by thinking through what I wanted the other players to do. Quite simply it was to fold when I wanted them to fold and to bet when I wanted them to bet. I then asked myself what do they have to believe for them to act that way. I came to the realisation that if they thought they knew what was in my hand they would bet the way I wanted them to bet.

I then went through what I would have to do get them to believe that. So armed with that information I went down to my local casino to see what would happen. The first half of the game I was playing wildly different to my normal style, and everything was geared to showing myself to be very predictable. I even anchored big bets to a knowing look, which is another strategy Kenrick talks about. You could almost see the sharks on the table calculating how they would play me.

It cost me a lot of chips to set this up because I had to fold lots of hands that I might normally have played. Also whenever I had a big hand instead of disguising it I put in unfeasibly big bets, everyone would fold and I would show the hand, but of course it doesn’t win as much. But an hour or so into the game I had the rest of the table nicely sensitized to a big bet and a knowing look from me meant a winning hand and anything else meant a losing hand. Now it was time to open up.

Beliefs Predict Behaviour

As we approached the middle game I found myself in a pot with rubbish cards and several players with a lot of chips in the middle of the table. I pushed all my chips in with my knowing look and everyone folded. A few minutes later another opportunity presented itself and I took it with my rubbish cards and an increasing stack of chips.

I was getting the feeling that people were reaching the limits of their beliefs, so I sat quiet for a few hands. Then as luck would have it I had a great starting hand and several people had put lots of chips in the middle. This time my knowing look and large pile of chips pushed into the middle of the table wasn’t enough I got called. But this time I really did have a monster staring hand and I won. The net result is I have just reinforced that belief again. We are now up and running to play the bluff another two or three times and that is exactly what I did.

An Unplanned Collapse Anchors

Another opportunity opened up and I excitedly pushed all my chips into the middle. As predicted the other players started folding except one. He hesitated and you could see him thinking things through. I realised my mistake as soon as I saw him hesitate, he didn’t have many chips left and was soon going to be leaving the game unless he took a risk to gain some chips back. He pushed all his chips in fully expecting to lose to my supposed bigger hand.

The thing is I had been bluffing, as I had with all the other big hands. My opponent had a better starting hand and duly won the pot as you would expect. My problem though, the belief I had spent so long installing was totally exposed and I couldn’t find a way of recovering from that. Sadly I left the table a short while later without making it into the money.

Learning Skills

But I am very happy with the result because for a substantial period on that table I completely controlled the betting. This had nothing to do with fancy play, clever language patterns or anything particularly difficult. All it required was a strategic overview and some thought before play. This was such an easy way to learn some powerful strategies and now I have some new stuff to think through ready for the next game. Now I am happy with the concept I just need to integrate the strategy with the rest of my play.

STOP PRESS

For a limited time the Dark Side 2 shopping cart is open. Here is the link where you can find out and buy the course now.

Pre-frames a Powerful Hypnotic Persuasion Technique

Like all simple ideas it is very flexible and has a multitude of uses. So let’s get on with explaining the idea and then how you can use it.

What Frames Exist Around a Conversation?

A coaching client of mine was complaining that he was finding a variety of prospects that would not tell him their budget.

Looking from the prospect’s perspective there can sometimes be a belief running that if they say their budget the sales staff will sell to that budget. A prospect might see this as a problem and that the question is being asked as a sales tactic. Unfortunately in some cases that is probably true and it might be where this belief came from.

But in a lot of cases it is helpful to know what the budget is. If you are providing a complex consultancy solution there may be many different ways of getting a result each with differing pros and cons. The net result is that by knowing the budget a sales professional can tailor their pitch to better save time and energy and present appropriate solutions. My coaching client works in this complex business to business environment and he is hampered if he does not know his prospect’s budget.

Inoculations and Pre-frames

The suggestion I gave him was to inoculate or preframe the problem away before it gets to be a problem. The traditional approach would be to tell a little story before the meeting about the prospect that was tied up for hours looking through meaningless options and proposals because the sales professional didn’t know the appropriate level to pitch at. Or the company that lost out on the best deal because they didn’t say their budget and everyone assumed they couldn’t afford the best deal. The sales person pitched a lower quality product they accepted and no one realised until it was too late to change the order.

Education vs. Adversarial Approaches to Sales

Another possibility and the one that was taken up by my client was the educational approach. A preframe I layer on to the sales process is that it is about educating the prospect. Spending time educating people helps them make informed choices and that should lead them to your products and services.

My approach would start before the sale meeting. Before it started I would explain to my prospect that I will be asking a variety of questions, some of which might seem a little strange. I would then take the budget question as an example and give my prospect some huge benefit statements about why they should tell me their budget and the consequences if they didn’t.

I usually add lots of “colour” into this by painting the clever buyers being honest and the really stupid ones closing down and not giving out the information. I sometimes tell the prospects a whole “How we laughed at them” type story about the stupid ones. By the time I have finished the prospects tend to be very compliant in the sales meeting.

My coaching client took this on board and redid his email template incorporating some of these ideas. The very next email response he got contained all the information, including budgets, which he needed. This was before he had even started speaking properly with them.

The Pay Off

You might think this is just another sales example but consider what happens when you see every conversation or exchange as a pre-frame for the next. For example your thoughts pre-frame your actions. How about other people and their actions pre-framing your thoughts about them and therefore your actions.

Here is a more specific example. The other night I was completely outplayed in a game of poker. I had watched this one guy play a few hands and he had made what I would consider some pretty dumb moves. My thoughts pre-framed a whole bunch of actions. I helped him to trap me and bust me out of the game because of the way I thought he played.

Here some other ideas. Have you noticed food tastes different depending where you are and who you are with? How about the type of day you are about to have? Have you possible already pre-framed the quality of your day based on your thoughts?

Have another read through this article pre-framed with a question. The question I might suggest is, “How can I use the information in this article to dramatically improve my life?” Try it and see what happens.

If you want some bigger more powerful ideas on how pre-frames work specifically in sales sign up to my Hypnotic Sales Techniques Course that you can find it right here.

If you want to explore how your thoughts frame your reality and the impact that can have watch this little video clip. Btw this clip is just a small segment of some of the mind altering concepts you will get when you download the Advanced Persuasion Patterns. Here is the video: