Starbucks’ “The Way I See It” campaign has been one of the best examples of “influence” I’ve seen. It’s another way for Starbucks to add to the experience and give someone one more thing to look forward to when they get their cup of coffee.

What are you doing to subtly influence others?

Clients love to set you up and get you to “do some groundwork” first before deciding on moving forward with you. They want to see a proposed strategy or outline first of the work you’ll do for them, or maybe have you “just do a preliminary plan” first.

Don’t fall for this trap. You’ll wind up doing work you should be getting paid for.

Instead, use the little used “Let’s Pretend” strategy, often taught by students of Sandler training.

Here’s an example of a prospect requesting you do some “groundwork” first:

Prospect: “I’m really impressed with what I’ve heard so far. I’d like to see a preliminary plan and strategy for the next six months, along with some costs and timeline for completion.”

Do not simply agree to this! Instead, play “Let’s Pretend.”

You: I’d be happy to work on a preliminary plan. Let’s pretend for a moment that when I come back with our preliminary plan, you are completely comfortable with our approach, the estimated costs are within your budget, and the completion dates meet your deadlines. What would happen at that point?”

In a matter of seconds you’ve done all the “groundwork” and the “preliminary plan” form them, at least virtually.  If the prospect isn’t wiling to make a committment to an action, you probably shouldn’t committ to doing the work. Unless you are charging for it.

Getting paid for your efforts isn’t something new.  It should be part of your strategy.

I read an interesting article today that answers the question, “What inspires people to take NLP training?”

Here is a paragraph from it, and it’s an article worth reading:

“For a start, NLP training provides an in depth understanding of NLP itself. Neuro-linguistic programming (or NLP) is essentially the study of excellence and understanding how and why those who excel in their fields do so.”

Read the full article here

NLP is full of fancy jargon, and you need a glossary of terms when attending a NLP Practitioner Training just to make sense of it all. “Presuppositions” are no exception, even though most think they know what it means.

Presuppositions are simply the linguistic equivalent of what most people call assumptions. But with a little more art and science to it when used on purpose.

Whenever we are communicating, we use presuppositions that assume something is already true; every sentence we speak in our everyday life has a presupposition in it. In most cases, we tend not to consciously recognize what we have presupposed, and instead concentrate on what is directly stated. Thus, presuppositions are unconsciously accepted as being true and the listener will act as if they were true.

Naturally, that’s the powerful part.

Think of it like this. Every sentence you speak contains a noun and a verb, so, with each sentence you speak you actually presuppose that something exists (noun) in the past, present or future.  You also presuppose that some action did or did not take place, is or is not taking place, or will or will not take place.

Great salespeople know how to use this to their advantage.

Some of my favorite “presuppositional” categories are:

Cognitive qualifiers: “Surprisingly, interestingly, amazingly, fortunately, luckily, happily, curiously, uniquely, naturally, obviously, etc.”  Everything that follows this word is assumed true as the focus is on the word (the cognitive qualifier) that starts the sentence assuming it so.  For more info on Cognitive Qualifiers – click here.

Presuppositions that shift space (in the mind of your prospects): “Along side of that, stacked on top of that, in addition to that, adding to that, instead of that, in front of that, inside of that, outside of that, behind that, underneath that, between that, above all that, etc.”

Presuppositions that shift time (in the mind of your customers): “look back on, in the future, right now, before, once, look ahead, finally, after, long awaited, everlasting, accelerate, presently, yet, carry through, then, when, now, etc.”

Presuppositional words that say something is factual, actual, or the truth: “actually, genuinely, unquestionably, surely, certainly, proven, obviously, self evident, valid, absolute, clearly, surely, naturally, etc.”

Presuppositional words of power: Realize, aware, notice, discover, uncover.

Future posts will have some examples of these, but this should get you thinking and more importantly, creating.

I’ve written about dealing with resistance on this blog a few times  (see part 1 and part 2 posts).  I have a class I teach on the subject so there is a lot more that we could discuss to clarify this important part of selling.

However, while it’s simple to think of inoculating objections as “overcoming them before they come up” and reframing the meaning, it’s not the only way to approach it.

Inoculating objections is more about installing an attitude into your customer’s mind as a pre-frame to your presentation. What attitude do you want your customer to have? What thoughts do you want them to think? What do you want them thinking about?

Do you want them open minded? Do you want them interested? The good news is you can control how someone is thinking. You have tremendous influence over what your prospects are thinking about.

For example – take a moment and think of your first car you owned. What color was it? Do you have many memories that help you remember that first car?  If you are thinking of your first car, or visualized what it looked like in your mind, or if you thought of other memories you have that were related to that first car – I directed and influenced your thinking.  So again, what do you want your customers to think about? Also, remember to use 3rd party referencing.

How do you plant the open-mindedness seeds?

“Mr. Smith, you may be unlike some of our other clients, who are facing budget constraints for 2010. A recent client of ours made it clear that their budget wouldn’t allow for reallocation of funds to purchase what we offer unless it made perfect sense. And it wouldn’t make sense for them, of course, unless what we could do for them could increase sales. Luckily, they were open minded, and it ended up working our for them in the end.”

Following a customer presentation gone south, have you ever found yourself saying things like, “They took me the wrong way,” or “They just didn’t understand what I was trying to say,” or “They didn’t get it,” or “The misinterpreted what I was meaning to say,” or “They were looking at it from the wrong perspective,” or “They misunderstood the presentation,” etc.?

My guess is from time to time, we’ve caught ourselves saying this and thought nothing of our own reaction.

One of the more valuable presuppositions taught in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is that the meaning of your communication is the response that you get.

If I asked you, do you like to be in control? What would your answer be?

My guess is your answer would be “yes.”

Most salespeople like to feel somewhat in control of their situation. If that is the case for you, why would you forfeit control to your customer by allowing the blame to go to them for misunderstanding you?

While it can be fun to point the finger or blame someone for “their misunderstanding” of what we were “trying” to communicate, it’s not useful for improving our communication.

If instead you adopt this empowering self-responsibility mindset of “the meaning of my communication is the response that I get”, you will find that it puts you in control of changing the outcomes.

I encourage you to approach each sales presentation, each customer encounter with this mindset, always asking what you could say different, how you could position your product in the way they will understand it best, based on how they buy, how they make decisions, and based on how they interpret the value best.

]]> http://nlpdaily.com/nlp-for-selling/feed 1 http://nlpdaily.com/we-cant-pay-attention-to-everythingbut-we-can-pay-attention-to-more http://nlpdaily.com/we-cant-pay-attention-to-everythingbut-we-can-pay-attention-to-more#comments Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:12:39 +0000 Joe Soto http://nlpdaily.com/?p=271

While the concept of change blindness suggests we can’t pay attention to everything and all details, we can pay attention to more.

More meaning, what’s in front of you that means something of value in interpreting, understanding, and reading them.

NLP encourages us to pay attention to more and form (calibrate) meaning from what we hear, see and feel when communicating with each other. In all of my client training’s, the most popular topic is developing sensory acuity and developing our ability to notice things we may not have consciously or deliberately paid attention to before.

This video really gets interesting 1 min 30 seconds into it.  Would you notice if someone changed their shirt in the middle of a conversation with you? Would you notice if someone changed into another person, in the middle of a conversation with you? Are you sure? Enjoy, Joe

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) gives us amazing linguistic ingredients for crafting our language with purpose in front of each customer we approach.

What type of language shifts submodalities and uses presuppositions of TIME?

from now on, then, when, while, endless, everlasting, prolong, past, yet, stop, still, in the meantime, in the future, long waiting, look back, before, after, once, anytime now, now, finally, presently, elapse, accelerate, and the list goes on.

Example: “After you see the results, you’ll look back feeling even more confidence then you did when when the decision was made.

What type of language shifts submodalities and uses presuppositions of SPACE?

in front of, along side of, in place of, above, aside from, in addition to, below, increase, instead of, disappear from, between, closer, behind, bring forward, against, beside, bigger, blow over, across, in back of, bring together, add more, inside of, and the list goes on.

Example: What if you could see along side of every problem is a solution, in fact many solutions?

Resource Book: An Insiders Guide to Sub Modalities

One of the foundational skills of NLP that you begin to hone in NLP Practitioner training (and beyond) is that of pattern detection. Once your sensory acuity sharpens, you can start to apply your new pattern detection skills in a variety of ways.

One of them is in identifying when someone is lying.

A person’s mouth is just one thing to watch when someone might be lying. Whether it’s a subtle covering of the mouth while making a statement, swallowing or gulping at a seemingly inappropriate time, or an inappropriate smile or facial express, all are used to calibrate against a lie.

These tiny physiological signals involving the mouth, often unperceived because they occur so quickly and seem natural, are at times what can be called unconscious “micro-signals.”

Throat clearing in response to a question or statement usually signified disagreement to something that is said or asked, or an uncomfortableness with an unprepared answer to follow.

Gulping is usually a sign of nervousness, which should lead you to question the reason or source for that nervousness.

One of the more obvious signals (but most often overlooked) is when someone tries to cover up their words. Literally. A person will cover their mouth with his or her hand as if scratching or yawning. If someone finds an excuse to rub their lips, scratch their mouth or nose, run an index finger under their nose, or in some other way cause their hand to come between lips and face, it’s typically an outright lie being spoken.

NLP places a lot of emphasis on values. Although the process of eliciting values is relatively simple, it does require some verbal dexterity to do it well, with rapport and grace.

When you are trying to uncover and reach people at deeper levels, rapport is required and maintaining rapport during “tough questions” is sometimes not the easiest art.

The process is simple and like many NLP patterns, are never only what they seem. There is alway more to it.

There’s really only one question to ask, but for variety you can create as many different versions of this question as possible.

So what’s the question?

Question to elicit values:  “What’s important to you about ________?”  or “What’s important to you in a ____________?”

When they answer, you can laterally chunk by asking “What else is important?” This will give you additional values.

You can also chunk down by asking, “What’s important to you about that?”

Another way to say it is, “What would that do for you?” or “What would you get out of that?”

This line of questioning will help you dig deeper, particularly when their answers are big chunks.

If the word chunks is grossing you out, chances are you haven’t studied a lot of NLP yet. Chunking refers to the level of detail (big chunks, little chunks).

I also like to end with the question, “Is there anything I’ve missed?” Customers will answer this, particularly when there has been something on their mind they haven’t got to tell you yet. This is when it’s unveiled.

On a future video, I’ll give examples of how this line of questioning sounds – because tone is everything in maintaining the rapport.