It’s easy to tell when your prospect or customer is talking to themselves because they will often lean their head to one side, nestling it on their hand or fist. Some call this the “telephone position” because the posture often resembles talking on the phone. Looking down to the left or right while doing this is also a good indication of someone talking to themselves.

NLP teaches us to track eye movements and calibrate the responses. Once you’ve calibrated their eye movements (don’t just rely on the “eye movement chart”) you can then adapt your language to pace their thinking.

Examples of what you might say include:

“Well, when you say to yourself…”

“When you tell yourself…”

“What do you tell yourself when…”

“What if you told yourself…”

Each Friday I conduct two sales training classes, a basic “fast track” class followed by a more advanced “sales mastery” class on behalf of The Performance Group, a sales development company in Des Moines, IA.

What I’ve learned most, recently, is that salespeople have become really skilled at getting in their own way. Or perhaps letting their “thoughts” get in their way.

Luckily, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) has taught us some specific ways to use our brain.  That doesn’t mean we always “use” what we know.

Most people do not use their brains deliberately – if you stop and think about it. Instead your responses are automatic. If you have a sales presentation that ended up bad, do you walk away and find yourself re-living the experience? Five hours later and you are still in the same state, re-living it over and over. Beating yourself up over it, mentally. “If only I would have…” “I should have said this…” “I didn’t ask the right questions…” “This damn economy!” Whatever.

I invite students to listen to the voice inside their head. Notice the tonality, the volume (how loud are you talking to yourself!?), the pitch and rhythm. And then notice how you feel when you speak to yourself this way.

I had a salesperson say to me last week, “It’s hard to figure out what I did or what to do differently after I’ve done a bad presentation.” I responded, “No kidding. How could you expect to with all that you have going on inside you head afterwards. There is not room for resourcefulness when you are drowning everything else out.” Literally.

Once you understand, deliberately, how you are thinking, you can begin to do it differently.

It takes a conscious, deliberate effort to think of someone that has said something to you that was particularly pleasing. Then to take those sub-modalities and talk to yourself in that way, with the same critical ‘content.’ Noticing how differently you are able to respond to the same critical words is your test. If you aren’t getting the change of state you desire, change more sub-modalities until you get the results you are after. Perhaps you hear the critical voice in the voice of someone that makes you feel great when they talk to you. Why not?

But is this only for dealing with your “self-talk” after you have a sales call go bad?

No.

It’s for before you have a sales call go good.

So before you sell, “use your brain for a change.” (In the words of RB).

I often get asked, “How do I master my NLP skills?”

Answer: “One bite at a time.”

Sharpening your sensory experience, paying attention to all the non-verbals you may not have been consciously aware of before, mastering your state, establishing rapport on multiple levels, using the meta-model, listening to sensory predicates signaling representational systems, identifying metaprograms, eliciting strategy, using sleight of mouth patterns, carefully using your advanced language patterns and the milton-model, and everything else that NLP gives you as a model of excellence (which would take much longer than a blog post to mention)…takes time.

And practice.

The best way to learn it is one bite at a time. With that said and at the same time, much of what you learn in NLP can’t be singled out and be useful. Too much of it works together with something else.

You can’t drive a car by “just paying attention to the steering wheel”, you have to pay attention to other things simultaneously such as your gas pedal, the road in front of you, cars around you, etc. But there are other things you learn to pay attention once you get better at mastering the fundamentals of driving a car – you start to notice the radio station, the weather, your passengers and perhaps engage even in conversation, the speedometer, your fuel gauge, and everything else that completes your driving experience. Most, if not all, becomes very second nature with experience and application.

That is where unconscious competence begins. You learned how to master driving a car, so you can also learn how to master your NLP skills.

Do you like card tricks? Are you good at figuring out card tricks? This NLP Blog is intended primarily for those wanting to expand their NLP skills and particularly in the areas of business management and sales. The most important foundational skill I will refer back to is paying attention (developing sensory acuity).  Why? Because it’s usually the one people take for granted.

Richard Bandler and John Grinder, when they were first modeling people like Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls, and Milton Erickson, were exceptional at looking for the non-obvious. They were able to track patterns, detect what worked and what didn’t work. They were able to decipher often times the most obvious things that other “observers” and “listeners” missed. They were truly “modelers.”

Watch this video -- follow along every second and see if you can figure out this card trick. It’s one of the best Card Tricks I’ve seen and VERY HARD to figure out. Whether you are a fan of card tricks or not, you’ll love this.

How did you do? The phenomenon of change blindless is very interesting. It’s proof we don’t (and can’t) pay attention to everythng -- but we can learn to pay attention to more. That’s the point.