Chat Log: NLP & Sales
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IRC Chat Log, May 27, 1998
| Jonathan | Who here's excited? As opposed to who wants to be?
| follie, MichaelR_, Guest6637, finter, ORIgami, follie, Stefan | Me!
| Jonathan | Who here DOES Sales of some kind for a living? Or has done Sales in their past, or is curious about how to make Sales easy for themselves?
| MichaelR_ | In the past, I have.
| follie | I sell dreams
| Guest6637 | I have. mainly furniture.
| Stefan | I've just sold myself, ehmm, my services. If getting summer nice summer jobs counts.
| finter | I've sold kirby vacuum cleaners
| Jonathan | WOW -- Kirby! A real Door-to-Door salesman! OK. I'd like to share a story with you! I do a lot of bookstore Talks at Borders Bookstores, some of you may know that.
| Guest6637 | Now I'm trying to improve my skills for a MLM I am involved with.
| Jonathan | And I do my best to sell a few NLP™ books for the bookstores when I do! And I always bring NLP™ products of some kind with me to the bookstores, sometimes tapes, sometimes handwriting analysis products. And I do different things with different groups, to gauge their differing reactions and see what works and what doesn't. One high level observation is that when some people buy, many people buy. If one or two buys, that's usually it. So when I'm selling to a group... there's something I do differently which makes the difference between several, and big #'s. Because there's a principle behind group responses. It's like... peer pressure. You do something successful... you induce the states... and people flock to the product I'm showing. But let me tell you the differences more concretely. If I talk about great things at the bookstore, and it goes on 5 minutes too long, everyone starts to tire (you can see the moment when the group begins to wane). And if that happens, I'd better have a closing right there. But if I keep inducing better states, and leading people through various discoveries... they get those AHA moments, and they begin to attach the continued AHA feelings... to guess who?
| Tranzpupy | You!
| Jonathan | Once I get that response... I have to take that moment to involve the product! And the product in the case of the bookstore talks is either tapes, or goods, or... seminars. The question is, once they feel that good, from just an hour... how good do they want to feel? Do they want more? And more & more & more of the discoveries they're making while guided by me? If they do, then they buy. Now if they don't, then I didn't induce the state. Now there's a difference between logical responses.... and emotional responses.
| Jonathan | Most sales are made at a given moment based on emotional, though most sales are made based on logical presuppositions. Very few people buy a house as an impulse buy, you know? There aren't house-closing deals hanging on the shelf at WALMART on the way out!!! So there's a big element of "is what I'm considering something I want?" Rather than if its what they need. OK lets jump into that for a moment! What percentage of the things you buy in life... do you think you actually "need?"
| Guest6637 | Very little.
| MichaelR_ | Very few, under 3% I'd say.
| follie | I find I need to get rid of a lot of the "things" I wanted at some time in the past.
| Jonathan | Does everyone else agree? Think about it! That's something to take and run with! Some tiny percentage of the things we buy in life we actually need. So that leaves the vast majority of things we buy in life... to be things we just want, and get some benefit from.
| follie | Right on, jonathan
| Jonathan | So out of all the things we buy in life that we just want... what percentage of things that we buy... do we get value from?
| Guest6637 | I think we'll get some value from everything we buy. Or at least we think we will.
| MichaelR_ | In some way everything...after all...we are satisfying some desire by initiating the purchase. I think the issue is whether the value is temporary or sustained.
| Tranzpupy | I'm pleasantly surprised when I really enjoy something I bought more than I thought I would..
| Jonathan | Yes. This leaves us with the following: Some great percentage of the things we buy and sell are things people want and not need. If you fill a niche of things people need, and can fill demand.... your business will often be self-generating. But the question is, when you're selling something that provides some value... whether actual OR perceived... what methodologies can you utilize to maximize sales... and what things can we avoid!
| follie | My question exactly
| Jonathan | And where is the difference between ACTUAL and PERCEIVED values going to benefit us... and where is it going to harm us as salespeople? Let's start with intention. Because if your intention is to make a quick buck, there really are a lot of ways to do that. And sometimes, the thing you're selling is SO small, and has such wide distribution, that it almost doesn't really matter whether there's real value. If you can make people happy for a little while with the product... then... perceived value has been justified.
| Tranzpupy | Isn't making people happy an actual value?
| Jonathan | But most people who sell things don't have that kind of distribution web behind them... so they have to provide products that provide more value. Yes Tranzpupy! Because if Persuasion Engineering™ teaches us anything, we sell nothing but feelings. And my bookstore talks tell me the same thing.
| Tranzpupy | Mmm.
| Jonathan | I can talk until I'm blue in the face -- and talk about wonderful things... but when I'm not dynamic... when I'm not in state... I get 0, 1, or 2 tape sales at best.
| Tranzpupy | You gotta "go first"
| Jonathan | That's one of the neat things about NLP™. Is that regardless of the state I'm in, I always have interesting material to talk about. And its provided useful experiments! Even if I'm not totally in an optimal state when I'm up there -- I can sense their interest in the material. But not their attachment to me! Does this make any sense? Because when you go into a state where you believe in your perceived value, and you amplify it with... a state where you BELIEVE IN YOUR ACTUAL VALUE as well.... PEOPLE will attach their emotional response to YOU! And when you get that response.... that's when you POINT TO your product!!!! And that's why when I get people SO juiced about improving their lives and communication with others... that I start talking about NLP™ trainings!!! Like, my seminars for example ;)
| Tranzpupy | You sly devil, you.
| Jonathan | Catch the language patterns? Language patterns help. But if the choice of words constitute only 8% of our communication -- I've found that far too much emphasis in NLP™ is on the choice of words and language patterns. Much more effective results come from understanding the process of communication and how it changes from moment to moment over time! In terms of when you.... open up your eyes... open up your ears... and pay attention differently with more clarity... to the signals people are giving you all the time. Be there with your sales prospects, completely. Forget the script. Pay attention to them, and be aware of what's going on with them. That's even more important 1-on-1! So I talked about how at the end of a bookstore talk, even if the information was golden, and I know they got it (because they go off to buy NLP™ books afterwards...) Unless I consistently paced the group and then led into consistently more positive and outrageous states, they didn't come up afterwards and sign up for events! But when I get them involved, they felt like it was their OWN thinking process and they created their own future possibilities all on their own. Does this make sense?
| MichaelR_ | Yes.
| Jonathan | I was called in to a Real Estate office recently. I've been doing some custom training work for an interesting real estate office nearby, and one of the managers brings me into deals occasionally. I'm like his secret weapon ;) the other guys never knew what hit em! They bring me in, and the guy they're talking to is just holding out for a better deal. But every day he waits costs him $5,000 in profits. He knows it too, and he thinks he can do better than those losses by waiting. And he doesn't know they have another offer on the table. They efforts to date haven't been able to close the deal. I went in... and I paid attention to what was going on. And I listened to the language... and I heard what this guy was saying... and watched what he was doing. And I mirrored him. Only I took what he was doing further. He had his arms crossed... on his side of the table... I was off to the side of the real estate guys on their side of the table... and I sidled off even further. I mean, I almost disengaged from the meeting. And I mirrored his arms and started looking over at MY clients, annoyed. I knew that they thought it was doing them good to hold on to their little secret about the other deal on the table. And I knew they wanted it closed with this guy (other reasons). But they didn't want to pay him the extra money, partly because they knew he'd make money from the day they closed the deal! So I went over to the opposition's side, and asked the guys I was working for, "why aren't you telling him the whole story?!"
| Tranzpupy | What?!
| Jonathan | They looked at me like I was nuts... of course... I mean, I'd prepared them letting them know I might do some very weird things. So they went along with it for the time being. Reluctantly! Meanwhile the dynamic is changing.... The guy who walked in feeling like he was holding out had "won over" a guy from their team... who was doing his closing for him. I said "You have this other offer on the table, from someone you could call today. And why haven't you explained that to | MichaelR_ | You kind of played both parties motives off of each other.
| Jonathan | Agreed. Both parties had a potential win-win they couldn't see. Now. Think about it. I could have made more money for either side, rather than both. I knew both parties would benefit, and that both parties would lose out by waiting. I knew both parties would benefit from a rapid close. And it occurs to me that ALL it took to get the close was to sell the hold-out on the feelings of all the good things he'd get by closing now, and all the feelings of all the things he'd be missing by not moving forward. Also, all parties involved had ALREADY dealt with the pros and cons of having the deal go through. They'd already been through that. So there was no chance of any of them being sore about the closing. Maybe the deal would turn out long term to be a bad investment... but no one would look back on the closing as being a bad decision. Yes, you have to know your product. Yes, you have to know what the standard objections are, and be able to overcome them, but even better, to never have to overcome them. Do any of these stories ring bells with some of your past sales experiences? And if so... lets concisely share them (1 line summaries) and choose 1 or 2 to talk about as a group! Choose either successful ones or unsuccessful ones... we'll explore why they were either!
| MichaelR_ | Selling home alarm systems, we specifically made sure that all possible objections were addressed, before the close. Preferable before they were raised. Worked great. ;)
| Jonathan | OK! Let's take the Home Alarm Systems -- for a couple of reasons! You had a script! You knew the usual objections! Yes-- preferably you addressed the usual objections before other people raise them... so that internally... other people have a sense that feels like they have no objections. Even if they had the ones you raised yourself! Right?
| MichaelR_ | Yes. I raised them intentionally. ...and disposed of them, when they agreed it was the right thing to do. ;)
| follie | sounds good
| Jonathan | Did you go door-to-door? Or was this selling to {perhaps qualified} prospects?
| MichaelR_ | Both. I really enjoyed door to door.
| Jonathan | Hehheh -- a true cold caller. Some people get chills when they think of cold-calling anyone.
| MichaelR_ | Once you get in that mode, it's easy...to be more outgoing.
| Jonathan | I agree!
| MichaelR_ | I was ice cold about it. ;) But, then I realized how fun it was, being able to do something that others missed out on.
| Jonathan | Cold Calling is awesome when you... learn powerful tools for getting into state more consistently and more effectively.... nowwwwww!
| follie | So how does one get into that state effectively, Jonathan?
| Jonathan | Alright lets look a little more closely about getting into STATE! Because if you can't manage your state better... then improving your close ratio is going to be hit and miss! Does it make sense why?
| Guest6637 | makes sense.
| follie | of course - if you don't feel good about yourself, you can't pass good feelings on to your potential customer
| Jazz- | people can sense incongruency
| Jonathan | Yes Jazz! OK. So getting into state is not a problem when you have the tools. When you have the tools. You have the tools already. They're all inside you already! Basic NLP™ Presupposition: Everyone has all the resources they need already inside them. These resources are emotional states which you've experienced before, at one time or another. If you've experienced them before, then you can regain direct access to those states... because the body can remember what it was like to be in those states. Now. Think of a state you think would be useful for making/closing sales. Something like, Charismatic! Or Eloquent! Or Calm!
| Guest6637 | Powerful.
| Tranzpupy | Charming.
| MichaelR_ | A congruous flow...like a peak sexual state... ;)
| Jonathan | Whatever you choose. They're all useful. The more the better, too... if you have a wider variety of states... and can cycle through them faster... people see you as more dynamic. And their feelings for you will intensify! Take any or all of those you mentioned! Pick one, for now, if you're a little new to this. Now. What was it like, when you go back to the most powerful memory of when you had that state! See what you saw, hear what you heard, and feel what you felt then!
| Tranzpupy | As you practice, you learn how to change states faster...?
| Jazz- | I smell an anchor...
| Guest6637 | This is where I run into problems.
| Jonathan | This one's just about being more able to... DO these things... and feel better & better as you make more & more sales! OK, this is where you ran into problems... how so?
| Jazz- | The more you practice attaining these states, the more you realize just how easy it is to sell SELL sell
| Guest6637 | I can sometimes think of the time. but I don't always bring back the state.
| Jonathan | OK. For each person, Guest6637, the process can be quite different. And you don't always bring back the state.
| Tranzpupy | Me too
| Guest6637 | I'm Paul.
| Jonathan | OK, I'll use your name then, Paul ;) For some people, they'll go thru pictures first, or sounds... or feelings first, and then intensify with pictures or sounds... But whatever works for you works for you.
| Guest6637 | I think it's more like I don't really remember. It's like if someone where to ask you what...
| Jonathan | If you go back to a memory, and attempt to access the feelings but they're not there... it just means a number of possibilities: | (1) The memory has been divested of its emotional intensity through the process of remembering it in a variety of other circumstances... you're basically diluting the emotional response somewhat as that happens. (2) You haven't yet found your ideal strategy for recalling the feelings (3) You don't really remember. Guest6637 | You had for dinner last tues. You know you ate, but you don't remember what.
| Tranzpupy | Or not
| Jonathan | So then the trick for you is to continue to seek out resourceful memories where its the strongest example you can recall of that particular resource. If you spend a while searching, with no result, then STOP! And do something different!
| Guest6637 | Like what?
| Jonathan | Start to search for a different resource... one which your unconscious mind is willing to offer up to you with more vigor and pleasure and clarity.
| Tranzpupy | Sometimes its like when I'm in a good, resourceful state, I can't think of those that aren't
| Jonathan | Anything positive and dynamic and energetic is a good sales state to be in, for starters.
| Tranzpupy | And sometimes versa vice...
| Jonathan | Using NLP™ and related techniques... you can get very flexible and sophisticated combining states... adjusting the intensity of states in combination with each other.... but for starters.... just think about gaining some flexibility with one at a time! If one state doesn't come easily... laugh about it.. and go in search of another kind of state where the memory might come back easier.
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