NLP Archives | Page 10 of 11

#TuesdayTips

Maybe you never make a buying decision on the basis of your personal response to the sales person. I’ve had people say that to me, “All my business decisions are purely logical – I don’t need any of that rapport stuff!”

And the next words out of the mouth are, “No, there’s just something about Jim that I don’t trust.”

I’m not prejudiced against any particular type of person, but a kinaesthetic person has some unique features that make them fantastically successful when dealing with other kinaesthetic people, and not so successful with other types. So let me tell you about Bob, the Photocopier man.

I was working at an Event Management Company selling $50k—$60k sponsorships and we had some really great marketing material – but we were printing the promotional brochures out on a bubble jet printer and I said, “Listen – this is not cost effective and it doesn’t look good. You spent all this money (about $20k) designing this marketing material, would you please let me get a proper printer?”

He told me to go ahead, signed off on the budget, and I called up a photocopier company and asked them to send someone out because we were ready to buy a unit. I’d had previous experience with this brand at another company and knew that they were really reliable, and produced great results, so the only reason that I asked them to send someone out is because there were two very similar models and I could not work out what was the difference between them.

So Bob was their representative and the morning he was coming in I had a bit of a crisis. Three of my sales staff were sick, we had a big sponsorship meeting prepared and I was having to divide different appointments between people, and shuffle things around to get everything done that day with three people missing.

When Bob walked in I said, “Bob, it’s so great to have you here, thanks for coming, I had a bit of a crisis this morning, as it turns out I don’t have an hour to spend with you, I could probably do 15 minutes. But it’s okay because I’ve already decided to go ahead, I’ve got the budget signed off, I just need you to tell me what’s the difference between this model and this one.”

And Bob launches into his sales spiel, “Oh yes, Chandell, thanks for having me. Our company started in 19…”

So he got through about three pages in his compendium and I said, “No, I’m sorry to interrupt but I don’t think you understand – I’m ready to buy, the boss has signed off on the budget. All I need is for you to tell me what’s the difference between this model and the model with the E, because we’re ready to buy.”

“Oh yes, and you know our toners are all recycled …” He just talked and talked and completely failed to listen.

After 45 minutes of their history and how they dispose of the cartridges and everything else, I’m about to kill him. There was no way I was going to buy this machine because when you buy a machine from them, the person that sells it to you is also your account manager, and I was not going to deal with Bob every time we had a problem with the machine. So I thanked him for his time and I sent him on his merry way, picked up the phone and I called their competitor.

Bob lost a sale that he already had because he didn’t listen, and he didn’t give me what I wanted. All he could see was what he had been taught, and how he wanted to be sold to.

Meta Description: The sad story of how lack of understanding of internal representation systems lost a deal.

Book your complimentary 30-minute Discovery Session with Chandell.

By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

#TuesdayTips

In my last post I talked about the importance of understanding how you see the world, and how other people see it in order to communicate with them effectively. Today I’m going to share some pointers which will help you identify what the internal representation system of another person is. If your offer is truly unique and compelling, or you have something that your prospect wants desperately enough then it won’t matter how you present it, but if there is any doubt in their mind then failing to pick up on their internal representation system, and to speak to it could be a deal-breaker.

As I mentioned, there are four primary internal representation systems: – Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic, and Auditory-digital.

Visual:

A visual person is concerned with how things look and appearance is an important part of what drives the decision making process. As I mentioned, I’m a visual person – if you don’t provide me with a visual prompt you can lose my interest, and lose the deal.

How do you recognise a visual person?

They talk rather quickly;
They usually stand or sit up straight;
They breathe up in their chest (because they’re talking too fast to breath deeply into their belly);
They care about how things look, and they want to see pictures;
Their speech is full of visual words like: – see, look, view, appear, show, clear, imagine.

A visual person will often use phrases like “Can you see what I’m saying?” or “It appears to me that …”, “That’s really brilliant, I can really see where you’re coming from.” “I just need to get some clarity on that.” because their visual senses are extremely active.

Auditory:

An auditory person is concerned with what they hear, and will make decisions based on that. They love music and they’re usually the kind of person who will hear something once and know all the words to the song, remember a tune, learn by ear. They’ll want to hear all about your program – and a written version won’t have the same impact.

How do you recognise an auditory person?

They talk at medium speed – slower than a visual person, but faster than a kinaesthetic person;
They breath about half-way down their chest – deeper than a visual person, not as deep as a kinaesthetic person;
They have flexible tonality in their voices and rarely talk in a monotone;
Their eyes will often move from side-to-side while they’re talking because they’re trying to construct what they’re saying and they’re recalling what they’ve said or heard;
They use auditory words like: hear, sound, listen, resonate, question.

Do you see how powerful understanding this is? If you know your own internal representation strategy, and can identify the ones that others are use, you’ll pick up on their cues much more readily. When you find someone who shares your own system, you can go ahead and sell as though you were selling to yourself, but if you find someone different you can modify your strategy. That way you’ll close many more sales.

Kinaesthetic:

A kinaesthetic person is mostly pre-occupied with how they feel. They will often take a long time to move through the sales process, and you may wonder if they’re just a tyre kicker after all. They are probably the group most likely to do business with other kinaesthetic communicators because they are operating on their ‘gut feeling’ and need to feel a strong sense of attraction to move forwards.

How do you recognise a kinaesthetic person?

They talk and move quite slowly;
They breathe deeply – right down in their belly;
They take their time over things and hate to be rushed;
They need time to ‘feel’ that something is right;
They use words like: feel, touch, catch on, solid, grasp.

Your kinaesthetic person hates to be rushed and will walk away from a deal that is otherwise perfect if they feel they are being pushed into it. If you are selling to a kinaesthetic person you need to be patient and persistent because it’s not that they’re uninterested, it’s just that it takes time for them to get comfortable with the concept or product you’re offering to them.

Auditory Digital:

People with Auditory-digital internal representation schemes usually have a strong secondary scheme, which is the thing you should be looking for. Auditory-digital people spend a lot of time in self talk – sometimes they communicate with themselves so clearly that they think they’ve actually already told you things, that they just said to themselves.

How do you recognise an auditory-digital person?

They will often have their eyes down because they are talking to themselves;
They are very analytical, if you’re lucky they’ll speak their analysis out loud even though they’re talking to themselves rather than to you;
They usually have a backup sense, which is what you should look for;
They use words like: experience, understand, think, process, consider, know.

Auditory-digital processors can sometimes be the hardest group to sell to because they need to convince themselves before they can accept your input.

The point of understanding both your own, and your customer’s internal representation systems is that it’s not about you! You need to focus on your customer and what they want to hear and what they want to know.

If you’re in the situation where you’re thinking. “This is not working for me right now and I feel like I’ve tried everything.” Ask yourself if you really have tried everything. Are you trying to communicate in the way you prefer, or the way they prefer? The difference between the person crying over there and the person having a crappy day is what you do with it – NLP gives you tool to do things differently.

Have you ever noticed this? When you look back on deals you might have lost could it be because you weren’t appealing to the right internal representation system?

Leave a comment below and let me know if you agree with this idea.

Meta Description: The four primary internal representation systems and how you can identify them and use your understanding to change your business outcomes.

#TuesdayTips

I’m naturally quite a visual person. A few years ago I met with someone who was going to do a social media strategy for me. She charges about $1200 a month and I’d heard wonderful things about her, so I thought it was all going to be really fantastic and I was ready to go ahead with the solution. We had a successful meeting and I was very happy with our discussion, so at the end of the meeting I said, “Look, if you can just send me a one page document, with three or four bullet points on everything that we just talked about, I can sign off on it and we’ll get started.”

She never did send me the document, so we never started the work. I couldn’t run my decision making strategy because I needed to see it there in front of me. It was a 12 month contract, so she cost herself quite a bit of money because she didn’t provide me with a one-page outline. I even made the point of saying, “It doesn’t need to be a fancy proposal, just three or four dot points outlining in writing what we discussed today so I can sign off on it.”

The woman that was selling me the social media strategy was an auditory person. From her perspective, she had told me all I needed to know to make a decision. I don’t know if went away and said, “I can’t understand why Chandell didn’t sign up, because she told me she had all of the things that she needed, but I’m going to be a victim about the fact that I didn’t get the sale.” A lot of sales people do respond that way when the sale doesn’t go through, when in actual fact she wasn’t listening hard enough – I told her what I needed from her to make the decision and really I wasn’t asking her for all that much. In the context of it, if I’m going to spend $1200 a month for 12 months it’s a fair bit of money to spend to get three dot points on a sheet of paper.

As far as she was concerned, we’d gone over the system verbally and I’d agreed, so there was no more to be done. Some people work like that. I don’t. It’s not wrong, it’s just different.

The point is we all see things differently because we have different Internal Representation Systems, and if you can get your head around this concept you won’t be leaving money on the table, just because you didn’t communicate in the way another person prefers (or requires).

Internal Representation Systems - A Powerful Tool

A number of workshop participants find that the insights they gain from this section are game-changers. In the Confident Closing workshops we have a short quiz that indicates your strongest internal representation system. The thing I always stress is that this system is not set in stone for anyone – it varies from day to day, and ideally as you increase your awareness you’ll be able to use all the internal representation systems fairly equally. This is part of becoming a more flexible communicator.

What I want to stress here, is that this is not a boxed system, and you shouldn’t put yourself (or anyone else) in a box. If you were to evaluate your answers to the quiz they’d change from day to day – this is simply a tool to help you understand yourself and others better, and to help you communicate more clearly.

Basically there are four internal representation systems, and we all use all four of them to a greater or lesser extent. It really is important to understand that we don’t have just one Internal Representation System, and we can strengthen them all, because a few years ago this concept was taken into the classroom in the form of Learning Styles with the idea that every child was either one thing or another, and that you could blame their lack of progress on a teacher who didn’t teach to their particular style.

This is so very opposed to everything I believe that I have to stress the point here. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is about growth, and about taking responsibility for your outcomes. You are not a victim of anyone as long as you are learning and growing.

The four internal representation systems are: – Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic, and Auditory-Digital. In the next post, I’ll outline how you can recognise the primary characteristics of these systems, but right now I really want to stress that as a business owner or sales person you need to be able to use all of these systems depending on the person you are talking to. Think about it as another skill you want to develop to make your relationships stronger and more successful.

Do you think that your communication style is fixed and inflexible? Or do you see this as yet another area in which you have potential to grow? Leave a comment below to let us know what you think.

Meta Description: How the way you see the world affects your communication with others – and how understanding the way this works can change your business outcomes.

#TuesdayTips

At this point in your conversation you want to reflect all the issues your prospect has highlighted as being important back to them. You also want to discuss how your product or service addresses these issues and resolves the problems they are facing in detail. This is not the time for a quick 5 point summary, but is a serious presentation of value. Your specific solution is what the prospect will buy, so you need to remind them of the value that each part of the solution will bring to their business.

Price will enter the discussion, but if you have stacked the value up for them then they price will be seen in the context of the return on investment they can expect – and that return could be in many forms – financial, time, peace-of-mind. Most quality buyers won’t make their decision on price alone. Clearly price is a factor – sometimes a business just can’t afford your solution – but more often then not, if the value is stacked high enough and there is enough convincing proof that it works, then your prospect will find the money needed to purchase.

Pricing and payment plans are just one more way you can customise your solution to fit your prospect’s needs without diminishing your profitability. You’d be surprised at just what people can afford when the payments are split over a few months or some other installment option.

In our Confident Closing Workshops we go over the importance of stacking the value when presenting your solution and helping your prospect to really experience the benefits your product offers. After doing this exercise many of our students go away feeling that they are seriously under-charging their clients once they have stacked up the benefits. Some of them have doubled or tripled their prices and found that they actually get more people taking up their offers.

Have you tried stacking up the value and tailoring your solution for your clients? Did it change their responsiveness to price and their interest in your product or service?

Let us know in the comments.

Meta Description: A tailored solution that solves my problem is almost irresistible for most people. Generic solutions are harder to sell at all, and certainly don’t attract premium prices.

Presenting a Customised Solution

Now that you have built rapport, asked questions, and established your prospect’s need for your product or service it is time to propose a solution before asking for the sale. This is where many businesses fall down and lose their way – they offer every client the exact same options and solutions. This often comes from the excellent idea that you should ‘package’ your services so people understand exactly what they are getting.

The difficulty with this is that your prospect gets the feeling that you are more interested in off-loading whatever you happen to have in your wheelbarrow, than you are in solving their problem – and that makes them defensive and hard to convince.

The Goal of Your Solution

When you actually propose your solution to a prospect your goal is to for them to feel that you have just suggested the exact piece they need to complete their puzzle. You want them to feel that you are proposing something that is tailor made for them, rather than a generic one-size-fits-all solution. When you propose a solution that really ticks all their boxes and meets the needs they have pointed out to you, you signal that you have heard their problems.

It is still your pre-defined package, but you have matched it exactly to your prospects needs, and described it in their language. Now they don’t feel that you have just grabbed a box out of your wheelbarrow and are trying to get them to buy whatever it is that you have too much of – now they feel it is designed exactly for them. Perhaps you have swapped out some coaching sessions for a top-notch presentation they can use, or made another slight tweak that meets their need. Maybe you haven’t changed anything, but by listening and learning have simply described the package accurately in their own language.

Whatever you have done, they have heard you describe the perfect solution to their problem. Do you think people will pay more for a tailored solution that exactly meets their needs, or for a generic solution with more features and benefits in it? I can tell you that the tailored solution always appears more valuable in people’s eyes – just like people are ready to pay more for a meal at a restaurant than they are at McDonalds.

#TuesdayTips

Building rapport is a key skill that makes our relationships run more smoothly in every area of our lives so it’s worth investing some time in thinking about some key techniques that help us establish rapport as quickly and easily as possible.

I’ve written about the entire 5-Step Selling process in another post [Link to #16] so this post just focuses on the first element of the strategy.

Why Do We Need Rapport?

Occasionally people will say something like, “Rapport isn’t important in business. I make decisions on the basis of facts, not relationships.” There’s no point arguing with this perspective so I don’t, but a few minutes later, that same person will say something about ‘just not getting on with’ another person and deciding not to do business with them.

Don’t kid yourself. Rapport matters. It is rarely the only factor in your business decisions (or it shouldn’t be), but it is important. If you are selling to another person your ability to establish rapport will directly affect your success in closing the sale. However, let’s look at the bigger picture: your ability to establish rapport quickly and easily will also make every other negotiation or relationship in your life run more smoothly as well, whether it’s with your spouse, your children, family members, or friends. Rapport makes it possible to work through tense moments in any relationship and create win-win outcomes for everyone much of the time.

How Can We Build Rapport Quickly and Easily?

Most people recognise the importance of building rapport, but their strategy for doing so is rather hit or miss. In my early days, I depended mostly on verbal strategies – finding common interests, experiences and places. It worked reasonably well but it took time – sometimes a lot of time.

A while ago I was working for a company that managed events and I was selling major sponsorships and event space for a particular large project. I called on some existing relationships, pitched to the sponsorship team and my contact signed off on the pitch. He was the head-honcho marketing guy and he signed off on the deal, but the person I actually had to deal with was his Brand Manager, who was coordinating everything.

His Brand Manager wasn’t happy that $100,000 of her marketing budget had been spent without consulting her. So I went in to see her, and the atmosphere was frigid! I tried everything I knew to build rapport with this woman and nothing worked for about 20 minutes, until we eventually realised that we had gone to the same school. Suddenly, her entire face changed, the atmosphere warmed up, and we were able to move forward productively.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) teaches some techniques that help you speed up the process of building rapport – and shorten that time of tension. You won’t always need them, because sometimes you will just ‘click’ with another person, but it’s good to have them in your toolkit for when you do. After all, even great relationships have some tense moments!

We build rapport through 3 main channels of communication: our words, our tonality, and our physiology or body language. Studies show that words account for about 7% of our effect on others; tonality, 38%; and physiology a whopping 55% of our impact. Obviously I can’t cover everything that Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) teaches here, but I’d like to highlight some ways we can use this information to build rapport quickly and discreetly.

Words:

If you listen to the other person carefully you can work out whether their preferred internal representation system is visual, auditory, or kinaesthetic, and you can choose words that match and mirror theirs. Visual people highlight words that represent sight: ‘look’, ‘see’, ‘clarity’; auditory communicators will use phrases like: ‘listen’, ‘hear this’, ‘there’s too much noise’; and kinaesthetic communicators will say things like: ‘Have you grasped that?’, ‘imagine’, ‘it feels right’.

Once you’ve picked up on their preferred system you can choose those kinds of words yourself and mirror them back to your prospect.

Tonality:

Does your prospect speak slowly? Do they speak quickly? Is their voice deep, and produced in the chest or belly, or high, or mid-range? You can identify this and match it back to them (discreetly). You might want to slow your speech down, or speed it up a little to meet their preferred speed. You might also want to change pitch – please note, I’m not suggesting your speak in falsetto just because your prospect is a woman with a high-pitched voice. Always be subtle and discreet.

Physiology:

There’s a virtually endless list of things you can match in physiology. Mannerisms, gestures, posture, blinking rate, … these are just a few of the tools you can use. Once you realise that our physiology makes up around 55% of your communication you’ll probably want to be more conscious of it in yourself as well as in others.

I’ve spoken about matching the other person’s style of communication by carefully observing their words, tonality, and physiology but I want to highlight here that this is a subtle process – not a question of mimicry. You certainly wouldn’t copy everything they did – that would be uncomfortable and would break rapport. You are simply using it to open channels of communication and give your message a greater chance of being heard and considered.

In a sales situation, I might focus on one or two really subtle areas – and I would make sure that my matching tool place outside the other person’s awareness.

It’s one of those skills that is easy to learn, and that improves with time. In Confident Closing we spend one session on it, and many of our students find that they can implement it immediately – in NLP Practitioner Training we revisit it in more detail and the feedback is usually that they are doing it unconsciously most of the time, but that when people sense tension they can make a deliberate effort using matching and mirroring techniques. Generally, even the people who were concerned about the ‘manipulation’ aspect when we first discuss the techniques of building rapport come back to me and say that the thing it really helped them to do was become a better student of other people by listening and observing more carefully.

Meta Description: Rapport is sometimes called the glue that holds relationships together and makes them work. Building Rapport is a key skill for anyone in both their business or personal lives.

#TuesdayTips

Do you know what the Number 1 reason people don’t set goals is? It’s because they are afraid of failure. Sometimes clients say, ‘I don’t know what I want?’ – what they often mean is, ‘I’m not clear that I can achieve what I really want so I’ll pretend I don’t know.’ At other times, they genuinely don’t know because they’ve suppressed their dreaming for so long that they’re not aware of their real thoughts and desires.

Perhaps you fail to achieve your goals as often as you succeed and you wonder why that is. Today I’d like to explore the link between achieving your goals and giving your unconscious mind clear direction.

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) one of the key areas we help people deal with, is letting go negative emotions – the core emotions of anger, fear, guilt, shame, and sadness. It only takes a few minutes, and usually clients will feel an immediate sense of relief which is fantastic. The negative emotions are gone, but your unconscious mind needs clear direction on how to think. If you don’t provide that direction, then your unconscious mind will quickly fall back into the old habits of thinking using those negative patterns. So, you’ve dealt with the problem – but now you have some re-training to do as well.

It’s the same with S.M.A.R.T. goals and your unconscious mind. You’ve created your S.M.A.R.T. goal – it is specific, measurable, as-if-now, realistic, and has a time frame – you’ve visualised it and made it as visceral as possible but you need to communicate that goal clearly to your unconscious mind so that it will help you achieve it. Your unconscious mind really wants to please you – but you need to tell it how it can do that and you need to make sure the instruction is clearly embedded.

When you create your S.M.A.R.T. goals and visualise them, that’s step #1. The rest of the process involves reminding your unconscious mind of those goals – that’s where vision boards, pictures, and regular review of those goals comes in. It may sound like hard work, but the truth is that once your unconscious mind knows what it is aiming for, it will support and help you at every turn. You’ll find yourself taking the needed decisions and completing your actions much more easily and effortlessly than ever before. It almost removes the need for self-discipline because your unconscious mind is working for you day-in, day-out, helping you to accomplish everything you ever dreamed of doing.

Think about that! Think about having your feet on a path towards the goals you really want, and moving forwards almost by instinct – easily and relentlessly. That’s what happens when you form your goals well, and then harness the power of your unconscious mind to draw you towards them.

Failure to achieve these goals isn’t really an option – because you only fail when you are conflicted about your goals. This time, you’ve set your goals carefully using the S.M.A.R.T. method, and you’ve given clear directions to your unconscious mind via your visualisation, and frequent reminders. All of a sudden you’ll find yourself smashing goal after goal as you work on them using a combination of deliberate action and effortless motivation.

Meta Description: How to achieve your goals every time without conflict and stress by harnessing the power of your unconscious mind.

#TuesdayTips

I’ve already talked about the power of your unconscious mind [Link to Post], and how it influences your behaviour, so today I’d like to take a closer look at how we can become friends with our unconscious mind and use it to help us achieve our goals, rather than blocking them.

Listening to your Unconscious Mind

Have you ever really listened to the things you say to yourself – the words and tone of voice you use when no-one else is listening? What are you saying? Are you speaking words of encouragement, hope and power, or are you constantly criticising yourself and belittling yourself?

Negative self-talk is one of the most common causes of depression. Therapists know that if they listen carefully to what their patients are saying to themselves they will be able to understand 90% of the problems besetting them. The problem is that often patients get caught up in the rehearsal of these negative conversations, emotions and experiences and they can’t let them go. That’s really where I was, when I struggled through my depression – every week when I met with my therapist we would go over the same ground, and I’d feel worse. He would try to help me see the lies I was telling myself, but somehow I missed the road out until I went to the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) training.

One of things I love about Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is that it propels you forward. It doesn’t leave you wallowing in your misery but offers you a clear choice.

Take responsibility for your life, or take the consequences!

We can either be ‘At Cause’ in our lives, or we can be ‘At Effect’ – the creators, or the victims of our circumstances. I don’t know about you, but the idea of being a victim doesn’t appeal to me … on the other hand sometimes I’m not all that keen about taking responsibility for things either. And that is where we can call on our unconscious mind to help us.

We can’t turn back the clock and undo the things that we’ve experienced, but we can always choose the direction we’ll take moving forward.

Make Friends With Your Unconscious Mind And Let It Work For You

Once you become aware of your unconscious mind, you will start to hear what it is saying to you. If it is encouraging you to keep moving forward, to stick your neck out and take some risks, and feeding you positive thoughts and emotions then you’re probably in pretty good shape. But maybe things are not quite so rosy and your unconscious mind is tearing you down with negative ideas and feedback. Don’t worry, you’ve taken an important first step – now you know that the part of you which should be your biggest cheerleader is letting you down.

You spend a lot of time listening to your unconscious mind, so you need to feed it positive thoughts, ideas, emotions and images – because whatever you feed it, it will send back to you quietly and without making a fuss. That’s why we need to choose our mental diet at least as carefully as we choose the food we eat. A lot of people take great care about the food they consume, but they fill their minds with random programs from the TV, radio, or magazines.

Your thoughts shape your future just as surely as the food you eat shapes your body – so take time to consider what you are putting into your unconscious mind. They say we become like the five people we spend most time with – that time could be spent with them in person, or via TV, CD or books. Who are your 5 top influencers?

Meta Description: Our unconscious mind is a very powerful influence, but we can use it help us achieve everything that we are looking for in our personal and professional lives.

By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

#TuesdayTips

Pricing – Value – Money … this is always one of the hardest things to determine. How do you set a value on your service? Most of my life as an employee there wasn’t much room for negotiation. In corporate sales, I was always paid a decent base salary plus commission that were pretty much set by the company I worked for. In one position, I was paid a very generous salary and achieved a great deal more than the target outcome, but then my employer decided I was too expensive.

In my own business, I come across people who will debate the price, then experience the value and tell me I’m worth more. I come across other people who walk away as soon as they hear the price – and never even think about the value. I know I’m not alone in this, because just about every business owner I talk to faces the same struggle.

Mindset is important because business is 80% psychology and only 20% strategy. Most of the business owners I work with have their strategy pretty well under control, but the psychology is where they get bogged down. I hear a lot of people saying things like, ‘I’m just not sure that I’m worth what it is that I’m asking,’ or ‘I always feel the need to discount,’ or ‘I feel the need to actually give more than I’ve agreed to’. Others use statements like, ‘I don’t know how to sell my product – I’m really good at telling them about it, but when it comes to asking for the money, I really struggle with that’.

The problem is not the product or service they deliver, it’s their understanding of the value they bring to the table. Mastering the mind-set of the confident closer gets rid of that procrastination, get rid of that overwhelm, and gets rid of that doubt about your value so you project confidence – and are received with confidence.

Your Perception IS the Reality You Project

When you present your business it’s really like a performance – and the purpose of a performance is to influence the audience and move them. The thing is that we don’t think about business presentations that way, we think about them as a means to an end, or more income, or reaching a target. You know, I’ve got this appointment today, I’m meeting this person and I’ll try to convince them to buy. We don’t usually see it as reaching out to influence people and they pick that up.

You see, the vital fact that you need to understand is that perception is projection. You may have heard that before, but I want you to really slow down and think about it. Perception is projection. … But you are unable to perceive behaviour in someone else if you are not capable of it yourself.

You’ll have heard the comment that when you point your finger at someone and call them names, there are three fingers pointing back at yourself. That’s because the faults we’re most aware of in others are the ones we are prone to, and it’s often the reason why parents are so hard on their kids – they’re projecting their own traits and so they’re hyper-sensitive to them in others.

What About Josie?

Remember Josie, the hairdresser I wrote about the other day [Link to Part 1] – she had fallen into the vicious cycle of discounting her services to attract clients. The problem was that this meant that she needed to see more clients to make the same money and every time she did this her perception of the value of her service plunged lower. I could see that before long Josie would have discounted her Salon out of existence.

I have to admit that I staged a scene to help her understand the value of her work. You see, Josie really was a great hairdresser, and she ran a great Salon but she was seeing her work as something people chose because of price. I sent a friend in who really needed to see a great hairdresser who would help her find a hairstyle that looked great and fit her lifestyle. I knew that Josie could help her, and I asked this friend to be really enthusiastic and pay more than she was asked IF (and only if) she was genuinely happy with the outcome.

Well, Sarah was delighted with her appearance once Josie had finished with her hair and shown her how to style it easily. She raved about Josie’s efforts, she admired herself in the mirror, and when Josie told her how much the service cost Sarah was (genuinely) outraged. “You can’t charge that little! It’s impossible!” she said. “You’re an artist and you should charge like one.” Sarah paid twice the price that Josie asked and as she walked out, she told a client who was just walking in, “I have just had the amazing service and the best value haircut I’ve ever imagined!” – and she meant it.

What Happened Next?

We’d already worked out what Josie needed to charge in our coaching sessions. The problem was that Josie was convinced that no-one would pay that much. Sarah’s comment gave Josie the courage to quote the price we’d agreed on to the client who had walked in as Sarah left. Her response gave her the courage to do it again … and again … and it wasn’t long before she really did discover the joy of owning a business.

The point of telling this story is simply that Josie is like many business owners – they can’t charge the prices they need to, because they don’t value themselves as they ought and Perception IS Projection!

Meta Description: Pricing-Value-Money – how your understanding of these can lead to success or failure and how they can turn your business around.

By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

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It’s a pretty consistent fact around the world that approximately 50% of small businesses fail within the first two years of operation and only about 8% of them make it to 10 years. Michael Gerber discusses the reasons for this at length in “The E-Myth Revisited”, but I’d like to discuss it briefly here and tell you a story to illustrate it.

Are You A Technician?

A lot of small businesses are started by ‘technicians’ who are very good at what they do, and angered when they think that their employer doesn’t value them enough. The accountant who leaves a big firm to start his own practice because he knows he’s being charged at $180 per hour, but only receiving $90, the chiropractor or physiotherapist who knows what each patient is being charged, but only receives a percentage of that fee, or my friend Josie, who is a hairdresser.

Josie worked in Angie’s Salon and she was paid $15 an hour. At the end of every week Josie saw that her income is far less than the total takings that Angie has in revenue. She worked out what each client paid for her services and compared that with her weekly wage and said to herself, “How come Angie gets paid this much and I’m only getting $15 an hour and I work much harder than her. I’m a much better hairdresser than she is and I see more clients!”

After a while Josie decided to start her own Salon. She knew that she is a really great hairdresser, in fact, she loves hairdressing so much she told herself that this would not be work! She worked really hard, put in long hours (all that administration as well as hairdressing!) and to encourage people to come in she started discounting her services. Josie was now working much harder now than when she was employed by Angie. When we sat down together and looked at Josie’s numbers in a Business Coaching session, we worked out that her new pay rate as a business owner was $1.20 an hour.

You see, what Josie didn’t understand were all the other tasks that Angie did behind the scenes. Things like rent, utility bills, doing the payroll, looking at how she’s actually going to get business walking in through the door, (Angie’s clients didn’t just show up with their money on the day she opened the Salon!), and managing stock levels. Josie only saw the big picture with all the zeros at the end of the week’s takings, she didn’t even consider the rest of the picture.

In this classic example of the standard Small Business Owner Josie went from scoffing over $15 per hour as an employee to buying herself a very stressful job for the bargain price of $1.20 per hour! Wasn’t that a great move?

Josie was down – but she was not out! She had signed up for a 2-day Confident Closing workshop that I ran because she was determined not to go back to being an employee. She was going to make this work!

We started by laying out all the bad news … the tasks she had to do, the bills she had to pay, etc – and then the good news … the clients she already had, the staff she had working for her and so on. The picture was pretty ugly, but with all the facts in front of her, Josie could see clearly why she was feeling so stressed and she could make a plan to get out of it.

Find out what happened next … Part 2

Meta Description: What many small businesses owners don’t consider before they start their business and how this leads to despair and failure.

By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

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Do you sometimes feel under-valued? Do you sometimes feel that people would buy your product or service if they only realised what it could do for them? Many people do. I used to feel that way all the time (sometimes I still do, but I know the problem lies with me), and I frequently talk to friends and clients who feel that way.

The easiest way to find out whether other people are hearing and understanding what you say is to listen to their response. At networking meetings, people will often say to me, “Most people don’t value my work for what it is worth.” The reality is that they have not managed to communicate the value of their work to others. It’s a pretty natural response when we don’t get the interest and buy-in we’re expecting, but the truth is that there is something you can do about it – and that something is to take responsibility for the response you get.

The Meaning Of The Communication Is The Response You Get

I’d like to illustrate this with a true story about Sally, a client of mine who was having trouble relating to her co-workers. One day she walked into my office and said, “I’m so over my boss, he is impossibly inconsiderate!” After a series of questions to uncover what the heart of the issue was for Sally, I learned that she had been in a meeting with her boss and had stated, “It’s a little bit draughty in here, isn’t it?” and then got very hurt and angry when her boss didn’t offer her a glass of water.

Somehow, when Sally had said, “It’s a little bit draughty in here, isn’t it?” she had expected her boss to understand that she was thirsty and needed a drink.

Now before you say to yourself, “Well, clearly Sally has a problem!” I’d like you ask yourself if you’ve ever made an indirect request hoping that your friend, partner, or colleague would understand that you are asking for help. You know what’s really interesting? This is how we communicate every day. You hear people saying, “I told her, she has to know – she has to know that I’m upset with her!”

“What did you say?” you’ll ask, and they respond, “Oh she just knows, I’m sure of it.”

“Don’t be!”

The real meaning of the communication is the response you get. If her boss doesn’t get Sally a glass of water then she can’t have made it clear that she wanted a glass of water. If your significant other doesn’t change their behaviour, you probably didn’t tell them clearly what the problem was and what response you were looking for.

If it happens once, the problem might be the other person – if it’s happening often then it’s probably time to take a good look at how clearly you communicate.

How Does This Apply to Sales?

In a sales context, that translates to, “If someone doesn’t want to pay your fee then YOU didn’t make it clear enough how valuable your services are to them.”

Now whose fault is it if the client doesn’t perceive the value of your service? Is it the client’s fault or is it your fault?

Many people don’t like to take that sort of responsibility on themselves. If you are taking charge of your own life and living at cause rather than at effect … if you’re empowered to influence others, then you should be willing to realise that you haven’t communicated in the most effective way that matches the needs of the person you’re talking to.

If you feel that prospects who are a great fit for your services aren’t taking you seriously then look at the value proposition you are sharing with them, the words you are choosing, and the mindset that backs up everything you say.

Meta Description: Do you ever complain that people don’t understand or appreciate your product or service as much as they should? NLP teaches that the meaning of your communication is the response you get and you can change the response by changing your flexibility.

Book your FREE Deep Dive Discovery Session here and move forward in your life and business, now.

By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

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Internal Representation Systems - A Powerful Tool

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Presenting a Customised Solution

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Why Do We Need Rapport?

How Can We Build Rapport Quickly and Easily?

Words:

Tonality:

Physiology:

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Listening to your Unconscious Mind

Take responsibility for your life, or take the consequences!

Make Friends With Your Unconscious Mind And Let It Work For You

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Your Perception IS the Reality You Project

What About Josie?

What Happened Next?

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Are You A Technician?

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The Meaning Of The Communication Is The Response You Get

How Does This Apply to Sales?

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