Whether you’re pitching to investors for funding or trying to meet your sales goals for the quarter, your sales skills is what will dictate the difference between success and failure.
For many sales associates, personality goes hand in hand with success. Usually, the assertive, friendly, and analytic make the most sales. Is there more to sales success than personality?
What else makes these salesmen good at their jobs? Are there specific strategies or patterns they use to reach such extraordinary feats?
There’s an answer in psychological science—Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).
NLP is a psychological outlook based on studying successful people’s strategies and modeling them to achieve similar results. What you learn through experience to achieve specific outcomes can explain your behavior pattern and how you process language and thoughts.
Proponents of NLP propose that everyone has subjective experiences that happen internally (personal perception of reality). With NLP knowledge, you can analyze others’ perspectives to understand their views better.
The information gained by this understanding can help you listen effectively, really understand what people are telling you and ask quality questions.So how can these basic NLP tactics help you improve your closing rates? Here, we’ll learn more about the NLP for sales, some NLP techniques that will make you a better sales associate, and NLP sales phrases that will seal the deal.
How Do You Apply NLP to the Sales Process?
Neuro-Linguistic programming for sales involves using specific behavior patterns and phrases to help shape how prospects will view your offer.
NLP and sales work well because they both involve understanding prospects, building relationships, and then swaying them into closing deals.
As a sales associate looking to improve your skills, you’ve figured there’s something more to making sales than using the right words. Your demeanor, intonation, body language, and other nonverbal cues trigger subconscious reactions from buyers. Buyers can suddenly feel distrust or dislike towards you for reasons they couldn’t explain.
With NLP, you can quickly identify what triggers these behaviors in buyers, look internally at your patterns, and find a way to get better results.
When you know the right words and actions that will lead to an emotional connection with potential buyers, you can subconsciously influence their reactions.
Ultimately, the NLP sales application is not about sublingual messaging or manipulating buyers. It’s a way of better positioning yourself for success.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming Techniques That Can Improve the Closing Rate
There’re 200 plus known NLP patterns and techniques. That is not to say you should slog through numerous research papers to try and master all these techniques.
You only need to understand how to have an NLP mindset to effectively apply the few techniques we’ll list below to improve sales closing rates.
The NLP mindset is mainly focused on improving your communication. Our language can influence how people subconsciously interpret what we’re trying to say. Asking the right questions, actively listening, and understanding what people tell you lead to a stronger NLP mindset.
Emotional Anchoring
Emotional anchoring is helping your prospect associate positive past emotional responses with your products.
We all have captured emotions associated with memories, places, and events. These emotions have been conditioned into our nervous systems over time and can manifest with specific stimuli or triggers in our surroundings.
In other words, the right words, symbols, sounds, or colors can trigger surges of emotional energy either on conscious or unconscious levels.
To apply this in sales, get your buyer to recall what it was like to achieve one of their most significant milestones. Anchor that experience with your preferred verbal or non-verbal cues. Slip in how your products fit into that picture using your selected signal, which they already associated with success.
The result is a prospect with an intense emotional connection to your product. Closing the sales is a cushy job from here on out.
Using NLP For Sales Phrases
NLP phrases are emotionally compelling words capable of cajoling prospects into your desired action.
Just as copywriters have power words—the persuasive language used to engage readers—NLP sales offer these phrases others have referred to as magic or hypnotic words.
While these descriptions speak to the kind of influence the words possess, they’re slightly inflated. The phrases are not Latin words capable of giving mystical results. They’re simply attention-grabbing English words capable of evoking strong emotions.
Here’s a table showing words to use to evoke different emotions.
Body Language and Communication Mirroring
Similarity and mimicry can significantly influence our decision to trust someone. To bond with your prospects, be intentional with body language, words, and mannerisms. Try to match, copy or mirror how they present themselves.
Liking what is similar to us is a core tenet in the human brain. As a skilled salesman, you can use this predisposition to your advantage.
The key is to be as subtle as possible. Being obvious, immediately adjusting your body language to reflect your prospect or repeating their words verbatim will come off rather obnoxious, leading to the opposite effect.
But if you can activate your stealth mode while mirroring prospects, this Neuro-Linguistic programming sales technique will work wonders for your closing rates.
How to Influence NLP Ethically
While Neuro-Linguistic programming has a lot of applications, like any other developing technology, NLP can be repurposed for harmful results.
NLP can be a powerful covert manipulation tool. All the techniques discussed above can manipulate someone into liking you or taking desired actions.
To influence NLP ethically, you need to learn and teach the possible adverse outcomes that can result from harmful NLP applications. This will make it easy to identify possible menacing situations.From here, we can identify solutions to this situation and how to resolve them effectively.
Boost Your Closing Rate With NLP Today
Now that you have an NLP mindset, you can use these newfound techniques to fine-tune every aspect of your sales pitch to achieve outstanding results.
Always remember that the ultimate goals of the NLP sales technique are to better connect with your prospects, effectively communicate a solution to their needs, and actively listen. Neuro-Linguistic programming sales techniques are by no means a covert manipulation tool to get sales conversions.Looking to learn more about NLP tools you can use to improve your personal and professional life? These self-practice techniques will get you well on your way to NLP greatness.
