DAY THREE: HOW TO SELL TO ANYBODY

The NLP practitioner has a certain approach when it comes to making sales. In essence the approach is about building a relationship first and then making a sale. You should ask yourself, what is more profitable? Making one sale through hard selling techniques, burning your client out, and never selling that person again. Or is a better approach to develop a relationship with that person. Finding out what they want and what their problems are, and then providing a solution to their problems. By building a relationship with your client you will be able to sell them your product and service multiple times. Overall developing relationships and addressing the actual needs of your customers is both more profitable and straight out less work.

The techniques that NLP can teach you will help you to instantly create rapport with the person that you are talking to. We buy things from people that we like or that we feel are like us. As a salesperson you will often encounter people who are quite different to you. The fact is that not everybody thinks the same way you do. You don’t even have to like the person you are talking with to create rapport if you use NLP. You also may only have a very small window to sell something to that client. This is where being able to create rapport quickly is so important for sales. Once you are in rapport with someone, then you will have the opportunity to cultivate a relationship with them. But the first step to sales is always to create rapport.

Rapport is essentially about creating a two way connection with somebody. It is about establishing a genuine level of trust and respect between two people. One of the best techniques to create rapport is known as matching and mirroring. This NLP technique involves copying someone’s behaviour and values in order to form rapport with that person. You have probably seen plenty of examples when people are not in rapport. Watch for example a panel discussion where one person holds conservative political views and the other liberal. You will see that they are certainly not in rapport with each other. The way they talk will be different, the pitch of their voice, their body language and of course their values couldn’t be more different. Then watch a couple who are in love, and the way that they relate to each other. There is an effortlessness to people who are in love in the way that they move in sync with each other. When they go to hold the other persons hand it is right there waiting for them. They talk easily and comfortably with the other person, and nothing seems forced. The whole point of rapport building with NLP is that you don’t have to be in love with the other person in order to comfortably engage with them. You only have to match and mirror their behaviour.

One of the best ways to match and mirror someone is to first mirror their body language. While you don’t want to be obvious about this. If the other person notices you mimicking them, then rapport will definitely be broken. You can push this further than you might imagine. People don’t think much about their own body language. So if you observe them, and then start to subtly copy them it is very unlikely that the other person will notice. Remember the matching and mirroring technique always begins with observation.

Once you have started to mirror their physical behaviour. Notice the tone of voice and speed at which they speak. This is very important because if you are a person who talks very loudly and your customer talks very quietly it is easy to upset them. It is up to you as the NLP salesperson to adjust your behaviour to theirs. If this bothers you, remember that there is real power in this approach. Would you rather be effective and successful? Or act the way you always do and be unsuccessful? I would say that a successful salesperson will choose the former every time. So alter first the volume you are speaking to match the other person. Then either speed up or slow down your speech so that you are speaking at the same speed as the other person.

Once you have established the same body language and speech patterns as the customer. Next you want to mirror their breathing. There is something very important about breathing that reaches us at a very primitive level. If you are breathing in time with someone you are almost certainly in rapport with them. Along with this you want to match the other persons overall energy levels. If the other person is highly energetic then you may need to up your own energy levels. Generally with sales people it’s the other way around. You are a bundle of energy and the customer is more reserved. Slow yourself down and operate at the customer’s energy level.

The great thing is once you have created rapport with someone. Then you can start to lead the other person. You have to make sure that you have actually established rapport before you begin leading, but once you have that rapport then you can start to control the flow of the conversation. Experiment with leading by altering your body movements and see if the other person follows you. If not you may have to build further rapport before you can lead.

Creating rapport with someone is an excellent way to establish a relationship with them. Matching and mirroring is a powerful technique you can use to speed up the process. Remember however that there are other ways of creating rapport too. Observe any keywords and phrases that the other person uses and try and build these into the conversation. Also it is important to take a genuine interest in what the other person is saying. Try and understand things from their point of view. It is vital that you understand the client before they understand you. You also need to be respectful of your client’s time, their relationships and their money.

Using rapport can help you to establish a relationship with anyone. This will greatly increase your chances of establishing working relationships with many different people and as a result increase your overall sales. Remember to create a relationship first, and then sell. The impact on your sales can be massive.