NLP techniques can be used in different ways and in different professional fields. In this article, we will analyze the benefits of NLP for the sales area and two techniques that a salesperson can put into practice on a daily basis to boost their results.

What is NLP?

As mentioned in a previous article, the purpose of NLP is to help us understand how we and the people around us perceive the world, and how we feel, act and think in accordance with this perception. By increasing the level of self-awareness, the individual becomes more clear and can make better choices in both personal and professional areas.

What does NLP mean in sales?

Salespeople are front-line professionals who constantly interact with the public, providing service and negotiating. For these professionals, learning to manage their thoughts and emotions at the time of sale is essential. They also need to have competence in negotiation and influence and to do this they need to develop communication skills.

NLP focused on sales helps salespeople develop an effective communication language, enabling them to read behaviors and adapt to each customer in the most diverse contexts, because selling is influencing a person to do something that will generate value for them. . An important point to emphasize here is that influencing someone does not mean deceiving, lying or manipulating them into buying something they did not need or want.

Benefits of NLP Sales

Neurolinguistic Programming works on our self-observation, when we understand where we are and where we want to go, we expand our understanding of the world, which improves our interaction with others and opens us up to a wide range of possibilities.

Let’s name three of the many benefits that we can achieve with NLP.

Self-knowledge: If self-knowledge is important in your personal life, it is no different in your professional life. Knowing what skills and abilities we have and what we need to achieve can be the difference between progressing or stagnating in our career.

In the sales sector, this can be exemplified as follows: if you, a salesperson, know that you are comfortable dealing with leads at the bottom of the funnel, but have difficulty prospecting, you will seek to develop the skills you lack, but how? He can model a successful person in the area he wants to improve, ask yourself: What skill or behavioral pattern does this person have that makes it easier for him to be successful in prospecting clients? Where or how can I acquire this quality, knowledge or skill?

By placing their deficits from this perspective, the person increases their self-esteem and security, as they know what their strengths are and that their weaknesses can be worked on.

Power of Decision: Leading your life like a drifting boat may take you somewhere, but it will hardly be the place you want to reach. Therefore, another benefit of studying NLP is improving our ability to make choices. According to The Wall Street Journal, we make an average of 35,000 decisions per day, most of which are unconscious. Therefore, understanding “why we do what we do” and “how we do it” can make our lives easier and allow us to make choices more consciously.

For the sales area, this is very important to understand your customer’s mind and be able to align your interests with theirs. A salesperson can use Metamodel questions to better understand the customer’s needs and anchor using mental triggers to awaken some emotion or action in their customer, favoring their decision making, which in this case will be the purchase of the product or service. .

Positive mindset: It has been proven through scientific research that holding negative thoughts generates anxiety and stress, which makes us more susceptible to health problems. Some people believe that being pessimistic or optimistic is part of who they are, but researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky disagrees with this statement. In her research on happiness, she discovered that 50% of our happiness comes from our genetic inheritance, 10% from life circumstances (the environment in which we live) and 40% from the decisions we make and the activities we choose.

This means that happiness is a decision, an exercise, it can be acquired. People with a more positive mindset tend to look for solutions instead of focusing on problems. As NLP is training the mind through mental strategies, it can make a person more optimistic and positive.

In the Commercial sector, this already becomes a differentiator when the customer, when contacting the seller, whether in a physical store, message or call, is received with a smile, a cordial and charismatic tone of voice. Another point is that a professional who believes in himself, values ​​himself and has a genuine interest in the client has a greater chance of gaining customer loyalty.

2 NLP Sales Techniques for Your Everyday Routine

Now that we know what it means and the benefits of using Neurolinguistic Programming in sales, let’s analyze three practical ways to use this approach.

Anchoring Technique

This technique was developed through the studies of a Russian doctor called Ivan Pavlov, the anchoring technique is based on the creation or rescue of some emotional trigger that will bring to the surface an action or emotion, in other words, it is conditioning. At the time of negotiation, the “anchor” will be the first information you provide to your client, so it must be well thought out, you need to be clear about your product and transparent in communication to encourage understanding and align expectations.

Mirroring technique

In 1951, Gestalt psychologist Salomon Asch created an experiment to understand the degree of influence groups have on an individual’s decision-making. He discovered that we mirror the behavior of the group we are part of and that we base our choices on it. When it comes to sales, we can use this discovery through some triggers, such as: the social proof trigger.

Between a service or product you’ve never heard of and one that several people have used and speak highly of, which one will you choose? Most people choose one that in “theory” has already had its effectiveness proven by other consumers. The seller can use this resource by citing data when approaching the prospect.

As seen, there are many ways to use neurolinguistic programming in the sales area. Mastering this tool takes time and requires dedication, but the results are worth every effort made.

Finally, it is worth highlighting that our professional and personal lives are interdependent, and that when we invest in the development of one of these areas we will also be contributing to the evolution of the other.

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