How to use NLP in sales, or can we use NLP for sales? Let’s look at these questions in detail in this article.
I have many friends working in sales and specifically wanted to know how to use NLP in sales? To answer this question, I have come across many NLP sales books.
For this blog, I have read Sell with NLP by Duane Lakin and Selling With Nlp by Kerry L. Johnson and have discussed with a few NLP sales trainers.
We will see How to use NLP in sales? And what are NLP sales techniques? Are there any NLP sales phrases? And finally, I will share NLP sales scripts to use?
How can you use NLP for sales?
To succeed in sales, one must master rapport building, use appropriate language, be good at communication, and be able to understand customers better.
NLP in sales can do just that for you. To understand customers better, you can use NLP language patterns for your NLP sales scripts, NLP meta programs, NLP presuppositions, and the NLP communication model.
You can also use NLP in sales by studying representational systems, submodalities to understand your customers.
You can take up any NLP practitioner course to learn these concepts in detail, or you can take this short course on NLP in sales.
Any sales professional will require these skills to succeed in sales.
- Active listening
- Understanding customer
- Staying positive
- Ability to handle the objection
- Building trust and relationships.
Let’s look at these skills individually in detail and how to use NLP in sales?
Active listening
Listening is an essential skill for any professional, specifically sales. To understand your customers better, you need to listen to their needs, concerns and find out what makes them tick?
Active listening also includes understanding the nonverbal behaviors of your customers. In addition, you can understand NLP eye accessing cues, NLP representational system, and NLP calibration to enhance your listening skills.
Understanding customer
Understanding your customer is the most crucial part of sales.
You need to understand what motivates your customer to make a purchase, how they make their buying decision, what their problem areas?
You can learn NLP meta programs to understand their motivation to make decisions and to understand what makes them tick?
You can learn NLP representational systems, submodalities, and NLP strategies to understand your customers’ buying behavior and needs.
Staying positive
To succeed in sales, you must be able to manage yourself well.
If you are not positive and too critical of yourself, you may not be able to perform well in sales.
We behave the way we think, and if you are negative, your behavior tends to get negative.
You can work on yourself by studying NLP communication models and NLP meta programs and understand yourself better.
You can work on your self-confidence with NLP anchoring techniques.
Ability to handle the objection
Sales professionals must be good at handling objections and rejections from the customers because none here likes to be sold to.
Learning NLP will give you tools like NLP Milton model language patterns and NLP meta models to handle objections. The NLP meta-model is my personal favorite when it comes to handling objections.
First, you understand your customers and build rapport with them. Then, based on your understanding, you can expect objections beforehand.
You study their communication pattern and resolve their objections.
Building trust and relationships.
We buy from the brands and people we trust, period.
NLP helps you understand your customers and their needs better; you can build trust based on that.
You can use NLP rapport building techniques to build relationships and trust with your customers, and you can also use NLP meta programs to understand their motivations and what makes them tick?
Imagine that you know what your customers want or need, frame your language according to their communication pattern, and suggest your products or services as solutions to their problems. This way, you can excel in sales.
If you want to learn How to use NLP in sales? And open to investing in a course, I recommend NLP in sales and persuasion by Alain. It is by far the best course available at a low price with Udemy’s lifetime access.
What are some NLP sales techniques?
Here are some of the NLP sales techniques that can be used as NLP for sales.
Rapport building
NLP rapport building techniques can be useful to build good relationships and trust with your customers.
You can use Matching and mirroring techniques to build rapport with your customers.
Matching and mirroring is the NLP technique where you subtly imitate your customer’s words, physiology, and gestures to build rapport.
NLP matching and mirroring works at an unconscious level that brings in sync with your customers.
Have you ever noticed while you are in sync with others, you both tend to agree on most of the things?
Imagine having the same level of sync with your customers can get you excellent results.
I have written an entire article on How to build rapport using NLP you can refer to later.
There is one exciting course on udemy, about Building instant rapport you can give it a try.
Here is a short course on NLP rapport building by Andreas Dorn, which focuses on more NLP rapport building techniques you can try. Check the NLP rapport building course here.
I recommend this course as it is specifically dedicated to building rapport by using NLP techniques and more. Give it a try.
NLP meta program to understand your customers
NLP meta programs can help you to know the motivation of your customers or what makes them tick?
NLP meta programs are mental programs that run on an unconscious level and affect our decisions and behaviors.
There are many types of NLP meta programs, like your customers are motivated by a towards or away mentality.
Or your customers’ process information from an external frame of reference or the internal frame of reference.
Or your customers focus on similarities or differences while comparing the outcome. Please note it is known as mistmatcher or matcher meta program in NLP.
Imagine If you can observe your customers in such details while having sales interaction or initial interaction. How much advantage will you have in sales?
For Example, If your customers are operating from the matcher NLP meta program, they like schedules, similarities, and routines. To convince this type of person, you need to look, feel, and listen just like them.
You can refer to my detailed article on NLP meta programs.
If you want to deep dive into the NLP meta program, you can read this book Figuring Out People: Reading People Using Meta-Programs
NLP communication model
The NLP communication model can help us understand how we process the information received from outside and its effect on our behavior, thoughts, and feelings.
The NLP communication model talks about how we process information received from our five senses.
It also talks about the majority of information getting deleted, distorted or generalized in any communication.
By learning the NLP communication model, you can better understand your customers and frame your sales communication strategy in that manner.
Learning the NLP communication model, you will learn about deletion, distortion, and generalization. In addition, other filters can help you to understand your communication style better.
NLP language patterns
NLP language patterns may be the most helpful NLP sales technique for any sales professional.
NLP language pattern consists of NLP meta model and NLP Milton model.
As we discussed in the NLP communication model, most of the information received through our five senses either gets deleted, distorted or generalized. NLP meta models can help you to bring that information back to the surface.
While the NLP Milton model language pattern can help you with hypnotic language patterns to take control of communication and get the desired outcome from the subject.
The NLP Milton model reverses the NLP meta model.
NLP meta model
NLP meta models can help you understand the details that are deleted, distorted, or generalized by your customer.
It is basically a strategic questioning method, use it wisely as NLP in sales technique, and you need to have built rapport before getting into the NLP meta model.
Let’s take a few examples of meta model language patterns.
For example, simple deletion – where an important part of the information is deleted.
We need to recover whatever is missing with such open sentences. We can recover the missing information by asking questions like, “What?” “When?” and “Where?”
Like “This is important.” You can challenge this by asking, “What is important and according to whom?”
Another pattern is Unspecified verbs. In this pattern, an unspecified verb changes or deletes the “how an event actually happened?”
The key question to ask in this language pattern is “How exactly?”. This will help you find unspecified verbs in the sentences.
“I argued with him.” “How exactly did you argue with him?”
You can learn more about NLP meta model language patterns from here.
NLP Milton model
NLP Milton model language patterns are hypnotic, and it is a massive topic in NLP to learn. So I will try to give a gist of this language pattern here. To read this language pattern in detail, follow this link.
In meta-model drills down to the specific information that is deleted, distorted, or generalized in communication, while in the NLP Milton Model, information is chunk upon the deletion, distortion, and generalization.
Let’s take some examples to understand the NLP Milton model.
Mind reading
Mind reading happens when we speak as we know the thoughts and feelings of other people beforehand without explaining how.
For Example
“You must be wondering.”
“You will just love it.”
Presuppositions
Things that have to be assumed to be true for the sentence to be understood.
For Example.
“Would you go into a trance right or in a little while?”.
“Once you take that 10th deep breath, you are already in a trance.”
Nominalizations
In nominalizations, verbs are turned into nouns.
It is an attempt to make the process a thing.
The key to identifying a nominalized word is that it has -tion as a suffix.
Here we talk about abstract concepts as if they were things.
For Example
“I am really pleased with your performance.”
“There is a solution to every problem.”
Truism
The truism is a generalization that can not be denied.
In most of the cases, these statements are related to sensation or time.
For Example.
You may need to take a break now or later.
Most people in business know it is difficult to increase sales, so they hire services like us.
There are more than 20 NLP Milton model language patterns. You can read it from my blog or refer to this book on Milton Erickson’s hypnotic language patterns and how to master them.
I believe learning NLP will help anyone to use NLP in sales. The best way would be taking up some courses and learning NLP.
NLP sales phrases
NLP sales phrases are also known as power words or hypnotic sales words that generate unconscious responses in customers.
Language is the means of communication, and it has the power to make you feel a certain way, or behave in certain ways.
So you can use these language patterns or NLP sales phrases in your sales process.
To make your customer feel positive, you can use these NLP sales phrases.
- Thrive
- Overcome
- Remarkable
- Progress
- Believe
- Change
- Refresh
- Healthy
- Refresh
- Overcome
To build trust and relationships with your customer.
- Guarantee
- Protected
- Backed
- Proven
- Endorsed
- No risk
- Certified
For creating urgency for your customers to make decisions.
- Limited time
- Now
- Exclusive
- Easy
- Simple
- Deadline
- Tested
- Running out
- Urgent
- Rare
For inspiring curiosity in your customers, you can use NLP sales phrases like
- Truth
- Illegal
- Finally
- Expose
- Secret
- Uncover
- Revealed
- Imagine
So these are some of the NLP sales phrases that prove how to use NLP in sales? You can use them in your sales scripts, sales copy, emails, newsletter, and product description.
There are many NLP sales phrases. You can study NLP Milton model language patterns for more details on sales phrases.
NLP Sales phrases PDF
If you want to download NLP sales phrase PDF for free, you can click on the link below. No email id needed.
Now let’s discuss if there is any NLP sales process, or to be specific, let’s understand the NLP 5 step Sales process that any sales professionals can use.
NLP 5 step Sales process
Here is the NLP s step sales process that shows how to use NLP in sales? And this process can be used by anyone.
Step 1 Build rapport
The first and foremost step is to establish or build rapport with your customers. You can use various NLP techniques for that.
You can use mirroring and mirroring to build rapport, and you can use NLP eye accessing cues to understand your customers better.
You can observe your customers’ breathing patterns, communication style, motivation, and language. It will give you a head start in a sales conversation that will be helpful in later stages.
Step 2 Ask Question
To understand your customers better, you need to understand their problems, issues, needs, and wants.
Best way to know that is by asking them questions. Believe me, and it is not as easy as it sounds.
You will better learn NLP language patterns like the meta and Milton models to understand your customers’ needs and issues.
I prefer using NLP meta model language patterns, as it uncovers customers’ communication patterns, the way they see the world and can also help handle objections.
Step 3 Find a need
You must understand what customers need, and you can use questions with a meta model as mentioned in step 2.
To dig deeper into customers’ needs, you can understand their buying strategies and motivation by observing their meta programs.
You can also anchor this state of need, and you can use spatial or auditory anchor at this point.
Step 4 Link their needs to your products and services
As we all know, nobody likes to be sold, and if you can match their needs with your product and services as a solution, they do not see it as sales but as a help.
You can fire the anchors set up in step 3, use language patterns, and specifically agreement frame to convince the customer that you are helping them solve a problem.
Step 5 Close
At last, take your order and close the meeting in a win-win situation.
Most of the time, customers want to feel they have made the right decision and make sure to close the meeting with that, subtly putting that their decision to choose is the right thing to do.
If you are still not getting orders, you can repeat the process from step 3, but ideally, end here and start afresh with rapport building next time.
So we come to the end of our post on how to use NLP in sales? I hope you have found all the details. You can sign up for this fantastic NLP sales and persuasion course that covers almost everything you need to know.
