Most people are surprised to learn that many types of hypnosis occur nearly everyday in ordinary life situations. Learning hypnotic language is therefore not a matter of learning a totally new subject, but is learning how to improve something you’ve been doing for a long time. Let’s look at some examples:
How Hypnotic Selling Builds Trust Quickly
Hypnotic trust: We have all met someone we have liked and trusted almost instantly—without any reason or justification. This is called hypnotic trust. It works because the other person does or says something that reminds you subconsciously of a person you have trusted or liked for many years. Thus you virtually have to like him or her. Top salespeople intuitively know how to trigger hypnotic trust.
Trust is a key element of all hypnosis because it facilitates hypnosis. Trust elicits a suggestible state of mind by minimizing resistance. We listen to people we trust. We tend to follow their suggestions. Trust gives people power. Trust is perhaps the most powerful communication shortcut in existence. That’s why politicians, psychologists, ministers, lawyers, managers, salespeople and parents are all interested in understanding how trust works.
Stop for a minute and picture one person who is able to persuade you. Do you have the picture? What gives that person his or her power? We will bet that you trust that person at a very deep level. If you didn’t trust that person, your defenses would be up and you’d be much more critical of his or her suggestions.
If you are an honest and reliable person, you can develop trust with almost anyone—given enough time! Think about your neighbors. You might not have liked one of them the first time you saw him. Now, after three years, you have learned he is basically honest and keeps his place looking neat and tidy. He cares about the neighborhood. He is fairly friendly. Now, three years later, you trust him.
In sales, time is limited. Few salespeople have three years to make the sale. The challenge is: How do I build trust as quickly and deeply as possible? Hypnotic techniques described in this book will show you how to build trust much more quickly than you ever dreamed imaginable. Of course, you still have to be honest and reliable, but these hypnotic techniques will greatly speed up the trust building process for you.
Using Common Senses to Increase Sales
Ideosensory trance is another form of hypnosis we experience daily. It is based on our innate abilities to create in our minds visual images, feelings, voices, sounds, and even tastes and smells. When did you engage in ideosensory activities today? When you vividly experienced something that was not going on in “real time.” Some examples: When you imagined what you might have for lunch or dinner, when you imagined what you might do at home tonight, or when you imagined a sales call, or mentally rehearsed what you might say to someone else in the office today. Did you see the expression on his face? Could you hear his words and feel yourself reacting? You were in an ideosensory trance.
Very persuasive individuals can orchestrate vivid images that influence both the perception and mood of the listener. Highly-skilled salespeople use “word magic” to bring their prospects and customers to other worlds of sights and sounds and feelings.
Let’s give you an example now of how you can use ideosensory trance in your sales work. We’ll use the example of selling cars. As a master automobile salesperson you can make your prospect see a vivid image of himself behind the wheel of a bright red Porsche. You can have him see his neighbors turning their heads to watch him drive down the street. You can have him see his wife smiling proudly as he pulls into the driveway. You can have him smell that new car smell and the smell of those new leather seats. You’ll have him feel the steering wheel in his hands and he’ll feel every little pebble and crack in the road as he races down a deserted country lane. This will all happen before your prospect even gets into the car!
Your prospect will hear the purr of the engine as it effortlessly accelerates up the steepest hill, and later he’ll hear the envious compliments of his friends at the office. As a highly-skilled sales professional, you can create an ideosensory trance that is so vivid and real, your prospect will likely turn into a customer.
One of our goals is to teach you the techniques of sales superstars. Our experience in sales training has taught us that the best way to learn these techniques is to practice them. Throughout this book, we will share examples and case histories with you showing how you can use every technique of hypnotic selling. As you read these examples, such as the previous example of ideosensory trance, look for a way you can practice the technique. By reading about the technique, by studying the example, and then practicing the technique, you will mentally own it. You will then be able to replicate the technique any time you need it.
To master multi-sensory selling, or as we call it, sense-sational selling, practice using multi-sensory words to describe the benefits of your product or service. What benefits will clients see when they own your product? What benefits will they hear (compliments, etc.)? What benefits will they feel? Are there any benefits they will smell or taste? Now, practice using these persuasive descriptions with your clients and prospects and see how much more fascinating they find your presentations!
You can also use ideosensory trance to trigger negative emotions that will encourage the decision to buy. Let’s say you are selling insurance to the co-owner of a multi-million dollar business. You can use ideosensory trance to have this co-owner realistically imagine what would happen to his business if his partner suddenly passed away. You can have him realistically see himself overwhelmed with work he doesn’t know how to do; you can have him see the business struggling; he can see that there is no money to hire a replacement; and no time to train a replacement. You can have him hear other people expressing their worries, doubts and fears about him and his ability to carry on without his partner. You will have him feel the anxiety and nervousness of not knowing whether or not his business will survive.
This negative hypnotic ideosensory message convinces him of his need for “key man” insurance to protect himself and the business. In fact, you are likely to sell two policies, one to each executive co-owner.
Many of the things we buy are purchased because we have a negative ideosensory image in our mind. We buy not to gain the positive, but to avoid the negative. We buy some things not to look beautiful, but to avoid looking unattractive. We join the health spa, not to look like a model or a muscle man, but to avoid looking flabby. Sometimes, we buy a car, not because we desperately want a new car, but to prevent people from asking us, “Why are you still driving that old car?” We are sold by the negative ideosensory image.
While these are technically called “negative” images, they can have a very positive and beneficial result for all concerned. Insurance sales superstars have known for many years that policies are sold because people want to avoid negative situations. The top producers in insurance, equipment maintenance, safety, waste disposal, and many other fields have known for years the secret of using negative ideosensory images to get positive results. Negative ideosensory images can work for sales professionals in virtually any sales specialization. Chances are, very few people in your field know how to use this technique—so it could give you an extra competitive advantage.
Controlling what Your Customer Will Forget
Amnesia is another hypnotic phenomenon quite common in everyday life and in sales. We are not talking about the extreme cases of amnesia in which a person forgets who he is, but rather such common forms as forgetting a friend’s name or forgetting one’s own phone number. When people say, “Gee, my mind just went blank,” they have temporarily gone into a hypnotic state, and have temporarily left the “real world.” When they come back they experience hypnotic amnesia and have no memory of where they were.
The sales super-stars we have studied have an uncanny ability to trigger this “forgetting” response in their prospects and customers, especially about the products of a competitor. Here is an example:
“The other companies in this business try to overload you with so many tiny details, it is impossible to remember much of anything about their products. However, it will be easy for you to remember the simple and clear benefits of our products.”
In this example, the sales professional triggered amnesia for the competitor’s product. Amnesia can also be triggered for a price, a name, or any other piece of data.
Who does amnesia work best with? Prospects and customers who are not detail-oriented. Detail-oriented people need facts and figures to feel comfortable about the decisions they make. Don’t erase any of the details they find so helpful. Instead, find out what they are most interested in, and show them how they can get more of that with your product or service.
Some clients will come to you and report they already have amnesia. They may say they have looked at another product, but they can’t remember much about it. Upon hearing this, some top salespeople will deepen the amnesia by saying, “That’s only natural. It is easy to forget all those confusing figures and claims. Here is what you really need to know . . .” They then persuasively describe the most important features and benefits of the product using ideosensory messages.
A word of warning: hypnotic amnesia is a powerful technique. You should never use it to get a client or prospect to forget any crucial piece of data. Prospects and customers deserve to have all the facts before they make a decision. Hypnotic amnesia should only be used to erase memories of trivial details.
You can trigger hypnotic amnesia by using words such as “forget,” “hard to remember,” “impossible to remember,” “not important to remember,” or “too boring to remember.” Adding extra emphasis to these words, stretching the words out, and saying them with some extra punch in your voice will give them additional impact. This is a combination of direct suggestion and intraverbal suggestion.
If another customer has ever told you that some fact or figure was “impossible to remember,” or “too boring to remember,” you can also quote that other customer to plant a suggestion for hypnotic amnesia. This is especially powerful if the other customer was a doctor, a lawyer, or another highly educated or high-credibility figure. People like to hear stories. Telling a customer stories about what other customers have said is a sophisticated way of giving that customer permission to do the same thing. Obviously, you should never tell a story about another customer that is not true.
What if you prefer to sell against the competition and your customer can’t remember anything about the competitor’s product? In that case, you may wish to use another technique of hypnotic selling: Hypernesia.
Controlling what Your Customer Will Remember
Hypernesia is really the flip-side of amnesia—it refers to the enhancement of memory and recall. Many memory enhancement techniques are based on linking together related sounds and images. Were you able to remember Mr. Hammer’s name because he was tough as nails to sell, or did you see a hammer every time you looked at him? You have undoubtedly already used many techniques of hypernesia on yourself to help remember important facts, dates, names and places.
The first rule of inducing hypernesia is to tell your clients and prospects what they will remember. This is especially effective if you combine the hypernesia with ideosensory hypnosis:
“You know, you may be lying in bed tonight and you will see yourself and some of your best friends sailing in this beautiful yacht.”
In the preceding example, you have told the prospect he will lie in bed and see himself in the yacht. If you hadn’t said this, when he went to bed tonight, it would probably have been like any other night. It is unlikely that he would have thought of your yacht. Now, having planted this hypernesia suggestion, he is much more likely to think of the yacht when his head hits the pillow. Let’s look at another example:
“You won’t be able to forget this hot tub. You may be driving along today in traffic and all day you might visualize sitting in the hot tub with your wife giving you a wonderful massage. And, you will imagine looking up at the twinkling stars and the warm water swirling around, so comfortable and relaxing.”
Astute readers will note that this example combines hypernesia with the previously described power of ideosensory trance. If you skillfully combine these two hypnotic techniques, your prospect won’t be able to get the image of your product out of his mind. This technique increases the likelihood that he will form pleasant associations when he thinks of you and your product. And, it also increases the likelihood that he will buy from you.
You can also use hypernesia to sell against the competition. If the competition’s product is more expensive, your competitor might have told the prospect it “only costs $1 extra per day.” That doesn’t sound like very much.
You can counter that sales strategy by saying, “I don’t think you will ever be able to forget that the other product costs $365 extra over the course of a year. $365. That’s a lot of money. That $365 number will stay in your mind.”
You can create hypernesia, or a lasting memory, of any competitive difference you want a customer to focus on. It may be price. It may be service, technical features, power, your superior warranty, or extra benefits you offer.
You can induce hypernesia by using words such as, “you won’t be able to forget,” “it is unforgettable,” “you won’t be able to get this out of your mind,” “you will think of this all day,” “you will think of this all week,” “you will remember this for the rest of your life,” or “this will leave a positive memory with you forever.” You can also plant the suggestion that someone else will find this unforgettable: “your wife will always remember this,” or “your children will always be grateful for this,” or “your husband will remember this for the rest of his life.” You can add another level of sophistication by telling a mesmerizing story about a customer who bought your product or service several years ago, whose spouse still remembers it. This is called “value-added selling” and it paints a very persuasive picture of a lasting benefit.
Negative hypernesia is a technique used by a number of top salespeople. Using this technique, you tell a story about someone who bought a competitor’s product:
“He bought an XYZ brand of computer, some clone computers for his company. He can’t even remember the name now, but he will never be able to forget what happened. The computers were almost impossible to service and they couldn’t be upgraded. The hard disks had several head crashes and he lost almost a year’s worth of financial data. He will remember that nightmare forever.”
Notice that the sales professional did not mention the name of the competitor’s computer. This is a practice we strongly endorse. We have found that it is rarely necessary to mention a competitor by name. You can sell against them by mentioning and comparing features and benefits. You come across as much more elegant and sophisticated by not mentioning competitors by name. Under no case should you speak in a direct, derogatory manner about a competitor. This only makes you look bad, and there is no need to resort to such behavior. Hypnotic selling techniques are so powerful and so varied that you can accomplish all you wish to accomplish through ethical, friendly methods.
While negative hypernesia has the word “negative” in its name, its effects are quite positive. You are telling people a mesmerizing story about some problems some other customer encountered that the other customer will “never be able to forget.” You thus, in a safe and friendly manner, warn the customer about a problem—and you show him how he can avoid it.
Motivating Customers by Putting Them In Positive Emotional States
Revivication, the process of mentally reliving earlier experiences, is actually more common than most people realize. It is used by top salespeople, politicians and religious leaders to get listeners to relive previous experiences. The purpose is to tap into all of the positive emotions associated with those experiences.
By revivifying a personal experience, the listener is placed in a more emotional and suggestible state. He or she goes into the “enjoyment mode” of being. This is similar to the change of emotional state we experience upon entering a movie theater. Have you ever watched people as they enter a movie theater? Watch their expressions. You can see that some of them begin to get a glazed look in their eyes. They begin to relax. Their breathing slows down and deepens. They relive associations and memories they have had in other movie theaters. They begin entering an altered state of consciousness.
Hypnotic revivication has many uses in sales. You can use it to get a person to immediately experience any mood, emotion or affective state. You can take another person back to an almost childlike state of excitement, wonder and joy:
Having customers relive previous wonderful experiences is very powerful and effective for triggering buying behavior today. A person experiencing these anchored-in positive emotions finds it very difficult to be critical. In reliving these revivified experiences, they enter a strong positive altered state of awareness.
Strategically and selectively talking about “the good old days,” combined with sophisticated intraverbal skills (how you say what you say), is more than just chit-chat. It is one of the most powerful sales techniques in existence. By switching from positive past experiences to what your product offers today, back to positive previous experiences then back to your product today, again and again, you effectively transfer the positive emotions of the past to your current product or service.
In a sense, hypnotic revivication is a psychological form of Pavlovian conditioning. You’ll remember that Pavlov presented meat to his laboratory dogs as he rang a bell. After just a couple of days, the dogs began to associate the ringing of the bell with the food. Pavlov found that as soon as he rang the bell, the dogs began to salivate. In the same way, hypnotic revivication can psychologically link your product or service to very positive experiences or emotions your customer has had in the past. Hypnotic revivication gives you the ability to call up any emotion or state of excitement your customer has previously experienced.
Motivating Customers by Putting Them In Negative Emotional States
THE REVIVICATION CAN BE FOR POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE EMOTIONAL STATES. Imagine you are selling expensive home security systems. You can use negative revivication to remind someone of the peace of mind he had years ago when there was little crime or burglary:
“Do you remember what it was like then, when you could leave your door unlocked all day? Do you remember when you could leave a key under the mat? Do you remember when you could sleep with the window open on a hot summer night with absolutely no fear?”
While he is reliving that wonderful feeling of security, you can let him know that he can feel that way again, now, through buying one of your high-quality security systems. Set up that Pavlovian link between how he felt in the past, and how he can feel today because of your product. Your product, your security system, is the Pavlovian bell that will get him to salivate. He can again sleep like a baby at night with no worries of burglary or crime.
“Negative” revivication can lead to very positive outcomes. One of the masters in its use is Pat Knowles, a sales superstar and consultant living in Kansas City, Missouri. For the past fifteen years, Pat has specialized in putting together and selling million-dollar real estate, insurance, oil and gas, and tax shelter programs. Pat frequently hears the objection, “I want to think about it,” when selling big ticket items to his wealthy clientele. A master of sales hypnosis, Pat uses revivication to remind prospects of the price they have paid in the past for procrastinating on a decision. Pat asks:
What Pat Knowles has done here is to use negative revivication to have his prospect relive a past loss. Using this powerful technique, he brings all the emotions associated with that loss to the present, to motivate the prospect to buy now, avoiding endless stalls and delays. Pat’s actual presentation is somewhat longer than the example above and it is very effective. It has enabled Pat to sell million-dollar plus investments to many wealthy decision-makers.
Hypnotic revivication works in romance as well as in sales. The wide range of uses of this technique is a testament to its effectiveness. People who are very successful in the dating game intuitively know how to use hypnotic revivication. Invariably, they will ask their date a question such as, “Tell me about the best relationship you ever had. What did you like most about that person?”
Their date will then relive the most wonderful relationship he or she has ever had. In the process, they will state exactly what their current date has to do to ring all of their bells. It is truly amazing how honest and revealing most people are if you know the right questions to ask.
One of our clients was a very lonely young salesman. He was working extremely long hours and found it difficult to meet young women. When he did have dates, they didn’t go well, and seldom led to a second date. Although he was earning over $200,000 a year, he felt his life was meaningless and empty without someone to share it with. At one point, his loneliness became so severe, he was contemplating suicide. When he learned the technique of hypnotic revivication, he decided to ask each woman he dated about the best relationship she had ever had.
The result was astonishing. He reported back to us that his dates were telling him exactly what he had to do to help them relive the greatest bliss they had ever experienced. One woman told him about a hot-air ballooning trip, and picnic with champagne she had with her ex-fiance. Our salesman-client duplicated that and he and his date had an exquisite time. Another date told him that her favorite musician was Jackson Browne. Our client memorized Jackson Browne songs and softly whispered the lyrics to this lady over dinner one night at a very expensive French restaurant. Talk about inducing a deep trance! She had spent dozens of hours listening to these songs in her bedroom and they triggered many deep feelings in her. She and this salesman are now engaged to be married. He traces his skill and self-confidence in building this wonderful relationship to his new understanding of hypnotic revivication. As he says, “If you know what’s worked in the past, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what will work today.”
Increasing Sales Today by Hypnotically Placing Your Customer In the Future
Age Progression is the hypnotic technique which allows a person to feel as if he or she is living in the future. In the clinical hypnosis setting and in the sales setting, this technique can be used to assist a person in “trying out” something new. The listener may want to mentally “try out” a new behavior or a new purchase. Hypnotic age progression makes this possible.
Let’s look first at an example from clinical hypnosis, and then an example from sales hypnosis. Some people go to hypnotists for help in losing weight. They think they will be totally happy if they lose twenty or thirty pounds. The hypnotist knows that the new slim figure can also bring on problems. He or she uses hypnotic age progression to warn and educate the client in advance about what might happen. Without this education, the client might lose the weight, experience an unexpected problem with the new slim figure, and decide subconsciously to regain the weight. Thus, the whole exercise will have no lasting benefit.
In hypnotic age progression, the hypnotist takes the client into the future. He or she induces relaxation and hypnotic imagery and takes the client 6 months into the future, when she will be 30 pounds lighter. Then, under hypnosis, the following may take place:
By thus skillfully using age progression, the hypnotist can skillfully educate the client about what his or her life will be like once the desired changes have taken place. The client will learn that his or her life will not necessarily be a bed of roses. He or she will be able to anticipate problems and solve them, while in hypnosis. This will insure that when the changes take place in real life, they will be lasting changes. That’s because there won’t be any unanticipated negative side effects.
Using age progression, a person can experience his own reactions and the reactions of others to new behaviors or a new purchase. Let’s look at an example of how this works in sales.
Kenny Clyde was a very successful annuity sales professional for United Resources, a major division of the huge financial services firm Integrated Resources. Kenny sold many tax-sheltered annuities to school teachers. In his sales calls, he would use age progression to take a couple into the future by saying:
Kenny then goes on to describe how this couple can stash away over 15% of their income, tax-free, into a tax-sheltered annuity. While keeping them in the future in their wonderful age progression, he describes how this money will build up and grow, completely tax-free. He shows them how their deepest dreams and hopes will be realized. The only way they can resist Kenny’s proposal for a tax-deferred annuity is to resist their own dreams and hopes. For most people, it is nearly impossible to resist one’s own dreams and hopes.
It is no accident that Kenny was so successful in annuity sales. It is also no accident that he was rapidly promoted to Special Assistant to the President and that today he has been promoted to Vice President of Sales for United Resources. Kenny is now dedicated to teaching his intuitive techniques, and those of other sales superstars, to the 450-strong sales force of his company. The success he is enjoying is reflected in the fact that everyday United Resources is taking away business and market share from its competitors. Kenny attributes much of his success and that of his annuity sales force to their ability to skillfully use age progression to sell this exciting financial product.
Using Hypnotic Methods to Grab and Refocus Customer Attention
Hypnotic Dissociation refers to the ability to separate oneself from the immediate environment—or even one’s own body. It happens to all of us! Think of a time you were in a meeting but you weren’t hearing anything that was being said. You were thinking about a subject far removed from the discussion at hand. What happened when someone asked you a question? You had no idea of what had been said. You probably needed to have the question repeated. It is as if you weren’t even at the meeting at all—and, in a real sense, you weren’t. You were hypnotically dissociated. Someone might have asked you, “Where were you?”
The answer is: You were in The State of Hypnotic Dissociation.
Hypnotic Dissociation is a very useful phenomenon in psychology, in medicine and in business. In psychotherapy, for example, a client may come in feeling devastated by a divorce. The psychologist can hypnotize the patient and dissociate him or her from the pain of the divorce. In medicine, patients can be dissociated from their physical bodies to remove the perception of pain. Patients who are allergic to anesthesia can have tonsillectomies, Caesarean sections and even amputations performed using only hypnosis as an anesthesia. In dentistry, root canals, fillings and other procedures are routinely performed by using hypnosis to dissociate the patient from sensations of pain.
Knowing how to “dis-associate” your clients from the immediate environment can be very useful in sales. By capturing and then selectively re-focusing their attention, you can get prospects to ignore or not hear honking horns, other people talking, phones ringing, critical statements, etc.
To trigger dissociation, you must first start with honesty. Tell your clients that they will hear horns or phones or people talking. Then, add to this truthful statement that soon these sounds will fade into the background and almost disappear. Say:
“As the horns and other noises fade into the background, you will be able to fully concentrate on what I am saying to you and you will be able to effortlessly remember the many ways our product will benefit you.”
Astute readers will note that we also used hypernesia in this example (“you will be able to effortlessly remember . . .”).
Our research indicates that less successful salespeople tend to try to ignore distractions, whereas, the sales champions actually call attention to them. They then hypnotically dissociate the customer from these distractions! So-called distractions are nothing to fear if you know how to use dissociation. An example will make this more clear.
Some sections of Palos Verdes Estates, California, are full of homes as expensive as those in Beverly Hills. One million-dollar plus home was situated on a busy street and none of the agents in Palos Verdes could get a buyer to place an offer on it. Palos Verdes Estates, located on beautiful green hills along the Pacific Ocean southwest of Los Angeles, is favored by people seeking a quiet, serene natural environment. They have little tolerance for traffic. To sell this beautiful ocean-view home, realtors held open house only during low traffic hours on the weekends in an attempt to hide or get around the problem of traffic noise. Nevertheless, every potential buyer seemed very concerned about how noisy the street traffic might be during the week.
The agent who finally sold the home took the bull by the horns and decided to show the home only during rush hours on weekdays: from 7:30 to 9:00 a.m. and from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. He directly confronted the fears of potential buyers and showed them how they would naturally “dissociate” from the slight street noise and, after a while, not even hear it.
When buyers were in this Palos Verdes home, the agent would ask, “Do you ever listen to the radio when you are home?” If they answered in the affirmative, he would ask what their favorite radio station was. He would then tune a radio in one of the bedrooms into this favorite station.
He asked if they ever watched television. If they answered in the affirmative, he turned on the television in the den. He also lit a fire in the fireplace in the living room. Prospects were surprised that just a low level of background music, the television or the crackling wood burning in the fireplace totally drowned out and dissociated the sound of cars going by. This clever real estate agent quickly sold the home and pocketed a commission of over $30,000 because he knew how to dissociate people from a distraction.
Hypnotic Selling Techniques that Make Time Fly
Time Distortion is another important hypnotic technique that most people experience on a day-to-day basis. Think how long two minutes lasts when you are waiting for an elevator, or placed on “hold,” or when you are waiting for your bill when you want to leave a restaurant. Now, think how long two minutes lasts during your favorite television show, or while reading a good book, or while working on a challenging work project. We clearly have the ability to experience the same “unit” of time as rushing or dragging—depending upon our expectations and our emotional state. Hypnosis can profoundly affect our experience of time, and you can use hypnosis to change the way your prospect or customer experiences time.
The sales superstar sometimes uses time distortion to make hour-long presentations seem brief. They can also use time distortion to slow down a short presentation so that they can pack a tremendous amount of information into just a few minutes—without rushing.
The key to using time distortion is to start with a self-confident suggestion as to how your customer will experience time. In your next sales call, say:
“This next hour is going to be one of the most exciting and quick-paced you have experienced recently. I guarantee you will be fascinated by the benefits you will learn about, and that the time will fly by. Let’s get started!”
By doing this, you will be starting your presentation with an eager and expectant prospect. People get what they think they will get. Of course the time will fly.
A more subtle and even more powerful use of time distortion involves getting the client to tell you about a very pleasant experience he or she had. This could be a fascinating movie recently seen, or a favorite book just read, or a brief vacation. As the person tells you about this experience, he or she will relive it. They will relive the emotions connected with it, and the sense that time flew by.
While the other person is finishing up their story, transition over to a discussion of your product or service. Your prospect will bring along his or her most recent emotional state. In this case, you will be bringing along the sense and feeling that time is flying, along with all of the other pleasant emotions.
To plant additional suggestions that time is moving quickly, near the end of your presentation, glance at your watch and say, “I can’t believe 45 minutes has gone by!” You will thus plant this same mindset into your customer. After saying this, look at your customer—and don’t be surprised if he or she nods in agreement.
What if you are only given a few minutes to make your presentation? Don’t panic. You can use time distortion to make time slow down. You can accomplish just about everything you want to accomplish without rushing the prospect, and without seeming nervous or pressured. Direct suggestions are sometimes the most effective in slowing down time. Look directly at your client, smile slightly and in a calm self-assured voice, say:
“Relax. We can make time slow down. In ten minutes, I will present all the highlights of this great new product to you.”
Then, with a self-confident voice, begin your presentation. Skip the small talk. Skip talking about the features. Concentrate on the benefits to the prospect. Add a couple of strong endorsements from happy customers. That’s about all your prospect needs to hear. Your prospect will sense your professionalism and inner strength.
The ten-minute presentation can be very rich and satisfying. At the end of the ten-minutes, ask, “We have invested ten minutes in your learning about this new product. Are there any questions I can answer for you?”
If you have done a great job, there will be a strong level of interest and some good questions. The prospect may even ask you to go on, to tell him or her more!
The reason many prospects say, “I don’t have any time,” is that they don’t know you and don’t trust you. Let’s face it: if their brother was presenting the same product, he would be given much more time because of the pre-existing level of trust. By using hypnotic trust-building techniques presented in this book, you will be able to quickly build a deeper level of trust than you ever dreamed possible. Once you have this level of trust, the prospect will lose his or her suspiciousness and will permit you—or ask you—to go into more detail.
Posthypnotic Suggestions that Chip Away at Customer Resistance
Posthypnotic Responses are the actions carried out, as well as thoughts and feelings that are experienced, after the hypnotic interaction has concluded. We have all experienced posthypnotic suggestion. For example, most salespeople have attended “pep rallies” or “positive thinking” seminars. Whether or not you feel motivated after the talk will depend on the speaker’s skill in using posthypnotic suggestions. The reason that these pep rallies are not more effective is that most of the speakers aren’t skilled in using posthypnotic suggestions. You go home and don’t use the techniques taught because the speaker did not know how to plant them deeply in your subconscious mind.
Sales managers are frequently less effective than they could be because they don’t know how to use posthypnotic suggestion. Some sales managers naively think that simply lecturing someone or telling someone to do something will produce lasting behavior change. We wish it were this simple! Life and sales management would be much simpler. While a simple lecture will sometimes lead to behavior change, the change is usually of very short duration. You tend to get compliance rather than long-term cooperation. Posthypnotic suggestion can give you an extra edge by planting the suggested behaviors or thoughts much deeper in the mind, below the level of superficial thinking and psychological defenses.
We recently worked with the vice president of sales for one of the largest and best-known computer firms in America. We did a study on how people were using their sales time and found that nearly twelve hours per week were being spent reading mail and magazines. When these findings were disseminated, many sales managers tried to change behavior by lecturing to their salespeople that they should not waste so much time reading computer magazines. In general, the lectures had little lasting effect. Several months later, salespeople were still spending over ten good selling hours a week reading magazines.
We taught several managers how to use posthypnotic suggestions to change this behavior. We combined the posthypnotic suggestions with powerful metaphors and stories. Some of the stories were about sales professionals who had thrown all of their magazines and newsletters in the trash and who suddenly found they had ten extra hours of selling time each week. Other stories dealt with salespeople who had their secretaries do their magazine reading for them—and then had the secretaries type a brief summary of the 3 best articles each week. The salespeople found the stories, which were combined with many posthypnotic suggestions, to be much more fascinating than the previous lectures.
In some of the stories, a salesman in the story could “almost hear” a big trash can calling out, “Feed me, feed me, feed me with magazines.” Every time they saw the big trash can, they “felt compelled” to fill the trash can with magazines and newspapers, “without knowing why.” There were no lectures and no haranguing—just a “feeling” this had to be done. We re-wired the feelings and emotions with posthypnotic suggestion.
We used the image of a “big trash can” to trigger the posthypnotic behavior. Several of the sales managers we worked with then went out and bought bigger trash cans for their offices. One sales manager even went out and bought large oak trash cans! He later reported back to us it was the best gift he ever gave his people.
The salespeople saw the big trash cans around the office and almost automatically began filling them with magazines and newspapers. The sales managers did a follow-up deepening induction of the posthypnotic suggestion by saying something like, “That’s good. You’re feeding the trash can. You are making it happy.” It was a light-hearted joke around the office, but it had a very serious and very beneficial side-effect. The salespeople were getting rid of a major distraction in their life: the magazines and newspapers that had been absorbing so many of their sales hours.
Within a few weeks of the planting of this posthypnotic suggestion and the installation of the large trash cans which triggered the posthypnotic behavior, sales increased. The product was the same. The price was the same. The salespeople had not received any additional training! The only thing that had changed was that the salespeople now had 8 to 10 extra hours a week to sell because the distraction of the magazines and newspapers had been nearly eliminated. The posthypnotic suggestion changed behaviors that could not be changed by lectures or threats.
Posthypnotic responses are sometimes called “waking hypnosis” because the hypnotic suggestion can be planted and acted on without eye closure or any kind of observable hypnotic trance. For example, a friend might describe to you a great Mexican dinner he had recently. He might trigger ideosensory activity with his complete descriptions of the delicious plate of tacos and enchiladas he had, and the crisp green salad that preceded the entree. You can taste the salt on the Margarita glass and feel the coolness of the icy drink. Minutes later, you seem to have forgotten most of the discussion. Then, hours later, your spouse asks, “Are you hungry?” Without consciously knowing why, you have developed a craving for a Mexican feast. The suggestion was planted earlier in the day and worked or acted itself out posthypnotically.
Posthypnotic responses are especially useful in cross-over selling. In cross-over selling, you get a person to buy several products or services, using each one purchased as an introduction (a “cross-over”) to the next. Banks and savings and loans we have worked with are very interested in cross-over selling because they have found they cannot make money by selling you only one product or service. They must get your checking account and/or your credit card and/or your car loan and/or some other sale to make a profit. Their goal is to get most, if not all, of your banking business. We have found that posthypnotic suggestions can greatly increase the effectiveness of tellers, loan officers and new accounts representatives in cross-over selling financial products and services.
Here is an example of a posthypnotic suggestion that has helped hundreds of our trainees excel in cross-over selling additional financial products and services at banks and savings and loans:
“Mrs. Jordan, you’ve been able to buy a beautiful home with the mortgage we have provided you. Now, as you run your errands later today, you may be able to think of some other ways our other financial services, such as checking and savings accounts, credit cards, and certificates of deposit, can help you. And, as you think of other ways we can help you, I want you to pick up the phone and call me. OK?”
What makes this posthypnotic suggestion especially effective is that it is linked with what the customer will be doing later in the day, in this case, running errands. If you know of some activity that your customer or prospect will definitely be engaging in later in the day, link your posthypnotic suggestion to that activity. Then, while he or she is engaged in that activity, the subconscious mind will bring up the subject that you have previously linked to the activity.
Also, the above example is effective because it links thinking of buying additional products with calling the salesperson. Highly-successful salespeople we have studied and worked with don’t just get their customers to think about their products, they get the customers to take actions that lead to sales. When you plant the suggestion that someone think of your products or services, also link it to calling you on the phone.
You want to deepen the posthypnotic suggestion by asking a question at the end. Look your client in the eyes, smile slightly and say:
“When you think of another way we can help you, do you promise me you’ll call?”
The word “promise” is especially powerful in this context. It almost guarantees that the posthypnotic suggestion will be acted on. After all, when most people “promise,” their good word and reputation is on the line. Most people don’t “promise” lightly. The “promise technique” is surprisingly simple and effective, yet it is known and used by very few salespeople. You can now add it to your professional tool set.
Never misuse or overuse posthypnotic suggestion. It should, of course, only be used to get customers to think about and act on buying products and services they truly need.
POSTHYPNOTIC SUGGESTIONS CAN BE MADE EVEN MORE POWERFUL BY LINKING THEM TO BENEFITS YOUR CUSTOMERS HAVE ALREADY EXPERIENCED. In the above example, Mrs. Jordan has been able to buy a beautiful home with one of your mortgage loans. This memory is revivified and is linked to the posthypnotic suggestion that she can think of some other ways your products and services can help her, and that she then give you a call. Since you linked the suggestion to her earlier pleasant experience, she is much more likely to follow up on the suggestion. To make it even more powerful, before using a posthypnotic suggestion, first revivify a strong benefit you have already provided to your customer. Remind them of what you have done for them, or how you have helped them in the past, then place the posthypnotic suggestion.
The “Unfair Advantage” of Sales Hypnosis
In some of our seminars and workshops, participants have said they feel that sales hypnosis gives them an “unfair advantage.” Does it?
Hypnosis is a natural state of deeply focused attention, frequently combined with relaxation and vivid imagery. As you learned earlier in this chapter, most people go in and out of hypnotic states, (such as hypnotic trust, revivication, ideosensory trance, age progression, etc.) everyday.
Since people go in and out of hypnotic states everyday, it is not necessary to induce hypnosis in anyone. Sales hypnosis is often simply a matter of using the customer’s own self-induced states of hypnosis to guide his attention and actions. Sales hypnosis will enable you to HOLD the customer’s attention, FOCUS the customer’s attention, and to create positive and LASTING IMPRESSIONS in the customer’s mind. It also enables you to greatly INCREASE SUGGESTIBILITY so that prospects will be much more likely to buy from you.
The hypnotic selling techniques you have learned in this chapter can be used individually or combined with one another for even greater persuasive impact. Top salespeople use posthypnotic suggestion, amnesia, hypnotic trust, ideosensory trance and hypernesia all in one sales presentation. And, they do so in a natural, conversational manner. Since the techniques are “invisible” to the untrained ear, the listener does not consciously recognize them.
All of these hypnotic techniques are natural and comfortable methods of communication. They are not tricky sales techniques. Every reader of this book has used these techniques at some point in his or her life. Previously, you didn’t know you were using them—and you didn’t know how to use them systematically. We hope to give you the power to change that. What this book offers is a proven means of increasing your powers of sales persuasion. By increasing your knowledge of hypnotic selling techniques, you will become more systematically persuasive and more successful.
Does sales hypnosis give you an unfair advantage? Yes, it does give you a real advantage, but it is not unfair. In our professional opinion, sales hypnosis is ethical and necessary. It is being used everyday by top salespeople, politicians, religious leaders, executives and other successful communicators. Simply ignoring it will not make it go away.
Ken Clyde, the Vice President of Sales for United Resources, says that, “Your goal in sales should be to create a win-win situation: to solve the customer’s problems by offering him or her a good product at a good price, and to earn a good commission.” Assuming you are offering a quality product or service at a good price, sales hypnosis will help you close more sales and earn better commissions. It will not help you sell products people neither need nor want. Remember: hypnosis will not get people to do things they do not want to do.
Would the world be a better place without sales hypnosis? No. Prospects would find non-hypnotic presentations boring and unfocused. They would not be as emotionally involved in what was being sold. Prospects would have less interest in buying products and services that they really need. Salespeople and marketers would be frustrated. The economy would slow down with fewer sales being made. No one would win.
Does the system presented in this book give you an “unfair advantage?” Yes. You’ll have an unfair advantage over your competition—not over your customer. You and your customers will both win.
Information is power. You are holding sales power in your hands. Use it wisely.