NLP Sales | NLP Techniques And Sales Introduction

NLP Sales. NLP is a great amplifier for sales skills.

This section explores some of the ways to improve revenue and profit. While it’s aimed at coaches selling both to individuals and companies, the approaches apply to anyone selling a service.

I’ve taken some of the very best sales approaches currently available as a starting point and then show how you can use NLP to make them more effective.

See our unique 1:1 NLP Sales course and our Richard Bandler certified NLP Business Practitioner course

My sales experience.

One of my first roles was as a retail buyer at B&Q with a £10m budget. Through thousands of sales calls and sales meetings, I learnt a lot about sales from a buying perspective. Later, as a business development, marketing and strategy manager in a £billion division at BT, I worked across different sales channels, developing programmes to increase revenue and margin. And now, as an executive coach and mentor, I work with top sales people to help them increase their revenues.

I understand well how sales and buying work.

Introduction to the NLP Sales section.

NLP is particularly good for:

amplifying your skills (particularly related to attitude),
overcoming blocks, and
modelling great (and less great) performance to transfer what’s learnt.

This is not meant to be a comprehensive guide, but it does give you some key pointers. I recommend the following sales books to complement this section.

How to improve your sales, revenue and profit

We’ve identified 5 key areas to improve your sales:

Develop/refine your customer proposition

This includes being able to articulate what you offer, your ideal customers and their characteristics, how they benefit, how you reach them, how you contact them and how you’re better than your competition

Answer the questions we explored in the Going Solo section: Customer Proposition. You may also want to extend this by answering our questions on Value statements.

Your attitude

This includes your beliefs and state throughout the sales process. NLP has a lot to offer in this area

Read our post on: Sales Attitude

Your sales strategy and process

This might include: Prospecting, qualifying potential clients, establishing value, handling objections, moving the sale forward (including closing), helping clients implement and achieve value, testimonials, case studies and referrals.

Your sales skills (particularly in implementing your sales strategy and process)

This might include state management, building inner resilience and persistence, mental rehearsal, framing, prospecting, developing your network, establishing trust, establishing value, presenting, negotiating, handling objections, closing. NLP has a lot to offer in this area

Your activity

Sales is a contact sport. What are your key activities each day? What do you establish as essential habits? How do you review how you’re doing? How do you improve what you do? NLP has a lot to offer in this area

NLP modelling can help in all 5 areas. NLP techniques can help in the highlighted areas.

NLP Sales section index – Some more

Assuming you’ve worked out your basic proposition and have an ideal customer list, you need to be clear about your customers’ buying cycle, the problems your service solves, and the value it can bring. You can continually refine these. See sub-sections 2 & 3.

You then have to make contact with the appropriate customer decision makers and influencers. We outline a good telephone approach and how to handle objections in sub-sections 4, 5 & 6.

You then want to drive/nudge the sale forward towards a successful close. This involves helping your customer through their buying process. See sub-sections 7 & 8.

Value, proposals, and negotiation are also important. See sub-section 9.

Successful implementation and helping your customers identify the value they’ve received will lead to case studies, referrals and testimonials and additional business. See sub-section 10.

Thoughts on the impact of ‘New Media’ and how to use it. See sub-section 11.

And finally how NLP helps. See sub-section 12.

(Three really useful questions; 1) What is really important? 2) What is our focus? 3) How do I learn about the things that impact our ability to achieve / execute. Thanks to Dave Brock.)

Please note we appreciate there are many successful approaches to tackling points 1-12. We’ve added what works for us as a starting point. Please feel free to develop them so that they work for you.

Read on to: The customers’ buying cycle

See our unique 1:1 NLP Sales course and our Richard Bandler certified NLP Business Practitioner course