Unlimited Selling Power: How to Master Hypnotic Skills - Couverture souple

Moine, Donald; Lloyd, Kenneth

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0136891268 ISBN 13 : 9780136891260

Editeur : Penguin Publishing Group, 1990

Synopsis

Provides salespeople with information on hypnotic techniques and how to use them in sales presentations and script books to win the customer's trust and make sales

A propos du livre

Extrait :

1
Unveiling The Best-Kept Secret Of Sales Superstars

It is an indisputable fact that top salespeople use forms of indirect or conversational hypnosis to command attention, build trust, garner respect and confidence, to create unforgettable impressions and to close sales. No one can argue with this fact.

University researchers have studied forms of conversational hypnosis for years. Studies of sales superstars have conclusively shown that they extensively use this powerful form of human communication.

Linguists are professionals who specialize in the study of how human beings use language. If anyone understands how the spoken word affects perception and thinking, it is linguists. Their research has shown that top salespeople and top negotiators and skilled attorneys all use similar forms of indirect hypnosis.

With all of the years of research that has been done, with all of the technical reports that have been published, with all of the indisputable proof we have that highly persuasive people do use conversational hypnosis, why is this finding so little understood and so shocking to the average person? Why have these techniques been kept secret?

The notion of using hypnosis as part of the sales process brings to mind images of unwary customers being tricked into buying products that they don’t need and can’t afford. It brings to mind the image of a salesman slowly waving a gold Cross pen in front of the prospect, back and forth, back and forth, until the prospect’s eyes glass over, and his hand slowly reaches out for the pen and signs the order.

The above scenario is exactly what this book is not about. And, it is exactly what sales hypnosis is not about.

Keys that Unlock the Secret of Hypnotic Selling

Scientific studies of sales superstars have been conducted on elite salespeople who earn in excess of $100,000 per year in personal income. In our own studies, which were inaugurated in 1978, we have interviewed, traveled with, worked with and tape-recorded a wide variety of salespeople—ranging from those who are flat broke to those who earn over $800,000 a year in personal income. Many of these sales champions cannot explain how they do what they do.

THUS, ONE OF THE REASONS THAT SALES HYPNOSIS HAS NOT BEEN TAUGHT PREVIOUSLY IS THAT THE PEOPLE WHO PRACTICED IT COULD NOT THEMSELVES EXPLAIN HOW IT OPERATED. They could do sales hypnosis, but they didn’t have the tools to break it down and teach it to others. Apparently, asking masters in the art of sales hypnosis to also be great teachers was akin to asking great athletes to also be great coaches. A great idea, but it is seldom realized.

The job was left to scientific researchers to discover the structure of sales hypnosis. The researchers found that highly successful salespeople use communication techniques which are nearly identical in structure to the communication techniques used by hypnotists.

The purpose of this book is to explain, for the first time, how sales superstars achieve results that are unattainable by average salespeople. In learning about sales hypnosis, you will discover that this powerful form of communication is ethical and, in fact, humanistic. You will learn many hypnotic sales techniques which will allow you to help an even greater number of people by being an even more effective sales professional.

Let’s now remove the veil of secrecy that has previously surrounded conversational hypnosis. Let’s learn how almost everyone can benefit from using these unique forms of human communication.

Getting Beyond Popular Conceptions and Misconceptions about Hypnosis

The proper place to start is to explain exactly what hypnosis is and what it isn’t. As one of the most misunderstood of all human communication processes, hypnosis has been an easy target for sensationalism in movies and on television. Hypnosis has the power to both fascinate and frighten. There are still many well-educated people who erroneously believe that hypnosis is some form of “sleep.” While some people use hypnosis as an entertainment medium, the most widespread use of hypnosis today is in psychotherapy and counseling. Look under the “H” listings in your local telephone advertising directory to verify that almost every city and town in America now has hypnotists working in private practice. They use hypnosis in everything from helping people lose weight, helping them stop smoking, for stress reduction, and in marriage counseling and psychotherapy. Hypnosis is also used by many dentists for pain control. Someone who is allergic to anesthesia can be hypnotized prior to dental work to block all perceptions of pain.

The most recently discovered area for the application of hypnosis is business, management and sales. Of these, the specialization experiencing the greatest growth is sales hypnosis. This is the first book about the exciting and rapidly growing field of sales hypnosis.

The experts still disagree about the one “perfect” definition of hypnosis. However, there is little disagreement about its key components. Many of the key components of hypnotic language, you might be surprised to learn, occur naturally in everyday life.

The best way to understand hypnosis is to look at it as a state of greatly increased suggestibility. That is, the hypnotized person is far more susceptible to influence by messages and images. Have you been looking for methods to increase your ability to influence others? If so, you will find that hypnosis has many of the techniques you’ve been seeking.

Recognizing Hypnosis as a Part of Everyday Life

There are different levels of hypnosis which you can observe everyday in your friends and business associates. In light hypnosis, your body may feel relaxed and you might be aware of “day-dreaming.” Anyone who is capable of concentrating for a few minutes can easily enter this state. Light hypnosis is a wonderful altered state of awareness for programming your mind so that you can achieve higher levels of success and have more focused energy.

People who are in a medium-level hypnotic state are not distracted by outside disturbances, and may also have a semi-glazed or unfocused look in their eyes. They may be reading a book or pushing a grocery cart and not even respond to a loud noise a few feet away. Medium-level hypnotic states can also be accompanied by very deep levels of relaxation, or a complete lack of awareness of the body.

In the deepest levels of hypnosis, you may not even be able to remember what has happened during hypnosis. You may have what is known as “hypnotic amnesia.” In the deepest levels of hypnosis, the powers of the human imagination are greatly increased. At this level of hypnosis, if a person is given an onion and if that person is told it is a delicious apple, he will eat it as if it were an apple. Root canals, amputations and other operations have been performed on people using only deep hypnosis as the anesthesia. Physical strength can also be significantly increased. Many Olympic-calibre weight lifters and marathon runners use self-hypnosis to increase their abilities to perform and to decrease the perception of pain. While deep hypnosis, or trance hypnosis, is a fascinating subject to study, there is seldom, if ever, any need for this level of hypnosis in sales.

Hypnosis is a constantly changing and fluid state. Within five minutes, you or a customer might momentarily drop to a deep level of hypnosis, relive a pleasant memory or association, then rise to a light hypnosis, engage in some conversation, and then drop to a medium level of hypnosis. If you have ever listened to a sales professional, fallen in love with a product, bought it, and then not remembered why you bought it, you were probably in and out of two or more different levels of hypnosis.

There is no conflict between hypnosis and reason. That is, you or one of your customers can be both highly rational and can also be in a hypnotic state. The hypnosis may trigger the powers of the imagination, but it will not overrule logic and reason. You cannot, for example, hypnotize someone and tell them to commit murder. It won’t happen. You can’t and wouldn’t want to hypnotize someone and tell them to buy a product they don’t want or need. They won’t buy it.

However, if someone does want a product and does need it, hypnosis will give you an extra edge in selling it. It is the edge that sales superstars have had for many, many years—and now you can learn how it is done.

When you communicate a message hypnotically, that message is more likely to bypass the listener’s conscious defenses. The hypnotic message goes more directly to the prospect’s subconscious mind. Communications researchers have found that there are four distinct ways of sending these messages or suggestions, and these are explained in the following section.

Four Ways to Send Practically Irresistible Suggestions

When people use Verbal Suggestions, they use words in a very direct fashion to make suggestions. While this form of suggestion is the most commonly used, it is not necessarily the most powerful. Let’s look at some examples from classical hypnosis, from everyday life, and from sales. From classical hypnosis:

“Your eyelids are getting heavy and you are beginning to feel sleepy . . .”

From everyday life: “You are going to love this meal!”

From sales hypnosis: “You are going to be very excited about what this computer can do!”

While the content of these verbal suggestions is quite different, the structure is the same. These suggestions set up expectations. They work because people get what they think they are going to get out of an experience. They work because thoughts can become self-fulfilling prophecies. If someone thinks they will like something, chances are they will like it. If they doubt they will like it, chances are they won’t like it.

The choice of words and the ordering of words in verbal suggestions has the power to change the way people think. Napoleon said, “We rule men with words.” In an upcoming chapter on Sales Scripting, you will learn how to script nearly irresistible sales presentations. The scripting of important presentations is now being done on a widespread basis by people in many different professions (including lawyers), and nowadays even our President is scripted before every major speech.

To be successful in sales, it is essential to understand the psychology of verbal suggestion. Verbal suggestion is what gives you the power to influence how a customer or prospect thinks. You earn your living based on your powers of verbal suggestion. As you will see, the suggestions that sales superstars make are planted in an elegant and nearly invisible way. Customers end up with the feeling that, “It was my idea to buy this! I wasn’t sold anything—I bought it!”

If delivered with enthusiasm and sincerity, the verbal suggestion gains even more power. While the words you use in verbal suggestions are crucial, they are not the entire picture. Presentation style is also vital. In the coming chapters, you will learn verbal presentation techniques to add hypnotic impact to nearly all of your messages.

Why isn’t direct suggestion more powerful? Because its content is easily recognizable. Direct suggestions are the kind of suggestions most salespeople make—and they are the kind of suggestions customers have the most defenses against. Prospects and customers develop a variety of sophisticated filters which screen out many forms of direct suggestion. The other forms of suggestion that you will learn about here by-pass the majority of filters that customers possess. Filters are by-passed because these other forms of suggestion seem almost “invisible” on the surface. Yet, on the subconscious or subliminal level, they have a tremendous positive impact.

The second type of suggestion is Non-Verbal. Selected gestures and facial expressions add hypnotic impact and emphasis to messages. For example, when you watch a skilled actor in a fascinating film, you can become almost completely mesmerized by the performance. You lose all perception of time. Before you know it, another half-hour has gone by. You may even lose awareness of your body, and your foot or your leg may fall asleep. You entered a hypnotic state of deeply focused attention and heightened suggestibility. Non-verbal suggestion is a tool used by both skilled actors and top salespeople.

One very powerful way of using non-verbal suggestion is to match or mirror the body language of your customer. We all trust people like ourselves, and by matching your customer’s body language, you are sending a message of “I am like you are.” This subconsciously increases the customer’s comfort level and decreases his or her resistance. On a subliminal level, the customer feels in harmony with you. When you adopt the body language of your customer, you are telling him or her on a non-verbal level that you have something in common.

One of the classic methods of inducing hypnosis, which has been in use for at least one-hundred years, involves having a patient look into a mirror while the hypnotist counts backward and tells stories. When you match or mirror a customer’s body language, you are sending back a hypnotic mirror image to that customer. Many customers look for differences in salespeople. They avoid buying by telling themselves, “The salesman is different from me. He is trying to sell me something.” When the salesperson appears to be very similar to the customer, by matching body language and movements on a subliminal level, that salesperson is more trusted and is harder to resist. Psychological research tells us that people cannot resist themselves or their own actions.

Besides matching or mirroring body language, you can induce hypnosis with your smile. The smile works by sending a powerful non-verbal message of “Let’s be friends,” and “Let’s get closer.” Sonny Salkind, one of the top real estate salesmen in America, has a wonderful, warm smile that melts people when they first meet him. Like Sonny, you should remind yourself to use your smile strategically as a form of non-verbal suggestion from the very first moment you meet a prospect or customer.

Intraverbal Suggestions, the third form of suggestion, come from intonations and voice inflections. When a hypnotist uses the word “sleep,” he usually pronounces it in a soft deep voice and extends it out into “sssssssslllllllleeeeeeeeppppppppp.” These special intonations and voice inflections give the word extra power. In the same way, sales professionals turn certain words into action commands by changing the intonations:

“Think of how hhhaaaapppppyyyy your wife will be when you give her this new sports car!”

In this example, a long resonant intonation on the word “happy,” triggers positive feeling in the customer. He has an immediate positive experience of his wife’s happiness. If the salesman just spit the words out, they would have little effect. It is the intraverbal suggestion that gives them all their power. Your voice inflections can actually trigger happiness in the listener in the instant he hears such a suggestion!

The intonations given to a word can change its impact and meaning 180 degrees. A word can send totally opposite me...

Biographie de l'auteur :

Dr. Donald J. Moine is a well-known convetion speaker and sales psychologist who has taught sales hypnosis to over 200 of America's top sales "superstars." Dr. Moine also writes sales script books and sales trainign films for Fortune 500 companies. Dr. Donald Moine is President of the Association of Human Achievement in Rolling Hills Estates, California.

Dr. Kenneth Lloyd is an Organizational Development Consultant who runs his own management consulting firm in Sherman Oaks, California. He co-wrote an award winning film on communication, and he has a number of television scripts to his credit.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Penguin Publishing Group
• Date d'édition: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0136891268
• ISBN 13: 9780136891260
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 288