During a normal conversation, people look away from each other 50% of the time. New research indicates that the direction in which they look away reveals what they think.

Irma has her fortune read every year and she is amazed at how much fortune tellers know about her. Yet Irma is no dummy. Instead of visiting one, she consults three or four in different parts of the city. Invariably the tea-leaf reader, the palm-reader and the astrologer give her readings that are so similar as to leave her breathless. At the last go-around they told her she was going to get married in March. How is that for coincidence among soothsayers who don’t even know one another?

Coincidence? Well, not exactly. These fortune tellers are really Cold-Readers, sophisticated mind-readers who convince clients whom they have never met that they know everything about their personalities and problems. In that respect they share a most valuable asset with the Peak Performers of the sales world, those men and women who have developed their intuitive skills to sonar precision. You, the serious sales professional, now have a tool at your mental fingertips that enables you to develop deliberately your own intuitive awareness and to program your customers to give you the expected buying response. You may not want to be a Cold-Reader, but you can become a master communicator.

Neuro-Linguistic Sales Programming

NLSP (Neuro-Linguistic Sales Programming) provides new dimensions in observing people and communicating with them. It is the science of face-to-face communication and explains how professional communicators use words and gestures to program the minds of other people, dramatically opening up a whole new world of sales development and sales success.

NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) was developed by John Grinder, a professor of linguistics, and Richard Bandler, a therapist/physicist, at the University of California. By combining the most effective strategies of Gestalt psychology, systems theory, cybernetics, psycho linguistics and persuasion patterns, Bandler and Grinder laid the groundwork for the emerging science of NLP.

(Editor’s note: Don Moine, Ph.D., one of the authors of this article, early recognized the staggering possibilities of NLP when applied to professional selling and together with some sales superstars, including sales millionaire Jim Sweeney (see Personal Selling Power, March/April 1983) developed NLSP or Neuro-Linguistic Sales Programming. Co-author John Herd has used NLP in his communication workshops with thousands of people and written about intuitive applications of NLSP techniques by Sales Greats.)

How to Read Your Customers Thoughts

Did you know, for example, that human eye movements accurately reveal thought patterns? This remarkable finding comes directly from modern neuro-psychology and is of great importance to the sales professional.

Ask a friend, “Have you seen a good movie lately?” and watch him look up and to the left as he says, “Let’s see . . .” before he can give you an answer. What did he do? He searched his memory bank and literally saw again a face or a scene from the movie. His eye movements, up and left, were the giveaway. Had he looked down and to the right, it would have revealed something different about his thought patterns and values.

The eyes are connected to part of the cerebral cortex, where memories are stored. Eye movements are not random. As you talk with a person in casual conversation or on a sales call, his eye movements reveal the type of information he’s pulling from his memory banks. This is your clue for how to sell him.

Eye Movements

Here is what eye movements tell about your listener. When he is looking up and left, he is remember something seen in the past. This is called an eidetic or remembered visual image.

When you listen carefully to his speech, he is likely to use visual words and phrases such as, “That’s not clear to me,” “Can you shed a little more light on that subject?” or, “Hey, that’s a bright idea.” Even his language reveals he’s thinking visually.

How do you sell effectively to that customer? You paint word pictures, using visual words, because you are now talking the customer’s language. A basic finding from psychology is that we trust people who are like us. To sell effectively to this customer you should communicate: “I am like you. We talk the same language. We understand each other – you can trust me.”

What if your customer looked up and right? He is using his imagination to create something he has not seen before: a dream house or a car he wants to win . . . or he may be making up a fib.

To effectively sell this person, paint word pictures about the future: how beautiful something will be as in “Can you imagine the expression on your neighbor’s face when you drive up in this new 1983 Cadillac?” Top producers do this intuitively.

What if your customer is looking down and left? This person is accessing information stored in the auditory parts of his cerebral cortex. In a manner of speaking, he is talking to himself or is repeating something his wife or business associate might have said.

Auditory

Listen to the words he uses: “Hey, that rings a bell,” “We’re not in harmony on that point,” or “That really struck a cord with me.”

There are hundreds of examples of visual and auditory ways of speaking. Just listen for them and then – and this is crucial – speak your customer’s language. This is what top salespeople do. And when you do it, you cannot help but be more successful. To sell the sound-oriented customer, use sound-based words and phrases. Include testimonials. They are the positive words that other customers say about you and your product. This may not sell the visual person, but it is effective with the auditory customer.

Kinesthetic

What if your customer keeps looking down and right? What kind of information is he accessing from his memory banks?

This type of customer monitors his feelings. Even highly intelligent customers check out their hunches and gut level reactions. Don’t look down on this type of customer. He is capable of making excellent decisions. To sell him, speak his language. “Does that feel OK to you?” “Are we in step?” “Can you grasp the impact of that?”

What are the dynamics behind this? We trust people whom we perceive to be like us. The Harvard Business Review has shown that the first person hired is the one most like the boss and the first person fired is the least like him. It may not be fair, but that is the way of the world. The only question now is, “How can I communicate to the customer that I am like him and that he can trust me?” NLSP offers the answers.

Other Answers Offered by NLSP

In addition to reading eye movement and listening for sensory language, NLSP tells us exactly how to sell to different people. The human mind resembles a sophisticated biocomputer. Once you know how a person has been programmed, you can speak “human computer” language and sell him. The only way he can resist you is to resist himself. For most of us, that isn’t natural.

NLSP has much to say about our decision-making strategies, including how customers make purchase decisions. Most people go through several steps before making a choice. Each of these steps is like the digit of a phone number. An average producer may know all the digits, yet fail to get them in correct order. The top producer, by contrast, not only discovers your exact purchasing strategy, but plays it back in its right sequence. Naturally you buy from the person who can reach you and fill your needs best.

Exactly how this is done will be described in our new book, NLSP – The Unfair Advantage, to be published later this year. But you can begin now by simply replaying your customer’s thought processes in their precise order. You will begin to close more sales. The fine points can come later.

Neuro-Linguistic Sales Training

NLSP is highly entertaining and inspiring to salespeople, especially when presented live at a training session or at conventions. It lends itself easily to demonstrations and dramatic role-plays. Once salespeople in the audience see it in action, they are sold on its utility and ability to make them more money. Select your trainer carefully. Make sure that in addition to a thorough NLP background, he has a success pattern in personal selling.

This article has been developed based on the new book, Neuro Linguistic Sales Programming – The Unfair Advantage, co-authored by John H. Herd and Dr. Donald J. Moine.