Visualization Techniques for Successful Selling

Dr. Wayne Dyer imagines his audience’s applause before he ever reaches the stage. Ed McMahon “sees” the smiles and “feels” the excitement of his audience before every show begins. And before he ever gets to the podium, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale concentrates on a mental picture of himself loving his audience, helping them, and keeping them spellbound during his speech.

These well-known, self-confident people and many others use a powerful self-help technique called visualization, a method of positive imaging that lets you experience a successful outcome to any situation ahead of time. It’s a dress rehearsal for success.

THE POWER OF VISUALIZATION

Dr. Peale is an outstanding example of a “scared rabbit” who changed his view of himself through positive imaging – and it changed his life. In college, Dr. Peale says that he was “the possessor of a huge inferiority complex.” A professor, who believed the young man had a good mind but was wasting his potential, demanded, “How long are you going to be like this? You probably excuse yourself by thinking that you’re just naturally shy. Well, you’d better change the way you think about yourself, Peale, and you’d better do it now, before it’s too late.”

Young Peale prayed on the chapel steps for the confidence and strength to overcome his shyness and self-consciousness. When he got up he felt like a changed man. Dr. Peale explains, “Of course the inferiority feelings weren’t all gone; I still have some of them to this day. But the image I had had of myself was changed – and with it the course of my whole life.”

Top salespeople use this same technique to close sale after sale. Consider Mary Crowe, a legend in the insurance business and a member of the exclusive Million Dollar Round Table. She started out selling door to door and people listened. Why? Because she was interested in helping them. She became what she “imaged” herself to be – a stunning success.

YOU ALREADY USE VISUALIZATION

When you read a good book, you visualize. You create mental images of the scenes and characters and you may even project what you think they’ll do next. Another type of imaging you probably use is worry. Worry is the visualization of negative outcomes. According to Dr. Wayne Dyer, 90 percent of the things we worry about never come true. Think of all that time you could be spending visualizing positive results – results that can help you make sales, achieve your goals and reach your full potential.

FIVE STEPS TO POSITIVE IMAGING

Here are some simple steps to put the incredible tool of visualization to work for you.

1. SET A GOAL. Make sure the goal is what you want, not what you don’t want (that’s called worrying).

2. RELAX. Check to be sure your muscles are relaxed. That helps your mind to relax and work more efficiently. Let go of other thoughts as much as possible, but don’t force it. Like going to sleep, it’s more a matter of not thinking than thinking.

3. USE AS MANY SENSES AS POSSIBLE. Some people can imagine beautiful, brilliant colors and clear images. Others easily hear – in their minds – a choir singing or a phone ringing. Still others can feel the emotional exhilaration of closing an important sale. Try to use as many senses – sights, sounds, smells, tastes, physical feelings – as possible to make your image come alive.

4. FEEL EMOTION. This is the key to getting your mind to respond as though the experience is real. It helps to recall an experience when you felt the desired feeling – confidence, enthusiasm, energy, etc.

5. FOCUS ON YOUR VISUALIZATION OFTEN. Repetition will program your mind to respond automatically. You’ll begin to replace negative worries with positive expectations.

Visualization can create concrete change. Use your imagination to visualize yourself establishing and building a good client relationship in the selling process and watch your sales grow – for real.

Nancy Constant is president of Offenburger-Constant, Inc. Her firm has created Mind Matters In Selling, a unique self study course for anyone interested in using the powerful techniques of self-hypnosis and visualization to improve sales. For more information please call (714)832-1314 or write Mind Matters, Inc., 4643 N. Charles, Ste. 103, Fresno, CA 93711.