Everyone In the World is a Marketer so be the best is a mantra we can use to help us find the way for us to be our best. Priscilla Palmer has written this post on what that means and how you can change the way you feel by using anchors.

Everyone in the world is a marketer whether we realize it or not, we all have something to sell. We market ourselves to potential employers, friends, and even loved ones. We may market products for the company we work for or even for our favorite brands.
One of the simplest and best definitions of marketing I’ve ever heard is - “we are marketing any time we are trying to persuade someone to do or think anything”. Going with that definition you can see that we market every single day of our lives. The good thing is that marketing is a skill that anyone can improve upon.
When marketing it is always important to be the best you can be. For instance would you be more likely to date someone who looks and smells like he/she hasn’t taken a shower in three weeks or someone who is well groomed? This may be an extreme example but it does get the point across.

USING NLP

One way to improve your marketing skills whether you are selling products or yourself is by learning to use NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). Here is an example of how NLP can be used in the work place to sell a product.
Imagine that you are a sales representive for an electronics company. One morning you wake up late you jump in the shower and as you get out you realize you forgot a towel. You jump out of the shower and in your rush to find a towel before you soak the floor you fall and bump your head. Irratated you get up and and find your towel.
As you are getting ready your child comes in and says “I missed the school bus.” So, you drive your kid to school but on the way there your kid spills his red Kool Aid all over your beige colored work pants. Now you have to run home and change.
You call your boss tell him your running a bit late but your on your way. Finally your on your way to work. Then on your way to work some guy drives up beside you and you can’t get around him therefore you miss your exit. Ugggghhh! Can the day get any worse?
When you get to work your boss is obviously irritated and throws you your time card saying “Next time you’ll be fired”!!!
Okay, you take a deep breath and walk out on the sales floor. You see a man looking at some big screen TV’s and you walk up to him asking him if he’d like some help. The man looks up at you and snaps “You don’t really expect me to pay such outrageous prices for these things do you?!!
Now you’ve already had a bad day and what you really want to do is snap back at him but, you know you can’t do that. You need to change your emotional state and pronto!!! You want to get yourself pumped up and excited about these TV’s so you can sell one to this man. Lucky for you you’ve prepared for this type of thing.

UNSTOPPABLE

NLP uses a technique where you mentally tie a word of your choice to an emotional state. Let’s say in this case your word is “Absolutely” and you have tied this word to a feeling of being “unstoppable and on top of the world” - You know that when you feel like this you can sell a hairbrush to a bald man!
You look the man directly in the eyes and you force yourself to say “Absolutely” in the most excited voice you can. Immediately you feel all the excitement and energy just start pouring into you.
The man looks at you like your crazy but you know that you can sell anything. You tell the man “Yes, Absolutely!!! Do you know that this particular TV has ……. Pretty soon your excitement rubs off on the customer and poof you’ve made your first sale.
Priscilla

http://www.Priscillapalmer.com

The way Priscilla sees this is one we can all start using today to know that Everyone In The World Is A Marketer So Be The Best.

Using NLP anchoring is the way to make sure you are motivated, positive and ready to succeed.

Anchors will help you:

• Access the resources when you need them
• Replace unwanted feelings with desirable ones
• Gain control over your emotions
• Keep on course in times of intense change
• Positively influence what we trigger in other people
• Experience the day we want, no matter what else is happening in our life

The way we feel is determined by associations we have made with events we experience. We make these associations throughout our life and what we choose to think is one of the most powerful influences on how things will turn out. Anchoring is the way we can choose the experience we have in life, irrespective of external circumstances.

BASIC NLP ANCHORING

NLP Anchoring uses the same principle as Pavlov’s dog that salivated when he heard the bell ring because he knew it meant food would appear. When a phone rings you feel you must answer it because you have answered that sound in that way so many times in your life. When you move house, have you ever found yourself driving towards your old house instead of the new one? I am sure there is a piece of music that reminds you of how you felt at a good time in your life and maybe one that does the opposite.

Everything we do is in response to something else that causes it and often it is a completely unrelated trigger that produces the response. An anchor can be defined as a stimulus that influences someone’s state of mind. The process of anchoring is working on how a particular event or action influences your or your client’s mind.

Anchoring is a hypnotic phenomenon and it will work in the way you organise and want it to happen. Anchors can be used to help you move in a specific direction and if anchors get triggered in the wrong situation they can be quite disorientating. One of the ways anchors can work is when we expect them to produce a particular effect that is helpful to us.

It is possible to anchor other people when you have a good rapport with them. The way to make an anchor for yourself is like this:

• Select a strong feeling you would like to have in a particular situation
• Take a few moments to remember the last time you felt this way
• Close your eyes and remember the feeling as vividly as you can
• Try and experience it as an image in your mind, or a colour, or a sound
• Make it brighter, more intense, sharper
• Bring it closer so it gets bigger
• Move the experience about in your mind
• Make it as clear as you can
• Find a word that describes how you feel, like YES! FANTASTIC! AMAZING!
• Choose an action or physical gesture as an anchor, like making a fist, pulling your ear, squeezing your thumb
• As the feeling becomes less intense, relax the anchor you chose

• Find another example of having that feeling and start the process again using the same anchor

When you have been through this procedure a couple of times take some time out, then come back, use the anchor and see how it makes you feel.

COLLAPSING AN ANCHOR

Some times you will want to neutralise or collapse an anchor. To do this:

• Find a situation where you have a negative feeling
• Make an anchor for this feeling as in the previous process
• Break state and rest
• Select a positive feeling you would rather have and create an anchor for it in the same way
• Break state and rest
• Now trigger both anchors together
• This may cause some confusion as both states sort themselves out into a new integrated form.
• Repeat the process

Think of a time when you may have felt the undesirable state and see how it feels. If you have collapsed the anchor there should not be a problem any more.

Anchors are used by sportsmen like Tiger Woods who always wears a red T-shirt for final rounds. It is believed this goes back to his college days and symbolises aggression and assertiveness. The red shirt is the anchor giving him the feeling he can win.

Comedians use anchors using gestures and facial expressions to communicate to the audience they will do something funny. Because they have used the same anchors over a period of time the audience knows what to expect.

You can find out how people use anchors by watching and listening. As you get to know your client better you will be able to know the anchors being used and use them to your advantage.

Using an anchor is a way to get better at what you do, better at influencing others and getting the success you need. Being the best you can be for success will give you a real advantage.

Jamie Smart Real World NLP & Hypnotic Language Master

This post was my interview with Jamie Smart. Jamie’s site www.salad.co.uk is a treasure chest of information and resources about NLP and hypnotic language. He tells us about his world and how he loves to use his whole life to learn new things. He talks about how he started in business and where he wants to take his company in the future.

NLP Copywriting Magician Speaks Out!

Louis Burns writes a guest post where he gives us an introduction to NLP copywriting, talking about how the copywriter makes his craft and the ways copy can be written to influence the reader towards a specific outcome. He talks about pacing and leading and use of pre-suppositions and talks about the elegance of a well-crafted piece of copy.

Words That Burst On To The Page And Make Sales

Now we spend some time analysing the elements needed to write an interesting article of sales copy, covering the headline, structure and benefits needed to get a complete piece of work. The length of the copy is discussed and the way offers and promises can be made effectively.

Win More Orders From the Heart With Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence is an important feature of successful people and in this guest post by Susan Dunn, we hear about the mastery and mystery of life and how understanding of emotions can be much more important than knowing facts and figures.

Making EQ Your Success Factor In Marketing

Learning about our client’s agenda in buying our product and we can serve his or her needs in what we sell, will move us closer to the sale. We talk about the competencies involved in Emotional Intelligence and learn what each one means.

Testing Can Be The Best Winning SuperHighway In Marketing

It is always a good idea to use testing and so often something we never get round to doing. Using split and multivariate testing tells us what works well and what works even better. When you have a new marketing campaign, a new product or a new service, the first thing you should do is testing.

Moving Towards Values That Will Market More Product

This guest post by Rintu Basu of The NLP Company tells us about the values of our clients and how they are an important factor in the decision making process. We are told how NLP can be used to build rapport and make our marketing more effective.

Harlan Kilstein Says NLP Is Dead

In this interview Harlan Kilstein, copywriting guru makes some controversial statements about how he sees NLP in the 21st century and how we can move forward. He tells us who he thinks are the leaders and how he has worked with the founders of NLP.

Ari Galper Gets Hit With Bait & Switch

In this post Ari Galper tells us about a recent experience he had with an aggressive salesman and how he was subjected to a sales technique called Bait & Switch, which is often used as part of the old style of selling which has been superceded by what Ari teaches.

6 Simple Ways Viral Marketing Can Work Wonders For You

In this post we hear from Ralph Wilson on how to build a viral marketing campaign. He details 6 simple ways to do this and by using them with what we have learned about NLP over the last 6 months we can make a campaign work wonders.

Medici Magic In Making Intersections And Opportunities

Frans Johansson’s book The Medici Effect tells us of the surprising and unique interactions we are now seeing as different interests and fields of expertise intersect with each other. For a businessman this can mean a new product, service, way of working, selling, marketing. It can be the way to solve problems, find new solutions and take on new challenges.

The Art Of Changing Meaning To Make More Successful Sales

Reframing is a powerful NLP technique that can be used to change the way a client sees your product or service. By using reframing you can alter perceptions and beliefs about your product so that they become more positive and useful in making your sales more successful.

Old Tricks For New Dogs Makes NLP Copywriting Real

Jon McCulloch is a marketer and NLP master who makes no apologies for the way he thinks about the peddlers of overnight success. He make us understand how circular reasoning and fraudulent claims are often a part of products sold today.

Next week I have a guest post from Priscilla Palmer, a personal development expert, who helps us understand how we can be our best. The RSS Feed is the best way to keep up to date.

The first 15 steps towards brilliant marketing plus NLP was the review of the first 3 months on my blog. We have come along way together over the last 6 months and I hope you have found this review useful to remind and perhaps introduce you to ways we have made 12 More Steps Towards Brilliance In Marketing.

Read this carefully, enjoy the witty comments and anecdotes and take a step forward in your understanding of what NLP really means.

NLP Copywriting – Old Tricks For New Dogs

by Jon McCulloch

It seems there’s something of a buzz recently with a new wave of miraculous copywriting techniques the peddlers are promising will take our copy to soaring new heights, enabling us to persuade and sell like the great copywriters of yesterday and today, all by adding a few simple tricks and tweaks to our copy.

And the name of this wonderful new technology? Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP. A copywriter’s linguistic Utopia.

Hmm.

If only it were true, if only it were true.

In my experience, NLP is only one tool of many a copywriter can (and probably should) use to improve their results and let’s face it, that really means “make more money”, and it’s not even the most powerful.

But let’s back up a bit. What is NLP copywriting?

Well, according to one loud proponent of it (he’s selling NLP copywriting products, so don’t expect too much objectivity), it’s what you see in the copy coming from some of the best copywriters around.

Sounds convincing, doesn’t it?

And it is… until you realise the flaw in the argument he actually uses.

His argument goes like this: “Top copywriters use NLP in their copy. Look at this copy from this top copywriter: it’s got persuasive language patterns in it. They MUST be NLP patterns because top copywriters use NLP in their copy”.

CIRCULAR REASONING

First, this reasoning is flawed. Technically, it’s called circular reasoning and it’s flawed because you use the assumed truth of your assertion to prove your assertion. It’s in his interest for you to accept this “proof” as legitimate because he wants to sell you something teaching you how to use NLP in your copy, too.

Secondly, just because something looks like NLP, doesn’t mean it is NLP. NLP is now a huge area of study and not all of it is immediately relevant to copywriting. But in the beginning NLP sprang up as codified form of what naturally persuasive people have done for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Even Shakespeare does it, when he says in Hamlet, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”. That’s basically talking about reframing.

In fact, if you look at some of the old great old-time copywriters like Robert Collier and Claude Hopkins, you’ll see persuasive language patterns in their work which could not possibly have been NLP because they were both long dead before Bandler and Grinder developed NLP (and I suspect even the most ludicrously self-aggrandising NLPers still hesitate to claim they can communicate with the dead, but nothing would surprise me).

Is it any surprise NLP-like patterns turn up spontaneously in persuasive writing by non-NLP trained people?

No.

It would be surprising if they didn’t, because form follows functions and NLP was born of modelling behaviour. The defining behaviour came first and is now passed on by NLP trainers in codified form (amusingly, the two things I’ve done repeatedly in the sales letters I’ve had the best results from… neither of them came from NLP; one I lifted from Collier, the other came from Tom Hopkins).

And thirdly, if we take a given letter which has been successful, can we be sure it was the NLP in it doing all the work for us?

No.

Well, that’s not strictly correct.

We can if we set up a proper double-blind peer-reviewed experiment to test the hypothesis, but I know of no-one who has. Even split-tests are not set up to do this.

OK, let’s imagine we send a letter with NLP in it to a list and get some results back.

Here are some typical things I’ve heard proponents of NLP copywriting say:

• If the results were good, then it was the NLP doing the heavy lifting.
• If the results were not so good, then either the NLP wasn’t done right or, more likely, something else in the copy blew the chance of the sale (and you will in fact see this in sales letters in bullet points of the form “the one thing you MUST NOT write or you’ll blow the sale INSTANTLY!”).

And this is all very unscientific and the presupposition is the NLP is going to be effective if it’s done right. It’s like the guy who said he didn’t do double-blind testing any more because it didn’t work (meaning objective facts didn’t support his subjective and erroneous belief).

BAD NEWS

Moreover, I have some bad news for all you budding copywriters out there: what most copywriters won’t tell you is the biggest deciding factor determining whether copy succeeds in making a sale or not… is the person reading it. Even Dan Kennedy claims only a 12.5% success rate. John Carlton cheerfully related to me the time he wrote 17 versions of an ad before it worked (hey, maybe someone ought to tell these guys about NLP so they can become good!).

See, despite what some people claim, you can’t actually hypnotise people against their will or convince anyone to do anything – all you can do is lead them into convincing themselves. Yes, there are things you can do to help them along that road, and indeed NLP is undeniably useful some of the time.

And clearly, this is going to be easiest if your audience is already half-convinced.

Bottom line: the “hunger” of your list for what you’re selling makes the biggest difference in response rates and conversion rates, and by several orders of magnitude.

I’ve seen one of my sales letters convert 46% of one list to buying a £6,000 ticket item and the exact same letter and offer get ZERO responses, never mind conversions, from a different list. And there was NLP in the letter!

And the thing most likely to sway your audience? Usually the offer itself – the mechanics of it and how it matches what they want, not how it’s phrased or padded out with embedded commands, sensory words, presuppositions or pattern-interrupts.

LOOK AT IT THIS WAY

Look at it this way: I don’t care how good a copywriter you are and how much NLP you put into your work, you are NOT going to be able to write an ad or sales letter and sell a whole bunch of pork sausages to vegans. You can tell ‘em they look, sound, smell, taste and feel as good as you like, but you’re wasting your time.

The trouble is, many people, especially when they’re first exposed to NLP, swallow it and the frankly outlandish claims made by some of its practitioners hook, line, and sinker.

They seem to assume it’s akin to magic in its ability to persuade, influence and hypnotise ordinary mere mortals. If many of the claims are to be believed, certain well-known “gurus”, including one very well known British “celebrity hypnotist”, can put an entire 800-strong audience into an “altered state” and install “radical new learnings” to the degree they can cram 10 days’ education into 3 days’ navel-gazing. This is an extraordinary claim, and to be taken seriously by anyone claiming to have a rational mind requires extraordinary evidence.

Worse, copywriters new to NLP are very often like teenage-girls with their first proper make-up: they slap it on willy-nilly with scant regard for the subtleties and don’t realise the final result looks hideously contrived and drives people away. Admittedly, NLP-copywriting peddlers often bring this point up themselves, and suggest they can somehow “accelerate” your “learnings”.

And I doubt it very much, in much the same way I doubt you can hypnotise 800 people into cramming 10 days’ knowledge into their heads at over 3-times normal speed. Extraordinary claims, guys, so let’s see some extraordinary evidence. Even the phrase “altered state” is meaningless — I can alter your state by punching you in the mouth, but it’s got precious little to do with NLP. One NLP chap recently claimed “everyone is always in a trance”. Uh-huh. If that’s so, it’s impossible to put anyone in a trance and any and all claims by anyone to be able to do so are necessarily false.

More to the point, Claude Shannon proved (mathematically) the information conveyed by an event is proportional to how unlikely it is. In other words: if something is certain, its happening tells us nothing. So, if everyone is always in a trance the fact someone is in one tells us nothing. The term ceases to have any useful meaning.

WE WANT TO BELIEVE

So, the question then is, why do people swallow these irrational and often illogical statements and claims about NLP? In particular (I love the irony of this), why is NLP so successful in getting people to buy into NLP trainings and copywriting courses?

Chiefly because we want to believe there’s some amazing secret power to give us the keys to the vaults of Earth and the gates of Heaven and everything in between.

If people didn’t have this hankering for belief you wouldn’t get large numbers of people selling CD and DVD programmes claiming to free you from the necessity of obeying the laws of physics and biology, or books “proving” we’re ruled by shape-shifting lizards from another dimension.

We all want to believe there’s an easy, effortless and “secret” way to being wealthier, smarter, more successful, slimmer, fitter, more attractive to the opposite sex (or the same sex if that’s your thing), and have better sex, more fulfilling orgasms AND live on our own tropical island with a handy selection of young, fit, insatiable and uninhibited sexual partners (or perhaps this is all just me? No, on second thoughts, there’s that business of Eliot Spitzer, isn’t there?).

Just do a search on Amazon.com now for success and you’ll get something like 186,361 results – and that’s just books.

READING THE SALES LETTER

So one thing the NLP copywriting gurus don’t mention – maybe because they either don’t know themselves, or, less charitably, perhaps, they don’t want you to know – is anyone who’s going to buy any product is already half-sold on the idea before he even starts reading the sales letter.

And why should the same not be true of their own NLP courses and products?

What about the happy customers’ testimonials?

Well… first, we see only the positive ones. No one is going to put up a bad testimonial (there are rare and specific exceptions, but let’s keep it simple).

Secondly, people are very good at fooling themselves. They’re already sold on NLP. The hysteria and feel-good factor of these things can leave us feeling euphoric, plus they’re already sold on the idea. Few people go into a seminar with a truly objective and open mind.

PATTERNS & MEANING

Human beings are not very bright. It’s in our nature to look for the evidence to support what we already believe and to give patterns and “meaning” to events that simply don’t have any. You can look back on any event in your life and give it any flavour or meaning you like. If you doubt this, I invite you to think about how this is any different from that very powerful NLP technique of “reframing”. It isn’t.

CIALDINI

Thirdly, Cialdini’s “Law of Commitment and Consistency” is at work here: the seminar-goers and product buyers have made a commitment to their training, both financial and emotional. Many of them have faced criticism from peers, family, friends, and colleagues. Almost no-one is going to come away from this kind of event or studying a product and say it was a waste of time and money and they’ve been screwed. Don’t underestimate the power of this Rule. The Chinese used it to get patriotic American airmen to denounce the US and support Communism; the Rev Jim Jones used it to get 900 or so people to commit suicide in Guyana in 1977.

GROUPTHINK

Fourthly, there is groupthink. It’s like the Emperor’s New Clothes. Who wants to look idiotic by denying they’ve “uncovered” these wonderful new “learnings”. What’s up, Doc? Whaddya mean you didn’t get put into an “altered state”? You schtoopit or sumpink?

Now, with my having said all that above, you’d be mistaken in thinking I was knocking NLP. I’m not. I believe it’s very powerful and my experience tells me I’m right.

But the kicker is, how much of this is true and how much is just my perception, I don’t know. I have no evidence other than my own anecdotes, and they’re not valid evidence because they’re too subjective.

Am I more successful because the NLP does the “heavy lifting” or is it just that I’m more confident about it all which in turn means I’m relaxed and so come over more trustworthy and competent to my prospects and clients? Does my being relaxed and confident about my writing mean I write better and so get better results? Or is it all just coincidence?

I don’t know the answers to that. But nor do you. Nor do the NLP gurus, no matter what they pretend.

NOT A MAGIC BULLET

NLP is not a magic bullet for copywriting. If it was, there would be only one copywriting product out there and everyone who bought it would become a star.

It can serve to improve your copy but if you’re an illiterate baboon who can’t string more than a couple of words together to form a coherent sentence, then chucking a bunch of NLP language patterns onto the page isn’t going to help you much; nor is putting your sales message in front of people who aren’t interested in you or your product.

By all means learn NLP. Knowledge is useful.

Although, as I tell my mentoring students and my clients, they’re going to be better-off learning to write in general terms and developing long-term relationships with their prospects and clients using the normal everyday hard-wired abilities they already have so they have a genuinely trusting and eager starving crowd to submit their non-superhuman copy to, than they are swallowing the extraordinary claims of self-proclaimed gurus and following them in search of some holy copywriting grail.

Because, frankly, it just isn’t there.

Next week I will be doing a review over the last 3 months of the blog so your

RSS Feed should be in place so you can be automatically updated.

Jon’s site is where you can register for his Irresistible Marketing Newsletter delivered free to your door. I hope you enjoyed hearing about Jon’s thoughts and comments and can see how Old Tricks For New Dogs Makes NLP Copywriting Real.

If you think back to the post on presuppositions you will remember that a person always makes the best decision they can based on what they know at that time. The object of reframing is to change that context so that their decision is still the best one they can make, but based on a different set of assumptions.

Reframing is going on in the world all the time

• Politicians are masters at reframing in order to produce a positive ‘spin’ on what they do or offer
• Jokes are often based on a reframe where the humour comes from shifting to another point of view
• Fairy tales are used to help children reframe and see different consequences
• An excuse is a reframe to get you out of a bad situation

We will look at a number of ways of achieving this and through practice these will become a useful tool.

AS IF

Using the ‘as if’ frame is a way of shifting beliefs by exploring possibilities that would otherwise not been thought about. When you are working with a client, building rapport and helping them towards a positive decision for your product you could use the following ideas a nd ways forward. We can say

Lets do this as if …………. (something has changed)

TIME SHIFT

In this way you step forward 6 months to a time when the problem has been overcome and ask what was done to make this possible. So if your client has a situation your product can resolve, invite them to step forward and think about what they did to make this happen.

PERSON SHIFT

You pretend you are someone else and try to work out how they would see the situation. This can demonstrate how differently and perhaps positively another person could handle a problem or situation.

INFORMATION SHIFT

Now you ask yourself if you knew everything you needed to know to sort out a situation, what would that knowledge be and how would you handle it?

FUNCTION SHIFT

Your fairy godmother can now wave her magic wand and sort everything out to clear a bottleneck or resolve a difficulty. What would change to make this happen and how would it affect the outcome?

There are two main ways you can make a reframe work.

CONTENT REFRAMING

This is the process of making a negative experience into a positive one by changing the meaning of what has happened. Any event can have many meanings depending on where you are standing and how important it is to you. By focussing on a more useful meaning can be a way of steering around problems and objections.

Usually you will do this by asking a question

‘What else can this mean for you?’

‘How can we turn this to your advantage?’

CONTEXT REFRAMING

The way you or anyone else reacts to an experience or set of criteria will depend on the context in which you see it. Sometimes you will look back on an experience and say

‘That was the best thing that ever happened to me’

even though at the time it was something to be endured. In a different time or place, what feels unacceptable now may seem completely different and much more useful.

For a context you must ask yourself

‘Could there be another time or place where this would be beneficial?’

For example, if you were thinking about launching a new product or service when the economy was in recession you could context reframe by thinking about being much stronger by being started now and positioned well for the future. That may be quite relevant in today’s economic uncertainty.

We can learn context reframing to empower our clients and ourselves. It is possible to create resourceful meanings to all experiences by thinking about how they could be useful, helping us and others to reach goals.

VALUE REFRAMING

In brand management and marketing terms value reframing means giving a new value to a product/service by finding a new market/context.

STRUCTURE OF REFRAMING

The NLP technique of reframing a behaviour breaks down into 6 steps.

1. You must identify the behaviour you want to change in you or a client
2. If it is your behaviour try and locate why you are thinking this is the right thing to do
3. Look for a positive benefit from the behaviour because remember people make decisions for the right reasons
4. Try and think of other ways of dealing with things that will produce a positive result
5. Choose the best 3 alternative ways of dealing with it
6. Check to see if there are any conflicts in dealing with your chosen way forward.

Then just go ahead and adopt the new frame with its positive outcomes.

REACTIONS

When you use reframing on your clients there are a few rules you should be aware of

• Make sure you have their rapport and trust before you attempt it
• Just because you think what you are suggesting is the best reframe it does not necessarily fit into their map of the world.
• By presenting your reframe as a metaphor or story it is more likely to have an effect than if you present it as a fact.
• You cannot impose your reframe on someone else because it must come from within them to be useful and it is their choice that they want to make it.

Next week you can read a guest post from Jon McCulloch, an expert marketer and copywriter, when he rattles cages and raises eyebrows by what he says about NLP in copywriting. You will be sure to get the post if you have subscribed to the RSS Feed.

Reframing is a powerful tool when used in the right way. It can open doors and make good progress with clients. The art of changing meaning to make more sales is a skill you should develop and use in your business.

Medici Magic In Making Intersections And Opportunities. Frans Johansson has written a book The Medici Effect which talks about the way different fields, disciplines and cultures can collaborate in producing limitless numbers of extraordinary ideas. For a businessman this can mean a new product, service, way of working, selling, marketing. It can be the way to solve problems, find new solutions and take on new challenges.

The Medici’s were a banking family that lived in Florence and funded creative people over a range of skills and disciplines. Because of their influence sculptors, scientists, poets, philosophers, financiers, painters, and architects came to Florence to work together. They learned from each other, breaking down barriers and forging a new world, based on ideas that became the Renaissance between the 14^th and 17^th centuries.

Power of the Intersection

It was the power of the intersection between these sets of knowledge that gave rise to what Johansson has called the Medici Effect. We too can bring about this explosion of ideas by finding ways in which cultures and ideas intersect. It is a mistake to think that it is only artistic people who can make this possible. In our world of ideas and communication we have a massive opportunity to forge new links and relationships between people who would normally see themselves as incompatible and separate.

In writing the book Johansson set himself 3 objectives he wanted to show you the reader.

1.–The first is to explain what, exactly, the Intersection is and why we can expect to see a lot more of it in the future. You will see how three critical forces are working together to increase the number of intersections around the world.

2.–The second is to explain why stepping into the Intersection creates the Medici Effect. You will see why it is such a vibrant place for creativity and how we can use intersections to generate remarkable, surprising, and groundbreaking ideas.

3.–Finally, the third objective is to outline the unique challenges we face when executing intersectional ideas and how we can overcome those challenges. You will see how execution at the Intersection is different from within established fields, and you will learn how to prepare for those differences.

Examples of the Intersection

He uses examples throughout the book of people who set themselves new objectives which combined fields which had never been seen as coming together.

George Soros, famous for making $1 billion in a few hours when he bet the British Pound was undervalued. Soros combined the fields of finance and philanthropy and his most important legacy will be the strategy he developed for transforming nations into open societies. He did this by working at the intersection of a number of fields to produce a world changing result.

Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist wrote the famous book ‘The Selfish Gene’ where he suggested that evolution did not occur between species or organisms, but between genes, which he called ‘selfish’. The intersection achieved by Dawkins was that he saw a parallel between genetic and cultural evolution and gave us the meme, a propagation of ideas, tunes, fashions, which are the building blocks of our culture. Memes move by jumping between brains using a process of imitation, thus spreading through our culture in a similar way to genes

Directional vs Intersectional Thinking

We tend to have 2 sorts of ideas. One is directional which continues along a well defined path from one step to the next, but the intersectional process is one that produces unexpected results and outcomes by the working together of different thought processes and share these characteristics:

• They are surprising and fascinating.
• They take leaps in new directions.
• They open up entirely new fields.
• They provide a space for a person, team, or company to call its own.
• They generate followers, which means the creators can become leaders
• They provide a source of directional innovation for years or decades to come.
• They can affect the world in unprecedented ways.

Johansson states it very well by saying:

For most of us, the best chance to innovate lies at the Intersection. Not only do we have a greater chance of finding remarkable idea combinations there, we will also find many more of them. To be specific, stepping into the Intersection does not mean simply combining two different concepts into a new idea. These types of combinations are part of both directional and intersectional innovation. Instead, the Intersection represents a place that drastically increases the chances for unusual combinations to occur.

Individual disciplines tend to be fragmented with a language and approach to problem solving that almost takes away the opportunity for synergy. By reversing this trend we build new relationships and languages that encompass a lot more.

There are 3 main forces at work.

The Movement of People

This is on the increase as populations become older, leading to lower birth rates and skill shortages. The flow of refugees and asylum seekers remains strong and many countries face problems that threaten their social security systems.

The Convergence of Science

In most fields we have reached a point where we do not have 100% of the knowledge but we know enough to make useful progress. This does not mean science has become less important, because now we look a lot at the interactions between systems. This brings together engineers, biologists and technologists to apply their knowledge to a massive range of topics and important parts of our world.

The Leap of Computation

Computing power doubles every 18 months which generates new intersections between fields that have been traditionally separate. This does not just enable us to do things faster, but allows us to do different and more tasks. Advanced communication has brought us the World Wide Web and GPS, cheaper phone calls and widescreen TVs. This has brought groups together in intersectional ways to produce opportunities for small start-ups and larger established companies.

Assumption Reversal

Assumption reversals are a very good way to change the way you think about almost anything. This is how it works:

1. First, think of a situation, product, or concept related to a challenge you are facing, and think about the assumptions associated with that situation.
2. Next, write down those assumptions; then reverse them.
3. Finally, think about how to make those reversals meaningful.

One of the more radical innovations in environmental management and control emerged by viewing an old problem from a different perspective. During the seventies and eighties, environmental groups and industry viewed air pollution and the resulting acid rain as an ecological or political problem, respectively. This led to legislative battles and loophole- ridden policies. One major innovation for effectively dealing with air pollution came about in 1990 when politicians and environmentalists began to view the problem from a market-based perspective.

By organizing a marketplace where companies could trade pollution rights, the overall level of emissions dropped by greater levels than ever before. Such an approach has since been emulated by other nations for this and other environmental problems around the world, such as global warming.

Using Luck to Make Changes

Quite often when you ask where a new idea came from you will be told it was luck. Hard work is also important, but the element of luck comes from using random combinations of ideas as ways of generating creative solutions. What you are looking for may be an innovative marketing campaign, or a new product and the solution will probably appear after a time of intensive thought and thinking about the challenge over a long period, then a period when you do not think about it. The idea is still in your mind for hours, weeks, months, and then one day something clicks. During the time your mind is silent your subconscious is working hard on finding the solution.

Prepared Mind Discoveries

The second form of random combinations happen when someone with a “prepared mind” comes across a phenomenon he or she had not set out to find. I say “prepared mind” because this particular observation could easily be missed unless one is prepared to understand its significance. A person can be working very hard on something in one area, but then by chance make a discovery regarding something fairly unrelated. Many examples of this type of random discovery are documented in the area of science and technology.

Many people are concerned by the notion that creativity is so dependent on luck. We imagine that logic or skill or something else, anything else, should have much more to do with it. We think it should be possible to figure out what is creative, and not be waiting for ‘a light to go on’, but in fact that is the way things happen.

Working With Diverse Groups of People

One of the best ways to make this magic happen is by working groups that have a wide range of interests. Generally we tend to stay with people who have our interests and outlook, but real creativity can spring from being with different mind sets and opinions. This is important when we interview people for jobs in our company. It has been shown that an unstructured interview has no validity as a selection tool because we always tend to look for patterns that match the way we think. If you want to look for ways to generate intersectional ideas it is important that you seek out new environments and even though it is not easy to break the similarity mould, there are great rewards from making it happen.

Quality vs Quantity of Ideas

The best quality ideas are most likely when there are a lot of possibilities in the mix. It is true that 10% of creators are responsible for 50% of innovations. Some individuals will come up with many more ideas than their colleagues and those who contribute the most ideas are most likely to find the most innovative solutions. Past success is often a way to produce future opportunities and the random nature of the creative process means there will be a large number of unsuccessful outcomes.

Many of the world’s most successful innovators have produced hundreds of fruitless ideas.

James Dyson

British inventor James Dyson used 5,127 prototypes before he created the cyclonic separation vacuum cleaner and he had to set up his own manufacturing company because no other producer would adopt his design. He now outsells these producers and has a world beating product. In 2002 Dyson created a realization of Escher optical illusions and in 2006 he invented a hand dryer using the Dyson Digital Motor that produces a 400mph airstream.

Tubular Bells

Richard Branson, a UK entrepreneur, wanted to set up a record label and met a teenage musician called Mike Oldfield. The result was Tubular Bells that has sold 16 million copies and still sells 100,000 each year. What is surprising is that the music was unlike any other album that came before. Oldfield developed his new form of music using the same combinations and possibilities available to other musicians but he experimented by stepping into the intersection between rock and classical music and came out with his innovative musical form.

Virgin Airlines

Branson, with his musical empire in place called for an airline ticket to get a cheap fare from London to New York. He got a busy signal and could not get through all weekend. He concluded that the company either had a poor management team or had more customers they could handle. Either way he saw an opportunity to compete, called Boeing to lease a jumbo jet for 12 months, so if it did not work out he could back out. After a couple of days finding the right manager Branson got an agreement with Boeing, so he called his business partners and asked what they thought about starting an airline. They thought he was mad, but 6 months later Virgin made its first flight from London to New York City. In 1997 Branson formed Virgin Rail and won franchises in UK for train travel.

You can read Frans’ complete book by downloading it from www.themedicieffect.com or buying it from Amazon, The Medici Effect - Frans Johnasson. My review contains only a small part of what is in the book so I would encourage you to get a copy now. You may also like to take a look at The Medici Effect blog.

Next week I will be explaining the way to reframe using NLP which is a useful tool when used in marketing and personal development. If you do not already have it please set up the RSS Feed so that you receive the latest up to date post when it is published.

This review of The Medici Effect does nothing more than scratch the surface of a very useful book. You will enjoy the way Frans presents his ideas and gives you ways to release Medici Magic In Making Intersections And Opportunities.

The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing

by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant
Web Marketing Today, February 1, 2005. Originally published 2/1/2000
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In a few short generations, a virus population can explode.

Viral Marketing Defined

What does a virus have to do with marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as “word-of-mouth,” “creating a buzz,” “leveraging the media,” “network marketing.” But on the Internet, for better or worse, it’s called “viral marketing.” While others smarter than I have attempted to rename it, to somehow domesticate and tame it, I won’t try. The term “viral marketing” has stuck.

The Classic Hotmail.com Example

The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:

1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,
2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: “Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com” and,
3. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,
4. Who see the message,
5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then
6. Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.

Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy

Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others’ resources

Let’s examine at each of these elements briefly.

1. Gives away valuable products or services

“Free” is the most powerful word in a marketer’s vocabulary. Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention. Free e-mail services, free information, free “cool” buttons, free software programs that perform powerful functions but not as much as you get in the “pro” version. Wilson’s Second Law of Web Marketing is “The Law of Giving and Selling” (http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmta/basic-principles.htm). “Cheap” or “inexpensive” may generate a wave of interest, but “free” will usually do it much faster. Viral marketers practice delayed gratification. They may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if they can generate a groundswell of interest from something free, they know they will profit “soon and for the rest of their lives” (with apologies to “Casablanca”). Patience, my friends. Free attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs then see other desirable things that you are selling, and, presto! you earn money. Eyeballs bring valuable e-mail addresses, advertising revenue, and e-commerce sales opportunities. Give away something, sell something.

2. Provides for effortless transfer to others

Public health nurses offer sage advice at flu season: stay away from people who cough, wash your hands often, and don’t touch your eyes, nose, or mouth. Viruses only spread when they’re easy to transmit. The medium that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, software download. Viral marketing works famously on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital format make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation. Short is better. The classic is: “Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com.” The message is compelling, compressed, and copied at the bottom of every free e-mail message.

3. Scales easily from small to very large

To spread like wildfire the transmission method must be rapidly scalable from small to very large. The weakness of the Hotmail model is that a free e-mail service requires its own mailservers to transmit the message. If the strategy is wildly successful, mailservers must be added very quickly or the rapid growth will bog down and die. If the virus multiplies only to kill the host before spreading, nothing is accomplished. So long as you have planned ahead of time how you can add mailservers rapidly you’re okay. You must build in scalability to your viral model.

4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors

Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. What proliferated “Netscape Now” buttons in the early days of the Web? The desire to be cool. Greed drives people. So does the hunger to be popular, loved, and understood. The resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and billions of e-mail messages. Design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission, and you have a winner.

5. Utilizes existing communication networks

Most people are social. Nerdy, basement-dwelling computer science grad students are the exception. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. A person’s broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or thousands of people, depending upon her position in society. A waitress, for example, may communicate regularly with hundreds of customers in a given week. Network marketers have long understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks as well as the weaker networked relationships. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion.

6. Takes advantage of others’ resources

The most creative viral marketing plans use others’ resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others’ websites. Authors who give away free articles, seek to position their articles on others’ webpages. A news release can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. Now someone else’s newsprint or webpage is relaying your marketing message. Someone else’s resources are depleted rather than your own.

Put into practice

I grant permission for every reader to reproduce on your website the article you are now reading — “The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing” (see http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles-clean.htm for an HTML version you can copy). But copy this article ONLY, without any alteration whatsoever. Include the copyright statement, too, please. If you have a marketing or small business website, it’ll provide great content and help your visitors learn important strategies. (NOTE: I am giving permission to host on your website this article AND NO OTHERS. Reprinting or hosting my articles without express written permission is illegal, immoral, and a violation of my copyright.)

When I first offered this to my readers in February 2000, many took me up on it. Six months later a received a phone call:

“I want to speak to the King of Viral Marketing!”

“Well, I’m not the King,” I demurred. “I wrote an article about viral marketing a few months ago, but that’s all.”

“I’ve searched all over the Internet about viral marketing,” he said, “and your name keeps showing up. You must be the King!.”

It worked! Even five years later this webpage is ranked #1 for “viral marketing.”

To one degree or another, all successful viral marketing strategies use most of the six principles outlined above. In the next article in this series, “Viral Marketing Techniques the Typical Business Website Can Deploy Now” (http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-deploy.htm), we’ll move from theory to practice. But first learn these six foundational principles of viral marketing. Master them and wealth will flow your direction.

“Copyright © 2000, 2005, Ralph F. Wilson, E-Mail Marketing and Online Marketing editor, Web Marketing Today. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reprint this article on your website without alteration if you include this copyright statement and leave the hyperlinks live and in place.”

Read additional articles from Web Marketing Today, Issue 70, February 1, 2000

Next week I will be reviewing a book by Frans Johannson where he talks about The Medici Effect, a powerful way we can use knowledge to cross boundaries and produce world-beating results. I know I say it every week, but your RSS Feed is the best way to keep up to date.

Using what you have learned today, along with NLP principles to hit your customers’ motivations, will prove that 6 Simple Ways Viral Marketing Can Work Wonders For You.

The other day, Sharon who is my long-time trusted “gatekeeper” covering our live chat box on our site, sent me this chat conversation:
Subject. “Possible LARGE Sale”
Sharon: Hello…its Sharon. Welcome
Visitor:I need Ari’s phone number
Sharon: OK, can I ask what it is in regards too please?
Visitor: I am with a huge agency in LA, (– name withheld –) and I want to introduce our firm to him. I also need help with a script
Sharon: ah ok i seeSharon: lets do this. Is it possible you can give me your contact information name phone and email?
Visitor: have him call me @ 919.268.xxxx
Sharon: ok, i will pass our chat along to have someone call you back
Visitor: Thanks
Now normally, any leads that come from our chat box (which by the way, is a major profit channel for our business), are handled by one our staff members. And if the lead turns into a large opportunity requiring my input, then I’m made aware of it.
But this particular day when Sharon had this chat conversation, all of our team members were busy on the phones and I just happened to be available for a few minutes, so I decided to call this person back to see what they had in mind.
As always, as I picked up the phone to call him, I kept my mindset in check by not making any assumptions about where the call might go.

BAIT
So I called and reached him on the phone and the first thing he says to me is, “Ari, I’ve been on your site for an hour now and have listened to your audio seminar and just love your philosophy of not pitching, being authentic and creating a conversation rather than trying to just ‘close’ someone.”
So I’m thinking to myself, “Well, here’s someone who really ‘gets it’ and will truly be a success story if he decides to come on board with our program.”
After a few minutes of talking about how much he resonates with the Unlock The Game Mindset, he starts pitching me his company’s online marketing services.

SWITCH
I was a bit startled by flipping or switching the direction of the conversation, especially since he gave me the impression that the idea of “pitching” was exactly what he was trying to get away from.
He said “You really NEED to have a conversation with my manager because you don’t know what you’re missing in terms of how we can help you grow your online business. We have all the latest technology of how to bring you more visitors to your website that I’m sure you don’t have”. He continued on without allowing me to say a word “…It will only be a 10 minute call with us, you really don’t know what you’re missing”. As he was saying all of this, he was raising the volume of his voice and accelerating the momentum of his speech, putting immense pressure on me — making me feel like I was being “cornered” with no where to go.
After he paused for a moment, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and asked him to give me some examples of the online technologies that he says I was “missing”.
He started listing them one-by-one. As it turns out, I’ve been using everything he said I was “missing” for the last few years in my business. (I’ve been online for 7 years now, so I’m pretty up-to-date on the latest internet breakthroughs).
After I told him I’m already using everything he listed, instead of backing down, he started to get more aggressive trying to “overcome” the fact that we were obviously not a fit.

BIG MISTAKE
He started using aggressive sales tactics designed to make me feel like if I had any decency, I should close my business and start again: “Ari you have no idea what we can do for you…you just aren’t understanding what I’m saying…we have a “guru” on staff you need to talk to…we work with your competitors and you’d be making a BIG MISTAKE by not talking with us.”

He kept going and going and getting more aggressive with every word — creating a massive barrier between us and making me feel very agitated.

Finally I said to him “Look, you began this call with saying you hate people who try to pitch you and you want to learn to break away from being rejected on the phone. Yet, you continue to do EXACTLY what you are trying to get away from. You aren’t LISTENING to me. You’re talking yourself into trying to make me say ‘YES’.”
Hoping that would knock some sense into him, I waited to see if he’d back down so we can at least end our call in a pleasant manner.
Not a chance. He came at me even HARDER.

I was completely shocked by his inability to connect with me.
It was like he was a ROBOT given instructions to pursue his mission regardless of the casualties along the way. Finally, I decided I had been as reasonable as I could and I said to him “You know what, I’m going to hang up the phone if we can’t end this in a pleasant manner.” Which is something I haven’t done for years. After I said that, he tried to overcome that “objection” also. I hung up the phone, feeling a pain in my stomach….that’s how much this call affected me. Here was someone coming from the completely OPPOSITE mindset of what I teach in my program. And someone who really needed to “detox” to come to his senses, so he could understand what he was doing to other people and how many sales he was losing because of it.

THE WORLD HE LIVES IN
* Feeling completely comfortable having a hidden agenda while pretending to be really listening
* Being numb to the destructive manner in which he is treating other people
* Happy to “dominate” his conversations because that’s how he thinks selling should be
* No qualms or ethical struggles with using a “bait and switch” tactic, giving me the initial impression that he was interested in making a change in his sales approach, then using that as a technique to get me to listen to his pitch.

Sad isn’t it. In a day and age when what we need most is trust and connectedness between other human beings, here’s someone whose been trained to completely disregard that in pursuit of his own goal. People like him (and there are thousands of others just like him) continue to buy the books and tapes of the old-school sales “gurus” who continue to teach that it’s perfectly acceptable to treat your prospects as puppets to control and take advantage of.
Funny thing is, we have hundreds of old-school trained sales people making the transformation into the Unlock The Game way of sales success all the time.

SUCCESS INGREDIENTS
They have two things in common:
1. They are open-minded
2. They are willing to “let go” of their old notions of what they believe selling is
Those two, what I call “success ingredients”, are what it takes to experience tremendous sales success while at the same time creating genuine trust with others…and feeling a lot better about yourself.
To your success,
Ari

Next week we will be taking a look at viral marketing so make sure your RSS feed is working to automatically get you connected.

For those who listened to the Harlan Kilstein interview last week there was a useful post made by my colleague Louis Burns where he talks about the Death of the Layman.

I hope you can see from this example how important it is to build rapport and that your relationship is of much more value than just making a sale. NLP gives you the tools to make this easy and comfortable. Please have another look at the post on the Game of Selling and how to make this effective in the way you sell your products and services. Many thanks to Ari from Unlock the Game for allowing me to use his blog extract and I hope you can now understand better what is meant by the title Ari Galper Gets Hit With Bait & Switch.

Many thanks Harlan for agreeing to be with me today. Harlan Kilstein has been working in NLP copywriting for more than 30 years and is acknowledged as a world expert in this powerful field. Dr. Kilstein’s ads, direct mail letters, web-sites, and radio ads have made millions of dollars for his clients. People call from all over the world just to get him to write ads for them. People routinely pay thousands of dollars for Harlan to create their ads.

When did you first get involved with being an NLP copywriter?

• I heard about NLP about the time Bandler and Grinder parted in the 80’s and I studied at a local NLP centre
• It started when I had my own business and the leads were not working out.
• I began writing my own ads and realised I was not using my NLP skills
• When I did use them my leads started to convert into sales

What drives you on each day?

• To be successful at what I do
• Live the kind of lifestyle I want
• I play every day
• I have become a yoga fanatic
• I am also a golf coach

What are your strengths? What are you best at?

• Helping people overcome what is limiting them
• Generally they know what limits them, but if they do not I can help them find out

How do you learn best?

• Reading and immediately applying
• I have an Ipod full of materials
• I never stop learning

How has your attitude to business changed over the last 2 years?

• It is a lot easier to live the lifestyle I want
• I create a lot more products and use my skills to help others

How has the internet changed marketing over the last 2 years?

• It has become much easier
• I recently sat down and wrote an email in 10 minutes that brought in over $17,000
• I am doing 2 seminars this month on 6 Figure Copywriting and the second part of my NLP Copywriting series

Who are your influencers and heroes?

• The number one in NLP is David Gordon
• David and I have been in touch for 30 years
• He is one of the founders of NLP
• I have a lot of friends in the marketing world who are very influential
• Frank Kern and John Reese are two of my main people

What keeps you awake at night about your business?

• Nothing keeps me awake

How do you market your business?

• I use a lot of email marketing
• When my site is up I work to maximise conversions
• I did not start with a big list but now it is getting up there
• I built it with Pay Per Click and banner advertising

How do you see your work going over the next 12 months?

• A couple of new products are coming out
• That will round out what I am trying to do
• Then it is just marketing to make them successful

If there was one piece of advice you could give in marketing what would it be?

• Learn how to communicate and build relationships with the people on your list
• NLP is a strong tool in whatever you want to do
• It is just a matter of doing it

The problems of NLP

• There has not been a lot of NLP development recently
• No breakthroughs
• The original Bandler Grinder group that did the modelling broke up
• They were about to produce a number of models that would go into many businesses
• That led to the death of NLP

Do you believe NLP is dead?

• There has been no new life breathed into it in ages
• It needs a regeneration of new ideas by people who care enough to do it
• David Gordon produced a new model of modelling
• Because NLP people are not talking to each other less than 10% even know this new model exists
• The New Code came and went but only Grinder knew about it
• They wrote Leaves before the Wind about it

Why don’t you take it forward?

• I am taking it into the realms of copywriting
• I am developing new models of copywriters and teaching people how to do it
• That is my contribution
• NLP started in the therapeutic world

Can you see any new leaders coming through in marketing?

• Kenrick Cleveland has been pioneering using NLP in sales
• He is way ahead of the crowd
• My focus is on growing my own business
• If people want to come along for the ride they are welcome

Harlan, many thanks for a mind expanding interview from what I have learned and I hope we can talk again some time.

Listen to the interview to make sure you understand how Harlan sees the world and visit Overnight-Copy.com to sign up to his newsletter and get a review of your marketing website. You can also read reactions to his 6 Figure Copywriting seminar.

Make sure you subscribe to the RSS Feed to automatically get the next post where we hear again from Ari Galper, who told us how to unlock the game of selling. This time he talks about a call he returned which shocked and surprised him.

I hope you enjoyed hearing Harlan Kilstein’s interview and that it gives you a useful insight into this influential man, and Harlan Kilstein says NLP is DEAD.

Using NLP to Build Rapport with Your Market

This article looks at some fairly well known NLP techniques such as building rapport, using values and applies these ideas to some areas of marketing.

What Is Rapport?

I will use a specific definition of rapport that I think is useful for marketing. The definition I’m using is:

Rapport is a process for building responsiveness with people.

As you can see from this definition rapport is not about how much someone likes you although this is often a by product of building responsiveness. It is purely about increasing responsiveness. A clear example is two people in a heated argument. They will be matching and mirroring each other and showing all the signs of rapport and be highly responsive to each other. But they probably, in the middle of the argument, not particularly like each other.

How to Build Rapport

In essence people respond better to the known rather than the unknown. This means that by matching a person’s body language, verbal language, beliefs and values that person will feel automatically more comfortable with you because they will “feel” like you are a known quantity. This makes them more responsive on an unconscious level. On any NLP Training Course you will do is shown how to develop this as a technique fully in face-to-face situations, over the phone and in writing.

The other real benefit of building rapport with people is that you get a far better understanding of where they are coming from i.e. you become more responsive to them. The idea of being able to walk a mile in the shoes of your marketing prospects is a huge benefit. There are specific NLP techniques to do this but are outside of the scope of this article.

Leading, the Benefits of Rapport

Whilst it is great that you get to understand your marketing prospects better and that they feel comfortable with you…but this is not enough. Marketing is about presenting the right products and services to the right customer in the right way so that they get the opportunity to buy. To this end the next step in the rapport building process is to lead your prospects to your products and services in a way that will present your products so that they buy. In NLP terms this is called Pacing and Leading.

You pace the current situation of your prospect to build rapport and then you lead them to a solution to their problems which is hopefully, your product or service. If we were talking about persuasion skills or sales skills we would look at this in terms of eliciting a buying state in your customer and then anchoring that state to your product or service. In effect whenever the prospect sees the product they get the urge to buy it. If you want to look at great examples of this sort of thing just think about how Coca Cola, Pepsi, Nike and many other of these types of brands advertise.

But How Does This Help My Marketing?

I am going to take a few areas of marketing and give you some ideas for how you can use the concept of NLP Rapport to your advantage.

Let’s just say you are thinking about a new product and are at a stage where you are doing some market research. Obviously if you know some rapport building techniques you can put your interview subjects at ease and get better quality information from them. But let’s just think for a moment about the type of information you can gain.

All the usual marketing type questions are obviously valid. But, there are all sorts of interesting bits of information I would be looking for. For example I would pay close attention to the language that they use. This is because in all my marketing copy I would want to match the exact language. I would like to know specific words and phrases they use, whether they prefer formal language, informal conversations, do they prefer emotional criteria or are they all about facts and figures. Understanding your market on this level has almost as much benefit as the answers to the questions about the product.

Understanding how your market processes information is key. By matching this you are building rapport. Imagine trying to sell trainers to young people through the use of government white papers detailing the impact of trainers on global economy. Or perhaps selling IT infrastructure systems to the CEOs of multinational corporations through 30 second adverts with lots of singing and dancing. Obviously I am being extreme to make the point, but understanding your prospect on this level allows you to deliver information to them in a way that is comfortable to assimilate.

I would like to know the fears, dreams, hopes, problems and expectations of my prospects. I would like to know these things generally but in particular the context of the product or service. People think and act differently in different contexts. A parent might be a complete pushover with their children but an absolute demon and completely intransigent at work. So the context can make a big difference to a person’s values, beliefs and thinking patterns. So a general idea is useful and specific information within the context of the situation you have for your product is even more useful.

The reason I am interested in this sort of information is simply because again it gives me stuff that I can use to pace and lead my prospects.

The Value of Values

One particular thing I would like to know from my prospects is their values around the product or service.

Values in NLP are those abstract concepts that are important to you in the particular context. For example, if I were to ask a range of people what is important to them about the car that they drive you will get a range of answers, such as:

• Reliability
• Fun
• Safety
• Economy
• Looks good

In fact you probably have several of these but they will be in a hierarchy. In any given context these values define the types of cars you will want and how satisfied you will feel with the car that you have.

You move towards your values and judge yourself against them. For example If a car buyer has two values, one about getting a good deal and another about a good looking car they will look for a car that fulfils both values. When they get home they will evaluate the car against these values for their emotional response. If they bought a car that they really liked the look of but thought they paid over the market value for the car they could come down with buyer’s remorse. They may never like a car that was good value but they didn’t like the looks.

People sort their values into hierarchies and will operate from the most important to the least.

The thing with values is that they are ambiguous terms. Two people may have the same value e.g. the car must look good, but that the criteria that fulfils this value could be wildly different. For example “looks good” for one person might mean a particular colour whilst for another it might mean a body kit and aerofoil. By using the words “looks good” you are already matching their values, but if you have the opportunity you might examine the criteria they are using to fulfil that value.

In a 1 to 1 sales situation I obviously have the flexibility to ask these questions of the prospect in front of me and then tailor my responses to their individual needs. But when thinking about marketing you might want to research common themes.

When doing market research one fundamental question I would ask is “what’s important to you about (X)?” where X is the context for my product or service. By knowing the values of my market I have an inside track on how to sell my product or service. If I do enough of this I can start to pull out trends and common values. Once I have this I have a huge amount of targeted information with which to present my product or service. Below I am going to look at written literature to give you an idea of how you can use this information.

NLP Techniques and Marketing Literature

Okay, so now that you’ve have all this information from your market research how do you use it to build your marketing literature.

The following is a generalised idea for written marketing literature. If you have a look at the NLP Techniques section of my website you will find a specific post deconstructing the language and process I used for my most successful email. The email was selling a Hypnotic Language Pattern Course and created a response of over 50% from my list and I had sold out the course in days of the email going out. When you look through the email you will find that I used every bit of all the ideas I have suggested below.

The first thing I look to do is use the hopes and dreams and expectations of my marketing prospects. Nothing builds rapport faster than having shared, positive expectations. This also has the advantage of drawing the reader in. Basically I am building headlines that plug directly into common values and give your prospect a big benefit statement.

Next I would be building the problem that your product or service solves. I would be doing this in a way that will match their language, their situations and frustrations that you have found in your market research. Again this not only highlights the problem for your prospect but also builds rapport because you are matching their situation.

Only then would I be looking to present the product. Again using the language of your prospect.

All the way through this literature I would be talking about unfulfilled values in the problem states whilst fulfilling those values through the product or service.

The Reality of NLP Techniques and Marketing

NLP is really about getting underneath the surface of who we really are. A good NLP practitioner course will show you how to elicit a person’s unconscious values, beliefs, motivations and drivers in any given context. As a marketer this information is like gold dust because it gives you the opportunity to match and create rapport as well as leading people to fulfil deep, unconscious desires and values.

Using this sort of paradigm for your sales and marketing not only increases conversion rates it is also a very ecological way of selling. Whilst it is easy to misrepresent someone’s values they will always find out and you will lose custom in a very serious way. Conversely by making sure that people’s values are met by your products and services they become friends for life, will bring huge referrals as well is repeat business.

NLP Training Making Better Marketers

Selecting a good NLP practitioner course is a great way of honing your sales and marketing skills. We have only touched on one small element of NLP and looked at few areas and ideas where it can help. Imagine the possibilities of being able to:

• Get your prospect to attach good feelings to your products and services…or even to yourself
• Use hypnotic language to blow out their objections and focus them on the benefits of your product
• Model expert sales professionals, marketers and business models so you can install them in yourself and your business

A good NLP course would be a great way of adding to your marketing skills.

Rintu

Next week I am talking with Harlan Kilstein, one of the world’s best NLP copywriters. He talks about his business and how he sees the current NLP scene, all fascinating stuff. Make sure you have the RSS feed set up so you will be able to receive it as soon as possible.

Rintu has certainly given us much food for thought in what he says, and in this way we can be moving towards values that will market more product for us all.