Edition #27: Five NLP Secrets That Will Skyrocket Your Sales Team's Performance

Telcos: I’m going to let you in on a secret that can revolutionize your retail training approach and drive your success to levels you previously thought were impossible.

Ready? It’s Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).

NLP is a pseudoscientific approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy. It was created in the 1970’s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in California, USA. Although it’s been around for a while, NLP has been mainly confined to the realms of life coaches, personal accountability coaches and other success-based personal coaching schemes.

Until now.

My experience with NLP goes back more than a decade. I became a Certified NLP Practitioner in 2008, and now I’m working towards my Master Practitioner Certification. I won’t sugar coat it - the NLP courses are long, costly, and require a lot of personal commitment to complete. This often results in long residential events to fully learn, practice and master the principles and techniques.

As a retail consultant, I’ve thought a lot about how the principles could be applied to train young retail staff and help them perform better in their roles. Let’s dive right in and explore the five principles of NLP and how they can be intertwined with your telco training material.

The 5 Principles of Neuro-Linguistic Programming

NLP consists of effective techniques that provide you with choices that you didn’t know you had. Even better, it triggers a curious attitude, and the desire to learn and explore new possibilities. But for NLP to be successfully applied, there are five basic principles you need to respect.

1. Know Your Outcome

What It Means:

Like you would set business goals, you want to set NLP goals. Start by knowing what outcome you are striving for. The most important part is ensuring it’s well thought out and that it’s useful.

Here are the requirements for NLP outcomes:

Using This Principle:

What does this mean in a telco retail environment? It’s very clear. You need to ensure your sales staff know what success looks like. Be specific and tell them what’s good and what’s not.

A great example is initial greetings with potential customers. Many young salespeople are easily overwhelmed by greetings, which can result in clumsy exchanges. By using the principles of “Know Your Outcome”, telcos can give the salesperson a positive, contextualised process for greetings that can help them give customers a positive engagement.

“Hi, my name is Will and I’m a retail advisor, it’s my job to help you find what exactly you need from us. How can I help you today?”

Say that naturally – and mean it. Now you’re off to a great start with every customer.

2. Take Action

What It Means:

While this might seem obvious, many people don’t take action. Some make excuses or give excellent reasons to explain why sitting around and doing nothing is the right thing to do. NLP is all about taking action, for yourself and others. Things seldom happen when nothing is done to expedite an outcome.

Using This Principle:

In a telco environment, it’s all about instilling young learners with the right attitude. Show them that by taking action and repeatedly doing things the right way, they can over-achieve - and be in control of their own career trajectory in the process.

3. Sensory Acuity

What It Means:

When we have a conversation with someone, we are also talking to ourselves in our heads. When the other person stops talking, we can interpret that as an invitation to share our opinion. The problem is that this way of conversing rarely elicits effective change in anyone.

Sensory acuity is about noticing the shifts and changes in others, and it’s only possible when we’re giving someone our undivided attention. Listening with our ears, looking with our eyes, and focusing our brain will ensure we notice everything that is happening in the engagement. Ultimately, this will make you a great listener and someone your customers want to talk to.

Using This Principle:

Now, teaching these processes to someone is easier than you may think. Help your salespeople transform their listening skills by showing them:

• How communication occurs.
• How mistakes are made.
• How to watch for micro-changes in a pitch.
• How to hear tone.
• How to spot behaviour.

When salespeople have all the facts, they can provide the right solution!

4. Behavioural Flexibility

What It Means:

If what you’re currently doing isn’t working, why wouldn’t you try something new?

Too many of us stubbornly repeat the same thing – even though it’s proven not to work. When we exhibit flexible behaviour, we gain better control of our situation, and our communication improves.

Using This Principle:

As we know, all customers are unique. By understanding customers’ needs and behaviours, salespeople can adjust their own approach accordingly. Sales training plays a role here too by giving salespeople a bigger toolkit of strategies to try. Clear communication builds rapport and establishes trust, and ultimately creates an excellent sales processes and experience.

5. Physiology of Excellence

What It Means:

Some days, working in retail can be tiring and feel never-ending. Being on your feet for 8+ hours during a winter shift, where daylight is short, can be exhausting! And being stuck inside on a beautiful summer day can be just as frustrating!

The trick to overcoming these obstacles is adopting the right mindset. Resourcefulness is contagious and can spread to those around you, creating a positive impact beyond yourself. When you’re feeling down, try adopting a new mindset.

Using This Principle:

Letting your retail staff understand their emotions and reactions to their physical surroundings helps them practice techniques that will motivate them to provide positive customer experiences. Show them that with the right mindset, they will create their own personal success and victory for their team.

Wrap Up

NLP offers some incredible insights that can revolutionize the performance of your sales staff. I’m such a big believer in NLP’s benefits that I’ve incorporated in our sales training course at Maplewave.

If you want to learn more about telco retail sales training, download our whitepaper How To Create Outstanding Telco Salespeople and read about what customers expect from their retail experience, why the telco store experience often falls short, the characteristics of an outstanding telco salesperson, and how to develop a successful retail training strategy.

Interested in how NLP could work in your telco retail environment? Connect with me on LinkedIn and we can talk!