Hypnosis in Sales, Persuasion & Influence

One of the techniques NLP Practitioners and Hypnotherapists use is called “Future Pacing.”

We take people “into the future” – in their imaginations, of course – and have them experience having already achieved their goals.

In other words, a person who wants to be thin and healthy and exercise regularly, we help them feel as if they are in THAT future, having already achieved that. We help them experience what that feels like and how it affects them.

So they’re imagining themselves out on the future thin and healthy and energetic and everything they want to be. We make sure there’s a tremendous number of positive feelings attached to that imagination. So that whenever they think about exercising, that goal pops into their mind and they have all those positive feelings which motivate them to take action such as exercising or eating healthy. That’s future pacing.

In hypnosis, we use specialized techniques to really wrap their mind into this idea, so that they experience it as realistically as possible. We get all of their senses involved.

Your best sales people and persuaders do the same thing.

If you were selling vacation packages to the Bahamas, you’d take your clients to the Bahamas in their minds. You’d have them experience a wonderful time and those positive feelings would motivate them to take action and buy your packages. You’d close a much higher percentage that way.

That’s future pacing and that’s how to use it in a sales context.

Now, I recommend that all salespeople learn and study hypnosis because that’s what hypnotists are great at – creating that environment and creating that imagination so that it’s more and more real. And more and more emotions come up in that imagination. And it’s those emotional buttons that push people to buy or not buy.

Enjoy,

Keith Livingston