NLP in Business

Let’s look at some of the ways you can use NLP in business. Whether you are a business owner, manager, sales person, employee or business coach; utilizing the skills and techniques taught in NLP will help you. We also use NLP a lot in business coaching with our clients.

The NLP communication model is really a useful thing to talk to business people about. The reason is that it allows us to understand that people have different ways of communicating. It shows us that the internal representation is the most important thing and how we hold that internal representation in our head really makes a difference. In terms of how we produce our state, our physiology and thus our behavior. This then also impacts on your performance.

The human nervous system is designed to produce behavior based on the internal representation that we hold in our mind, the state that we are in and our physiology. So if we want to improve our behavior or results; then we can, if we pay attention to our internal representation, state and physiology.

NLP and the principles of success

The Five principles for success that we use in NLP are of course really useful in business. Especially talking about having sensory acuity, sensory awareness, knowing what your outcome is and being outcome oriented and outcome driven. It makes a major difference in achieving your actual goals and targets.

Keys to an achievable outcome and well formedness conditions are also very useful in business. It is especially useful in business meetings to know your outcome, having a goal and knowing where you want to go.

NLP for rapport

Using rapport in business, is something that you could actually even do short course on. Where you can actually teach people how to do rapport and how to turn all business transactions into win-win situation. Many times in business, people have an idea of it needing to be one up man ship or a win-lose situation. If you are in rapport with someone else and they are in rapport with you, not only do they trust you, but you increase your trust and your caring about them. That creates a situation to be a win-win.

Rapport also tends to extend job longevity. In a business with little rapport, where there is a lot of backbiting and a highly competitive driven standard, there will be high staff turn over. By adding rapport you will actually increase the job longevity of the employees. People who are in rapport with the people they work with, tend to prefer to stay around longer because you will begin to feel comfortable and begin to trust them. You will begin to feel like you are working with people who are your friends and so will stay there longer. Rapport is one aspect of how powerful NLP is in business.

More NLP techniques.

The representational system preference test is very useful. You could actually make a list of all the people in the company’s preferred representational systems. You could teach all the people in your company predicates and how to use the predicates somebody else prefers. That of course will also increase rapport.

Intonation patterns are very useful for people that work on the phones. It is useful to make sure that you are conveying the right message when speaking to clients. When asking for the order or payment, using the right intonation patterns will make a world of difference.
If you ask for an order or payment with a questioning intonation, then your results may not be as good as if you used a command tonality.

Eye patterns are useful when using NLP in business. It could give a manager a in-depth feeling for the setting of the person that they were talking to, and if this person is telling them the truth. I actually asked a printer for a quote to do some flyers and they looked into their visual construct quadrant, so I know he just plucked the figure out of the air. I wont do business with them now.

State control

Submodalities are being used very successfully in business. Salespeople who need to be motivated quickly, afraid of a sales calls, or not liking to do paperwork, can be helped very quickly. So someone who did not like to do paperwork, we could use the dislike to like script, so they would start liking to do their paper work. Or someone who was concerned about not wanting to make phone calls, a Swish Pattern could solve that problem.

Hierarchy of ideas is useful to help guide somebody to be more abstract. Very good to use in negotiations to find solutions to what may seem like insurmountable problems. It is also very good for a manager to know to chunk up or when to chunk down. To intuitively recognize when they needed more specificity and when they needed to be more abstract.

The Meta model is very useful to help get very specific with clients and staff. So when a client says that he is unhappy with your service, you can get specific. By getting specific they may realize that it is only a small thing that you can actually rectify. Thus keeping the client by helping the client realize they are not unhappy with the service, but rather one aspect.

Metaphors are very useful in business. Telling stories about other happy customers, can help potential clients to find a solution or decide to use your products. I often like to use stories about Richard Branson, because I find him very inspiring. Without having to tell somebody what to do directly, they can come up with and own the answer themselves.

Anchoring can be used for yourself and to build for yourself and your salespeople. It is very useful for presenters or anyone who needs to maintain their state in a particular situation. Anchoring can be used to maintain and elicit certain states at will.

Collapse anchors are useful in a very quick fix situation where a business person needs to make a change quickly.

Chaining anchors is a fabulous intervention for getting rid of procrastination. How many business people that you know who procrastinate?

Strategies are a major part of NLP in business. I believe that a top sales person knowing strategies, would just be unstoppable in business. Discovering the motivation, decision-making and reassurance strategies of your clients, staff or fellow workers can make a huge impact in business.

Reframing is another very important part and is a really good for handling objections.

Parts integration is very useful in business to get rid of the in-congruence in individuals. So the person will definitely appear more congruent and can help them to be happier and more content.

Time Line Therapy® in business.

Negative emotions tend to interfere with the person’s ability to produce results. Anger in a business setting has really no place. A boss yelling at his employees or co-workers yelling at each other has no place in business.

You can have sadness of not being promoted. That’s going to affect your performance. Fear of closing, fear of communicating or fear of speaking up. All of those things can interfere with performance. Time Line Therapy® is also great for getting rid of phobias. Time Line Therapy® will also get rid of any limiting decisions. Imagine having sales staff who believe they can ask for the order. Many sales people never actually ask for the order and thus lose a lot of potential business.

So to say you can use NLP in business is an understatement. As a business coach, I would suggest that all business coaches should be trained to use NLP in business. Using NLP in business and in your coaching practice will increase your results with your clients.

In similar posts we will look at NLP in education and NLP in therapy, so please visit us again soon.