Your sales results depend largely on your ability to build personal and emotional value for your prospects.

I have made countless purchases based purely on emotional appeal, while very few of my purchases in life have been based wholly on logic. If you think about your past purchases, you’ll probably say the same.

Using NLP to Develop Sales Questions

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is the study of influencing the subconscious mind through every-day conversation.

Because of NLP, we know that questions are some of the most influential language patterns, because they must be contemplated by the subconscious mind in order to be answered. (Statements, on the other hand, can often be rejected by the conscious mind on their face value without any contemplation.)

When you ask powerful questions, you engage the client at a deep subconscious level. This will often make the difference between losing the sale and closing the sale.

Questions like the ones below will help you build value toward a purchase, but only if you allow the client to fully associate and answer.

These will build strong motivation, both toward what they want and away from what they don’t want (both types of motivation are needed in sales!), compelling the client to want, desire and ultimately purchase your offering.

All of these questions should be asked from a place of rapport. Without rapport, the sales process is mechanical and unemotional. Rapport is something that is covered in other blog articles and in my NLP sales training.

Questions Are the Answer When it Comes to Making More Sales

In the following sample questions, I’ll be using a weight-loss program as the example product/service for sale, but these questions can be applied to any product or service in any niche. This is not a “script,” but rather a collection of questions to have in your tool-belt. Practice them until they become second nature.

• What made you think about finally getting a handle on your weight issue?
• How long have you had a problem with your weight?
• How have you suffered because of it?
• What have you lost or never had because of this?
• If you had the opportunity to wave a magic wand and have things be exactly the way you want them, what would it be like? Describe that to me.
• Who is that person who thinks you have no hope of accomplishing this? What will it feel like when you prove them wrong?
• What will people be saying about you when you’ve accomplished this? What will they be thinking? How will that make you feel?
• So, it’s fair to say that this is important for you to lose this weight, isn’t it? Why?
• What will you FINALLY be able to do once the weight is gone? How will that change your life?
• What are the top five reasons you know that you’re worth this and you deserve it?
• What will it mean about you to finally have this taken care of?

These are all just examples, but I know you can see the theme. These are open-ended questions that associate the client to their OWN personal motivations and values, rather than the rehearsed values and benefits of the sales person.

Most sales-people mind read that the client has the same vales as they do, and talk, talk, talk. The key to sales is to SHUT UP. Let the client sell themself.

For these questions to be most powerful, do not allow the client to respond with surface answers. If they’re not digging deep, help them dig by asking some of these questions to draw out real, personal, emotional answers:

• Tell me more about that…
• Why’s that?
• What does that mean to you?
• What will that do for you?

If you put these value building questions into action in your sales encounters, my opinion is that you’ll see immediate results that will grow the better you get at building value.

If this has been useful for you, I want you to know that this only 1% of sales. It’s an important 1%, but still just a piece of the puzzle. You can learn more about how to close sales with NLP by downloading my ebook, Ultimate Sales Closes, ($19.99 value) for free below.

Posted by
Michael Stevenson
Master Trainer of NLP

Tags: course, home study, NLP, sales

This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2015 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Business, Motivation & Success, NLP, Sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.