Marketing Tricks the BIG Companies Use to Fool You” Series Use the Same Tricks to Build Your NLPCoaching Business I

These articles are written to be equally useful for the beginner of NLP and the NLP Trainer although some of the articles may be more advanced than others. If you find yourself reading an article that’s too advanced, give us a call or send us an email. We will be happy to clarify the issue for you.

Marketing Tricks: Article No. 1

So, you’re a hard-working man or woman. You really do your best, and yet no matter how much you work, you don’t seem to attract enough business.

Why is it then that your good and useful skills don’t attract more clients?
Why is it that it seems so hard to make the business work well and bring lots of prosperity?

If you’re one of these people, read on.

Believe me, you don’t have to look very hard to find cases of wonderful, well-intended, helpful and knowledgeable NLP Coaches whose small businesses are not producing the results they’re hoping for (and they deserve – in our opinion).

Or perhaps, you work in another industry, and have nothing to do with coaching but experience the same problems.

On the other hand, we all have experienced the persuasive power of public relations techniques. They are extremely convincing, even believable… Until you understand how they’re constructed, the language used – and then you can unravel their true intentions.

Not all companies or corporations use PR to deceive us. However, all you have to notice is the large “cash infusions” by certain companies that can take your discriminating eyes off the ball, sometimes when you really need to be paying closer attention.

If you don’t understand this, then read through the linguistic patterns in this articles series, and begin to notice how they’re used. This understanding alone will powerfully illustrate this whole concept to you.

From Time To Time It Is Worth Pointing Out the Obvious

So, why is a small business owner struggling to get clients?

Number one – because times have changed. Renting an office and hanging outside a sign saying for example “NLP Coaching Here” – will not make people flock to your doors.

Number two – Many are missing something essential, something the big boys all know and utilize (masterfully I must say) in their promotions to us, the consumers. These are the PR linguistic techniques. And of course we are aware that we cannot possibly write them all for you even in a series of articles, we hope to give you a good insight in the art and skill of public relations.

Fact: The average consumer in western world sees over 3,000 advertising messages a day.

Why? Because the product has to be placed in the minds of consumers. Otherwise 1: We would not know about it and 2:

We would not want it.

So, to be successful in business you need to make yourself known to your potential clients.

But how???

How To Do It So That It Works

We’re all caring people. We got into this field because we care. We want to empower others, help and assist and we’re driven by a good intent.

But… No one cares about you! None of your potential (coaching) clients wakes up in the morning wondering how you are and what are you doing today. You have to get clear about this.

Then, it is YOU who must have a clear idea where your business is now and where you want it to be in a certain period of time. In NLP Coaching – you are your business. That means that your business is a reflection of you. And the fundamental reality is that the coaching business is driven by sales, marketing and advertising.

Unfortunately business does not happen by magic or by the law of attraction. It may begin in your head and in your thinking, but ultimately has to get “out there”, in the market place. People have to know about you and your services. If they don’t, regardless of how good you are in your NLP skills, you will have no clients, and therefore no business.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed. To know HOW to do it, what formulas to use is a skill in and of itself.

With the exception of NLP Marketing DVD’s, inside our NLPCoaching Trainings we spend little time talking in detail about how to market yourself. Most of our time obviously is spent on teaching and practicing the NLP and Time Line Therapy® techniques themselves.

This is why we are beginning a series of articles where we will post a collection of PR techniques (which are all based on the NLP Milton Model Patterns or the Sleight of Mouth techniques.) These patterns are used overtly and covertly by the advertising and marketing industry, and they work really well.

Are These Techniques Manipulative?

From time to time there are people who tend to believe that PR linguistic patterns and techniques are manipulative.

Folks, techniques are just that – techniques! It is upon the integrity of the person using techniques to decide if s/he uses them to promote something good for people or not. When you’re excited about NLP or Time Line Therapy® you don’t manipulate anybody because you could talk endlessly about them.

You’re just excited to have found something useful that could help clients to solve their bothersome problems. You’re excited to have helped somebody who struggled in business, and now they’re doing well. You’re just excited to have helped a relationship not working well, or a person going through a stressful situation to get over that and restore a balanced and happy life.

So are these techniques manipulative in and of themselves? No more than a hammer. Can you “manipulate” a person with a hammer? Sure.
Are there manipulative people in ALL domains?
Are there manipulative used-cars sales people?
Are there manipulative lawyers?
Are there manipulative priests? (considering the scandals we read about in the media….)
Are there manipulative TV reporters?
Are there manipulative fathers and mothers?
Are there manipulative men/women in general?

Sure.

Does that mean that ALL used-car sales people, lawyers, priests, TV reporters, fathers/mothers, men/women are manipulative?

No! Absolutely not!

Does that mean that all these people are using PR linguistic techniques for manipulation?

No!

So we will encourage you to use the patterns described herein with integrity and honesty. As in our 5 Step Sales Process, please realize that if the client has no need for you or your services, it is not OK to continue to pursue that client. Back off. And save your time. There are lots of people out there needing your NLPCoaching services. You just need to find them.

This does not mean that these techniques could not be used to manipulate (overtly and covertly) people to purchase certain products. All you have to do is take one single example: movies.

Remember Minority Report movie? In this movie, the main character, pre-crime captain John Anderton displays visibly the Nokia logo of his phone. Do you think this happens by accident? In the same movie, if you pay attention you will also see clearly the advertising of the logo of his watch. It is Bulgari.

Do you realize how many millions of dollars are spent for this to happen? It is called product placement. So whether we like it or not, whether we agree with the practice or not, the reality is that it happens. Everywhere. On billboards, on TV and radio advertising, in the glossy pages of fashion and gossip magazines…. It is just a fact of life.

Is this good or bad?

For our purposes it is beside the point. This is not a debate whether what’s going on is right or wrong. Our purpose here is to identify some of these patterns for you, so you can recognize them. Once you recognize what techniques are being used “on” you, then you can turn that around, utilize those techniques, this time in integrity and for your own benefit.

Learn all these techniques (not all at once, this is why we post them here one at the time), and make up your own responses. The process itself will improve your coaching business thinking tremendously!

So, here we go:

Pattern No. 1 – MAKE IT SIMPLE

Watch TV advertising. Is it simple? Almost laughable. 6th grade comprehension level.

When you present your message for cold audiences, drop complex ideas, issues, or problems, this cannot be done without sacrificing some content and also some explanatory parts of the message.
If you make your message too complex and too complicated most people will not take the time to fully figure it out. If they are rushed, they will be likely to ignore the whole message because it is too difficult to understand.
David Crystal, in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, suggests that there must be at least a million words in the English language. Tom McArthur, in the Oxford Companion to the English Language, comes up with a similar figure. But for the average citizen, the used vocabulary is estimated to include 3,000 words. (http://www.trivia-library.com/b/word-counts-and-vocabulary-usages.htm)

According to the same source

“[…] an average American journalist uses an average of 6,000 words in his newspaper articles. Victor Hugo used an active vocabulary of 38,000 words; Shakespeare, 24,000; and Homer, 8,500. But Horace, with 4,600 words, came significantly below the American journalist, and Xenophon, with 3,200, was about equal to the present-day “average citizen.”

So Keep It Simple. But, be careful so not to sound condescending if you talk to a more sophisticated audience.

In the case of simplifications, make sure your vocabulary does not use words that are unknown, unfamiliar, jargon or words that are not widely known; replace complex words with simpler ones, more easily understood.

Here are a few examples. When talking about:

• Trainings; you can say something like “All your NLP needs will be fulfilled if you take the training with us”
• Anchoring: How would you like to wake up on the right side of bed every day?
• Eye Patterns: One good way to determine if someone is lying to you. (This is actually only partially correct, but we saw it used)
• Rapport: is one of things you do – but you don’t know you do. It is like tuning into the same wavelength of the person with whom you talk to.
• NLP: Instruction manual for how your mind works.
• Time Line Therapy®: How would you like to never be a victim of your emotions again?

So the point of this technique is to learn to use simplified language. Simple, easy to understand words.

Next technique in the next article…

Until then, be well!