Therapist use a technique called Future Pacing to change their clients actions and behaviours. Working with a clinical hypnotherapist we have developed a new way to approach overcoming sales objections using this same technique.
The aim is to give sales people:
A new and effective way to handle objections
Objection techniques that they can quickly learn and put into action
A way to overcome sales objections that makes full use of their current sales skills and experience.
How Future Pacing can work to increase your sales
Now you’re probably asking yourself if you should carry on reading this page. You’re about to make a choice, click off the page or carry on and see what you can gain. It’s a decision process, a choice you make, just like the ones your buyers make as you try and sell to them. Think about, how you make that choice, and how your customers make their choices. When we make choices and decisions we look ahead into the future and predict the consequences of our decision. As we do this we make pictures, hear words, and these create feelings about the decision we are about to make.
Right now you may be thinking:
If I read this article will there be anything in it for me?
Is this a sales pitch and what are they trying to sell me?
No it’s not, so there’s one objection out of the way.
You could be thinking, I want to make more money and this article could have that one sales objection technique I need that will make a difference to my sales results, and my income.
You will be seeing positive or negative consequences to your decision to read the article. It is at this point that objections can start to form. The aim of this objection technique is to change the negative consequences the customer sees internally that cause sales objections. You will be working with the buyer’s internal map of future reality, because that’s where the objection is formed. A prospect can raise a sales objection because they predict certain consequences of buying. They see the future. They see what happens and how they could feel if they buy your product, and they don’t like it. They can see something negative. They present this negative view of the future as an objection. What people see in their imagination can be real. It can also be completely made up, a fantasy or a nightmare. But in both cases it will feel real to them.
How to use this technique to change the buyer’s mind
These inner pictures, sounds, and feelings, will be filtered by past experiences, current beliefs, and the information a buyer has selected to take in. The buyer forms a prediction with their pictures, sounds, and feelings. They experience their prediction of the consequences of choosing to buy from you. This can happen in a few seconds. If those predictions are negative you get objections. If they are positive you see them move into a buying state and closing the sale is easy. Therapist, motivational trainers, and NLP practitioners, lead the client through this process. They guide them as they view the consequences of their choices, decisions, and actions. A client with a habit may be guided through their predicted future and see, hear, and feel, the impact their habit will have on them, their families, friends, job, and their future life. A good coach or therapist will make this future pacing appear, sound, and feel, real to the client. Then the client will be guided through a future where they have made different choices. The client or buyer sees, hears, and feels, a positive future that happens because they stopped their habit, or changed their negative actions. The mind struggles to differentiate between real and imagined. A good sales person, coach, or therapist, makes this Future Pacing feel real.
Put this great selling technique into action
A buyer raises an objection and says, ‘It’s too expensive.’
You then lead them through the consequences of having that belief. You get them to see, hear, and feel, what will happen if they buy a cheaper model. Guide them through the future consequences of trying to save a few pennies. Then you show them the positive future that will happen when they change that belief and buy from you. You use benefits and make them feel how much they will gain. Lead their imagination and show them a future where they have made a positive choice and bought your high value product. Sell them a picture of the future, not just the features of your product.
