4.42 Business and Organizational Development.
There are many aspects of business and organizational interactions that we could consider, and we will single out specific areas as we go through this section. But there will be general applications of NLP elicitation and utilization procedures for this field that hold for all situations in which communication between human beings is involved, which we can generalize across all of these aspects.
The most important resources of any business are the people that make it run. Being able to organize and deal with people effectively is the principal task of almost every executive, supervisor, manager and administrator, no matter what kind of business is involved. There are four essential steps in doing this successfully:
A. Rapport
Establishing rapport with the individuals you work with will pay off by greatly cutting down unnecessary resistance to the job you are trying to get done. Your approach with each individual will powerfully influence the course of the interaction. By pacing the person's strategies and other behavior, picking up his vocabulary, mirroring and feeding back his voice tonality and tempo, facial expressions, posture and gestures, it will be possible for you to establish a rapid and worthwhile rapport.
Investing the necessary time to establish positive anchors and resource anchors at the beginning of a communication interchange can profitably assist in speeding up progress toward the desired net outcome of the interaction.
B. Information Gathering
Knowing what information you need and how to get it will greatly assist you in getting things accomplished rapidly and successfully. Grounding this information as much as possible in specific sensory based language (that is, so that it is in terms of things that everybody can explicitly see, hear, feel and smell) will be well worth the effort in streamlining any plan, procedure, negotiation or operation. By using the meta–model, paying attention to nonverbal cues, organizing your information gathering tactics in terms of the three–point process and putting emphasis on form and process, you will quickly pinpoint what changes are required to eliminate costly or time–consuming problems as you discover what strategies are required to open profitable and dynamic new possibilities of action. The minimal information to be gathered for any decision making, problem solving, change or transition process to be properly engineered would consist of:
What do you want? (Desired/outcome state.)
What is happening now? (Present state.)
What stops you from getting what you want? (Problem state.)
What do you need in order to get what you want? (Resources.)
How would you know if you were moving adequately toward your goal? (Feedback.)
Have you ever got it before? What did you do then? (Resources.)
These are purely process questions. You will want to get other evaluative (meta) information at some point as well (i.e. a cost benefit analysis), such as: What will it cost? What is it worth? Do I (we) have the resources?
Pacing, described in the step on rapport, is a quick and efficient way of gathering information. Pacing gives you rapid access to information about the model of the world and the strategies of those you are working with. By simply feeding back an individual's behavior you will actually begin to pick up naturally many of the details of their strategies and operations.
C. Delivery/Presentation
By packaging the delivery and presentation of your ideas and suggestions in a way that is consistent and congruent with the strategies and models of the people you are dealing with, you will make those ideas maximally acceptable to them. In presenting several alternatives you may choose to package only the alternative you identify as most beneficial to you and your client in the form which matches their unconscious strategies. By so doing, you exert a powerful influence on the decision. In either case these tools achieve their effectiveness by using information about the patterns of personal organization which lie outside the conscious appreciation of the person being addressed.
D. Feedback
It is always necessary to get feedback on how your communications are affecting the individual or group you are dealing with. One of the basic presuppositions of NLP is that the response you get from the person or group you are communicating with is the meaning of your communication, regardless of what you intend the meaning to be. That is, people may not interpret your communication in the way you intended; but it is up to you to observe what response your communication is eliciting from them and to respond appropriately — i.e., to vary your behavior until your intended meaning is conveyed to the other party. Feedback lets you know when and to what degree what you are doing is working; when to continue what you are doing and when to change your behavior. Your ability to make refined sensory distinctions will be an invaluable and time saving resource for you with this process.
4.421 NLP in Sales
In the area of effective sales work, we begin with the assumption that sales personnel are trained to qualify their customers. By qualifying their customers or clients, we mean that the sales representative is committed to offering their company's product or service only to clients who would actually benefit from such a product or service. To fail to match the product or service to each unique customer is to run the risk of buyer's remorse. Most new business is the result of word of mouth referrals by satisfied customers.
The tools we offer here are powerful enough to sell without qualifying clients. Thus the step of qualifying customers becomes even more important as a safeguard for both the customer/client and the business involved.
Let's consider an example of how NLP principles could be applied in the area of sales. Let us suppose that a salesperson from Superior Electronics (SP in the following dialogue) has previously laid the groundwork for a sales meeting with the purchasing agent (PA) for ZX Computer Corporation by thoroughly researching what kinds of computers ZX sells, how well they are performing and selling and by leaving a sample power semiconductor with ZX's Engineering Division to be tested and "qualified." That is, SP has accomplished his information gathering and knows his product meets ZX's performance specifications before he walks into the meeting.
SP: Good morning, Mr. Edwards. I'm George Smith with Superior Electronics.
PA: Oh yes, I remember talking to you on the phone. (After handshake, sits, leans back in chair, crosses left leg over right, points to chair beside his desk.)
SP: (Sits, mirrors PA's voice tonality and portions of his posture unobtrusively.) Mr. Kurtz in your Engineering Division tells me your ZX–12 personal computers are really moving along in sales.
PA: (Smiling.) We've picked up a big chunk of the market in the past two years. We're certainly pleased with the customer response the ZX–12 is getting.
SP: (Pacing PA's tonality and posture more strongly.) Are you satisfied with its power supply performance?
PA: Oh yes … We've used a lot of Solitar products in getting off the ground, but … (Looks down and right) we're interested in staying in contact with what's available in terms of quality and price.
SP: Your feeling is that you'd be interested in system components that would add to the sales momentum you've established for the ZX–12?
PA: Yes … That's right.
SP: (Tests establishment of rapport by shifting to slightly new posture. PA follows, indicating that rapport has been established. SP then begins to gather information about PA's buying strategy.) Do you think you made a good decision buying your initial components from Solitar?