What she does, then, in this relatively simple and generalized example, is to present the same content recoded into the language of each of the three major representational systems. She marks out and directs the appropriate coding to the person with that strategy and paces each person she addresses, even though at the same time she is maintaining the structure of a group presentation. S will use any feedback she receives to direct and amplify the strength of her presentation. If E (whose decision point was discerned as kinesthetically oriented) should begin to look up and left consistently and begin to shake his head slightly as S is speaking to him with kinesthetic predicates, she would know that she had lost rapport and would immediately begin to switch her presentation to pace him.
If she'd had time to elicit the full decision strategy from each of the group members her task would be slightly more complex, as she would, for maximum impact, want to pace the entire representational sequence that each member cycled through during their decision processes.
Those readers familiar with group decision making will recognize that such complexity would rarely be required. Rather the more typical group will have developed (unconsciously) some group level strategy where the various functions are distributed among its members. For example, one group member will be extremely active in questioning the factual basis of the presentation, while another will make comparisons with alternative products or services. Frequently, the group will have the decision point function assigned to a single group member. When that member's tests are satisfied, the group has decided. The individual who has sharpened his sensory acuity will recognize the signals and package for the sequence specified by the group strategy with special attention to the individual decision strategy of the member who serves as decision point and exit.
One of the major obstacles to success for many salespeople is the lack of what we have called requisite variety — that is, the ability to vary their behavior in response to feedback from different kinds of customers. Many salespeople present only one particular form of packaging that will pace some percentage of the population but will be ineffectual with the rest. They rely on volume coverage rather than repackaging their communications to pace each individual appropriately. High pressure tactics will pay off with some people but not with others. Any particular existing sales technique will work — but only for a limited percentage of the market population. One effective use of NLP for sales would be to determine which of the existing techniques, that work well, paces which class of representational strategies. The salespersons may then adjust their behavior to access the most effective approach for each buyer's strategy so that statistically they will succeed with a larger percentage of customers. Hence, any particular technique will continue to succeed where it has been succeeding, but you will know exactly which kind of people to expand with. After a period of time, since there will not be that many different categories of buying strategies, the salesperson will know the moment someone walks in the door which category he falls into and which tactic to use.
4.422 Implications of NLP for Advertising.
Advertising agencies and personnel have utilized the pacing of strategies since advertising began (although they probably never thought of it that way). Consider the following example of an advertisement, paraphrased almost word for word from a popular magazine:
"When I shop I like to ask a lot of questions. That way I can feel sure that I've seen all of the options, and am really making the best choice. Product X has the best quality I've seen …"
The strategy of the person making this statement is obviously
The strategy is essentially one for information gathering in which the person asks questions, and is shown samples of the product, which are then evaluated kinesthetically with respect to the sample size required for the person's decision strategy. This ad would, of course, pace to some degree anyone who shared a similar strategy. The ad also contained a photograph of the person allegedly making the statement — dressed in stylishly modern clothes. Such a picture might also serve to pace the image a person has of themselves, or an image they aspire to achieve.
A statement which would pace a different shopping strategy might go something like:
"I don't like to feel pressured when I'm shopping. When I see someone really coming on with all that phony show, I just keep telling myself, "Who needs it?" and get out of there as fast as possible. The people at company X have never tried to put on any glitter. It's a good feeling to see people that really care. I can say from the bottom of my heart, "They know how to treat their customers …"
This statement would pace a strategy that went:
In this strategy the person derives feelings from what they see and then makes a verbal evaluation which leads directly to the outcome.
One effective approach in advertising, since there are different buying strategies, is to discover the most general or pervasive classes of strategies and create an advertisement pacing each one.
Most successful advertising involves all of the representational systems in the 4–tuple, generally placing an emphasis on one or two—depending upon the nature of the product. The essential desired outcome of any product advertising is to establish overt and/or covert anchors linking the product to positive 4–tuples and to the motivation and buying strategies of consumers, such that anchors will be triggered when prospective buyers enter a context in which that product is sold. For this reason it is important to include visual or auditory cues in the advertisement that will also be present in the buying environment. Audience participation in the advertisement (the involvement of the viewer/listener), such as showing what the observer will see through his or her own eyes, or hear on the scene, establish effective anchors associated with the product and its market environment.
Another important step often left out of advertising is that of telling the customer what to do to buy the product — giving him explicit directions about where to go and how to buy.
Tailoring your vocabulary to the culturally established dialect or idioms of the target population of your advertisement is another very effective and often amusing means of pacing that may be employed by sales and advertising personnel. One of the authors, for example, was recently consulting for a floral brokerage. The primary marketing targets of this company were florists, whose very job demands sensory refinements (olfactory) not common in the general population. One of the recommendations made to them, as a means to help their sales department branch out to new areas, was to mix in an assortment of floral idioms and terms, and olfactory predicates, into their advertising and sales arrangements. This would provide an enjoyable way to pace customers, to keep rapport from wilting and to insure healthy growth. It would also provide a fresh, fertile and satisfying environment for the creativity of sales personnel to blossom and even help morale to grow. A sample list of floral terms easily transplanted into everyday speech could include: