NLPhilia Blog

NLP Master Trainer Elite Stever Robbins has joined the “Quick and Dirty Tips” crew to produce a podcast on productivity. He’s the official Get-It-Done Guy!

Most people think of productivity as doing stuff faster. It isn’t. In this podcast, we find ways to do things better, and really dig into what’s even worth doing in the first place. You can act on the tips immediately, whether they’re about details such as labeling your files, or about the big picture of your life, such as finding ways to collaborate with colleagues, friends, and family so you work together helping everyone reach their goals.

Get it on iTunes (Stever’s Preference) or directly from the Get-It-Done Guy’s page.

Previously: Stever Robbins on Logical Levels

Master copywriter Harlan Kilstein made an exciting discovery recently: a videorecording of Doug O’Brien teaching his acclaimed Sleight of Mouth training to a group of salespeople. He’s mastered the video to DVD and has released it for sale.

Check out what Harlan has to say about the conversion process:

I decided on the spot to convert these VHS tapes into DVDs and encountered a glitch. The guy I hired liked the DVDs so much he kept inviting his friends over to watch them. What should have taken a week ended up taking months.

Now check out what he has to say about the content:

Most salespeople are happy if they close at a 20 to 40% rate. Most copywriters are thrilled if their copy converts 1% of the lookers into buyers. Even at these numbers, money can be made.

But what if your sales closed at an 80-90% rate? Or your copy converted 17% or more? You know what that would do for your bottom line?

These DVDs are a must-have for anyone who wants to be more persuasive in any every context.

Order the DVDs here.

By way of this post on the Freakonomics Blog, here’s some interesting research on people’s tendency to prefer things that have the same initial as their own name:

People like their names so much that they unconsciously opt for things that begin with their initials. Tom is more likely to buy a Toyota, move to Totowa and marry Tessa than is Joe, who is more likely to buy a Jeep, move to Jonestown and marry Jill—and Susie sells seashells by the seashore. Even weirder, they gravitate toward things that begin with their initials even when those things are undesirable, like bad grades or a baseball strikeout.

This might be useful if you’re wanting to persuade someone to your way of thinking. Maybe we should be asking Karen to sign the contract and Donna to sign the document and Paul to OK the paperwork. What do you think?

When we’re interacting with someone, we may often think we’re just trying to let them know some important piece of information. I recently learned something, though: facts are not interesting. People only pay attention to facts if they’re attached to values. Dean Brenner wrote a pertinent manifesto for ChangeThis back in October:

Brenner believes there is a critical flaw in how we communicate. We naturally divide our communications in two approaches: to inform or to persuade. When, according to Brenner, every communication is an opportunity to persuade. Next time you hear someone say, “I just wanted to give you an update…” you’ll know an opportunity to shape opinion was missed.

Link to Dean Brenner’s “To Inform or Persuade?” ChangeThis Manifesto

Barbara Stepp’s online store has Dave Dobson‘s incredible Beach Trip on DVD at 33% off!

It is the only video product of Dr. Dobson’s work and totals 70 minutes. On DVD 1, Dr.Dobson discusses your brain, reference, consciousness, other-than-conscious mind and Hypnosis. On DVD 2, he takes you on his internationally famous Beach Trip.

Link to buy the Beach Trip DVD

Barbara Stepp’s online store has a special sale on Stever Robbins‘ instructional CD, Logical Levels, at 20% off!

Join NLP Master Trainer Elite Stever Robbins for a CD that begins where Dilts’s “neurological levels” leaves off. Identify how you and your clients think in different levels and shift between them smoothly. Know when you’re matching and mismatching levels, and develop influence strategies for shifting levels by moving between times, goals and tactics, levels of systemic organization, and description/reality. CD contains both audio track and PDF file of accompanying slides.

Link to Stever’s CD on Barb’s store

Barbara Stepp of Excellence Quest is holding an NLP Master Practitioner training in Chicago, Illinois, USA from December 5 to December 11, 2007.

If you want to change your life forever, or make it even better, take advantage of this great value! Learn at Excellence Quest with Barbara Stepp, Certified Licensed Master Trainer of NLP™ and DHE™, corporate trainer and premier coach. John LaValle, MBA, President of the Society of NLP™ says, “Barb is a true professional, an asset to NLP™ and one of the few trainers we can refer people to.” She is highly recommended by Dr. Richard Bandler, co-creator and developer of Neuro Linguistic Programming™ and creator of Design Human Engineering™. Dr. Bandler says,” Barb is one of the best. There is none better.” Many say, “Barb teaches NLP™ with a heart.”

Link to more information
Link to sign up now
Special price when you sign up for both this class and Simply Hypnosis/Practitioner

Barbara Stepp of Excellence Quest is holding a combined Hypnosis and NLP Practitioner training in Chicago, Illinois, USA from November 28 to December 4, 2007.

If you want to change your life forever, or make it even better, take advantage of this great value! Learn at Excellence Quest with Barbara Stepp, Certified Licensed Master Trainer of NLP™ and DHE™, corporate trainer and premier coach. John LaValle, MBA, President of the Society of NLP™ says, “Barb is a true professional, an asset to NLP™ and one of the few trainers we can refer people to.” She is highly recommended by Dr. Richard Bandler, co-creator and developer of Neuro Linguistic Programming™ and creator of Design Human Engineering™. Dr. Bandler says,” Barb is one of the best. There is none better.” Many say, “Barb teaches NLP™ with a heart.”

Link to get more information
Link to sign up now
Special price when you sign up for both this class and Master Practitioner

I first learned about congruence from Frank Farrelly.

While I’d learned how to do it from my NLP trainings with John and Kathleen LaValle and Doug O’Brien, Frank was the guy who really taught me what it meant. From his book, Provocative Therapy:

One thing in my mind was very clear: that radical congruence, if held constant, was very helpful to patients in interviews; that I could not only laugh at patients without detriment to them but even with help to them; that laughter towards patients was not inevitably “demeaning their dignity”. I also felt very freed up in interviews. I wasn’t “grinding my gears” and my responses towards clients weren’t going in one direction while my thoughts, reactions and feelings were going in another.

Now, that isn’t to say I laugh at my patients. I certainly laugh if they say something I find funny, but in my line of work that’s rather a rarity. I do, however, respond to them honestly.

• Very recently, a man’s wife died at my hospital, and he was understandably distraught. As he kissed her for the last time and told her that he loved her, I choked. I had to walk away. Some would have said I was “unprofessional” for letting my feelings show like that. I disagree. (Fortunately for me, so does my manager, and so do the ICU nurses.)
• Some time back, a woman on our psychiatric unit was dismantling the furniture in her room. She was upset about something and the staff were afraid to go in and get her. I went to the door and saw her surrounded by drawers. “Move them away from you, please,” I asked. She asked why I wanted her to do that. I said, “To be honest, you’re scaring me a little. I’m afraid you might use one of them to try to hurt me.” She looked at me, maybe a little wide-eyed, and moved them away from her. She then accompanied me to the “Quiet Room” without a problem.
• Typically, if I have to restrain someone, I’m not pleased about it. I understand how frightened they must be and I treat them the way I’d want to be treated if I’d placed myself in their position. I approach such events with the attitude described in stanza 31 of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell’s translation):
  

  Weapons are the tools of violence;
  all decent men detest them.

  Weapons are the tools of fear;
  a decent man will avoid them
  except in the direst necessity
  and, if compelled, will use them
  only with the utmost restraint.
  Peace is his highest value.
  If the peace has been shattered,
  how can he be content?
  His enemies are not demons,
  but human beings like himself.
  He doesn’t wish them personal harm.
  Nor does he rejoice in victory.
  How could he rejoice in victory
  and delight in the slaughter of men?

  He enters a battle gravely,
  with sorrow and with great compassion,
  as if he were attending a funeral.

One of the things I keep in mind is that, because I intend to remain congruent in that way, I have to decide what response I want to have in such situations. My NLP skills permit me to do that. I can decide what’s important to me in a given situation and resolve to behave consistently with that.

Sometimes, people don’t know how to take me. They assume there’s something else going on. Incongruence seems to be the norm, I guess. My girlfriend told me, early on in our relationship, that she felt like I was looking into her rather than at her. I wasn’t. I was looking at her, and she’d gotten used to everyone else looking at the pretty, perky, sunshiny persona she exudes so well. And I still have to deal with her responding to stuff I didn’t say, simply because she seems to assume I “really meant” something other than what I actually said.

I think my favorite example is the time a supervisor at the hospital tried to bully me. It was the way he got things done, and it tended to work with pretty much everyone. He wanted me to do something for him, and I was willing to do it for him (he wasn’t my supervisor), but he took on the “pushing people around” affect with me. In a completely congruent fashion, I responded to him as if he’d instead asked me for a tremendous favor. He tranced for a split second, and then he responded to me as if I’d just agreed to do him a tremendous favor. And the funny thing is, he never tried to bully me again. If I recall correctly, he didn’t bully anyone when I was around. Not that he thought about it and decided against it or anything… more like it never even occurred to him.

Anyway, congruence is a powerful thing, and I’m exceeding grateful to Frank for having opened it up for me. I enjoyed my Provocative Therapy training and highly recommend it to anyone. I also enjoyed the meal I shared with him and with Doug O’Brien; it was a ball. If you ever get the chance, go see Frank in action.

John Johnson of Persuasion 101 introduced me to Dr. Clotaire Rapaille’s work:

What is your earliest memory of coffee? What image comes to mind when you hear about a Jeep? Why are wedding traditions different in the United States from France? Rapaille reveals the unconscious motivators behind how we act and what we buy by unearthing the unique culture codes found within each of us and derived from our earliest or most enduring memories.

Thanks to Dr. Rapaille, we can drive a Jeep, we can buy coffee in Japan, and we can do countless other things that NDAs probably prohibit us from knowing about. If you’re a marketer, you want Dr. Clotaire Rapaille’ ChangeThis Manifesto.