I won't tell you what I read "sock puppet" as initially.

For the record, I have read Rintu's ebook and think it is pretty good - in fact I'll be putting it up as an associate product when I get round to it.

I found it more practically-oriented and immediately usable than 'Persuasion Engineering' though I must confess that I haven't practised as fanatically as Rintu would like me to.

practicaleq wrote:

I found it more practically-oriented and immediately usable than 'Persuasion Engineering' though I must confess that I haven't practised as fanatically as Rintu would like me to.

Many followers have

Hi guys,

I was asked in response to my previous post what other persuasion books I have read.

I think the problem/issue I have is that because I have been trained to be so sales focused I think of sales books as being persuasion books and most of persuasion as being sales. Working in some tough markets will do that for you :-)

At the moment I am reading Sleight of Mouth. Great book but quite hard to get through.

In the context of sales I have read so many books that I could not name half of them. The ones that spring to mind are Sales Therapy and Covert Persuasion (which I am in the middle of). Both of these were very good but it is hard to remember EVERYTHING you read so a lot gets lost on the wayside.

To use in the context of this discussion, i.e. how does it compare to other NLP persuasion books I have read, I can think of 2. One I have completely forgotten its name (big bloody yellow thing, read like a uni text book and had me falling asleep by chapter 2) and the other is a book called Dynamic Influence by a Sales Trainer called Stephen Long. I do not think anyone could find a copy as it is given for attending his course. Good book though. Rintus, to my mind, was as good as Dynamic Influence, if not better, and I found Steven Longs book very good. However, having read the whole thing through, I think it could and should include more content, but I have just signed up for his e-course so maybe that will fill in the blanks and take things into the more advanced stage.

Also a question: Has anyone else here read Covert Persuasion by Kevin Hogan?

Finally, a big thanks to all posters who replied to my initial questions. Thanks.

Oh and before I forget I am attending a course tomorrow on NLP Persuasion and Influence. It will be interesting to see how it compares to Rintu Basu's suggestions.

Thanks guys.

Jamie

JP London wrote:

At the moment I am reading Sleight of Mouth. Great book but quite hard to get through.

it is a bit hard going but a good book. I would also have a look at Mind Lines by L Michael Hall

I really like Igor Ledochowski's CD's on Conversational Hypnosis and Connierae Andreas's Advanced Language Patterns (although this was a little hard going at times too)

JP wrote:

At the moment I am reading Sleight of Mouth. Great book but quite hard to get through.

Aiki wrote:
it is a bit hard going but a good book.

Alternatively, it is hard going because:

Although this book was published in 1999, it is effectively a record of what the author was doing approximately 20 (twenty) years earler (see page x - yes, "page x"). Indeed, what we actually have here is a rebundling of 14 basic NLP concepts - reframing, chunking, positive intention, and so on - presented as though they they were the basis of a whole new way of understanding how languages works.
To be fair, if this had been published in 1980 it might have had a reasonable claim to that status. In 1999, let alone in 2009, it just looks very, very old and tired.

For a more detailed review see here:

http://www.bradburyac.mistral.co.uk/revs18.htm

Be well

Andy B.

I've read this entire thread and now have an overwelming desire to buy a book on sock puppetry.

Sean

There's probably at least one "sock meister" lurking on 'Connectuions right now

(Definitely NOT Rintu)

But if you're in a hurry check out "Joe Greenfield" on Knol. He has cut and pasted a load of nonsense from the old Wikipedia page on NLP whilst claiming he is some kind of expert on the subject.

In my ever so 'umble opinion, "he" is a sock puppet, along witrh several others, some of whom are listed in the JGV Knol (that's "Joe Greenfield Virus" or Jolly Green Virus" - according to taste).

The posts at the end of "Joe's" NLP article include a number of comments almost certainly posted by "Joe" himself under various aliases in an attempt to validate the article. Including one of his favourite formats: "Thanks for taking the trouble to write this article, Joe. I hadn't realised NLP was such a fraud" - or words to that effect.

On the other hand, why bother.

Be well

Andy B.

Has anyone who have posted on this forum for a while read the book yet?

Steve

See Andy Smith's comments - June 1st.

Hi guys,

Me again. Question: IS it worth reading Sleight of Mouth? I keep hearing mixed reviews.

I felt I could give a bit more feedback now RE Rintu's book. I have just finished reading the book for a second time and have to admit I genuinely like it and have learned a lot. I recently attended some days on the Business Practitioner Course run by NLP life and one of the days was on Persuasion and Influence. I felt Rintus book went into more detail on what was learned there. Even though the one day only covered some basic skills, I felt that this, combined with Rintu's book has given me some additional knowledge and that I learned a lot.

I have also signed up for the advanced online course with Rintu so will be able to say how this compares to the course run by NLP Life which was run by a gentleman who works closely with Richard Bandler. So, hopefully I will be able to continue to compare.

I have another question too but am not sure if this is the correct thread to ask but here goes.

Does anybody here use NLP persuasion techniques in a sale job? More specifically a telesales focused role? IF so, do you find yourself more successful when using NLP skills than people who are trained in more traditional sales skills?

Hi Jamie,

Not me - but my mate Gavin Ingham is very good on telesales skills and uses some NLP. As I recall, both he and another NLP-trained sales expert, Andy Preston, reckon that 'generalist' NLP training on its own won't give you the complete set of sales skills.

Judge for yourselves from their postings at gaviningham.com and andy-preston.com

Jamie

re:"Does anybody here use NLP persuasion techniques in a sale job? More specifically a telesales focused role? IF so, do you find yourself more successful when using NLP skills than people who are trained in more traditional sales skills?"

that depends on what you call "NLP Persuasion techniques"

for example, do you call verbal mirroring, pacing another person's voice qualities(rate of speech, tember, tone, pitch,etc) a persuasion technique? I don't but doing the verbal mirroring, pacing sure is effective for achieving some level of rapport on the phone, I learned that in NLP Practitioner

do you call eliciting and using MP's a persuasion technique? I do. yet I learned to elicit criteria in a traditional sales course in the USA before I took Practitioner. it wasn't until I took some NLP training that I learned about ALL the MP's(beside criteria)

now tonal anchoring is Definitely an NLP persuasion technique(as is visual anchoring)but you can only do tonal in telesales.

before I came to my current profession(landlord and options/futures trades)I used most of the above in Inside Sales in several industries, performing outgoing telesales campaigns regionally and nationwide

and then there's SOM. which I know to be very applicable in telesales.

Jim

JP London wrote:

Hi guys,
Does anybody here use NLP persuasion techniques in a sale job? More specifically a telesales focused role? IF so, do you find yourself more successful when using NLP skills than people who are trained in more traditional sales skills?

I have worked as a trainer in contact centre (where apart from getting sales results we we were also finalists in a European Training award so presumably were doing something right )

In my opinion, to be successful in a sales role (and it's not unique in this aspect) requires a combination of knowledge, skills and attitude.

Yes there are things you will learn on most NLP courses that you can use in a tele-sales job. For example, To name just3:
state management so one "bad call" does not effect all your other calls,
calibration - noticing what a caller is actually saying and not what you think they are,
reframing - can be used when objection handling.

On a general NLP course it's highly unlikely anyone will specifically relate it to your job. For example - "you can use this technique to focus on your conversation if the agent next to you is half a second ahead of you reading the data protection act statement." It will be up to you to relate what you are learning to your job and life in general. Again, this is not unique to telesales.

I know fantastic telesales agents who if you asked them if they used NLP they would say "NL what?" Some will be doing things naturally, others will have learnt what we would label as NLP without labeling that themselves. (For example, I used to sidestep anybodies preconceptions about what NLP is/isn't by not mentioning it. I wouldn't do an exercise about perceptual positions, I'd do one about how you can use stepping into a customers shoes to effectively handle a complaint - same thing, different labels.)

My advice will be to play with what interests you to find the way that works best for you.

Hello everybody,

I have not posted or been on the forum recently as I have been quite busy.

Happily, I have done a bit more reading/studying in that time and looked at many articles onlinearound persuasion and sales. I have to be honest and say fair-do's to Rintu Basu as his book is still sitting up there as one of the best I have read. I know that there has been a lot of doubt as to the authenticity of some of the posters on here but hopefully people will see that I have posted on other topics on the forum. I can quite happily state that I would (and have) recommended Rintus book to others. Also, I read another book recently by a guy called Duane Larkin. Has anyone heard of him? His book was called "The Unfair Advantage: Sell with NLP". This goes quite well with Rintus book and I personally believe that combining the 2 would be a very good idea for any sales person or even anyone who wishes to have more skills around persuasion and influence.

Hope everybody is well and that this post helps.

J

I read Duane Larkin's book and can say it was one of the biggest disappointments in my life. Truthfully, I read it out of curiousity because I am probably the best salesman around, so I don't need any help. That being said, I did not find a single page, paragraph, or even sentence in that book that would help a lesser salesman acheive the success that I have. I have yet to find an NLP-based sales book that is any good, and that includes your diety Richard Bandler's piece of garbage "Persuasion Engineering." There are some very good sales books out there. Pretty much anything by Brian Tracy. Zig Ziglar. Tom Hopkins. None of them have to do with NLP.

myrddin wrote:

There are some very good sales books out there. Pretty much anything by Brian Tracy. Zig Ziglar. Tom Hopkins. None of them have to do with NLP.

You are, of course, absolutely right - for you.

Obviously your best course of action is to STOP being curious about NLP. Forever.

Happy days

Andy B.

myrddin wrote:

I read Duane Larkin's book and can say it was one of the biggest disappointments in my life. Truthfully, I read it out of curiousity because I am probably the best salesman around, so I don't need any help. That being said, I did not find a single page, paragraph, or even sentence in that book that would help a lesser salesman acheive the success that I have. I have yet to find an NLP-based sales book that is any good, and that includes your diety Richard Bandler's piece of garbage "Persuasion Engineering." There are some very good sales books out there. Pretty much anything by Brian Tracy. Zig Ziglar. Tom Hopkins. None of them have to do with NLP.

Myrddin, fair enough I understand where you are coming from. Do you mind me asking then how YOU sell? Are you a student of Feature Advantage Benefit or FAB as its called? Or what would you describe as your "process"?

Also, what do you sell and how long have you been doing it?

Unfortunately as we do not know each other and cannot judge the accuracy of the other persons words, let me say this. I have been in sales for 6 years (not that long I admit) and in that time I have known some great sales people and some mediocre sales people. The ones who followed the 80's/90's mentality of FAB or what I call the "same style as every other sales call" approach had some luck but it was by far a numbers gain. The truly successful ones were those who did things differently - made less calls but had more success. And they did it not by sounding like a cliched automoton but by using "conversational language". If you listen to a scripted sales call and compare it to how you interact with people in the real world it is remarkably different, and that is where SOME NLP books work well. By picking the words and structure that move away from cliched sales scripts and sounding more human, familiar and eliciting favourable responses. But as I said, that is just my experience.

A final question: If you are so anti-NLP (which a lot of people are and is absolutely reasonable) then why are you posting on a NLP site?

J

P.S thanks for th recommendations. What books would you class as the most helpful?

Andy B. wrote:

You are, of course, absolutely right - for you.

Obviously your best course of action is to STOP being curious about NLP. Forever.

Happy days

Andy B.

Huh?

JP London wrote:

Myrddin, fair enough I understand where you are coming from. Do you mind me asking then how YOU sell? Are you a student of Feature Advantage Benefit or FAB as its called? Or what would you describe as your "process"?

Also, what do you sell and how long have you been doing it?

Unfortunately as we do not know each other and cannot judge the accuracy of the other persons words, let me say this. I have been in sales for 6 years (not that long I admit) and in that time I have known some great sales people and some mediocre sales people. The ones who followed the 80's/90's mentality of FAB or what I call the "same style as every other sales call" approach had some luck but it was by far a numbers gain. The truly successful ones were those who did things differently - made less calls but had more success. And they did it not by sounding like a cliched automoton but by using "conversational language". If you listen to a scripted sales call and compare it to how you interact with people in the real world it is remarkably different, and that is where SOME NLP books work well. By picking the words and structure that move away from cliched sales scripts and sounding more human, familiar and eliciting favourable responses. But as I said, that is just my experience.

A final question: If you are so anti-NLP (which a lot of people are and is absolutely reasonable) then why are you posting on a NLP site?

J

P.S thanks for th recommendations. What books would you class as the most helpful?

I apologize if you or anyone else misunderstood what I wrote. That, of course, is my fault. I'm not at all anti-NLP. What I meant was, I have yet to find a good sales book that is based on NLP, not because NLP is wrong, but the books just haven't been good. For example, I don't think anyone could read Larkin's book and learn anything useful about NLP. He doesn't explain enough nor give sufficient examples of concepts that should be foreign to any reader with little background in NLP. Hopefully someone will write a good book on sales based on NLP.

I may have exaggerated my selling prowess. Essentially what I do is try to cultivate a sense of compassion toward my prospect and assume the sale. Everything else sort of falls into place. I will admit, I have a close ratio of about 25-30%. I wish it were higher and I have been working on figuring out what I can do differently to improve that.

As to your question about which books are most helpful, it depends on what you need. In both sales and seduction it is important to identify your sticking points. For example, if you do not qualify well then "Question Based Selling" is a good book. If you do everything right, but are not closing well "The Art of Closing Any Deal" by James Pickens should straighten you out. If you are completely lost and have no sales process in place, then Tom Hopkins book is essential.

myrddin wrote:

I apologize if you or anyone else misunderstood what I wrote. That, of course, is my fault. I'm not at all anti-NLP. What I meant was, I have yet to find a good sales book that is based on NLP, not because NLP is wrong, but the books just haven't been good. For example, I don't think anyone could read Larkin's book and learn anything useful about NLP. He doesn't explain enough nor give sufficient examples of concepts that should be foreign to any reader with little background in NLP. Hopefully someone will write a good book on sales based on NLP.

That's OK, little sock puppet - there is absolutely nothing in your posts to suggest that "you" are capable of selling hand warmers to Inuits or bottled water in the middle of the desert.

In fact you haven't even managed to spell Duane Lakin's name correctly.
I imagine that's the sort of thing that would be likely to really piss your customers off. If you had any. But then again, you know as well as I do, you're no salesman, and you have no customers.