by Trish Riddell
I recently completed my NLP practitioner’s course with the excellent John Seymour. For my assessed modelling project, I chose to look at what makes the difference between good and excellent when it comes to convincing a potential client that you can offer the best training for their needs. I am in the very fortunate position to be working with some of the world’s best trainers at Kaizen Training, so I modelled two of the best to determine what they did. I then modelled two people who have fewer years experience in training to find the differences that made the difference.
I want to share my findings with you here, with a few suggestions to try out. Interested? Read on!
When I compared experts with less experienced trainers there were three things that stuck out as different to me. In reverse order, these are:
3. The experts used stories and examples to demonstrate their expertise in ways that were indirect. They did not feel the need to shout about how good they were – they just knew they were the best. They exuded a quiet authority when they were talking to new clients!
2. The experts understood that they would have convinced the client when the client was as enthusiastic about the training event as they were. They saw it as their role to communicate this enthusiasm. Or, as we occasionally have been heard to say here at Kaizen – STATE was everything!
And the number 1 difference in the experts was (drum roll):
1. When the experts described the experience of discussing ideas with a new client, the focus of their attention was extremely narrow – only the client was important! In fact, when asked to describe what was happening, they could describe nothing else that was going on around them. The only thoughts in their head were what they would need to say next in order to create a state of excited enthusiasm in the client – what story they could tell, what new idea they could bring in, what state did they needed to maintain in themselves in order to lead the client in to excited enthusiasm.
Now, I would not be surprised if many of you who train clients feel that these are things that you already do, but I would ask yourself to consider the degree to which you do them, and the commitment that you put into thinking specifically about these processes.
Call to Action:
- If you already feel that you do some, or all, of these, reflect on a recent experience of selling to a client that maybe didn’t go the way you wanted it to. What could you have concentrated on to a greater degree, and how might this have changed the outcome?
- If you do not recognise one or more of these ideas, how could you bring these to your conversations with new clients? What stories could you tell? How could your enthusiasm for training be used to create enthusiasm in the client, and how could you focus completely on the client in these situations.
We have years of experience of these techniques at Kaizen, so feel free to contact us if you want more ideas of how you can convince at your best!
