For the non-salesperson, a career in sales does not look so very complicated. For those engaged in sales, however, the human-to-human interaction contains as many complexities as courtship or political diplomacy. Sales call reluctance involves a failure to prosper and a failure to self-promote. The causes are all emotional, deep-seated within the Middle Mind, practically hardwired into a struggling salesperson. It could be fear of the unknown or the fear of failure. It may be fear related to public speaking or interpersonal engagements. There may be reluctance to appear pushy or aggressive.
Only for the most unusual person in sales has one or more of such fears not caused a knot to form in the stomach at some point, or the heart to race, or perspiration to bead, or feet to drag. A battle rages within us between the need to succeed in making a living and the years of Middle Mind programming that seems to fight us along the way. We have read all the books, many which are “guaranteed” to show us the way to make sales easy and productive, and yet when the pressure is on, when the lights turn on and the bell rings, the same old emotional obstructions appear. Even as we push through such feelings, we know our reluctance limits our success.
Hypnotherapy provides the tools to efficiently change a salesperson’s entire perspective on work. Let’s consider the steps in the hypnotherapy process for quickly overcoming sales reluctance.
Step one is to unearth the emotional roadblocks, the programming, the neural pathways that have taken a lifetime to form and which have been solid barriers to the salesperson’s success and happiness. Some of these roadblocks may be apparent to the client, but he or she will need to examine and deal with even the most obvious obstructions. Other emotions that hamper success may not be as clear, but the hypnotherapist will be able to assist in the self-discovery process. In extreme cases, advanced techniques may be necessary during hypnosis to assist in hunting down and identifying the problem “programming” issues.
After identifying the issues, the second step is to deconstruct the components that created these negative habits and influences, reinforcing them over the years. These emotions are almost set in concrete. They may have taken years to develop and solidify, but hypnotherapy offers a shortcut to re-program or over-write these stultifying and previously uncontrollable emotions.
Once the therapist and the client have a picture of what habits, influences, or emotions are causing the problems, they will work together to establish the goals for the therapy. The client will identify what success looks like. What does the salesperson want to feel like? How does he or she want to feel? How does he or she want to act following hypnotherapy?
With this information, the hypnotherapist and the client can coordinate the overall plan for the sessions. With this roadmap, the client and the therapist can begin to make the necessary changes toward success.
As part of the plan, the client will have real, concrete activities in order to practice new behaviors and habits. The salesperson will be able to implement these new behaviors in the prospecting and contacting of sales targets. Because there must be a way to test and measure a client’s progress, the salesperson will report on the real life applications of the work he or she is doing during the hypnotherapy sessions. Such reports allow the “team” of therapist and client to re-visit every step in the program, from identifying root emotional causes and roadblocks to plan development and then to make any adjustments necessary. For weight loss clients, their calories still have to be counted and their weight measured, even though the ultimate key to weight loss is Middle Mind modification, since all weight gain is really related to emotional actions. With sales call reluctance, we measure sales production, and with each step in the progress, we measure whether the controlling emotions are changing.
The key step in making that change, the step that allows the entire process to move so rapidly, occurs during hypnosis. As we so thoroughly explored in Part II of this book, the hypnosis sessions allow clients, in conjunction with the therapists, to efficiently get at those deep Middle Mind issues and make the changes. Here the client’s own Middle Mind is given the bits of information it needs, in the proper form, to do the work of “fixing things.” The capabilities of a person’s mind are extraordinary, and each client’s mind, in its own way, will bend, reform, and readjust, all in incredibly creative ways. Also, during these sessions, the client will achieve on-going boosts of relaxation, confidence, and focus, the common “side-effects” of modern hypnotherapy. People seldom realize all the positive effects of the hypnotherapy process until they experience it for themselves.
The final step a client is to apply all of the in-session effort to real world practice and to experience the success that has been missing. Together with the therapist, the client will first follow up these real life applications in later sessions, with the goal to make all corrections permanent as rapidly as possible