Hypnosis workshop in Dallas

HYPNOSIS IS THE SECRET WEAPON WHEN IT COMES TO SALES SUCCESS and SALES PERFORMANCE

By Valerie Grimes, CHt
Clinical Hypnotist at The Flow Center, Dallas, TX
January 14, 2016

ARE YOU SUBCONSCIOUSLY SABOTAGING YOUR SALES EFFORT?

ANSWER THESE FIVE QUESTIONS TO FIND OUT:

  • DO YOU AVOID REPRESENTING NEW PRODUCT?
  • ARE YOU HAVING DIFFICULTLY EXCEEDING YOUR CURRENT SALES GOAL?
  • DO YOU AVOID CALLING ON NEW PEOPLE OR CERTAIN CUSTOMERS?
  • DO SALES STOP AT THE NEGOTIATION STAGE?
  • DO YOU LACK CONFIDENCE WHEN TALKING TO NEW PEOPLE?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then most likely you are allowing old thought patterns that exist in the subconscious mind to affect your behavior (sales performance), thus negatively affect your results. You see, selling is a mental activity and what we do is work with you to get in top condition and to sharpen your personal skills.

In this article I will introduce the two parts of mind and how they work against each other, define differences between belief, thought and habit, and demonstrate three laws of mind, so you can learn why hypnosis can be a secret weapon when it comes to obtaining sales success.

I’ll begin with this simple fact:  there are two parts of your mind: the conscious and the subconscious.

The conscious mind’s job is to analyze, rationalize, contemplate and think. I call it the THINKER. 
The subconscious mind’s job is to store information—huge libraries of information. One bit of information it might hold is how to ride a bicycle. Most people can ride a bicycle without having to focus their conscious mind on steering and pedaling. Their subconscious mind does all that, leaving their conscious minds free to carry on a conversation with a fellow cyclist, think about what they’ll eat when they get home—things like that. I call the sub-conscious mind the DOER.

Again—the conscious mind is the thinker. The subconscious mind is the doer. One thinks, the other does. Sounds like it should work well—but the fact is, the subconscious mind does more than store information.

It also stores beliefs, opinions, feelings and habits. It even operates your body’s involuntary functions such as breathing and blood flow. And two of the most interesting things the subconscious mind does is—it avoids pain—and it seeks out pleasure.

Performing those functions isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes they can be. Sometimes a person’s opinions can be wrong. Sometimes habits such as smoking can be detrimental to one’s health. And sometimes the feelings carried in a person’s subconscious can stop him from doing what his conscious mind wants to do. More often than most people realize, feelings carried in the sub-conscious mind can sabotage the conscious mind’s intent.

How does this happen? Here is a fact about the mind that is fascinating—and critical to how we operate in life.

As one has experiences in life, we all attach feelings to them. If you hit the winning home run to help your high school team win the state championship, you have the emotion of joy attached to that memory. You’ll probably always enjoy watching baseball, even when you’re too old to play. On the other hand, if you were attacked by a pit bull when you were five years old, I’m sure you would have feelings of fear and pain attached to that memory.

Now here’s the pertinent part of what I’m telling you. What the mind tends to do is to project a feeling from the past onto the present moment when there is something in the present moment that reminds him of a past experience. Let me say it again. What the mind tends to do is to project a feeling from the past onto the present moment when there is something in the present moment that reminds him of a past experience.

I knew a girl who was attacked by a pit bull when she was five, and from then on, every time she saw a dog, she would go into a panic and try to get away. Even today, as an adult, she tenses up—even if she simply hears a dog bark. Now her conscious mind knows that not all dogs are mean and likely to attack, but that feeling attached to her attack is so strongly held in her subconscious, she won’t even go near a small dog.

So, what does all this have to do with sales?
Let me give you an example. Suppose we have two sales reps intending to sell their respective products to the same customer, the most difficult customer in the county, we’ll call him Melvin.

The products the men are selling are equal in performance and all other important criteria. Both know their products inside and out. They both offer the same warranty, the similar financing, etc.—and they both have their eyes on buying new boat with the commissions from the sale. Both of their conscious minds are focused on selling their products.

Now here’s the difference between them. Sales rep Tom has a subconscious mind that supports his ideas. He wakes up thinking “today is the day I sell that product to the most difficult customer in the county, and I’ll be fishing by this weekend”. Why is he so certain he’ll sell? Because in the subconscious part of his mind, he has childhood memories of selling all of the school carnival tickets he was given to sell and being told he could sell a bottle of sand to nomads in the Sahara desert. He also has memories of selling a lot of cars in his first job as an auto salesman. He remembers being congratulated by the Sales Manager. And piled on top of that over the years were more memories of making sales and receiving high commission checks from other companies he worked for. And now, he sells high-priced equipment, and as he heads out the door, he has only positive thoughts and feelings about making the sale.

Unfortunately, the other sales rep, Arnold, doesn’t have a subconscious mind that supports his ideas. The customer, Melvin, reminds him of his grandfather who was always negative and disapproving of whatever he did. And the feelings of shame, pain and anger he felt that were associated with his grandfather and has carried in his sub-conscious mind for decades get triggered—and Arnold experiences them once again as he awakes. He’s not conscious of those feelings—because they are in his sub-conscious mind—but they are there in the present moment and they affect what he feels, thus his reactions. As he brushes his teeth, he thinks, “I really don’t want to go call on that old guy today.”  Still, he has no conscious awareness of why he doesn’t want to—and when he notices he has a pain in his neck he doesn’t make the connection to the fact that he has often referred to Melvin as a pain in the neck. Nor is he aware that those old sub-conscious feelings are what’s behind not being able to find his keys. Or missing the exit and being so late which causes him to miss Melvin who already left, and thus, miss the sale. It’s all cause and effect, but, of course, Arnold has no awareness of what has transpired. In his mind, he has merely added another memory with a feeling of defeat attached.

I told you this little tale to demonstrate what happens to people all the time—to show you how old beliefs, feelings and habits may be affecting your sales. Hopefully, you can also see in these illustrations how important it is for your subconscious mind to support your objectives.

Exploring your mind
Conscious Use vs. Subconscious Use

As I have said before there are two parts of mind.

The Conscious Mind’s (CM) function is to analyze incoming information, it also works to apply logic and reasoning to what you are experiencing and makes a judgment as to whether to accepts or rejects the incoming information.  Remember what it is called?  The THINKER.

The Subconscious Mind’s (SCM) function avoids pain, likes pleasure, stores all your feelings, emotions and memories as well as your habits and beliefs.  It is called THE DOER.

The are designed to work in concert this way:  the CM has a thought, and the SCM’s job is to carry it out, it is supposed to work as intended, however the success of that depend on the programming of the SCM. Keep in mind the SCM is a goal driven mechanism and it will carry out whatever is programmed into it. Sometimes we have success; sometimes we fail.

Think of a time when you were devoted to exercise more, quit smoking, eat healthier, get more organized, be more motivated, or be a more patient driver…How long did it last? What happened?

For a period of several weeks, it is easy for us to give a new function our focus and concentration.  However, something usually happens to distract our focus and we fall back into our regular patterns of behavior, we feel we have failed.  This condition has nothing to do with your willpower; it has everything to do with the inability of the SCM to carry it out based on the information stored there (in the SCM).

There are three laws of mind that you must understand in order to bring about changes.

  1. Law of Concentrated Attention.
    a.    Principle is based on putting concentrated attention on an idea over and over again until it spontaneously tends to realize it self.
    2.    Law of Dominant Effect.
    a.    Principle is based on your mind’s ability to only focus on one attitude at a time, positive or negative.  Strong emotions replace weaker ones. Attach a strong emotion to a suggestion for the dominant effect.
    3.    Law of Reversed Effect.
    a.    Principle is based on the fact that the harder you try to do something consciously the lesser the affect, it is the job of the SCM to carry out actions, so relaxing, not efforting allows the desired effect.

Let’s make the 3 Laws of Mind personal

Law of Concentrated Attention in Action.

Going back to third grade, before you knew that 3×3=9, you learned that by consistently repeating the multiplication tables. Now years later you know them automatically, they are stored permanently in your memory, they were placed there by the principal of the law of concentrated attention.

Helpful to know and why hypnosis is a secret weapon:
Hypnosis gets the idea into the SCM much more rapidly and without all the memorization exercises.
Law of Dominant Effect in Action.

Think of your favorite vacation spot, hold image in your mind, while closing your eyes.  Open up and feel your senses: the visuals, the sounds, the aromas, and the physical sensations. Know notice how good you feel. Now think about doing your taxes? What happened to the feeling?
Principle is based on your mind’s ability to only focus on one attitude at a time, positive or negative.
Purpose:  Your mind can’t hold to opposing attitudes.

Helpful to know and why hypnosis is a secret weapon:
Hypnosis creates a stronger desire for what you want to focus on and how you want to feel.

Law of Reversed Effect in Action.

Try to remember the last name of all your elementary school teachers (battle of the conscious and subconscious).

Purpose: when you relax and stop trying, results are forthcoming.

Helpful to know and why hypnosis is a secret weapon:
The answers do not come while focusing, that is the work of the conscious mind, but when you relax the subconscious releases the answer because that is where memories are stored.

BELIEF VS. HABIT VS. THOUGHT

First allow me to define these then I will show the role they currently play in sales and how they can be transformed through hypnosis to play a newer and more productive role.


Belief-
1: a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing

2: something believed; especially: a tenet or body of tenets held by a group

3: conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence

Thought-
1: to form or have in the mind

2: to have as an intention <thought to return early>

3 a: to have as an opinion <think it’s so> b: to regard as

4: consider <think the rule unfair>

Habit-
1: a settled tendency or usual manner of behavior <her habit of taking a morning walk>

2: an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary <got up early from force of habit>

Going back to the introduction of the two salesmen, they had beliefs formed at an early age that were driving their thoughts although unconsciously became a habit of thought, resulting in a behavior.

Hypnosis is a powerful tool to access the subconscious mind and to reframe the original belief which then drives a new thought and a new resulting habit. A state of hypnosis is a natural and focused state where metaphors or guided imagery is used to enhance the desire for a new habit. Desire (emotion/attitude) drives behavior and a habit is a behavior.

Our Personal Skills Training Program is unlike any sales training program you’ve ever encountered.

We do not “motivate” individuals and stir them into a frenzy.  We all know that wears off quickly and old, detrimental habits reappear.  Neither do we teach a system or process. Although a few “sales technique” programs offer some limited value, none address the true causes of under-performance.

What we do is help people identify the obstacles in their subconscious minds that work against their sales efforts. Then—we help them diffuse or change those negative beliefs, opinions, habits and feelings into positive ones.

 

Valerie A. Grimes is a clinical hypnotist assisting individuals in achieving an optimum level of support through positive thinking and by teaching new habits and forming new beliefs available through the process of hypnosis. She blends centuries old hypnotic practices with modern day neuroscience. Her office is located at The Flow Center in Dallas.  She can be reached at 972-974-2094

 

 

By Valerie Grimes

Besides assisting individuals in behavior change and self improvement, Hypnotist Valerie Grimes specializing in dependencies such as alcohol, food, shopping, pain medication, and smoking. She is also trained in the area of hypnosis for PTSD and Auto Immune Disorders. And is a Reiki Level 2 Master. For More about Valerie, Go To Her Personal Web Page. She is a 2002 graduate of the Dallas Hypnosis Training Institute, and certified by the American Council of Hypnotist Examiners. Continuing Education is maintained 15 hours per year through Hypnosis Motivational Institute in California.

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