I remember fondly on wet Sunday afternoons playing Buckeroo. You loaded up this spring mounted plastic horse with all sorts of plastic items – spades, boxes, blankets – the items got heavier and heavier and eventually the horse would bolt out of the springs, scaring you witless.
Great fun.
You see there was only so many things the horse could carry before it bolted and that’s a little like humans and their attention spans.
NLP says that we can only concentrate on around 7 things. Only keep around 7 items in our head, in our conscious mind. Beyond that and we bolt like buckaroo.
We obviously don’t bolt but if we faced with handling more than 7 things, we ignore or our sub conscious takes care. And that’s where we can influence effectively. Let me explain some uses:
- Make sure when you’re dealing with a customer or colleague that you want to influence, keep the distractions to a minimum. Apart from the obvious be aware of what’s behind you, it’s amazing what can distract. Remember 7.
- Deliberately overload the customer and then slip in some hypnotic influencing techniques, here’s a couple of them:
- Use the word “because” liberally to justify your reasons for your idea.
- Soften your voice and lower it for an influential tone.
- Match everything you can see and hear about your customer
There’s a whole list of things you can do whilst the customer is occupied and these serve to influence them. Its ok, it’s only influencing.
