For the world of NLP, this is truly a blessing. Now, in addition to words on paper, we can actually use volume and tonality to mark off the message.

But with the exception of Eben Pagan, we’re just not seeing it online today done with any artful planning.

Plus, with the shorter copy in use today, it is incumbent upon the NLP Copywriter to use the language patterns to get the reader to take action much more rapidly.

Think about the words that would FORCE a person to take action.

What would you use?

But what made me take this super expensive course was the idea that he combined NLP with selling.

I was so bored. My dogs had more effective NLP skills. I took more bathroom breaks during that seminar than any other. I couldn’t believe I had gotten suckered in to this program.

And at the end of the program, he sold another program. Yes, he had secretly planted the overwhelming desire for us to purchase his next expensive program.

Yawn. I had no desire to continue my studies and I was amazed at the big name people who gave him credit for increasing their sales.

What was it that PT Barnum said about suckers being born any minute?

So now there’s another breakthrough NLP discovery used in video and selling.

Ready? Stop yawning. I haven’t told you yet.

Okay here it is.

When you are talking, when you talk about your prospects shake your hands in the direction of your prospects. When you talk about you, point to you.

Now don’t you feel an overwhelming desire to send me money?

Didn’t think so.

When you see someone using this technique, they are trying to manipulate you. And they are setting you up for the sale.

A real sale is when you connect with the buyers wants and needs and your ability to fullfil them.

No hand shaking needed.

Harlan

PS. I just saved you about $50,000 in advanced speakers trainings in this little post.

Just had to add this video

I can’t say that I liked it very much. Especially the rapid inductions.

Grabbing someone’s head, shaking it, and yelling “Sleep!” would scare the bejeebers out of anyone.

And then I heard the story of a hypnotist who tried this in his office with an elderly client and hurt her neck.

Whoops.

There’s a fabulous movie Marjoe about a young boy who is born as a preacher. From the ages of 4-14 he saves people all across the United States. As a teen, he gets disgusted and walks away from the business.

In his twenties, he returns to the road with some video cameras to record his preaching and performance in church.

The cameras are rolling as Marjoe gets people to faint – sometimes a whole line of people at one time – just be pointing at them.

And that’s when you need to understand the concept of the trained baboon and hypnosis.

The training baboon is conditioned how to behave by watching others.

You know what they say, “Money See. Monkey Do.”

So it doesn’t really matter if the goal of the money is to get people to faint at a religious revival meeting or go into a deep trance.

I suggest to you that if you go up to a total stranger on the street, grab their head, shake it and yell “sleep!” you’re going to find yourself punched in the head.

Get my point?

PS. The movie Marjoe won an Oscar for best documentary in 1968. It is available on Ebay from time to time and well worth the investment.

Some of the most effective NLP interventions haven’t been very nice?

When Tony Robbins asked a woman crying her eyes out, “Who peed on your face?” It wasn’t particularly nice.

But it was effective.

It interrupted the patten and enabled the woman to deal with her problem.

When Richard Bandler finds out a certain tonality disturbs a person and deliberately uses it again and again to move a client, he isn’t being particularly nice.

But he is being effective.

So how can you know when you’ve gone too far?

The key is rapport.

When you are working one on one, in person or on the phone, you can maintain your rapport.

But when you are working via copy, how can you check rapport?

For example, one fabulously successful site created negative rapport with the readers. It was called “RIch Jerk.”

People actually looked forward to his insults.

I wrote an email for him to mail and it was filled with insults. But his audience loved it.

What made people stay with that copy despite it’s insults?

Your thoughts below.

If they turned out doctors the way they turned out hypnotists, people would die like flies.

Most hypnotists don’t know that they don’t know.

It goes back to a classic debate on the style of hypnosis.

There is the direct authoritarian style hypnosis. “You will go deeply into a trance.”

Or there is the Ericksonian permissive style, “I’m curious if you are comfortable enough to allow your eyes to close.”

Well, which gets better results?

At best, 20% of the population responds to direct suggestion. That means if you use direct hypnosis, 80% of the population is going to show no results – other than getting annoyed.

The Ericksonian permissive style allows you – as Erickson said – to do something new with every patient you meet.

My teacher Dave Dobson used to say when you are doing hypnosis, there is an amazing feedback device in front of you. It’s called a client.

Yet most people who do direct hypnosis don’t pay any attention to the client.

What do they pay attention to? Their script!

When I opening my hypnosis office, I interviewed a lot of hypnotists. My interview was to put them in the room with a volunteer client and watch them on closed-circuit camera.

One lady came into the room, found out the client wanted to lose weight, didn’t bother to ask any questions, went out of the room to her car to get her script, and read it to the patient.

When I asked, why didn’t you look at the patient she answered, “I didn’t need to. I had the script in front of me.”

Other people play the deeper deeper game.

In this game, they are concerned about how deep the patient goes.

Depth of trance has nothing to do with the EFFECTIVENESS of trance.

In an Erickson video featuring “Monde” Erickson has her age-regreess with her eyes wide open. She also demonstrates positive hallucinations.

Good hypnosis has nothing to do with “deeper deeper.” It has to do with matching the suggestion to the client.

What do you think? Share your thoughts below.

I had tried many different treatments including massage, acupressure, herbs, vitamins, and foot work but I was still painfully cramping in yoga.  He asked, “Harlan. Don’t you live in Boca?  Why don’t you see Joe X?”

I never heard of Joe X and he was impossible to find online. Eventually I tracked him down and discovered this guy was the real deal.

He’s an NLP trainer and bodyworker with an international following.  And it turns out, his office is directly across the street from mine.

Within a session or two, my problem was GONE!  But I’ve continued to go to Joe and learn from him about what he does.   There’s a funny thing about working with Joe.  While he’s working on you, he starts to talk kind of funny and my eyes close and out I go.

Joe is doing classical conversational hypnosis.  There is no formal trance.  Just ordinary conversation and out I go.

Of course, I’m not the only one who notices this.  When Richard Bandler had a recent stroke, he told the hospital the only person he would let work on him was Joe.  Hmmm. I wonder why.

Now Joe has no products explaining what he does or how he does it but I’m sure I’ll get one out of his sooner or later.  But I’d like you to take away one thing I learned from him.

When I work with Joe, he works on only one side of my body for most of the session.  And shortly before the end, Joe touches the other side and says, “And your unconscious knows how to take all the learnings and transfer them here….”

And the connections are made.

Now imagine being able to harness that kind of power in your writing so the reader makes the connection.

But that would create a new style of copywriting, wouldn’t it?

NLP was founded by Richard Bandler and John Grinder.  The two of them co-taught in seminars across the United States (and the world).  At one point, they even did a show on the Las Vegas strip.

As personalities, the two could hardly be more dissimilar.  Bandler was the PT Barnum showman.  He regaled the audience with stories during the trainings.  Grinder was the professor.  He taught techniques and was in love with the structure of change.

Bandler developed a pattern he still uses today.  He tells wild stories to induce certain emotional states.  He chains these states together.  And he uses nested loops to conceal these chains from prying eyes.

Grinder is still the professor.  He lectures the audience on the structure of change.  Currently, he is teaching the “New Code” of NLP.

The lesser lights in the NLP world included Leslie Cameron (Bandler), Judy DeLozier, David Gordon, Robert Dilts, Stephen Lankton, Stephen Gilligan, Steve and Connirea Andreas, and many more.  They were very talented teachers who created high quality trainings.

Somewhere along the line, a new model of training arose in the “Bandler camp”.

In this model, people were no long “Instructed” in NLP.  The presenter got on the stage and “did NLP” without offering any instruction.  He would tell wild stories, elicit and install states, tell nested loops and in the end, the audience “got the material” on a deep level.

The problem was, the attendees couldn’t do any of the things they learned.  That’s because they learned it on an “unconscious” level.

I’m here to tell you it’s a load of crap.

If you attend an NLP training, you need to get the skills and be able to apply them.

All of this “you got them on an unconscious level” is bunk.

Either you can do them or not.

One of the best things Dave Dobson used to teach was, “Can you empirically prove OTCC in the real world.”  If you couldn’t, you obviously didn’t have a grasp of the real world skills.

So if you plan to attend a training, ask if the trainer believes in “unconscious installation” of skills.

If they say “yes”, run the other way.

Peace,

Harlan

Sorry for being blunt but it’s true.

I hope by now that you aren’t using cheap tricks like buy now in bold letters and thinking it’s effective NLP.

It’s not. It’s manipulative and it sucks.

And if you go ahead and do it anyway, I hope Karma bites your butt.

Seriously however, NLP works really well in sales in persuasion. It works really well in person and works really well in print and in video.

Heck, Frank Kern knows just two patterns and they work pretty damm well for him.

But let’s play pretend…

Every step of your website from headline to offer and PS is wrapped tightly with NLP.

Can you even begin to imagine the staggering multiplying effect? Imagine Frank Kern type results on every line of your website.

I’ve been waiting to release NLP Copywriting 3 – the NLP website and it’s coming soon.

Next week in fact.

And it’s going to be delivered over a period of 12 weeks right over the Internet.

There will be a forum to ask questions because I want this to work for your business. (It already works for mine.)

What kind of numbers can you expect to see?

The last NLP video I did for a client converted at 12% without a word of copy on the page.

Of course, there was a lot of sneaky stuff I’ll share with you in the course.

Look for it!

Harlan

I’ve told people, don’t use questions in your copy.

Why?

Because when you use a question, you force the person to think about the answer.

And when they think about the answer, they aren’t with you on your page of copy.

For example:

“Are you really satisfied with your lifestyle? Do you wish you could do something about it?”

Now those questions force the person to go inside their head and leave your copy.

And if you ask the wrong question… they may never return to your copy.

But what if there was a right way of asking questions in copy?

And what if this was a breakthrough technique – never before revealed – that could actually
produce a change in the reader just by his answers in his head to your copy?

Let me make this clear.

The WRONG question and you lose them for good.

The RIGHT questions and you own them.

And it works in copy.

And it works in sales.

And it works in personal change work.

What I’m about to reveal will blow you away.

Stay tuned.