In the marketplace, value is built, profit is protected and sales are closed by salespeople who possess superior presentation skills. There are tools that can separate you from the crowd if you take the time to master them. If you don’t, you will find yourself leaving prospects under served and sales opportunities lost. Here is one of those tools.

In this, the third in the series, I want to draw your attention to an area of the presentation that the majority of salespeople overlook on a regular basis. It’s the area of emotions or feelings. It has often been said that customers make buying decisions emotionally but justify those decisions rationally. As a sales manager, I saw that statement proven true every day.

That then begs this question. “Why do so many salespeople neglect involving the customer’s emotions when presenting a product or service?” Often salespeople will “show and tell”. The ‘show’ what a product will do and then they will ‘tell’ what the benefits are. Rarely will they talk about what the customer will ‘feel’ as they experience these benefits.

In many ways this is becoming a lost art. Today, we are shown everything in multi-media sensory overload. Need proof? Watch a 30 second television commercial to see what I mean. Many of those commercials will flash 30 plus different images at you trying to make their point. Modern film does much the same thing. They leave nothing to the imagination.

A good book or an old classic radio program plays not to your eyes, but rather, to your imagination to create a ‘mental movie’. The great part of a mental movie is that we, as individuals do our own editing.

So the next time you are presenting your product or service, encourage your prospect to create their own mental movie with a comment like these. “Just image how you will feel after you entertain your friends in your new hot tub.” or “Just image how good you will look in this new suit. You will be the envy of all your coworkers.”

You get the idea. Simply make the suggestion and your prospect will script the movie. Involve feelings in every possible selling opportunity and watch your closing ratios soar.

This is the third in a series of three articles on presentation tools, please check out the other two if you haven’t seen them and then I invite you to visit us to discover how to add to your selling skills toolbox to close more sales and earn more money. Because getting paid is good!

We offer complete, powerful and very affordable computer based Mastery sales training for company and educator use. Available at [http://www.sellingatmastery.com]

Individual salespeople wishing to Master their selling skills and those wishing to learn how to sell at mastery are invited to please visit [http://www.salestraininghere.com]

Both sites offer free valuable training bonus resources just as a thank you for stopping by.

There is a very lucrative affiliate offer that you will want to check out because getting paid is good!

There are innovative coaching techniques based on new insights into the nature of human conditioning that are extraordinary in helping to understand what keeps people stuck and more importantly, how to help them get unstuck. Human conditioning includes far more than limiting beliefs. It involves powerful feeling-level interpretations about ourselves and life. These feeling level decisions occur when we are very young, well before we can put words to them. The Core Dynamics model and its insights about human conditioning are important to coaching because it is these feeling-level decisions that cause us to live inside of limitations without even being aware it. These feeling-level decisions are at the basis of the inner conflicts that keep us stuck.

As an example, most people don’t consistently trust and act on their intuition. Why? When we are young, we often have experiences of doing something that comes from an inner, intuitive, creative impulse. If, as a child, we draw a picture all over our bedroom wall, we may get punished for it. These kinds of experiences occur before we have adequate language to describe our inner response to the punishment. If we did have the words for it, it might go something like: “The intensity of the overwhelming emotional pain of being punished is so incredibly unpleasant that I am going to avoid acting on those inner impulses so that I don’t have this awful emotional overwhelm experience ever again.” How many of these experiences does it take before we make an inner feeling-level decision to stop acting on our intuition? This becomes the foundation of not being true to ourselves for fear of how others might react. This forms the basis of the fear of confrontation that so often holds people back from doing what they really want to do. Our life becomes limited to operating inside of early feeling-level decisions such as this.

The Core Dynamic of Ignoring Your Intuition is just one of the 12 Core Dynamics that are in this model. The Core Dynamics system also provides five very powerful experiential techniques that are easy to learn and to teach your clients. These techniques actually resolve the underlying patterns of energy and information that hold our conditioned reactions in place. So the model and the techniques together provide both intellectual understanding of how our conditioning limits us as well as practical ways out of the conditioning’s insidious grip.

Conditioning is not just a human phenomenon either. Dr. Deepak Chopra relates a story about an experiment in which fish were placed on one side of a fish tank that had a glass divider in the middle. After a time, the divider was removed and the fish, conditioned to only being able to swim within the one side of the tank, continued to only swim in that side of the tank for a long time. To what extent are we like these fish, swimming inside of limitations without even recognizing it?

Now that you understand the insidious nature of human conditioning, we can explore, from a Core Dynamics perspective, the past, present and future of coaching.

The past:

In the past, coaching has provided excellent support for people in clarifying their direction and helping them achieve their goals and have a better life. The extent to which the profession of coaching has provided people with this kind of support has been a wonderful development in those parts of the world where coaching is being adopted. Coaching is still new to most people and its value is only beginning to be appreciated by the general public. Many coaches acknowledge that although they often help people, they sometimes feel that something is missing. They’d like to be even more effective. If we examine the coaching of the past from a Core Dynamics perspective, we can begin to see how the client and the coach have, in many cases, been both operating from inside of their conditioning.

Let’s take the example of setting goals. It is often the case that behind goal setting is a powerful and insidious Core Dynamic called, Looking for Yourself Where You Are Not. This Core Dynamic is based on a new appreciation of the combination of dependence on our parents as an infant while also being highly identified with them. When a need goes unmet because one of our parents isn’t there at the time, we tend to make a “feeling-level decision” that some part of ourselves that meets our needs is missing. This type of experience and interpretation seems to just be part of being human. The consequence is a deep inner longing to find that which will make us feel whole.

How does this relate to goal setting and coaching? If the Core Dynamic of Looking for Yourself Where You Are Not is active within you, you are likely to set goals with an expectation that you will feel a sense of fulfillment when the goal is reached. It will finally give you the feeling of being complete! The problem is that you are not incomplete in the first place. But it doesn’t feel like you’re complete because of the presence of this Core Dynamic. If and when you achieve the goal, whether it be for the ideal romantic partner, the six figure income or the new house over looking the ocean, the feeling of fulfillment is usually fleeting. It just doesn’t bring about the fulfillment that you thought it would. As a coach, you probably instinctively sense that helping your client set and achieve their goals isn’t really helping them obtain the fulfillment that they have been seeking.

Coaching of the past, however effective it may have been, has lacked the understanding of the insidious limitations caused by human conditioning and what to do about it. Coaches have also been operating inside of the same conditioning. It’s like one of the fish in the fish tank being the coach for one of the other fish while both still think the glass divider is still there. This limitation in the understanding of the nature of human life has had a profound limiting influence on the effectiveness of coaching in the past.

How about the present state of coaching?

The present state of coaching is a mixture of the past and the future. There’s nothing wrong with the old coaching model as it is helpful and many coaches will find that this is sufficient. I was privileged to be the late Thomas Leonard’s personal coach for the last few months of his life. He mentioned to me that he often observed that most coaches made an average of 20 coaching mistakes per coaching call. He realized that it is really great people that make great coaches. His attention was turning to having personal development for the coach become the most important part of coach training. He realized that in order to be a great person, it didn’t matter as much what you know as the extent to which you have “absensed” the things that you are not.

Thomas deeply appreciated my insights into the nature of human conditioning and how I have applied this knowledge to my own life. This is why he asked me to be his coach. He wanted to “absence” everything that he could from his life that really wasn’t truly who he was. He felt that there was nothing more important for coaches to learn for developing their own greatness as people and therefore having a place of greatness from which to coach others.

So the present state of coaching is a mixture of 1) people coaching from inside of the Core Dynamics and living in a similar state of frustration and lack of fulfillment as their clients (sort of the blind leading the blind) and 2) people learning new models for coaching such as the Core Dynamics model and applying these new models to their own lives and the lives of their clients. As they do, they are getting breakthroughs in one session that they simply couldn’t get before.

The Core Dynamics system provides new techniques that allow people to experience their own essential nature as whole and complete. These are experiential exercises that anyone can learn and practice. They are designed to re-establish the sense of being whole. By the way, this is not psychotherapy. It is simply education in how to reconnect with the essential nature of who and what you really are and to use your under utilized capabilities. In addition, the exercises help the client (and the coach) free themselves from old patterns so that they have nothing holding them back from living and enjoying the fullest possible expression of who they really are.

What about the future of coaching?

It’s likely to look quite different from what it is today. We are living in a time in which there is a global paradigm shift taking place from a world view based on classical physics to a world view based on quantum mechanics. The difference between the old coaching and the future coaching may well be as different as sending a typed letter via snail mail is from sending an email.

In the future coaches might be called something different, like Human Software Engineers. These Human Software Engineers of the future might use techniques and technologies to rapidly pin-point what is really keeping their client stuck. They may be able to help their clients eliminate the energy of their conditioning in a way that is similar to canceling out environmental noise with a electronic noise canceling headset. Using such technologies, they may be able to wipe out the barriers to people living and enjoying their lives to the fullest in a matter of minutes. This could produce results for clients that are so extraordinary that people’s lives will be transformed quickly, powerfully and effortlessly. Delivering results of this speed and magnitude will naturally create highly successful businesses for Human Software Engineers. Human Software Engineering may become one of the most valued professions in the world.

As mentioned earlier, the present is a mixture of the past and future. In actuality the future of coaching that I have described above is already here. This powerful futuristic method is called WaveMaker(TM) Coaching. Here’s what a coach who has taken both the Core Dynamics and Human Software Engineering/WaveMaker Coach training has to say about it:

“After attending the 12 Core Dynamics of Common Problems and Human Software Engineering training in Phoenix, I threw away every other coaching strategy and tool I’ve ever learned because I don’t need them anymore. The diagram of the 12 Core Dynamics and my WaveMaker are all I need to help anyone become quickly and dramatically free of the limitations that have been holding them back in life.

I’ve also completely revamped my full-time corporate and personal coaching practice – replacing phone coaching with face-to-face WaveMaker coaching – because I’m not willing to take more time and effort to achieve results that I know the WaveMaker can deliver. People are coming from all over for appointments and are reporting changes of mind-blowing proportions. There is no way to overstate the importance of the Core Dynamics and Human Software Engineering training and the WaveMaker technology for coaching. If you are a coach, you will want to learn this.”

Being invited to make a presentation to a group of people means that you are considered an expert on the subject at hand; a subject that the group you are speaking to has an interest in.

It is important you speak to the person who offered the invitation before you begin to write your speech. Find out about the individuals you will be speaking to, who do they represent? What part do they play in their respective organizations? These tips will let you know in what context you should write your presentation; what type of power point presentation will be more applicable? What jargon to use? How to avoid speaking down to them or over their heads?

It is best if you research the history of your topic and not introduce your topic as if it was the first thing that occurred, realize that every thing comes to be because of organic growth. I would not discuss Web 2.0 social networks without touching on the telephone, e-mail, Napster, the media, and technology. Because it would be odd to start talking about Web 2.0 right away with out an easy build up. Write your presentation with the above thoughts in mind.

Try to establish a beginning and an end and pay attention that your audience wants to be energised, they want to feel part of your speech, they want to learn and understand things that will add to their already sophisticated knowledge.

Talk to your audience as if you were speaking to your friends, don’t shout, breathe and remember that they do not know what you know, you are the expert, this should keep you from becoming nervous.

Take time when you are writing and make an effort to communicate with the audience in a way that it is in context, politically, and with taste. Know how long you are expected to speak and time your speech to fit into the time allotted to you.

In the past I was the Energizer Bunny when it came to booking and giving lectures. I kept going and going and going: I mailed my press kit everywhere, I spoke at any location that would have me, and partnered with equally enthusiastic individuals that were just as desperate for business. I thought I was giving quality presentations, yet I was seeing minimal results from my events.

I didn’t understand why this was happening. After all, I was giving great talks and providing excellent information, right? Why wasn’t I attracting clients as nicely as I imagined? My dream of making a living as a health counselor was slipping away with each fruitless presentation.

Intellectually, I knew that my workshops were supposed to result in new paying clients, yet something was missing. Didn’t people want information? Diet books are hot sellers! Isn’t this what they want?

Actually, I was doing the right things, but I was executing them in the wrong way.

The type of workshops I was giving were only perpetuating the American habit of collecting health information and doing nothing with it. Like reading a good book, participants went home, were pulled back into their daily obligations and forgot about me and my tips. To my surprise, my sharing of really good tips was ineffective in causing health changes.

I realized I needed to change.

The most important thing I finally got was deeply understanding, or “knowing in my body,” that the only way my participants would ever get healthy, was if they took action about their health concerns. And a good first step was to sign up for my free consultation I offered at the end of my talk. I got really clear that at the very least this initial session would cause some change, even if they didn’t sign up. This had me show up for my talks in a much more daring, unique and effective way.

Here is an example of my old way of presenting my workshops:

o I gave talks anywhere they would have me.

o I often tried to fill my own talks.

o My host sites didn’t have their marketing together so I did a lot of work to get people there.

o I gave lots and lots of information. So much so that my participants would leave feeling overwhelmed and unaware that they would need me to help put this stuff into action. I essentially assaulted them with information in an effort to prove I knew what I was talking about.

My improved way of presenting my workshops.

First, my talk locations must meet my preferred criteria:

o They get the participants to attend. I just show up.

o They have an effective marketing system and simply plug my event into their schedule and guarantee a set amount of participants.

o The host site is in abundance and is already successful.

o The host site attracts my type of clientele.

o I really like the place and it’s somewhere I would enjoy spending time. (Which usually means my ideal clients hang out there too)

o They have an online presence. So they can put me on their website and vice versa.

Second, I show up with a few tips and spend the rest of the time demonstrating what I do:

o I treat workshop participants as if they were already paying clients: coaching them rather than talking to them.

o I share a few insightful tips through my on-the-spot demonstrations.

o I leave ample time to pass around my schedule and encourage participants to sign up for a complimentary sample session.

These basic upgrades now have me booking and presenting talks the right way. Meaning, I’m working smarter and attracting clients.