NLP and Sales | NLP Coaching

The NLP Presuppositions
Sjoerd Eisma

Whenever we interact with other people and/or with our environment, we do so on a basis of a whole multitude of presuppositions - assumptions about what is, or is not, true in a given situation.

In most cases these assumptions are based on prior experience of some kind.

Examples of Presuppositions

"Every Behaviour Has A Positive Intention"

This is possibly the most controversial of the NLP presuppositions, since it is open to misinterpretation. What the presupposition means in the context of NLP is that every behaviour has a positive intention, as far as the person exhibiting the behaviour is concerned.

It is worth pointing out that NLP does not claim that all behaviour is necessarily the best possible choice from an objective point of view. Nor does it suggest that all behaviour will have positive benefits for everyone involved.

I've been in many sales situations where the prospect was answering me in a way I didn't expect or gave me a strange reaction to my presentation - In those cases I always thought about this presupposition ( my prospect has a positive intention so what does he or she really mean?) and I just replied with a simple question: "what do you actually mean by what you just said?" or "Is it correct that I see big questionmark in your face, do I need to be more specific?". 

In sales it is absolutely essential NOT to assume what the customer means but to ask a question to confirm if your first impression is correct. That will give you a lot of power in every sales situation because:

The person asking the questions controls the conversation.