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In sales, have you ever encountered the following situations? Have you ever met a customer and didn't know how to start the conversation? After starting, didn't know how to grab their attention? After grabbing attention, didn't know how to build trust? In further sales work, do you wish you could quickly get the customer to listen to you? Find the customer's needs? Create the desire to buy your product or service? And finally close the deal? If you need these, the Five-Step Hypnotic Selling method can provide comprehensive support and assistance, making you feel increasingly influential and driven.

Before starting this magical method, we must repeat some important points to clarify misunderstandings about hypnosis and sales. Only then can we begin our training to become excellent salespeople from a correct starting point.

I. Concepts of Hypnotic Selling ● Concept 1: Hypnosis is a method to change state, not to make you sleep. What we see on TV is usually performance hypnosis (also called stage hypnosis). The hypnosis introduced here originates from conversational hypnosis. What is conversational hypnosis? It is a way to make the other person enter a state more receptive to your influence through conversation, while you organize your language to make your words more attractive and compelling. Hypnosis is not about sleeping. Generally, a hypnotic state is one of focused attention and increased suggestibility. We often put ourselves or others into varying degrees of hypnotic states in daily life, such as playing video games, daydreaming, doing math problems, listening to music intently, thinking about work, or recalling memories—these can all be light or moderate hypnotic states. ● Concept 2: Whether you are a hypnotist or not, you hypnotize every day; whether you are a salesperson or not, you sell every day. Some say, "Hypnosis is useless for me; I don't need it." In fact, whether you think you need it or not, you hypnotize others or yourself daily. When you keep saying, "Hypnosis is useless for me," you are actually giving a hypnotic command, and this command will make you believe you don't need to learn this excellent technique. When you say to yourself, "What is hypnotic selling? It might help me," you are also performing self-hypnosis, making yourself willing to accept new things.

At the same time, the above process is also a sales process—it's the process of selling an idea to yourself. And every day, at different times and places, we constantly sell our ideas, our products, and ourselves to others. You might say, "The rice noodle king on Dongmen Street is delicious; they have seafood noodles, very tasty. Let's go there to eat." That's hypnosis—you trigger others to imagine something and enter a state of focused attention. It's also a sale—you package your opinion with "delicious" and sell it to others.

See, isn't that wonderful? Whenever you interact with people, you are constantly hypnotizing and selling. Since it's so closely related to our lives, we need to pay more attention to it and let it play a greater and better role. ● Concept 3: The four-character secret of sales: In sales and transactions—what you sell is yourself, what you sell is belief, what customers buy is feeling, and what you sell is benefits.

II. Five Steps of Hypnotic Selling ▲ Step 1: Attract Attention (Sensory Focus) Common sales problems:

  1. Salespeople start introducing products without attracting the customer's attention, and after finishing, the customer just says, "I'm not interested."
  2. Salespeople talk extensively about product benefits instead of starting from the customer's needs, only to find out later they recommended the wrong product. Benefits of this step:
  3. Quickly attract the customer's attention, thinking, and participation.
  4. Start from the customer's situation and sell in a targeted manner.
  5. Build good rapport by focusing on the customer's preferences and problems. Technique explanation: Technique 1: Situational Questioning This is one of the core techniques. The purpose is to start the conversation from the customer's situation and discover their problems through continuous questioning. Example 1: Salesperson: "Miss Bai, what kind of work do you do?" Miss Bai: "I work in human resources." Salesperson: "Oh, human resources—that's quite a challenging job. Can you tell me more about it?" Miss Bai: "There's not much to say. I often have to train employees, sometimes even on weekends, and I can't take care of my kids." At this point, we start to discover Miss Bai's problem: her work schedule conflicts with caring for her children. ▲ How to Develop "Situational Questions" Generally, salespeople tend to start directly with product introductions without considering customer needs. This approach often fails to motivate customers to buy. Hypnotic selling does the opposite: it starts from the customer's situation, discovers their problems, further understands and strengthens their needs, and ultimately drives consumption. Traditional sales approach: Customer → Product → Product benefits ← Product features Customer situation → Customer problem → Customer need → Product benefits Hypnotic selling: We use questioning in this process: Customer situation → Customer problem → Customer need → Product benefits We dig deeper step by step. To design these questions, the process is reversed: Product benefits → Customer needs or problems in different scenarios → Questions related to life scenarios. Example 2: Designing situational questions for a training course called "Heart-to-Heart High-Efficiency Communication" Product/Service Benefits | Customer Problems/Needs in Different Scenarios (4 scenarios) | Questions Related to Life Scenarios Understanding yourself | Family: Understanding your wife, improving relationship with wife, understanding your child's thoughts, helping child improve self-esteem, helping child improve grades | "What do you and your spouse usually do for fun on holidays?" (This doesn't directly ask if you're married but asks differently) "How is your relationship with your spouse?" "How old is your child?" "How is your child's academic performance?" ... Understanding others | Career: Building a network for career development, improving relationships with colleagues or subordinates, learning to influence, motivate, and inspire others, learning to handle conflicts | "What kind of work do you do?" "How are your relationships with colleagues?" "Do you think you need to meet more people for career growth?" ... Improving communication mindset | Leisure: Learning to communicate with your body | "Have you noticed that sometimes your body feels extremely tired?" ... Changing communication skills | Money: Learning to talk to strangers, boosting confidence in social interactions, learning to sell products to others | "Would you like to increase your income?" "Do you think you need to improve your ability to sell yourself or your products?" "I guess you know that success is closely related to social skills, right?" ... Technique 2: Identify "Road Signs" "Road signs" refer to information revealed in the other person's words during conversation. The most important "road signs" are about their problems and needs. In Example 1, we can see three road signs: "working in human resources," "has children," and "too busy on weekends to take care of the child." Once we identify these road signs, we can use them as starting points for deeper conversation. Example 3:
  6. Using the road sign "has children": "Oh, how old is your child?"
  7. Using the road sign "working in human resources": "Oh, human resources—that's quite a challenging job. Can you tell me more?" Technique 3: Simple and Timely Responses When using questioning techniques, salespeople sometimes fall into the trap of asking questions endlessly like a census taker, which can trigger customer suspicion and resistance. Therefore, we must insert timely responses, such as our own thoughts, feelings, and a little about ourselves. Example 4: Miss Bai: "My child is five years old, a boy." Salesperson: "Already five? I can't tell," pause, look at her, "I have a child too. I'm curious about yours; mine is quite naughty." Technique 4: Pause During the conversation, occasionally after the other person finishes speaking, don't rush to respond. Pause for a moment. Often, the customer will unconsciously share more about themselves. Of course, this technique should not be overused; use it occasionally. ▲ Step 2: Find the Problem (Induction) In Example 1, we saw the salesperson begin to discover a customer problem. The second step of hypnotic selling is to discover the customer's problem because behind every problem lies a need waiting to be fulfilled. In Example 1, Miss He's need might be to have time to care for her child. Further, we can infer that her child is very important to her. So, if we continue the conversation from the child's perspective, it may be more compelling for her. Warm reminder: In "Hypnotic Selling Basics" by Niu Tou, we introduced hypnotic techniques to guide attention. Combining these with Step 2 will double the results. ▲ Step 3: Stimulate Needs (Deepening) Common sales problem: A major challenge for salespeople is handling customer objections like "I have no money," "It's too expensive," "I'm not interested," "I have no time," etc. Benefits of this step: Objections often arise because customers feel the product doesn't provide the value they want. This step is to help customers see how much benefit they can gain from the transaction, and how regrettable it would be to miss it. Technique 1: Face the Pain In sales, why do customers buy or not buy? Why are they willing to buy now or not? What are their motivations? The core motivations are: seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. And the drive to avoid pain is four times stronger than the drive to pursue success. So, when we find the customer's problem in the previous step, we can show them the painful consequences of not solving it. Guide them to imagine how they would feel if things continued this way. When a person feels that not changing will bring pain, they are often willing to take the first step toward change. Then, we need to connect that change with our product or service—simply put, make them understand that our product or service can help them achieve that change, and that the change is very pleasant. Technique 2: Show Pleasure Ask the customer to imagine what it would be like if their problem were already solved. Guide them to think about the happy, satisfying feeling after solving the problem. Here, I want to share the four golden phrases of sales: In sales and transactions, what you sell is yourself, what you sell is the concept, what customers buy is the feeling, and what you sell is the benefit. This technique provides the "feeling." Then tell the customer that we have a product or service that can support them in solving their problem and getting the benefits they want. This way, the customer will be happy to pay.

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