Persuasion Engineering: Sales & Business Language & Behavior
©1996 by Richard Bandler & John LaValle
Meta Publications
In the past, I had heard the audio of the Persuasion Engineering seminar and this book seems to be a pretty close transcript of that seminar. Richard Bandler is a master of voice use and much of this is inevitably lost in the format of the written word. The embedded metaphors, too, which Bandler uses extensively in his training are not as effective in the book as they are in the audio. Without the appropriate auditory cues and silences, this book is often difficult to follow and confusing. Of course, Bandler does use confusion deliberately as a trance-induction techniques, but there were many points in this book where I felt confused only as I tried to figure out what on earth he was talking about. I have no doubt that the authors deliberately meant to keep these confusing sections intact, so that they could achieve more direct communication with the unconscious mind, but for me personally this communication worked far better in the audio format. Another read through it would surely reveal much more and help greater understanding.
The book is aimed at sales people and is presents many of the standard concepts of NLP in that context, including representational systems, eye patterns, anchoring, meta model, milton model, and timeline work. This is not an appropriate book to learn all of these things for the first time because they are only presented partially and in an ad hoc manner as they are useful for each demonstration or explanation or story. However, for a reader who is already familiar with all of the basic NLP techniques, this book will provide many rich examples of how they can be applied highly effectively in the sales process.
Bandler’s stories run throughout the book, often entertaining, always sounding considerably exaggerated, and often revealing their deeper metaphoric meaning on a second or third reading. For me, I found the audio more useful, but even just this book will certainly give the reader some powerful insights into how NLP can be used in practical ways in selling.
The Persuasion Engineering series is available as a book or on DVD from The NLP Store.