Using NLP to Reframe the Customer Experience

5 min readJul 31, 2017

“If a problem can’t be solved within the frame it was conceived, the solution lies in reframing the problem.” ― Brian McGreevy

The ability to reframe and reframe a person’s worldview is a skill that is paramount in business.

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert and arguably one of the most successful cartoonist, shared in a recent interview that he was a trained hypnotist.

What got me more interested in the topic was his explanation of its applications to writing and marketing. He used Trump’s debate and marketing tactics as a case study, something that I coincidentally wrote about following the election.

In learning about hypnotism, I discovered a powerful application that is easy to implement in daily life for both personal and business objectives.

By no means am I a trained hypnotist or Neurolinguistics practitioner (more on that in a minute), but what I’ve researched was compelling and intuitive enough that I had to share with my peers.

To begin teaching you this method, you need to take one minute to watch the video below. Just watch it mindfully and we will come back to it shortly.

We not only process information in unique ways, we also express our experience to others in unique ways. The words we use are actually metaphors for our individual responses and experiences.

The Conscious Output System

The words we use to communicate our internal experiences to another person is known as our conscious output system.

Simply put, it’s how we attempt to articulate our experiences to another person after we have become “aware” of those experiences.

Marketers and salespeople tend to assume that our output system is the same as everyone else’s.

If you and I both see something we like and both agree on it, then we must have the same output.

However, experts in the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) found that this is not the case. (Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in California in the 1970s.)

By the time we are eleven or twelve years old, we developed a “preferred output system” also known as Representational System. We often switch between different systems but everyone has a preferred system that is comfortable and most often used.

These output systems come in three types: Visual, Kinesthetic, and Auditory.

In the United States, about 40% prefer visual, 40% kinesthetic, and about 20% prefer auditory.

Here’s how each breakdown:

Visual: Things we see
Kinesthetic: Things we feel (touch/emotion), taste or smell
Auditory: Things we hear

The Beach

Let’s go back to the beach. Imagine that we ask three different people a simple question-

“ What did you like about the beach?”

Common answers communicating the experience using each preferred output system:

Visual:

I like watching the waves and the beautiful sky
You can see the fish swimming
I can see people relaxing and having a good time

Kinesthetic:

I love the warmth of the sun
I enjoy feeling the sand between my toes
I can feel the tension drop away. It makes me feel loose and I get tingly all over

Auditory:

I love hearing the sound of the waves
It’s so tranquil, I can hear myself think

Keep in mind that people will shift and use different systems.

We can all use both our left and right hands, but we will always lean towards using our preferred hand.

If you tell a visual person to “put a handle” on their situation they will understand what you mean. Then, they’ll wait to see where you want them to put it.

In his book “Monsters and Magical Sticks”, Dr. Steven Heller shared that he often finds that auditory people have a highly developed second system (kinesthetic or visual) and will use many words to describe what they’re feeling (kinesthetic) or how they want you to see their experience (visual).

Using the Preferred Output to Help Others

When someone is in physical pain, the person will be in his or her kinesthetic system. The goal of the therapist then becomes to move them into another system.

This will help them utilize a different area of the pain from the part that controls pain.

When speaking to a prospect, a sales person can use neutral questions to begin to understand which preferred system the prospect uses:

What do you enjoy about using (product name)?

What does success mean to you?

Describe the perfect outcome

The goal here is to stay clear of using anything that primes them with visual, auditory, or kinesthetic cues.

If you’re not careful, you could say something like:

“What does a successful outcome look like for you?”

This will likely get you a visual answer as humans have a tendency to “mirror” each other. Unless under stress, most people are flexible enough to switch systems.

Changing Minds or Channeling Desires?

Changing the mind is a losing battle, but finding ways to unearth and channel already existing desires will often yield a successful sales outcome.

However, as long as your prospect continues to stay in a particular system the problem and their mind will remain in place.

If you can successfully identify their preferred system then you have a higher chance to influence them to “switch” systems. This allows the opportunity to receive different options to solve their problem.

When you’re able to switch someone into a different conscious output system they’ve gone into a state that doesn’t exist (hypnosis).

What you’ve now done is help them “break” their mindset and call upon another “partner” or “system” to solve their problem.

In the business world, this is the result of “reframing” or “cognitive reframing”; the psychological technique that consists of identifying and then disputing irrational or maladaptive thoughts.

Finding the right way to move a prospect from one preferred output system to another will allow you to move closer to closing a sale. More importantly, it allows you to provide a better, more empathetic customer experience that opens up a relationship.