Originally broadcast on BFM 89.9 – The Business Station: 🎙️ Listen to the Full Conversation: Sheila Singam discusses NLP in Business and Sales on BFM 89.9’s Raise Your Game podcast with Freda Liu and Nicole Rodrigues, founder and marketing director of Mountain Fresh Fruit Juices Asia. (Run time: 18:36 mins). Published on 25 September 2015.
Have you ever walked away from a high-stakes client meeting feeling as though you were speaking an entirely different language? We have all been there. You present a brilliant, feature-packed proposal, yet the client simply stares back at you with a blank expression, unmoved. It got me thinking about how so many brilliant entrepreneurs and professionals struggle to connect, purely because they miss the fundamental human mechanics of communication.
In business and sales, we often fall into the trap of believing that decisions are driven strictly by cold, hard logic. But human beings are inherently emotional creatures. We buy based on emotions, and then we rationalise those choices using logic afterwards.
This is where Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, becomes an extraordinary game-changer. Far from being a set of manipulative tricks, NLP in business and sales provides a deeply ethical, human-centric framework designed to build genuine trust, decode customer needs, and navigate unpredictable challenges with total resilience.
Key Takeaways
- Build Instant Rapport via Mirroring: Match posture, speech tempo, and body language to lower buyer resistance and establish immediate unconscious trust.
- Leverage Sensory Predicates: Align your language with your client’s dominant modality—visual, auditory, or kinaesthetic—to ensure your value proposition resonates deeply.
- Reframing Sales Objections: Shift buyer focus from immediate upfront cost to long-term value and competitive risk using NLP reframing techniques.
- Anchor Positive Emotional States: Connect your solutions to moments of peak buyer confidence and enthusiasm to accelerate decision-making cycles.
- Uncover Core Buying Drivers: Use precise NLP questioning models to identify the hidden motivations and decision-making criteria behind purchasing choices.
1. Clarifying the Well-Formed Outcome
The foundation of setting any goal—whether in personal development or commercial sales targets—is defining a clear, precise endgame. In NLP, we call this a Well-Formed Outcome. Unlike vague wishes, a Well-Formed Outcome requires you to get clear on what you actually want, framing it positively and in sensory-rich detail.
When you hold a clear outcome in your mind, your unconscious mind goes to work, tuning into your environment and pulling forward opportunities that help you achieve it.
Years ago, before I was formally trained in NLP, I sat down and wrote out a list of 10 major goals. I simply wrote them down clearly. Over time, I achieved every single one of them. That experience taught me the incredible power of structured clarity, prompting me to set bigger, bolder goals every year.
2. Setting Metrics & Timelines
A vision without concrete numbers and firm deadlines remains an abstract idea. To anchor your outcome into reality, you must attach specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), exact sales targets, and crisp timelines.
My friend and client, Nicole Rodrigues—who previously served as Managing Director and Marketing Director of Mountain Fresh Fruit Juices—paired her outcome planning with a vision board. She created a vision board placed where she could see it every morning upon waking and every night before sleep. By visually anchoring her business sales targets alongside personal aspirations—such as quality education for her children, personal milestones, and health targets—she primed her mind daily.
Within nine months of setting her specific sales target, she achieved her exact milestone.
3. Identifying & Removing Limiting Beliefs
You can possess the finest outcome and timeline in the world, but if you harbour internal limiting beliefs, you will continually encounter mental blocks.
Despite having a superior product, Nicole shared candidly that she suffered from a persistent belief that her company wasn’t “good enough” to secure prestigious five-star hotel accounts. Through targeted NLP processes, she identified and removed that self-limiting belief.
Once that mental restriction was erased, her confidence transformed. She approached those luxury venues with authority and unlocked doors that previously felt completely closed.
4. Building Subconscious Rapport & Handling Objections
Once your internal mindset is clear, execution relies on how effectively you connect with people, decode their needs, and address their objections.
Building Subconscious Rapport
Fundamental to all relationship building is trust. A client does not need to be your best friend to trust you to deliver exceptional value. You establish that trust by meeting people where they are through matching and mirroring their physiology, tonality, and sensory language patterns (Visual, Auditory, or Kinaesthetic).
If you pay close attention, your client’s language will give away their exact preference:
| Sensory Preference | Language Indicators | Ideal Sales Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Visual | “I see what you mean”, “Clear” | Show visual demos, brochures |
| Auditory | “That sounds good”, “I hear you” | Focus on tone, clear discussion |
| Kinaesthetic | “Feel”, “Grasp”, “Run through” | Provide hands-on samples / brochures |
If you are marketing to a kinaesthetic buyer, you must let them touch, feel, or try the product. If your product is a massive piece of machinery or an abstract service, let them hold and feel the weight of your high-quality brochures instead. Communicating in their preferred style removes unconscious friction.
Case Study: Breaking Through an Unapproachable Client
Nicole used this exact tool to break through with an exceptionally tough commercial client whom her sales representative had failed to engage. When Nicole stepped in, she consciously matched his posture and movement subtly without him noticing, creating an immediate, comfortable space for open dialogue. The client felt an immediate sense of trust and signed the contract, securing a major account.
Eliciting Buying Sequences
Beyond sensory preference, every buyer operates with a specific sequence of buying values. You can elicit these values directly by asking what they looked for first, second, and third during their last purchase, then feeding back your solution in that identical order.
A Tale of Two Insurance Agents
I once had an insurance agent try to sell me a policy. I explicitly told him, “Here is what I want, package something that fits my specific needs.” Instead of listening, he insisted on forcing me through his standard, lengthy presentation slide by slide. He completely lost me, and I did not buy.
Shortly after, another agent arrived, listened to my exact criteria, and said, “Tell me what you want, and I’ll tailor it exactly for you.” He matched my values precisely, and I immediately put down a large investment with him.
Handling Price Objections
When clients raise price objections, standard salespeople retreat into defensive discounts. In NLP, we use the Meta Model to ask precise clarifying questions—such as “Expensive compared to what?”—and use inductive language to paint a sensory picture of value.
Case Study: Addressing Price Objections with Metaphors and Proof
When prospective clients quibbled over the price of Mountain Fresh Fruit Juices, Nicole positioned Mountain Fresh as the “Mercedes-Benz or Rolls-Royce of fruit juices.”
When they probed further, she revealed that a single 300ml bottle contains the cold-pressed juice of eight premium apples, with no added water, sugar, or preservatives. The moment buyers saw the tangible quality and value proposition, price ceased to be a hurdle. When value is clear, buyers happily pay a premium.
5. Executing, Managing State & Adjusting Timelines
Execution takes place in an unpredictable business world. When deals fall through, client meetings go off track, or market conditions change, NLP state management tools allow you to step out of unresourceful emotional states so you don’t wallow in disappointment. You allow yourself to acknowledge the setback briefly, reset your internal emotional state, and step right back into action.
Crucially, if you don’t hit a specific goal within your original timeframe, don’t beat yourself up or be hard on yourself! Be kind to yourself. Check for any hidden limiting beliefs, adjust your timeline, extend your horizon, and enjoy the process!
Frequently Asked Questions
How does NLP in business and sales improve everyday client negotiations?
NLP in business and sales equips you to build immediate trust through subtle physiological matching, decode your client’s hidden buying values, and address core concerns using inductive language and benefit-driven framing. It shifts negotiations away from price battles toward mutual, value-added outcomes.
Can NLP tools help sales teams overcome severe rejection?
Yes. Through state management and the Well-Formed Outcome model, sales professionals learn to detach emotionally from temporary setbacks, maintain psychological resilience, and focus steadfastly on long-term goals.
Is matching and mirroring client behaviour manipulative?
Not at all when done with integrity. Matching and mirroring is a natural human process that signals empathy, active listening, and respect, laying the essential groundwork of trust required for any healthy business relationship.
How can I learn to apply these NLP tools effectively in my own business or sales team?
While understanding the concepts is a great start, mastering NLP requires hands-on practice, feedback, and real-world application. Immersing yourself in a structured NLP training programme gives you the practical experience to naturally integrate rapport-building, state management, and clear goal setting into your daily professional conversations.
Transcript: NLP in Business an Sales
Transcript: NLP in Business an Sales
Programme: Raise Your Game
Station: BFM 89.9
Host: Freda Liu
Guests: Sheila Singam (Founder, Human Equation), Nicole Rodrigues (Founder, Mountain Fresh Fruit Juices)
Freda: Good morning. This is Freda Liu. You’re listening to Raise Your Game. Many successful business people and sales professionals use some form of NLP tools, either consciously or unconsciously. NLP can give you strategic influence, help create and maintain rapport, teach you the right questions to ask to address customer concerns, give you inductive language tools to impress upon people, and teach you to negotiate effectively. It is the final Friday of the month. So this morning we have Human Equation’s Sheila Singam and her guest Nicole Rodrigues, managing director of Mountain Fresh Fruit Juices here, who wanted to share with us on how they’ve used NLP to help in business and sales. So Sheila, we’ll start off with you. How is NLP useful for those doing business and which tools can be used?
Sheila: Well, there’s a whole range of tools that you can actually use in business and in sales. Foremost among them, of course, fundamental to all relationship building is communication, and the NLP rapport-building tools are really very profound. In fact, I teach my students to just build rapport when you go in to see clients. Just match and mirror their physiology, their tonality, listen to the words that they’re using and match those as well. And they’ve come back and told me that they’ve got amazing results, and they’re always very perplexed. How can something so simple be so relevant and so successful? And I say, “Yeah, that’s it.” And people think that the little tools in NLP are not worth addressing or using, but you start with the fundamentals, right?
Another thing is also to listen to the language people are using. Some people are highly visual, some are auditory, some are kinaesthetic. So if you listen to their language, you’ll be able to say which is their preference. So when you speak to them, you match that way. So if someone in their language is using a lot of kinaesthetic words, words like “feel” and “I need to run through it before I can grasp it,” when you actually are marketing something to him, as far as possible, you let him have a feel and touch. If it’s a product, let him touch it, feel it, try it out. And if it’s too big a product and you can’t carry it, let him look at the brochures, feel the brochures, touch it. So you communicate with them in their preferred communication style.
Another thing is the kind of language that you use. We recommend people to use what we call inductive language. Inductive language is very big-picture language, language that is full of metaphors, which actually connects better with people than just jumping straight into the specifics. Now, what I teach my people in my sales programmes is don’t go and hard sell the features of the product, what it is, because that one, people can basically see; you have brochures with the specifications. What you need to do is to translate the features of the product or service into the benefits it will bring to the buyer. Paint in their minds a picture of what it’s like when they have that product or service, what it’s going to do for them, what they will see, hear, and feel when they have it, to build a rich sort of picture.
And then we know the sounds and feelings, because people buy based on emotions.
Freda: Right.
Sheila: Right. I mean, if I’m going to go and buy a bottle of water from the shop, it’s not based on emotions. But if I’m buying things like houses…
Freda: Unless we tell you the water is from the mountains, to the French Alps.
Sheila: Then I will choose that one. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. So, a lot of times we think that people are buying based on rationality. People will buy based on emotion, especially big-ticket items, and they’ll rationalise it using logic, like the features and the pricing.
Freda: What was it said that Nicole said? That Mountain Fresh is the Mercedes-Benz, the Rolls-Royce of fruit juices, right? We’ll hear a little bit about Nicole’s story, but when you also talk about rapport and trying to connect with someone in a way, you are getting the person to like you at the end of the day.
Sheila: Actually, you don’t really have to be in rapport with—you don’t have to like someone to be in rapport with them. Rapport is actually—the fundamentals of rapport is actually trust.
Freda: Okay.
Sheila: So I might not really wonderfully like you
Freda: Or want to have dinner with you, but I will trust you.
Sheila: I will trust you to provide. Also, another thing that we need to look at in business and sales is connecting with the values of the buyer, the buying values. This is a very, very profound technique. You ask, you elicit from the buyer, like say, “The last time you bought a house, what was the first thing you looked for? And then what was the second thing, and what was the third thing?” So they might say, “The first thing I looked for was the environment. The second thing I looked for was spaciousness, and the third thing was the price.” So when I am, say, if I’m selling houses, when I’m showing them a house, I would feed back the benefits of the house in the same order. I’d say, “I’ve got a perfect place for you and the perfect environment, right? You would love this environment. It’s got this, this, this, this…” based on what they want.
Freda: Because a lot of times, I guess, like salespeople will say what they like, but not meet—and it’s different things to different people, right? And you want… so then listen to what they have to say, and talk about those features first that they would like.
Sheila: Absolutely. You feed it back in the order they would like. Like I once had this guy come to try and sell me insurance, and I’m saying, “Okay, here’s what I want, and package something for me that fits with my needs.” And he’s saying, “Oh, wait. I’ll go through the whole—share everything with you. You listen first.” I said, “I don’t have time. I don’t need to listen. I know what I want. I don’t need to listen to all your products and packages. You tell me. You know your products, you tell me.” But he proceeded, and he lost me. I didn’t buy from him. But there was another guy. He was persistent. He said, “Sheila, tell me what you want, and I’ll tailor exactly for you what…” I said, “No, I want a savings plan for when I’m older.” He said, “Okay, I’ve got the perfect thing for you.” And he got me.
Freda: Right.
Sheila: I bought from him. It was a large amount that I put down, but he got me because he was listening to what I wanted.
So in business, if we listen, our listening skills also have to be—we call it in NLP sensory acuity: watching the person’s physiology and listening to what they’re saying. And then when you talk to them, when you watch their physiology, you can actually see that they’re connecting with what you’re saying, right? And listening and taking note of what the client’s buying values are, what is their strategy for buying things or for investing, let’s say. And then when you go back to them and talk about the benefits of your business, your product or your service, you feed it back to them according to what they want. That means you match your product benefits and features and all that back to what they want.
Freda: All right, but business can be unpredictable. Now, how does NLP help one to persevere through hard times? We’ll talk to Sheila Singam from Human Equation together with Nicole Rodrigues from Mountain Fresh Fruit Juices after this. This is Raise Your Game. BFM 89.9.
[Break]
Freda: This is Raise Your Game. Good morning, Freda here. Final Friday of the month, we have Sheila Singam from Human Equation’s Tools for Transformation, and together with Nicole Rodrigues, the managing director of Mountain Fresh Fruit Juices. You know, we were just talking about NLP and how that helps with business and sales, but business can be unpredictable and we’re going through a challenging period in Malaysia at the moment. How does NLP help someone persevere through hard times?
Sheila: One of the things, a couple of tools that NLP can give you, is what we call the well-formed outcome model, where you actually sit down and write down what you really want, where is the endgame for your business, and then sit down and plan the steps that you need to take. So if you’re focusing on the outcome, what we believe is that everything in your unconscious mind, your environment, everything pulls together to bring to your attention the opportunities that are going to help you to achieve the outcome. And the second thing that we teach people is state management. So, you’ve got a deal that’s fallen through and you’re pretty much inclined to crash and just kind of lie down there and wallow in it. “Oh (exclaiming a sense of despair), but NLP state management tools teach you how to get out of that state and wallow for a little while, get out of that state of disappointment and then get back into the game and focus on your endgame and the outcome that you want.
Freda: Okay. So, I know this is one of the tools that you use, Nicole, but before that, a little bit about your business.
Nicole: Okay. Mountain Fresh, we started about six years ago. My husband found the agency and I decided to take it on because I love the taste of the juices and it’s a good product that I think that every household should have, and every restaurant and five-star hotel.
Freda: Right. I know that with the NLP, you’ve used a lot of tools. One of the tools is the well-formed outcomes as well. So tell us how you use that tool.
Nicole: Okay. For the NLP, for the well-formed outcome, it was in a sense that it gave you a direction and a focus that, okay, I’ve got to do certain things, and I was so focused on getting it. When I did the NLP course, after nine months, I actually achieved the sales target that I wanted in the well-formed outcome.
Freda: So, what was happening before?
Nicole: Before, in the sense that there was no sense of direction. I would know that I want this client and a certain amount of clients, but I didn’t really know how to get them and get there. As Sheila was saying, like in state management, when I lost the deal and I didn’t get it, I would be like, “Darn, I… I don’t know what to do,” and I’d be like…
Freda: “Okay, I don’t know what to do. That’s it; that’s the end of the road,” right?
Nicole: Yes.
Freda: Okay, and what other tools do you use? I know you also use rapport a lot, I guess.
Nicole: Yeah, I do a lot of rapport and also matching and mirroring, because matching and mirroring is one of the most, I think, effective tools for me. It’s like when you see your client, and then you can sort of match and mirror them and eventually get into rapport, because it makes it easier to communicate.
Freda: Can you share a story?
Nicole: There was a quite difficult client that we had, and initially I sent my sales guy to go, and he couldn’t break through. And with NLP, I spoke to Sheila about this, and she taught me this matching and mirroring, and I actually used it. It’s quite easy to use. When he did something, I matched it without him noticing it, and eventually, yeah, he actually signed the contract, and I got the deal.
Freda: Okay. So it’s just connecting that way, and I guess, as you were saying, that helps build trust.
Sheila: Absolutely.
Freda: It doesn’t mean that you’re best friends right now, but you build trust as well. So how has it also—how have these tools also helped you in terms of your focus and self-motivation?
Nicole: I’ve used the well-formed outcome. I’ve been very, very focused on what I want to get done and when, because there is a timeline of when we should get it, because you’re writing it down. And basically, I’ve also used the vision board that I have. So every day when you wake up, you look at what you want, and before you sleep as well, you also see what you’re supposed to do. So you have instilled it in yourself: “Okay, this is what I want, and I will gear myself up to get it.”
Freda: Okay. What’s on your vision board?
Nicole: My vision board? Well, I’ve got the house that I desire, the car that I want, good education for my kids—proper schools—and the amount of sales that I want Mountain Fresh to achieve at a certain amount of time. And also, the perfect figure.
Freda: You’re perfect. Okay. Okay. So, these are things, and then when you’ve got this on the board, then it sort of motivates you to do the things to get there.
Nicole: Yeah.
Freda: Right. Okay. So, what about in terms of—you talk about inductive language. Is that metaphors as well?
Sheila: Yes. Metaphors as well. So, I think sometimes, Nicole, we all go and see a client and they say, “Waa are your products so expensive?” Like for Nicole, for example, “Waa is your Mountain Fresh so expensive?” So, you ask—you say, “Well, it’s the Mercedes-Benz of fruit juices, or the Rolls-Royce of fruit juices,” and people straight away get it. “Oh, I see. Quality, right?” It’s the best quality. So, you really don’t go and ask someone to negotiate on the price of a Rolls-Royce or a Merc, right? So, people then understand the value of it.
Another thing that we also teach salespeople and business people is beliefs. You see, you can have the best well-formed outcome, you can have the best intentions for your business, but if you yourself have a limiting belief inside of you that you can achieve that, then it’s not going to happen.
Freda: Were there self-limiting beliefs for you, Nicole?
Nicole: Yes, there definitely were. Yeah, it was like a belief that I can’t get that particular hotel, because I felt that I’m not good enough for them and stuff. And when I went to this NLP, we got that removed, and now I know, “Okay, I can do it.”
Freda: Okay. So, in the case of metaphors, we talked a little bit about that. So how do you then, when someone says, “This is expensive”—apart from you saying that this is the Rolls-Royce of fruit juices—what else do you do to counter it in a positive way?
Nicole: I will ask them, “Okay, expensive compared to what? What are you comparing it to?” And I would explain like, in the Mountain Fresh bottle, for 300 ml, there is actually eight premium apples inside. And when I tell them that, they’ll go, “Ah, no wonder.” So then they’ll understand that, yes, it is of that quality, and that’s why, for the price you’re paying, there are no preservatives and no sugar, not even water is added.
Freda: Okay. So you move away from price, which is a very easy “expensive,” right? So you go into the explanation of what it is, and you sell the benefits.
Sheila: Yeah. Because most salespeople—most business people get stumped when people critique the pricing. Yeah. So this one gives you the questions. In NLP, we call it the Meta Model. The questions like what, how… we avoid the “why” question. So people would say, “That’s too expensive.” “Compared to what? What makes you say that?” And then we do a comparison of maybe your product—you compare it with the competitor’s product and show them the benefits, the value-added benefits of yours. And then they go, “Oh” People, when you show them something that is of a higher value—I’m not talking about price, I’m talking about value—when there’s added value in something, they don’t mind paying a higher price for it, but if you can’t show them what is the value-added proposition of your product compared to something else, competitors, then they can’t see it, and then they will quibble about the price. And for some people, if the price is the highest criteria—I mentioned earlier about criteria, right? So people have different criteria about buying. So some people, it’s first, quality; second, appearance; maybe somewhere third or fourth is price. But for some people, the highest criteria is price. And if they’ve already made up their mind inside their head that the price is the price, if you can possibly try and convince them that the other criteria are being fulfilled, they might compromise on the price. But then again, they might not.
Freda: Okay. So, in terms of your—just to finally—like your well-formed outcomes and also the vision board, how often do you change this, or is there going to be a deadline, right? So, what do you do when it comes to the vision board and the well-formed outcomes?
Sheila: Well, you go back and look at it, and then, you set a deadline. If it’s achieved, then you kind of take it off. Give yourself a good pat on the back. Take it off and put more things. People need to continuously set goals. And a goal is not something like you reach out your hand and then you can touch. Your goal has to be a little bit out of reach. So there has to be that stretch for you to go and get it, right? So when you’ve achieved your goal, then set yourself other goals. That’s what I’ve done over the years.
So I, I mean, years ago, 20 years ago, I sat down and wrote a list of 10 things down, and I wasn’t even NLP-trained 20 years ago. I didn’t know all these things about goal setting, writing it down, vision boards and all. I just did it one rainy day and I achieved all of them. So then I set more goals, and I set more goals. So every year you set yourself new goals, right? If the goal doesn’t sort of work out within the timeframe you expected, then you go back and look at your limiting beliefs. What is the belief that you’re holding inside of yourself that’s stopping you from achieving that? And then you remove the limiting belief, which we, most NLP practitioners, all NLP practitioners are trained—timeline therapy practitioners are trained—to do. Remove the limiting beliefs, and then you reset the timeline. Don’t kill yourself and knock yourself on the head if you didn’t get it in that timeframe. Be kind to yourself. Just maybe you’ve reset your limiting beliefs; give yourself another extended period of time and do it. The whole idea is to enjoy the process; don’t be rigid and tough on yourself when things don’t work out the way you want.
Freda: All right, we’ve been talking about how you can use NLP in business and sales. Sheila Singam from Human Equation here, of course, last Friday of the month, and you’ll get to hear her again the last Friday of next month, together with Nicole Rodrigues from Mountain Fresh Fruit Juices. Raise Your Game, BFM 89.9.
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