NLP Anchoring in Business

When you’re in any kind of a communication transaction with another person, whether it’s trying to sell to a client or communicate with your boss, a friend, or your spouse, the process for getting the type of response you want is pretty straightforward.

Simply ask the other person to remember some past experience that you know will bring out the type of response you’re looking for.

For instance, if you want a pleasure response, ask him or her to recall a memory or activity that was enjoyable. This makes the other person more receptive to the ideas you are communicating. It’s not hard to see that when you’re trying to sell something, your customer is going to be easier to sell to if they are in certain states of mind.

Learning to use anchoring effectively takes time and practice. You can practice by anchoring various good feelings on yourself, as well as family, friends, and business associates.

Besides making everyone feel good, practicing like this will help you to get used to anchoring, and eventually make it easier for you to do it unconsciously.

Ultimately, you will learn how to anchor appropriate responses without even thinking about it. This will make you something of a natural-born salesperson, besides making you and the people around you happier in general.

Many organizations and corporations in the U.S. and other countries have used NLP to improve their effectiveness.

The uses of NLP in the corporate world range from coaching executives to improving customer service. In fact, NLP techniques can be helpful in any situation where two or more people must communicate.

NLP and Anchoring

Anchoring is probably one of the best-known NLP terms, and a very useful technique originally developed by Bandler and Grinder.

It’s a way of tapping into the powerful unconscious desires of other people to elicit the response you’re trying to get.

Anchoring works by associating a memory or feeling with something else — that is, you’re anchoring the two together. For instance, when you think of something fun you did often when you were a child, feelings of pleasure come to you. Those feelings are anchored to that memory.

Anchoring, in the NLP sense, is going on inside and outside us all the time. Most of the time we are not aware that it is happening, which makes it all that much more powerful over us.

Novelists and filmmakers consciously use anchoring. Think back to your favorite movie and how cues like music, lighting, action, and suspense produced various psychological states in you as you watched.

When you heard the signature music in “Jaws” that signaled the shark’s approach, how did you react? A little nervous, perhaps?

Did you even need to actually see the shark on the screen for these reactions to take place?

In the same way that the shark’s theme music is used over and over in the film to keep stimulating the same response, many pieces of music and literature also use recurring themes for the same purpose.

When dealing with other people, we often use anchoring without realizing it. The outcome of these encounters often is a result of the anchoring that takes place among the participating parties, so it would be helpful to become conscious of what is happening.

When we build up a strong emotional association with another person, we tend to re-enact that emotion automatically and unconsciously whenever we are in their presence.

NLP techniques can help you become aware of the reactions that you are anchoring in other people and in ourselves. Once you know this, you can control the anchoring so that it best serves you and your goals.