Jason Sharpe, the head of customer service at First Direct, is a trained “master practitioner” in NLP.

Last year he began to use the technique to improve the performance of customer service employees. “I wanted to find out what our really excellent people are good at, how they do what they do, then demonstrate to someone else how they can use those models to improve their own behaviour,” he said.

Mr Sharpe chose 200 of the most successful performers from a division of 3,000 people and whittled them down to three who were “truly outstanding”.

He then interviewed and videotaped them on the sales floor to identify similarities in their language and behaviour. He then did the same with the weakest performers.

While the high performers “absolutely understood” the bank's products and principles and went out of their way to be in control of the facts, the weak performers had “limiting beliefs - things they believed they weren't good at that prevented them from stepping up to the next level,” he said.

The successful salespeople visualised what customers looked like and used positive, upbeat language, such as “I can” and “I will”, Mr Sharpe said.

They did not get hung up on a lost sale but moved on quickly. The weak performers were more likely to say “I'll try” or “I might” and dwell on perceived failures.

Working with one of the weaker performers, Mr Sharpe created a “positive anchor” to boost her pride - by sticking a picture of a lion in her line of sight. Changing her body position so that she sat more upright while on the phone had a tangible effect. “It sounds ridiculous but you have to do something different to break the state and get into a positive frame of mind.”

Within two or three weeks she hit her sales target for the first time in six months. The top performers also improved by identifying what they were doing well, he said. First Direct plans to integrate NLP techniques into its training and recruitment. “It is a unique tool,” Mr Sharpe said.

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