Psychological Cat Burglar – An Interview with Dr David Moore.
It is safe to say that if David Moore did not exist you would have to invent him. He is the owner of The Moore Consortium group of companies which cover a variety of the ‘self-help’ streams, from NLP and Persuasion through to Firewalking and EFT. David spent his early years as a salesman in a variety of industries including Time Share, Insurance, Double Glazing and Advertising. In the early 1990’s he became a salesman for Cable London, a cable TV and Telephone provider and within a very short space of time went from salesman to team leader, to Field sales Manager to National Sales Trainer. He was the most successful salesman Cable London produced. He was the only salesman to venture into the notorious Broadwater Farm Estate in North London, the scene of rioting a few years earlier, and over a two month period there became top salesman. He became national sales trainer when Telewest increased their share holding of Cable London and flew all over the country training staff from London to Dundee. It was only after watching a sales consultant present a three day training seminar to Telewest Communications (Cable London’s owners) that David realised where the future really was. He formed his own Training company, left Cable London/ Telewest and was a spectacular success.
Behind the success he admits there were difficult times. The loss of a corporate culture was one.
“I had always worked for other people. I had a very high salary, pension schemes, medical insurance and a car allowance. Now all of that was gone and I was flying solo. It is difficult but not impossible. If it is something you feel you should do then I would suggest you do it. It is liberating. It’s very different. It’s a huge responsibility. But, it is the only way to really do what you want!”
Over the last 15 years David has incorporated a variety of elements into a program he has developed called ‘Human Potential Technology’. These include Inner Game and Attitude, Persuasion, Firewalking, Glasswalking, NLP, Hypnosis, EFT and Sales Training.
“I don’t believe in being a ‘jack of all trades; master of none’ as some companies appear to be. My method is to incorporate a lot of different areas of expertise that fall under the umbrella of Personal Development. I feel that if you teach Persuasion you must have expertise in NLP. To teach people how to walk on fire or broken glass you must have expertise in attitude and persuasion. It all fits within the parameters of development.”
What about the Personal Development or self help movement?
“To me, self help is like self abuse. You HAVE to do it yourself. The books and dvd’s only show you what to do. You must take action and do it yourself. I do tell people to stop buying self help books because they probably haven’t read all of the ones they already have. A new one comes along and they put down the one they are reading and order the new one from Amazon and then a few weeks later…it happens again. It’s a paradigm shift. The answers you want are probably already in a book on your shelf that you didn’t finish. I have read hundreds of them and I read the new ones and I can see that many of the ‘new’ ideas are just a rehash of older ideas. I agree that as the times change and people become more aware of self help and human potential we need to teach and coach in a new way. If we taught today in the style of a teacher from 30 years ago, the chances are we wouldn’t be listened to.”
You spent a lot of time teaching people to walk on Fire or Broken glass. Was that fun?
“Fun is one word for it. It was great at the time but I believe it has been done to death. It is very rare to find anyone who hasn’t either done it or at least heard of it or heard of someone who has done it. It doesn’t have the novelty factor any more. The training I put people through before they walked included a lot of life skill training, persuasion and NLP techniques that they could utilise in all manner of areas of their lives. It was never really ‘only’ about the walk. I train a lot of people in everything from Sales training and Customer service through to Attitude and Inner Game. I have always been interested in Persuasion. How one person can get someone or a company to do something when other people have tried and failed? I have studied great persuaders of history; I have researched and studied conmen and brain pirates who can get total strangers to do whatever they want them to. There is an art to it and like everything in life; all it takes is the knowing how to do it. If someone tells me something can’t be done, I have always believed that was because they didn’t know how to do it!’
So salespeople have to have the ability to persuade people to buy?
“A good salesperson will persuade people to buy. A really great salesperson with put a person in a position where they not only WANT to buy, but buying will seem natural. They have to be put at ease. I have been very successful in every sales environment I have worked in. My mentor, Hal Stamford, was one of the UK heads of Coca Cola before he retired and took a consulting job at Cable London and he said once that I ‘could sell shaving foam to the Taliban.’ That’s an interesting concept!”
If I were to become a salesperson could you teach me how to put people at ease?
“Remember, my years of training salespeople stem from my history of selling. If you knock on someone’s door at 7pm at night, with no idea of who is behind the door and they, in turn, are not expecting you then you have four or five seconds after they open it to put them at ease. You are then expecting to be asked in, for them to listen to you and for them to buy from you. I did that on a daily, weekly, monthly basis for two years before the company asked me to show other salespeople HOW to do it. I was always over target and getting results. I was earning more money in a week than the Sales Director was earning in a month. Yeah, I can teach anyone. I didn’t only look at sales techniques. I studied body language, language patterns, embedded commands even colors. I was always aware that colors have an effect on people. I always wore a pink shirt. Pink is a very powerful color, as is purple. Not just any pink but what is known as ‘Baker-Miller pink’ or more commonly ‘drunk tank pink’. It denotes trust. It’s used in calming offenders moods in prisons, it reduces the anxiety levels as well as blood pressure. The dressing rooms of visiting football teams are sometimes painted that colour so as to render the players less competitive. If I worked in a very affluent area then the pink shirt would be accompanied by Gucci loafers, designer suits and silk ties. In a less affluent area that look was jettisoned for jeans/ chinos and trainers and a leather jacket. I still had the pink shirt though.”
What about Manipulation or Persuasion in everyday life, like advertising?
“It is more like Social Influence. It is fun to intercept and decode the psychological DNA of free will. Once you have an understanding of how to redirect another persons thought processes then your own neural meteorology is something I call ‘Controlled unpredictability’. You can decide what way it will go but the distance and direction will sit outside the normal constraints. You just need to know where the brain’s pressure points are. Where peoples blind spots are.”
Isn’t that dangerous?
“Only if you were using the knowledge for something bad. As it is, I have people coming to me for answers. They are stuck, at a point in their life where they can see no future or change. I do what needs to be done to help them.”
What is the basic process?
“There is a system that is used in all forms of Persuasion. Conmen use it, politicians use it, members of the public use it without knowing they are using it. It’s an algorithm. There are three A’s to persuasion. Attention, Approach, and Affiliation. The basic raw material, your message, is what people pay attention to. The manner of your delivery is going to predetermine how people will process or approach it. Thirdly, how you are evaluated by others, your body language, language patterns, verbal and non-verbal cues are the parameters of affiliation. In essence, the Human Potential Technology program we run offers our SPICE©program. Simplicity, Perception, Incongruity, Confidence, Empathy. Once you deploy a technique that encompasses those ingredients, it ships so much psychology into the brain’s bloodstream, people lose all resistance to persuasion. “
Where do you see yourself in five years time?
“The Moore Consortium will be worldwide. The Dynamic-Life Academy will have a team of trainers around the world and certification programs. I am looking forward to the future and working on it now.”
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