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.”
