How To Use “Influence” Training To Solve All Your Leadership, Sales, Personal Productivity, Managing, Presenting and Coaching Problems, Once And For All
Good News! – The entrepreneurial, management and sales success strategies you will discover in the coming months are all based on, or related to a very simple foundation, rooted in the word
Influence. For the past 9 years, my exploration of influence has led me to an integral, all encompassing, “holistic” approach that I believe creates a simple, yet surprisingly empowered approach to personal and professional growth, for anybody who has previously considered their ability to influence an important one. I’ve distilled influence down to three categories, neither more or less important than the other.
Self
Others
The World
Most business owners seeking influence start with OTHERS, often due to dissatisfaction with results, as they relate to OTHERS, thinking that if my team isn’t doing what I want, my customers aren’t responding the way I want, my results aren’t where they want, so I ought to look at the people I’m trying to influence and do something. This approach often turns up frustrating results. We will approach this a little differently by discussing the person doing the influencing (a pretty important person!), the SELF, before getting into those we are attempting to influence.
THREE CHOICES: No Ownership, Some Ownership or Total Ownership
Influence Equals Transformation
Almost nobody disagrees with me, yet the majority of living examples do not fully implement the following truism: You can’t give what you don’t have.
Translated: You can’t get your sales force to perform beyond your capability to exemplify, teach, and motivate them to perform. You can’t get your customers, clients or students to listen and take action according to your desire, if you don’t wholeheartedly and authentically have the knowledge, beliefs, attitude and discipline to influence them to do so. You get the point?
When we get to ‘others’, just remember that your prospects, your team, your clients and your world will only transform to the degree that you can influence yourself to transform. So where do you stand on all this?
The fact that you are on this website says you, an influencer – teacher, manager, entrepreneur, coach, salesperson - are likely NOT in the category of ‘no ownership’, meaning you take no responsibility for your results. That leaves two choices: Some ownership or Total ownership.
Unfortunately, most people fall into the category of Some ownership. Even those who think they are in ‘total ownership’ of their results, very few actually exemplify this. Who is the last customer, team member, client, student, or business associate who – at no fault of your own – didn’t respond to your attempts to influence them, the way you wanted them to respond?
Have you thought of anybody yet? If you HAVE thought of somebody, you prove my point. It is very difficult to take ‘total ownership’ over other people, your results, your success and the people around you. Take heed.
‘Fault’ Is a Low Intelligence Concept
Be willing to own ALL your results, good and bad. Great presenters succeed by intentionally crafting their messages, and when they fail, they convert objection and rejection into the perfect opportunity to redraft their message. They own the result.
Be willing to own ALL the results of your team, good and bad. Great leaders look across the hall when things go well and say “you did it”, and look inside when things don’t go well and say “I did it”. They own the result.
Bottom line, to the degree that you take responsibility for everything in your life, you will be able to change everything in your life.
Knowledge Money
True wealth has nothing to do with your bank account. It is who you are when your bank account, along with your houses, cars and toys, are wiped away. Your skills, your experience, your life lessons and accumulated knowledge are your true wealth. (Or at least your wealth potential.)
Since the beginning of recorded history, those who knew the most were worth the most. Ancient scribes, during times of rampant illiteracy, controlled the direction and progress in society. This will always be true, knowledge and wealth will always go hand in hand.
Learn something from everything. As an influencer, the more examples, stories, perspectives and life lessons you can draw from, the broader your ability to influence will be. Translate and transfer ideas from everywhere into your world, your business, and your sphere of influence. It takes creativity, but in the end the smart professional deserving of the highest profits is the one who can learn from other influencers in other industries. .
Look In The Mirror
What happens outside of you is a reflection of what is happening inside of you. IF something isn’t right, not where you want it, you should be willing to climb the highest mountain and walk without sleep in order to find out what, where, and how your ‘inner world’ is reflecting into your outer world.
As a member, you will learn numerous ways to reprogram your internal processes, so that you can ultimately have more command over your external results. You will get how to, instantly applicable ‘self influence’ strategies for managing your decisions, your emotions and your time, allowing you to harvest maximum productivity which will directly translate to the quantity and quality of influence you have over others.
INFLUENCING OTHERS: You Are Responsible, Yet Least Important
The Goal
Lost of wasted time, meeting space, energy and money can be found left on the table by managers, teachers, sales people, and other influencers who fail to achieve one very simple goal, every time they communicate: To Cause Transformation.
Whether it is the insurance salesman trying to influence the prospect that their product is better, or the CEO trying to influence her company that her vision is worth following, the goal is transformation. Transformation of belief, transformation of attitude, transformation of perspective, transformation of habits.
The Audience
Transformation begins by knowing where our audience is starting. Harvey McKay, taught his
sales force to go into every conversation, presentation and situation armed and aware of literally dozens of answers to questions about their potential audience. This takes discipline (self influence), preparation (self influence) and foresight. Yes, you are responsible for results, but when you open your mouth, deliver your message and attempt to influence others, they are more important than you.
Don’t Ignore Science
Trainers, teachers, coaches, manager and presenters. Don’t ignore the science that is available, yet rarely executed upon, that tells how how people take in your information. If you really want your team, students, company or audience members to internalize your message, it must follow a simple set of rules:
- Active vs. Passive Ratio: The more active the environment, the more likely one will retain what is being presented. Active means involvement of multiple senses. In your attempts to influence others, are you engaging them? Are they being stimulated, instructed visually,
auditorily, and kinesthetically? Can they see, hear and touch what you are saying? Retention – i.e. ability to influence – goes up ten fold when activating all of the learning modalities. As a member, you will learn multiple ways through various examples of those who are the best in the world, at how to make sure your attempts at communicating and influencing are as active as possible.
- Energy: Energy matters on two levels here.
- Your internal intentions, beliefs, and attitudes about whoever is in front of you send out a frequency, quite literally, just like a radio wave. This frequency can and will be picked up, detected, and judged by those you are looking to influence. All the more reason you need to step back and work on your self before EVERY communication and presentation, even written. These words have an energy that resonates with you.
- The energy of your audience will also greatly affect their ability to retain what you are communicating. If you work with groups, this is critical. Keep the energy up however you can. Even one on one, the energy of the person across from you will affect their openness to transformation.
- Self Orientation: This is a big picture idea. The more you are focused on yourself, your fears, your image, your ego, the less you are focused on the people in front of you. This is one of the easiest ones to misunderstand. I’ve seen executives get up and talk for an hour to their most important people, and never once reveal that they intimately understand, care and are aware of the thoughts, feelings and actions of their people. Get off of self and onto your audience.
Your “Content” Doesn’t Matter
No, it sure doesn’t. IF I took a bottle of Fiji water, and I asked you how much somebody would pay for the water, you would have to answer somewhere between $2 and $3. If I took the same water, poured it into a generic, plastic cup or bottle and asked you, “how much would somebody pay for this water”, the answer now shifts, likely to free. Here is the critical question: What determines the value, is it the content, or the packaging of the content (the context) that determines the ‘perceived value’ of the water?
As an manager for example, the end value of every important conversation you want to have will be determined not by the content, but by the context that you set, as you bring somebody into the conversation. Do you prepare ahead of time? Are you sending out an agenda before the meeting? Do you have your critical points in writing to hand out during the meeting? Do you take interruptions during the meeting? Do you acknowledge the thoughts, feelings, experiences of your audience before you start the meeting?
Your answer to these questions and more is all about context. Everything you do and or communicate before and at the beginning of every conversation sets the context for the rest of the conversation.
You sell an expensive, high dollar service. Are you waiting until your prospect objects, or are you
consciously building into your conversation – at the VERY beginning – why your price is actually appreciated by your current customers, and following with the benefits of working with you. Do you see the difference?
How you bring somebody into a conversation determines the value of and perception of the rest of the conversation. The same applies on a grand scale when talking about the ‘culture’ of a business or company. The culture, ability to enforce standards, rules and systems, will directly relate to the ability to grow. The context controls the content.
Getting Them To Listen
Sarah Singer Noureigh trains teachers and business professionals how to use scientific principles to engage their audience. The most profound lesson I ever learned from Sarah, was also the most blatantly obvious, yet many whom I’ve passed it along to were stumped and even awakened by it’s brilliance.
“The number one priority of a teacher [trainer, manager, presenter or influencer] is not to teach, but to inspire their students to want to learn.”
So how do you get them to listen. First of all, this is rule number one in selling, and it should be rule number one for everybody who ever wants to influence anybody to do anything. Enter the world of your audience first, and prove to them that you have done so.
Whether you be a plumber, real estate agent, CPA, or florist, your marketing material, conversations, presentations, estimates, phone calls should all be directed so that you can very quickly get the prospects attention and proving to them that you understand what it is like to be them. As a member, we will reveal numerous ways to do exactly this.
If you lead a team, same thing applies. Beginning your meetings, conversations and communications by proving you understand your people is critical. More critical, I would say, than even what you have to say.
Think about it, what is your message worth if you don’t crack through the half dozen or so psychological barriers that most people have built up before every outsider’s attempt at influencing them? Nothing.
TEAMING UP WITH THE WORLD
If you’ve gotten this far, and you are already wildly successful in your world of influence, this may be your missing link to get to the next level. You’ve gone as far as you can see, but you know there is something beyond where you are.
I am a firm believer in building Influence, as an
entrepreneur or even just as a family member, using an integral approach. Thus far, we’ve discussed principle elements of influencing the self and other, which compliment and connect to each other in a very obvious way.
In every human language, there are three tenses that are used. The I, the we, and the it. An integral approach would not be complete without considering how all three elements, the I, the We, and the It all interact.
There are several universal principles that I have tested, observed and succeeded with, time and time again in my business.
Giverpreneurship – Giving For Profit
My good friend John Ruhlin, as a young twenty year old, found himself networking his way into everywhere from the executive offices of corporate giants, to the rolodex some of the most elite and famous business people in the U.S.
John taught me how he got to the top, and it’s a lesson worth sharing. There are two overriding principles in everything he does.
- Do what you do for the good of a cause or mission greater than yourself. Find something that moves you, that gets you up, that inspires you.
John inspired me to create “The Cutting Edge Project”, a philanthropic endeavor based around a book that will donate to charities from India to Beijing, to Malawi and across the U.S. I sincerely believe that the ‘good’ behind the cause of this book has been and will continue to be the driving reason for it’s long term success.
- Give first – receive second. The great tragedy is that this concept is so simple, it is overlooked as the eternal, fundamental lever that will always reap profits. How can you give, serve, educate, or deliver value to your team, your prospects or clients, beyond what they have asked for?
The world will always deliver wealth to those who give more value than they ask for in cash.
When the world sees you are looking to benefit more than just you or the person right in front of you, and that you are giving more than you are asking for, it will make room and give you space to grow. The people, resources and ideas will all align in perfect harmony when your mission serves a greater good.
Janus the Roman God of The Gates
Janus was the Roman God who sat on top of the gates, able to see both ways at the same time. Great influencers can see more than one perspective simultaneously. Specifically, they can find the opportunity within the challenge.
The universe will always respond in direct accordance with the perspective we choose. Here is an example.
Your business is dealing with a very specific challenge: sales numbers aren’t growing fast enough to keep the business alive.
When you focus directly on what is wrong, and what is challenging you, you go into a mode of ‘scarcity’. Your intelligence literally goes down. This means that, in a very primal way, you will protect what you have since it’s ‘all you’ve got’ , which is exactly the opposite of looking forward and outward, with a mentality that will promote growth.
On the flip side, when you see the opportunity, you go into the mode of ‘abundance’. You find gratitude in every situation, knowing that all we have is enough. This leads us to the people, the resources, and the ideas to help us expand to become bigger than our problems.
As a member of Global Empowerment Connection, we will bring to you the ideas, the people and the resources to expand your ability to influence others. You will find we deliver no nonsense, proven, and actionable ideas.
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