“Influence affects everything about us. It really comes down to our emotional connection with ourselves and others and thereby affects our career, our finances, how we raise our children, and even how we treat our bodies. Those who master the art of influence have the ability to move people emotionally and tremendously impact what they do. The person who influences is also a person who contributes beyond him/herself and becomes a true leader.” –Tony Robbins
When you think about it, being able to sell a product or service comes down to the ability to influence. The better you are at influencing others, the more sales you make, the more clients/customers you have, and the more you can grow your business.
What does it mean to influence?
Influence is the power to move people to action, achieve extraordinary results, create joy, happiness, and fulfillment, and to make a positive difference in the quality of people’s lives. To be a great influencer, you must understand what already influences people.
How?
There are four primary tools which can influence someone’s beliefs or change their approach to buying.
1. Rapport
If you Google rapport you will find it defined as, “a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned understand each other’s feelings or ideas and communicate well.”
When you have rapport with people, you are aligned and can lead them in the direction you want to go. Rapport is built on mutual trust and respect.
There are a lot of ways to build rapport. Identifying shared interests or networks, paying a compliment, referring business, giving good service, and being a great listener are all effective ways to build rapport.
2. Questions
Asking questions is your most powerful tool for influencing people. When you understand what people believe and how they make decisions, all you have to do is show them that buying your product/service is consistent with those beliefs. That’s all that selling is!
The best questions help you connect with them through understanding and appreciating their world. That includes what is most important to them, their values, the primary focus in their life, their motivations, and their fears.
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Asking questions that seek to understand shows you care, builds rapport, and trust. It also increases their emotional state and positivity, which they will link to you. Meaning, when they think of you and your products/services, they will do so with positive feelings and emotions not negative ones. Asking questions will also identify objections, making it easier for you to overcome them.
3. Personal Congruency
Congruency means that your verbal and nonverbal communications support each other. Congruency stems from being certain about what you are saying. Have you ever seen someone say yes but they had a slight head shake from side to side when they said it? That’s an example of a person not congruent with what they are saying.
Congruency is important for a couple of reasons. For one, in any interaction, the person with the most certainty will influence the other. Second, it demonstrates that you are certain that what you are offering is worth more than what you are asking for in return. This is critical in sales. Buying is just the transference of emotion. Your congruency will help people feel certain that purchasing from you will provide them more pleasure and less pain.
4. State Management
Maintaining your emotional state (your energy plus what you focus on), is critical to influencing others. When you practice state management, you will learn how to take negative states like disappointment, frustration, and anger and turn them around so that they empower you. Your emotional state impacts everyone around you. You want prospects, clients/customers, and everyone in your sphere of influence to be lifted by your energy, not drained by it.
Notice that nowhere on this list of tools will you find judging others, bullying, or listening solely for the opportunity to bury the dagger. This is where solid sales principles help you be a more decent human being. It saddens my soul to see what is going on in the world today. There is a whole lot of talking and not much listening. People want to be heard without hearing others. People want you to understand their viewpoint without seeking to understand anyone else’s.
What saddens me even more is that I see this behavior from colleagues that I have liked and respected for years. People that I would consider to be very educated and articulate. I see them baiting people into arguments, cleverly disguised as debates, with the sole purpose of delivering the fatal blow to the other person’s viewpoint. That’s not influencing. That’s bullying. They would never respond that way to a prospect or client but they will do it friends, colleagues, and community members.
“You cannot influence from a place of judgement” – Tony Robbins
I long for a world where we ask sincere questions because we seek to understand, not because we seek to prove each other wrong. Additionally, I long for a world where we seek to understand so that we can create solutions, and where human decency becomes the norm. A world in which walking a mile in another person’s shoes is commonplace. Where the greater good is more important than being right.
Being an influencer is a super power. True influencers use their influence to make people’s lives better because they are focused on contributing to something larger than themselves. That focus will grow your business and make you a more decent human being.
STACY OLDFIELD
After nearly 25 years in Corporate America, Stacy launched Minerva Management Partners as a way to combine those years of business experience with her life coaching certification and love for coaching women. Minerva Management Partners is a business coaching practice designed to support women entrepreneurs committed to launching and growing their business. Also, as a Results Coach with Robbins Research International, Stacy helps business women to focus their ideas and efforts and holds them accountable for achieving their goals. Whether it’s helping women discover creative solutions to their business challenges, coaching them to be clear and decisive, or helping them see and take action on new opportunities, Stacy guides them to achieve the business and career results they are seeking. Stacy is also the creator of the Minerva 3-Day Networking Challenge and the Network Like a Boss Lady On-Demand training program. Stacy has been invited to speak to many audiences within South Carolina including the Center for Women, Women Entrepreneurs of Charleston, the Women of the Workforce program of the Naval Information Warfare Center (SPAWAR), Charleston Women in Business, Association of Fundraising Professionals, SCANPO, graduate classes at both The Citadel and the College of Charleston (CofC), and Leadership CofC. She currently serves as a mentor through the Women of Excellence Program at Xavier University and previously served on the Board of Directors for the Beautiful Gate Center and on the advisory board of the SC Women’s Business Center.
