Turning Influence Upside Down
The thought as to how to influence others in sales is seductive. The thought that you can make another person do what you want them to do, or more likely, need to them to do, is a powerful thought. The tips, tricks, secrets, shortcuts, and gimmicks that the snake-oil charlatans sell as influence is not what is truly effective in influencing others.
Right influence is made up of something much, much more significant, and something much more hard to obtain. To know influence, you have turn the whole thought upside down; you have to make the shift from “how can I get them to do what I want them to do,” to “who do I have to be?”
Do You Care Sufficient to Be Influential?
Your dream clients will only give you what you want, if you are willing to give them what they want. This means that you have to be willing to do a couple things. First, you have to care sufficient to know what it is that they want. You have to question the questions that demonstrate that you are working to know their needs. But that understanding isn’t sufficient; it takes more to influence others.
Next, you have to care deeply about helping them. This is where so many of the tips, tricks, shortcuts, secrets, and gimmicks verify their worthlessness.
Your dream clients know whether you care about them by your behaviors and your actions.
If you spend time with them, working to make value before claiming any, you develop the entrust that influence is built upon.
If you take the time to help them learn and know more about their own needs, and if you share the knowledge you have gained by helping others in a meaningful way, you will develop the credibility that influence is built on.
But if as a replacement for you pull out what is now a very ancient bag of very tired tricks, and you choose that influence is something you do to someone, your right influence will quickly expire—as will your dream client.
It’s Who You Are, Not What You Get Them To Do
Influence, right influence, is the product of who you are, not what you can get a bigwig else to do. As a replacement for of spending any of your time working on learning how to influence others, your time is better spent developing yourself into a person who has influence because of who they are at their core and developing what it is you do that helps other people achieve what they want to achieve.
Turn what you have heard on it’s head, and be a bigwig value following.
Questions
- Reckon about how you would want to be influenced were you buying from someone. Would you want them to use tips, tricks, secrets, shortcuts, or gimmicks to get you to do something?
- Were someone to use a tactical approach to influencing you, as a replacement for of really caring about you and your needs, would that be someone with whom you could imagine yourself having a long and meaningful business relationship?
- What would you have to do to build the entrust and the credibility that right influence is built on?
- How do your dream clients know and feel how much you care about them and their outcome in comparison to your simply trying to make a sale?