Tag: 5 Pillars of Influence Series

We’ve all been taught how to politely greet another person. We don’t even have to think about it.

I put out my hand and say, “Hi, my name is David. Nice to meet you.”

More than likely the other person, let’s call her Samantha, will soon ask me an introductory question, such as, “What do you do?”

How I respond to that seemingly innocuous question during a business or networking event has a dramatic impact on my bottom line.

Here’s why.

“Are You Like Me or Not?”

When we meet someone, our subconscious mind quickly decides into which of the following three categories to file the person:

• This person is like me,

• This person is different from me and can help me, or

• This person is different from me and can’t help me.

If you simply answer introductory questions, the other person is going to determine, This person is like me. You’re a peer, a colleague or a potential friend.

That is actually the death knell to influence and sales. You don’t want to be seen as a peer, but as a person of influence, as someone who has the ability to make a difference in people’s lives.

So what do you do instead?

Polarize

You polarize the conversation. Rather than responding to introductory questions, ask your own questions to quickly determine if the person is your ideal client or not.

For instance, when Samantha asks me what I do, instead of answering her, I say, “Let me ask you a question. If your annual income instantaneously became your monthly income, what in your life would change?”

Because I did not respond as she expected, her subconscious mind says, This person is different from me.

Then she will either say, “Gosh, I don’t know. That’s interesting. I’ve never thought about that before.” Or she’ll attempt to make something up.

My next question quickly determines if she’s a potential client for me or not. I ask her, “Would you like it if your annual income became your monthly income?”

If her answer is no, I’ve probably triggered something that she’s resisting and she’s going to move away from me.

That’s okay, because she is not my ideal client. My ideal clients don’t answer no to that question.

But if she says something like, “Who wouldn’t want to turn their annual income into a monthly income!” she’s shown me that she’s a potential client.

I then say, “If you’ve got about 15 minutes, I’d like to talk to you about how I could show you how to do that. Why don’t we get you on my calendar?”

Find Your Own Way

Since we’re all conditioned to answer questions, you’ll likely need to practice this technique before you feel confident in it.

When you’re practicing, don’t just parrot what I said. Find the questions that will quickly identify your own ideal clients.

And then you’ll find, in any business setting, that you can quickly position yourself as a person of influence and begin to rake it in.

In this series I’m teaching you how to master the art of influence, so you have the power to change business problems into profitable opportunities ~ including turning the objections of your prospects into iron-clad commitments.

Part of that process involves identifying which of the four main styles feels most comfortable to you when conducting sales conversations.

Are you:

• The “warm friend”?

• The “stern parent”?

• The “seducer”?

• Or the “shamer”?

Being able to name your natural sales style is important, so that you can then ask yourself why.

The Why

Why does it feel more comfortable for you to employ that particular style in your sales conversations?

You want to know the answer to that question so that you can determine whether or not your comfort stems from emotional weakness.

For instance, are you their “friend,” because you know that warmth, enthusiasm and good will can encourage prospects to take a scary leap of faith? Or, are you friendly in your sales conversations because you’re afraid you’re going to upset somebody? Or because you have the need to be liked?

Are you the “seducer,” because you think that sex appeal is your only appeal and the only way to get people to listen to you? Or, are sensuality and a playful allure natural expressions that draw people to you like a magnet?

Are you the “shamer” because you have the need to belittle others in order to feel superior? Or do you truly want to help people step into a new and uncomfortable change ~ and you know that this style is very effective in psychologically triggering the audience to accept the offer.

Is the “stern parent” comfortable because you always have to be in control? Or, do you know that your direct and matter-of-fact truth-telling are the best swords for cutting through the haze of your prospects’ denial and fear?

Now What?

As you can see, there are potential positives and negatives associated with each style. So what do you do if your why stems from a weak place?

First, you need to face that weakness, and acknowledge what it’s costing you and your clients.

For example, it’s likely decreasing your sales, undermining your influence with others, and greatly diminishing your effectiveness as a leader, teacher or coach.

Next, you need to start influencing yourself. You don’t necessarily need to change the style that feels comfortable to you, just get rid of the fear that currently fuels it.

For example, let’s say, like a lot of people, you have a warm friend style because you’re afraid of making somebody upset. If that’s the case, you need to push through that fear and give yourself another experience.

So the next time in a sales conversation, when you feel that inner prompting to speak up or tell the truth or guide the conversation to an uncomfortable place, and you’re afraid to, do it anyway.

Show yourself that you and the other person can survive a little upset.

In fact, not only can you both survive it, but your pushing through your own fear can lead to a breakthrough for both of you.

And then your warm encouragement can be the perfect soft landing to then guide your prospect to his or her next step.

What is that next step?

Very likely, it’s working with you.

If you want to influence others to buy your products and programs, you must first influence yourself.

I’ve been telling you that for a few weeks, and now I’m going to show you how.

1. Get Real

The first step to influencing yourself is to get real. You need to be honest with yourself about the ideological prison that you’re in, so that you can influence your ideal prospects to get out of theirs.

For instance, do you believe in abundance or do you believe in lack? Do you believe that if you have the desire, the way to meet that desire is in your life right now? Or are you telling yourself what you can’t afford? Or why you can’t have what you want?

Negative beliefs like these steal thousands from your bottom line every year. They repel high-paying clients and blind you to the opportunities that are all around you.

Fortunately, you can change your beliefs, and, as I said, the first step to that is acknowledging the prison bars that they’ve created for you.

2. Talk to Yourself

Your spouse, business, children or pets all require your attention and have an impact on you emotionally. If you immediately move from interacting with problems or issues to jumping on the phone, you will surely carry reaction energy into your sales call.

If you remember, “reaction energy” is most people’s primary mode, where they just react to whatever is going on. If you carry that energy into a sales call, you have a tendency to use force as a tool. You may reveal too much to your prospects or want to be right or try to make them wrong. Whatever you do, you’re not in your power.

That’s why every sales conversation needs to begin with a conversation with yourself.

Spend 10 minutes before every sales call, asking yourself questions like these:

“What is the desired outcome of this call?”

“What energy state do I need to be in, in order to be influential when I’m on the call?”

“How will I help this person get out of his/her prison?”

“How am I going to influence him/her?”

In those 10 minutes you can totally shift to a place of “influence energy,” which means that you sit in your power with the highest good of your prospects in mind, and direct your conversations in a way that lets the prospects influence ~ and sell ~ themselves.

3. Gain Knowledge

The third key to becoming your own power of influence is to gain knowledge at the level that you want to be, not where you are.

Be willing to stretch your mind and travel to events. If you won’t invest in trainings for yourself, how can you expect your clients to invest in yours?

If, instead, you know in your gut the value of reaching for where you want to be, as opposed to where you are, you can persuasively demonstrate that value when your prospects are huddled in the dank corner of their prisons, afraid to face their fears.

It’s Not Difficult to Do

Becoming your own power of influence is not rocket science, but it is just as transformative for you.

By incorporating these simple mindset shifts, you can totally change your results.
You can empower yourself to impact other people’s lives for the good, while boosting your own income to the stars.

When you have the desire to do or have something, but your personal or financial situation indicates to you that you can’t, you’re in prison.

You want something. You can’t have it. You’re stuck.

As your ideal prospects contemplate buying your service or product, many of them are in a prison of their situation too. They want or need what you’re got, but they think that they don’t have the money or their spouse won’t let them do it or the funds are earmarked for something else.

Whatever their prison is, they believe it. Those bars are very real for them.

If you haven’t integrated the Five Pillars of Influence, their prison may be real for you too. In fact, you’re probably in there with them, agreeing with their assessment or trying to convince them that they’re wrong. Either way, you’re losing the sale while they miss out on the solution that would change their life.

Fortunately, there’s an alternative.

Become Your Own Power of Influence

As I said last time, you need to bring them to clarity to bridge the gap between their prison and your solution, so that they naturally influence themselves. They buy from you and they feel really good about it.

The first step to doing that is Pillar 1: Become Your Own Power of Influence. That means, you learn how to influence yourself.

Think about it, how can you coax someone out of their prison, unless you have coaxed yourself out of yours?

You can’t. To help them, you must first help yourself.

How I Became My Own Power of Influence

Listen, I have been there. When I first started as an entrepreneur, nobody knew who I was. I didn’t have a cultivated market. I didn’t have a website.

I literally started off making cold calls, and, because I was completely broke, I needed to make sales right out of the gate.

The other thing you have to understand is that I was not a born salesperson. I had dabbled in sales, and I was okay at it, but I hated it with a passion. That’s right. I could not stand sales.

Then one day, early in our work together, my mentor asked me why I didn’t like to sell. I told him that I had no idea. “I just don’t like to do it,” I said.

He shook his head and said, “I know why you don’t like it. It’s because you think sales is something that you do to somebody, but it’s not. Sales is not something that you do to someone. It’s something that you do for them.”

In that moment the dots connected for me and my thinking shifted so dramatically that it allowed me to come at sales from a completely different perspective.

I finally understood what had been holding me back. As long as I felt that I was doing something to prospects, sales felt bad. It felt bad to sell to somebody.

But once I realized that I was offering my ideal prospects a solution that they actually need and want ~ I was offering them a way out of their own prisons ~ I came not only to love sales, but became very good at it, and my income skyrocketed.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I had also just taken the first step toward becoming my own power of influence. I’ll show you how you can start doing that for yourself next time.

In this new series, I’m going to show you the secrets to closing 80-100% of your perfect prospects in 15 minutes.

Sound implausible? It’s not.

It’s absolutely possible, if you integrate and apply the Five Pillars of Influence, which I’ll explore and explain over the next several weeks.

What Exactly Is Influence?

Influence is simply the capacity to have an effect on someone. In the context of sales, it is the art of equating in the mind of your ideal clients the fact that you have the solution they need.

Influence is not pressure. It’s not asserting or forcing your ideal prospects to buy something they don’t need.

Contrary to what you may have heard or been taught, force is actually counterproductive to sales. It doesn’t work in the long-run. In fact, it often backfires, because it stems from what I call “reaction energy.”

Influence Energy Versus Reaction Energy

Reaction energy is the way most people navigate through life. They react to everything, never realizing the power they have at their fingertips to create the life they desire.

When you’re in reaction energy, you’re not in your power, and you think that force is the answer — the way to get whatever it is that you want. I’ll explore all this again in detail in a later article; but, in short, if you carry reaction energy into your sales conversations, it won’t feel good to your prospects, and they will resist you, coming up with objection after objection, none of which is the real issue at all.

If you’re in reaction energy, though, you’ll just swat at the objections, all the while trying to convince your prospects that they’re wrong and employing all kinds of other techniques, thinking you’re getting somewhere, but you’re actually not.

To get to the sale, you need to come from a place of “influence energy,” which means that you sit in your power with the highest good of the prospects in mind, and direct the conversation in a way that lets the prospects influence themselves. As a result, they feel that you’re trying to help them and are extremely grateful, and they end up selling themselves.

They Already Want What You Have

Influence energy is your best sales tool, in part, because your ideal prospects already want or need your product or service. (That’s why they’re ideal for you.) They may not realize that yet, however, because they’re in a prison of their own situation.

That means, their solution is outside the bars of their prison, and they simply can’t see it.

That’s where you come in.

Empowered by the energy of influence and its five pillars, you bridge the gap between your prospect’s prison and their solution. And once they finally see the solution, you’re right there with it — with exactly what they need and want.

But to get to that place, where you’re harnessing the power of influence, you must first influence yourself. I’ll pick it up here next time.