Tag: influence

The 5th Pillar of Influence is short but profound: believe in the greatness of your new clients, so that they can believe in it too.

If you have reached this final Pillar of Influence, you have just secured a sale.

Congratulations! You have much to celebrate.

You accomplished this sale by carefully applying the first four pillars, which were:

• Pillar 1: Become your own power of influence so that you can influence others

• Pillar 2: Put yourself into the position to influence

• Pillar 3: Attract your ideal client

• Pillar 4: Ask questions during a discovery conversation

Believe in Them
The sale is your new clients’ first victory. It is their first step toward the change that they need to make in order to have the life of their dreams.

You want to be excited that they have stepped beyond the bars of their prison to begin this process of transformation.

You want to be excited about it, so that they will be excited as well.

Your Belief Sustains Them
If you’re nervous, they will be nervous too, which will cause doubt to fester in their mind.

Doubt will stop their transformation in its tracks, and they’ll probably go into buyer’s remorse.
Your belief in their greatness is a cloak that will help keep their doubt at bay.

It will keep them going when they falter, and sustain them during those dark moments when they confront what they need to confront in order to change.

They Have Chosen You
I’m sure you know from personal experience that change is not easy, and we all need help.

From the time we are born ~ utterly dependent upon our caregivers for survival ~ we learn how to determine if a person can help us or not.

Your new clients see in you the hope for their new life. They have chosen you as the person to guide them.

Isn’t that an honor and a privilege to take with utmost seriousness?

And isn’t that why you’re in business? To create positive outcomes in people’s lives?

Of course it is.

Pillar 5 Cuts Both Ways
Well, here’s the other wonderful thing about Pillar 5. It goes both ways.

While you are holding the vision of their greatness and what’s possible for them, you begin to glimpse your own greatness as well.

You begin to see that much more is possible for you than you realized.

And as you take this journey of change with your new clients that these 5 Pillars have allowed you to take, you are transformed.

You step beyond prison bars that you may never have known were there, and walk your own path of greatness as well.

When people talk about their “ideal client,” they sometimes focus on attributes and demographics.

While identifying those qualities can be helpful, you’ll be much more successful if you define your “ideal client” this way:

Ideal clients are people who already have the urgency to change. You don’t have to convince them that they have a problem. They know it.

You also don’t have to twist their arms to get them to spend money to fix their problem. They’re already doing that too.

Their Urgency to Change
They’re buying books and going to conferences, seminars, and workshops. They’re actively seeking information and guidance in order to change.

An even more powerful indicator of their urgency is if they’re willing to travel. The farther they get from their house to look for help, the more money they’re spending to fix their problem. Not to mention the impact of travel itself: the affect on loved ones left behind, the logistics involved in packing, arranging for housesitting, child- or petcare, the disruption of their work.

When people are willing to travel, they are serious about change.

And those people are your ideal clients.

Your ideal clients are not the people who say, “I would go to that event if it were in my city or town. I just can’t fly across the country.”

Those people are stuck in their own reality. They do not have the urgency to change. And they are not your ideal clients.

It Starts with You
The only question you have to ask yourself is which stance do you take? Will you look for help beyond your hometown? Or, do you feel that travel is just too difficult, too expensive. If so, you are not influencing yourself.

Remember, part of influencing yourself is being willing to stretch and gain knowledge at the level where you want to be. If you’re trying to gain knowledge at your existing level, you’ll never advance.

And, as I’ve said repeatedly, if you can’t influence yourself, you don’t have a prayer of influencing others.

Where Are They?
The key to attracting your ideal clients with that urgency to change is to determine exactly where they are demonstrating the want and need for what you do, both online and offline.

Online: For instance, what online groups do they belong to? Who do they follow? On the Internet, you can learn all kinds of things about people just by looking at what they’re posting, what they like and don’t like, where they’re spending their money, etc.

Now, eventually, you want to build your business so that you have systems to draw people to you. And that’s something we can help you with. But if you don’t have those systems in place yet, you can certainly start with public information.

Offline: What conferences, conventions, and seminars do they attend? What self-help groups do they belong to? Where do they gather?

Sit down and start brainstorming and you should come up with a good-sized list.

If you don’t come up with a list of possibilities, you have to ask yourself another question:

Are you the one with the urgency problem?

I’ll pick it up here next time.

From the time we are helpless newborns to the moment of our deaths, we need – and seek – help from other people.

In fact, one of the very first things we learn is how to determine if a person can help us or not, and, subconsciously, we never stop looking for that person who can help us advance.

If you understand that truth and position yourself as a person of influence who can help others, without even knowing why, prospects will be drawn to you.

So if you’re ready to become a magnet to your ideal clients, here are the two remaining keys to positioning.

1. Dress the Part

“When people walk into a room, without even thinking about it, they start judging the other people based upon what they observe.

If you’re dressed to impress at business or networking events, that first impression is likely to be that you are “different,” which, as I explained last time, is the first step to being seen as a person of influence.

Dressing the part affects you as well. You feel more confident and carry yourself more powerfully when your hair is done and, if you’re a woman and wear makeup, your makeup is professionally applied, and you have on great shoes. It’s the same for men.

Now, dressing the part doesn’t necessarily mean conforming to a corporate ideal. You have to be you.

Wear clothing that is appropriate to your niche or style, but that makes you stand out and brings out your best. Draw others’ eyes to you and be proud as they wonder, Who is that man or woman?

At Home Too.

You also want to dress the part while making sales calls from home. You may think that no one is going to see you, but you will feel the way that you’re dressed. As I’ve said, if you hope to influence others, you have to first influence yourself.

If you take the time and make the effort to dress well and then have that 10-minute conversation with yourself before you get on the line, you’ll likely be astounded by the difference in your results.

2. Bring an Assistant with You

Let’s say that you’re at a networking event and you look great. You’ve also taken my advice from the last article and polarized the conversation, and you have determined that the person you’re speaking to would be an ideal client.

After the prospect agrees to a follow-up phone conversation with you, the final key to positioning yourself is to have an assistant with you. Pass the prospect on to your assistant to put you in their calendar and vice versa, and free you to move on to the next person.

As your assistant handles the logistics and builds excitement about you and your work, the prospect will rightfully sense that everything is about to change.

Meanwhile, you are exactly where you want to be: perfectly positioned to influence that prospect to choose the life of his or her dreams.

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.