How to Influence People

Motivate, Inspire and Get the Results You Want

Chris Helder

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780730369585
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Master the power of influence and persuasion.

What if you could instantly boost your capability to influence, motivate and connect with people? How could it increase your productivity, team culture and bottom line? Better yet, what if you could influence yourself to achieve greater success? Imagine the impact that would have on your life and fortunes. How to Influence People takes these ideas out of the realm of what-if and turns them into reality. Whether you're a new manager looking for direction, an experienced leader looking to hone your skills or a sales professional looking for better ways to connect, How to Influence People is for you!

Originally published in 2013 as The Ultimate Book of Influence, this book has been reviewed and redesigned to become part of the Wiley Be Your Best series - aimed at helping readers acheive professional and personal success.

Part I
Influencing yourself — action and clarity

The first part of this book is about influencing yourself. When I say that, it is about creating a new level of action to go achieve what it is you are after. The problem, of course, is many people do not have any idea what it is that they are after. So, this part of the book will address these two main concepts — action and clarity

Three tools will be presented in this section of the book:

Tool number 1: breaking down the e-wall

• How to avoid a game of e-pong, where the customer hides behind the e-wall.
• Strategies for creating leverage and moving that customer to taking action.
• How to create a face-to-face environment to influence the customer directly.

Tool number 2: the butterfly

• How to recognise that the number one thing that holds people back is fear.
• How to change anxiety into an action signal.
• How to use that action signal to create successful habits and new results in business and life.

Tool number 3: the sunset

• How to gain clarity about what area of your life you want greatest results in.
• Using the sunset as a tool to uncover the clarity of others.
• How to use that understanding of others to influence them.

CHAPTER 1
Tool number 1: breaking down the e-wall

Clients are busier than they have ever been before. The easiest way for them to decipher and consider your proposal is when it has been in writing and sent via email. In this way, they are the ones who are in the box seat, able to read and consider the proposal in their time. They are able to compare your proposal to other written proposals, shift around the priority of the proposal depending on their workload, and all of this without your being able to exert your power of influence.

This is because the digital age has created a virtual electronic wall, the e-wall, which our clients can now hide behind. The pattern of communication has become less about face-to-face interaction, and it is acceptable to do business via email.

The e-pong timeline

This is a typical interaction for a proposal that is emailed in the new reality. It is a game that I call e-pong! You have researched, found your decision maker and sharpened your angle to win the business.

• You make a call. The decision maker is pleased to hear from you, but he or she is busy. They ask you to put your proposal in writing and send it to them for review, via email (one week).
• You send your proposal via email.
• The decision maker responds that he or she has received your proposal and will review in due course and respond via email (two weeks).
• You follow up via email in a couple of weeks after hearing nothing back (four weeks).
• Your decision maker is busy and distracted by the day-to-day running of a business. They take four days to respond to your email and say that they are apologetic but will get back to you shortly with a decision after they chat to the relevant people via email (five weeks).
• Based on the reply, you are inclined to give the decision maker another week before hassling them again via email for an answer.
• You send another email to your decision maker asking if a decision has been made (six weeks).
• Nothing is heard back, and doubts creep in about the priority your proposal is being given.
• You write via email one last time stating that you are just wrapping up the quarter or ticking things off your task list and asking once more whether any decision has been made (seven weeks).
• You receive an answer via email four days later from your decision maker, thanking you for the hard work you put into the proposal, but unfortunately other priorities have arisen in the company and they are unable to proceed with the business at this time (eight weeks).

Eight weeks of e-pong, with no result. This has all happened because you let the decision maker hide behind their e-wall. In fact, this happened because you also hid behind the e-wall! It takes courage to break down the wall and be in a position to influence that customer face to face.

It is simply easier to have an email relationship with someone. It is easier to send your client a monthly update or a quarterly newsletter and consider that the job is done. Most of all, it is certainly easier to try to win a sale by sending the client a proposal and play e-pong. It is much harder to pick up the phone and get face to face with our clients to cut through all of the procrastination and time wasting.

Don’t get me wrong. There are times that email is the only option. I realise that. All I am trying to do is challenge you to think about how you can create more face-to-face interactions. What can you do to break down the e-wall?

Changing timelines

Let’s take sales, for example. Salespeople talk to me all the time about the difficulty in getting face to face with their clients so they can utilise their skills of influence. They discuss changing trends in technology and adapting to the way business is done. However, the timeline of a sale has barely changed in terms of basic action plan connect points, but the underlying message consistently flowing through is that the amount of time between first contact and closing has significantly increased.

Why has this happened?

It would be easy for salespeople to stand fast, and claim that the e-wall is just another excuse or a trend, and that if you believe in your being personable and having sound communication skills, then nothing should stop you or delay your sales process. My personal favourite excuse dished out by your average motivational speaker is: ‘If it’s not working, then you must be doing it wrong!’ To my way of thinking, this is less than helpful advice, and certainly does not recognise the changing way that business is being conducted in the 21st century. You cannot deny the advances in technology. The statistics tell us that we are more likely to communicate by email or social media than to pick up the phone or meet face to face. We are nearly all capable of conducting business in a completely mobile environment and we are more contactable than ever with our portable devices and Wi-Fi technology, and yet to close a sale is taking longer than ever before.

Five strategies to break down the e-wall

Here are five strategies you can use to help break down the e-wall and stop playing so much e-pong.

1 IDENTIFY THE DECISION MAKERS

At some point, usually before you have the opportunity to meet face to face with the client or send them a proposal, you will have spoken to the client on the telephone to set up everything. One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make is that they send through information without knowing exactly who all the decision makers are. They know the person that they are dealing with, however they have not asked the question in terms of who will really be making the call.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking: ‘Chris, it doesn’t work that way in my business! We can’t always get to the decision maker right away.’ Okay, fair enough. This book is throwing a whole bunch of spaghetti (ideas) at the refrigerator door. If it sticks, take it. If not, let it fall to the floor. However, in your business, I want you to be clear that the person you are presenting to is definitely the person who can get you to the next level of your sale.

It happens all the time that people speak to a non-decision maker simply because it was easier to send them through the information. Often, you were directed to this person as a gatekeeper. You are spending hours putting together a proposal for your business and this no...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Foreword
• About Chris Helder
• Introduction:the new reality
• Part I Influencing yourself — action and clarity
• Part II Influencing others: inspiring and motivating
• Conclusion
• Appendix: How are you tracking?
• End User License Agreement