Influencing Skills

We probably all recognise that influencing and persuasion are two skills needed when in business. What do we mean by these two words?

Influencing is the power to affect the thinking of another person, especially in an indirect or unobtrusive manner. Whilst Persuasion is the ability to bring someone to a particular opinion or view by offering irresistible reasons based on their values and model of the world. Or more simply, by giving them an answer to the question ‘What’s in it for me?’ People allow themselves to be persuaded only if they can see something in it for themselves.

The only viable approach to persuasion is Win – Win as there is normally an on-going relationship between the parties involved. Win – win respects the legitimate interests of all parties and finds solutions that successfully dovetail those interests.

So Influencing and Persuasion are not about Manipulation. Manipulation is when we use our power to achieve the results we desire without regard for the impact on others involved. In the long run manipulation carries a high price – it is likely that people who feel manipulated will try to sabotage your achievements.

Resentment, Recrimination, Remorse and Revenge are four dragons that inevitably lie in wait for those who manipulate other people says Genie Z. Laborde in her excellent book Influencing with Integrity. None of these is good for healthy on-going business relations.

Many people fail to recognise the scope of their potential influence. To get a visual representation of your network of influence, draw a spider diagram with yourself at the centre moving out to all those with whom you have regular and/or significant contact. These can be work contacts/social contacts/family contacts. If you then think about the power of 6 theory that states that within our contacts there will be someone within 6 contacts away who is the person we wish to connect with. Just think about it how many contacts do you have to go through if you wanted to have a connection with David Cameron, Gordon Brown, George Bush or a famous singer? The answer would be that within 6 connections you could reach them. (6 to the power of 6 by my reckoning gives you 46,656 contacts and low and behold you have the connection you are wanting and all you did was ask 6 people, who asked 6 people, who asked 6 people and so on).

Now that you have reached them your powers of Influencing and Persuasion come into play. You may have experience from your life of not always getting what you want. There can be many reasons for this of course, although when we fail to achieve what we know we could achieve the problem often comes down to what we are saying to ourselves. In other words, we get in our own way.

Most people are far better at negative self-talk than positive. We say things to ourselves that we would never accept from someone else. The real problem with those negative, self-doubting thoughts is that they are powerful determinants of what we get. The truth is that we get what we expect rather than what we want.

This process becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy and can be represented like this.

Thought ------------ > Feeling ------------ > Action ------------ > Result

“No! I can’t” ----- > Scared / Resentful ----- > Don’t do / Half-hearted ----- > Failure

The answer, of course, is to take more control of our self-talk and learn to expect to get what we want. This involves two things.

Well Formed Outcomes, you need to focus very sharply on what you want. To be well formed an outcome must meet four criteria:

Ø Stated in the positive

Ø Sensory specific success criteria

Ø Within your control

Ø Mindful and respectful of consequences

Positive Management of Resource States, we are all in control of our own minds. We can choose to be resourceful or not. Sadly, you are not taught to take control of your own internal processes at school. But the good news is that anyone can take control of their own resource once they become aware of how to do it. There are three key elements.

Ø Physiology - slump and feel depressed : look up, relax the mouth and get happy!

Ø Breathing - how you breath changes with your state : try slow & deep

Ø Thinking - think positive thoughts and you get positive results!

So we’ve sorted ourselves and our thinking out now we can look at some of the other things that can help us be more persuasive.

To persuade effectively whether formally or informally, in writing or verbally, whether selling products or ideas, it helps to understand the impact how we present our material can have on the outcome. There are 3 ways of talking about our product or idea:

Feature statements

These describe the characteristics/specifications of the argument/product.

Ø What it is?

Ø How it is different from others

Ø e.g. ‘The briefcase is made of leather’

Advantage statements

These show how the features can be of general use - their application.

They are also statements of assumed need, i.e. they may, or may not, be an advantage to the individual customer.

Ø e.g. ‘Leather is smarter than plastic'. This is only relevant if you know I want to look smart.

Benefit statements

These show how the product or idea meets an explicit need which has been stated by the customer, or you know for sure they want. Benefit statements show what is in it for the customer and hence are a vital element of persuasion.

e.g. ‘You said you particularly wanted leather, our briefcase is made from the finest quality pigskin.’

Research shows that benefit statements are the most successful in persuasion although many people still talk about features.

To persuade effectively it is important to think through the situation you will be in and to prepare. Preparation is half the battle towards successful influencing and persuading.

Things to consider are:-

Ø What is your objective - ideal and minimum acceptable?

Ø What information do you need?

Ø What are the arguments for your case?

Ø What are the customer needs?

There are two main styles of persuasion Push or Pull. By making your discussion two-way and dynamic you can draw information from your client. You can then pitch your arguments to match the information and views you are establishing, you can identify Needs and make Benefit Statements.

A push style can be described as telling whereas the pull style is asking.

The push style can be seen as dynamic, the person is full of proposals, energy and knows exactly what they want and how they wants it to be, with little tolerance for those who disagree.

Whereas the pull style attempts to find out information first, resolve differences by isolating the agreement, as well as disagreement, build on the agreement and make benefit statements.

Inevitably, the question arises as to which is the best, or most effective style? It does depends on the situation and the people we are trying to persuade, both push and pull are effective and those who develop both styles are likely to be more successful persuaders than those who operate with one style or the other. Although using the pull style to find out what the other person wants and then using benefit statements to highlight the match between your product or idea to their need seems to me to be preferable.

Success at persuading is, of course, relative and few will be successful all of the time.

There are many other things to consider when Influencing and Persuading and I will continue this article in the next Newsletter and talk about how we can use some of the concepts from Neuro Linguistic programming to enhance our Influencing and Persuading ability.