Real Influence – Persuasion Without Pain

You don’t like to be pushed, persuaded, or maneuvered, and neither do your clients. Instead you need to work on being a strong influence—being “influenceable,” says John Ullmen, co-author of Real Influence: Persuade without Pushing and Gain without Giving In.

“There’s a lot out there about how we can supposedly get people to do what we want—tools, tricks, tactics, and so forth,” Ullmen says. “The problem with that is that it’s easy for it to get out of hand.”

People see through unauthentic behaviour, and they can detect if they’re being persuaded, pushed, or sold to. Instead of gaining an ally, people will earn an adversary who might not feed this back. They will simply not call back, they won’t give your company their business, and they’ll spread the negative word about you to others.

“If you want to be more influential, don’t push, don’t maneuver, don’t drive your own agenda, don’t win arguments. Instead win hearts and minds,” Ullmen says. He maintains there are four steps to connecting with and influencing people.

1) Go for great outcomes. Results reputation and relationships.

2) Listen past the blind spots so that your own point of view and good intentions don’t block out opportunities to understand and gain genuine connection and commitment.

3) Engage with them in their, “there”, so that you can understand what your client needs as quickly as possible and so offer the support they need

4) When you’ve done enough – do more

We all recognise the importance of creating a loyal customer database but sometimes we can forget that the needs of our customers is king.

Are you looking beyond your “blind spots”?