Have you ever wanted to be more influential?
Influence is such a powerful thing. In this video and blog post, I share with you three P’s of effective influence.
Influence: the ability to be a compelling force, or to produce effects on the actions, behaviour and opinion of others.
Influence is the ability to change yourself and others, and positive and authentic influence. It’s about making the world a better place.
I love talking about, learning about, reading about and teaching about influence.
Some people get confused about the word ‘influence’ – they think it’s about being a social media influencer and selling product. And sometimes people view influence as a manipulation tactic.
That’s not the type of influence I’m talking about. It’s about ethically and authentically influencing people.
Influence is NOT about manipulation. It’s not about trying to convince people to do things they don’t want to do.
It’s none of that.
I want to share something that I read in the foreword of Adam Hulahan’s book ‘Influencer’.
It’s by Tim Gates, who’s a global motivation and change conference speaker.
He says:
“It seems to me that most codes of law, ethical principles and spiritual texts all encourage, declare or command the influence of self and of others. Have you noticed that personal and societal development and progress are all governed by a process of influence?”
A great purpose of life is to influence yourself and others to motivate positive change.
If we can influence heart-centred people, people who care deeply about others, people who want the best for other people – the ripple effect is profound.
When you become more influential, you can influence more people to take positive action, and create positive change.
Have you noticed that everything you have, believe, experience and do, who you are, your life – has been shaped and influenced?
We’re always being influenced all the time by other people and things, and we have all our lives.
We can control our future by what we are allowing ourselves to be influenced by today. Who you are today is a product of what influenced you yesterday. Today you can influence your tomorrow.
There are many great ways to influence others and I want to share three powerful ways.
1. Positioning
The way that you position yourself determines how much influence you have over other people.
If you want to truly be an influencer, if you want to have influence in life as a leader, as a thought leader in your area of expertise and in your genius zone, you need to position yourself correctly.
There are different ways that we can position ourselves. What I recommend when it comes to positioning yourself offline and also online is a mixture of credibility and humility.
Credibility + humility. It’s a beautiful combination.
We need to be able to share our credibility with people – we need to share why what we’ve got to say is important, why it matters, why people need to listen and pay attention.
But we don’t want to be tooting our own trumpet to much right?
We don’t want to be always raving on about how great we are, because people don’t like that, they polarise that. If we go on too much about how great we are, we can actually push people away.
So when we bring in humility with the credibility, people really want to listen to what we have to say.
The way you can do this is through your tonality and your body language and the words that you say.
For example, let’s say that you want to share how much experience you have, but you don’t want to sound like you’re bragging.
Remember that people want to know your credibility – they want to know that you’re good at what you do. They want to know your positioning and why they should pay attention to you, why they should be influenced by you, why they should listen to you.
The way you can do this is by using a lower humble tonality.
You don’t want to have really high over-energetic enthusiasm when you’re talking about yourself, because people tend to bring you down a peg in the positioning they have you in, in their mind.
If you say it in a low humble tone and you use your body language to express it in a humble way, people are more open to receiving it.
You can also bring in the people that you are grateful for that have helped you because no one has succeeded on their own.
No-one is a great success without help from friends, mentors, coaches, counselors, teachers or parents – we have all been influenced by people, we’ve all been helped by other people to get into the position that we have.
I learned this from Benjamin J Harvey – I want to give kudos to you Ben, thank you for teaching me this.
The rule is, when you’re talking about yourself, you use low tonality low energy, and you drop the volume in the picture but when you’re talking about them and what’s in it for them, you get more excited and you add more energy to what you’re saying.
You can do this when you’re on stage, or on video as well, you can actually use some of your body language to get more vibrant and expressive when you’re talking about what’s in it for them – the listener, the audience, your followers – whoever is listening to you or watching you.
The next thing to think about your positioning is that it’s kind of like a bank account. I like to think of this analogy where you’ve got an account – it’s a metaphor, and you’re always making either deposits or withdrawals into the people who you want to influence.
So, if you, for example, turn up late for an appointment, you’ve just made a withdrawal from that account. It’s like an influence account and we add and subtract depending on whether you’re making deposits, or when you’re making withdrawals.
Some of this happens at our unconscious level or subconscious level and we don’t realise that we’re actually having this effect on other people.
When you make withdrawals, you lower your positioning in their mind.
We’re always lowering or increasing the positioning that we have in people’s minds, depending on how much we’re giving them, how much we’re serving, how much we’re helping – and how much we’re just taking and asking for ourselves.
We want to make sure that we’re putting in lots and lots of deposits before we make a withdrawal.
That’s why we don’t just walk up to people and invite them to our paid programs – we get to know people first, we make deposits before we make withdrawals.
So we give value, we give content, we teach, we use education-based marketing before we ask for a sale so that people can get to know us, like us and trust us.
The three key ingredients to influence are:
* Being known
* Being liked
* Being trusted
You cannot have effective influence without those three things.
To get your positioning where your known, liked and trusted you need to make sure that you’re giving lots of deposits.
The last thing I want to say about positioning is that you’ve got to remember to prize yourself. It’s called prizing.
You’re the prize.
So I want you to think of it like a cat and a dog.
Unless you’ve got a really crazy cat, which some of you might, I don’t know, but most cats when you get home, they don’t run up to the door and jump on you all excited, as a dog does.
They usually just sit and wait, and lick themselves and be pretty. Typically, they’re not over-excited like a Labrador for example.
So think of that scenario about cats and dogs and the difference between a cat, which knows that they’re the prize – they love to be patted and admired and adored, whereas a dog it’s all about “Please like me, Please like me, Please take me for a walk”
I know there are exceptions, but in stereotypical cats and dogs, be the cat. Be the cat. Because no one can buy you anywhere, except from you. People can get other coaches, other service providers, but they can only get you from you.
You’ve got to value yourself and position yourself as a person of value in order to influence people.
And you can do that by showing your credibility with humility, making deposits and also knowing that it’s not about you just being a nice person and bending over backwards for other people, that’s not what influence is.
It’s being the leader, it’s leading and not being led. It’s being willing to stand up and have a voice and have an opinion and prizing yourself.
Not under-valuing yourself, not under-charging, not giving all these discounts because you’re desperate to get sales, for example.
If says “No, I don’t want what you’ve got” – that’s fine, move on.
You’re not trying to convince them that they need you.
You want to prize yourself and what you offer and only work with people who want to work with you, who are committed, who are willing to learn and change and respect and value your time.
2. Presence
This is about being present. If you want to be influential, you cannot be stuck in the past, or stuck in the future.
When you’re connecting with someone and you’re looking them in the eye and you’re really connecting with them and you’re getting to know them, and you’re asking them questions and actively listening…
…you will not be able to influence them unless you’re hearing – first of all the things that they’re saying, and also the things that they’re not saying.
You’re looking for the non-verbals, the clues and the cues in their body language and in their tonality.
You cannot do this, you cannot notice those small details, the language that they are using it and be able to memorise it, in order to really be able to help them unless you are present.
So when you repeat back to them what they told you to make sure that you understand it correctly – if you’ve been drifting off and thinking about what you’re going to have for lunch.
Or if you’re stuck in the past about what happened to you this morning, maybe you’ve had a stressful morning, you won’t be really super present with them and you won’t be able to influence them.
If you are jumping on the Facebook Live video, and you’re not present because you’ve rushed, maybe you’re still stuck in what happened an hour ago, or because you’re worried about what’s going to be happening tomorrow morning, you won’t be present on that Facebook Live video and people will feel it.
They will feel your stress, and that energy is really frantic, and even if you’re smiling and friendly, people still pick up on those things, energetically.
Even if you try to hide it, it still comes across in the way we speak and in our body language, and the things we say.
So, we’ve got to really be in the moment.
I do this by imagining a bubble around the person that I’m talking to, so I’m not distracted by things going on around us.
I also do it for example like doing a video like this. I’m only thinking about how can I communicate this to the best of my ability. Right now, I’m not thinking about anything else.
When you are truly in the moment, you can be influential.
It does take practice though, right? None of us get it perfect – we’re always going back and forth along our timeline into the past and into the future.
Very few people live completely present. We’re not meant to live completely present all the time – we are meant to be able to draw wisdom from our past and plan for the future, we are meant to be able to look at our whole life and our timeline.
But we need to make sure that when we’re with someone or when we are focused on a task, that we get in that zone and that flow and stay present.
3. Passion
You know how important passion is – imagine trying to be influenced by someone who doesn’t have passion.
Someone with a monotone and crosses their arms and doesn’t care, and isn’t passionate – you pick that up. And it’s not someone that you want to emulate or follow or get excited about.
I like to think of the three E’s of passion
* Emotion – There’s some kind of emotion where this person is moving you emotionally. It’s not just logic, facts, stats and data like a boring University lecture…
It’s actually real-life, relevant topics and there’s emotion attached to it.
* Energy – Passionate people have energy and influential people have energy. And I’m not talking about that hype, fake, over-the-top kind of energy – I’m not talking about that.
I’m talking about charisma, that passion that comes through, people like Will Smith, Jim Carrey, Marianne Williamson, Oprah Winfrey, Tony Robbins…
…they have passion, and they are all different. They’re not necessarily jumping up and down on the stage, although Tony Robbins does, it’s more than that.
People with energy speak with power and certainty and charisma.
* Enthusiasm – People who are enthusiastic about their message are influential. Again, it’s not hypey, it’s not flashy or fluffy, you’re enthusiastic about your topic and care – you deeply care from your heart, about what you’re sharing.
You can always tell when someone’s not passionate about what they do for a job. or about how their day is going. or how their life is going.
You can tell – if they have that spark in their eyes, if they’ve got a spring in their step when they’re loving life and vibing at a really high frequency – you feel that energy.
I remember when I was in my last few years of working in a gym full-time as a personal trainer and that passion had just been slowly reducing and I could feel it.
I would deliver the best sessions that I possibly could and I would be organised and be as enthusiastic and energised as I could, but the spark was really diminished.
Looking back now I can see that it was because I really wanted to do coaching. I wanted to transition out of that training job but I didn’t know how.
I was still studying and thinking about how I was going to make the transition.
There was a period there where I knew that I lost my passion, and I could just feel it – everything, wasn’t as shiny and wasn’t as vibrant, it dulled the experience.
So if you’re feeling like that about what you’re doing, ask yourself “How can I get that passion back?”
Because you’ve got to be an effective influencer, which you need to be if your business owner if you’ve lost that passion.
As a business owner, we need to be able to influence others – because that’s what sales and marketing is all about. It’s the ability to influence people to positive change.
Things that are going to improve the quality of their lives, and help them heal or transform them or save them time or money or bring relief – all those beautiful feelings that come on the other side of positive change.
So those are 3 P’s of effective influence:
1. Positioning
2. Presence
3. Passion
Which one do you need to apply more in your life at the moment?
If you have any questions or comments, please post below.
Would you like to know how to use influence skills to attract clients?
There are a few different options for how I can help you.
If you haven’t had a one-on-one session with me before, then I’d love to offer you a free one-on-one session.
I will help you strategise and put the right systems in place for your business and show you the next steps you need to be doing right now, and how to actually do them.
Or maybe you’ve got these systems in your business already, but they need a few tweaks because they’re not all working as well as they could.
If you don’t have a flow of consistent clients coming through your pipeline and you’re signing them up regularly and then nurturing them so they are raving fans, systems can help you.
You can book in your free session here
Also, I have a full-day workshop coming up on Saturday the 17th of August, in Sydney.
This is for you if you want help putting together your client attraction system to help you attract and sign up clients and keep them coming and paying you consistently so that you can have a profitable business that you love.
You’ll learn the systems you can use to free up your time and stop stressing and struggling over money and getting stuck in procrastination or overwhelm or any of those things that hold us back in our business.
You’ll get loads of useful tips and a step-by-step plan that you can apply straight away, plus a lot of support and a great community.
Learn more about the workshop here
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