Want Influence? Without These 6 Sources You’ll Never Get It.

Astonishing study on Influence

Patterson, Grenny, David Maxfield, MacMillan and Al Switzler conducted an enormous study that led me to their book, “Influencer.”  In our businesses, we all want to have influence with customers, prospects and our reps or affiliates but unless we understand how to influence people effectively, continuous frustration is a daily state of mind.

Our ineffectiveness at influencing others, (and here comes the good news) is not a character flaw or lack of passion or motivation.  The solution to the challenges we all face with our business lies in learning, not talent.

We can all become extremely influential and we can do it without being intrusive or pushy.

Discover vital behaviors

It may seem obvious but influential wizards don’t focus on results.  Instead, they focus on behaviors.  You have to decide what you are trying to change before you can influence change.  Don’t confuse outcomes with behaviors because you may influence a behavioral change and not see instant results.  This creates confusion in the people you are trying to influence.

This 50 year+ study states without behavioral focus people will not choose to change their behaviors.

Example: John is not enrolling new reps.  If we focus on John’s numbers and tell him he needs to make more calls we are confusing behavior and results in John’s mind.  What we need to do is focus on John’s behavior, making calls consistently in a systematized way or even better yet with you.  Help him improve the behavior which will eventually improve the results.

OK, you understand the mechanism and here’s how to bring it to the next level.

While people may trust us, it does not mean we have ‘influence,’ with them.

A blueprint to gaining influence

Source 1 – Personal Motivation.  Work to connect the vital behavior that will drive your business to intrinsic motives.  Example: By knowing John’s goal to put his daughter through college, connect the behavior of dialing the phone to John’s motive.  This will begin to influence John.

Source 2 – Personal Ability.  Coach the specifics of each behavior through practice.  Example: I would role-play on the phone with John 20 or 30 minutes and then tell him to read the scripts out loud for another 20 or 30 minutes.

Source 3 – Social Motivation.  This one’s really easy with growing organizations.  Simply find other people who have overcome the challenge you are trying to help John with, then connect John with those people to both motivate and enable the targeted behavior. This is a powerful, powerful concept.  I do it with ‘non-recruiting 3-ways’  – one of the 5 accelerators you’ll find here.

Source 4 – Social Ability.  People in a community intuitively understand they have to help each other if they are to be truly successful.  Great influencers ask others to also coach John with that particular vital behavior you have identified.  Example: I called a rep, Artie, and asked him to help Henry with a new behavior.  This let Artie know I respected him and his ability, let Henry know he was valued and created community.  Henry and Artie now swap tips and information even though they are in different organizations.

Source 5 – Structural Motivation – Those who are great influencers understand and capitalize on attaching appropriate reward structures to motivate people to pick up vital behaviors.  Example: Staying with John here, I know he wants to pay for his daughter’s college so I put a $50 savings bond for her on the table if he would both practice and make 100 calls.  It’s very important to note I said nothing about the results …again focus strictly on the behavior.

Source 6 – Structural Ability – Most people in home-based-businesses have conference calls or training.  Influencers know that the best teachers of a particular behavior are the ones who struggled with it and overcame it.  So again, continuing with John, our company has a conference call about dialing the phone once a month.  I told John that he was going to be conducting the call 3 months from now so let’s get busy daily mastering this skill, in bite-size pieces.  This was a dual reward because it let John feel, that is, it influences him, that he was a vital part of the team and could help others because we had confidence in his willingness to improve this behavior.

The book the “Influencer” had an enormous influence over us and I highly recommend considering this book if you would like influence with the people you work with.

Over the years I have shared this with my leaders.  Those who work the six ‘sources’ into their behavior quickly became tremendously influential both within their organizations and with the company.

There is no question people that know what they are doing know that knowing what to do is not enough.

The ‘key’ factor is influence.

Thoughts while shaving

Wretched communication skills

Are folks getting worse and communication or have they always been this bad?

Just sayin‘.

It’s a slam dunk when someone adds the phrase ‘just sayin’ that an insult precedes it, and for some reason these idiots who use the phrase ‘just sayin’ actually believe they are being honest with you.  Like they are being honest and that makes it OK. Like Julie Klam’s spin on this.

“Just sayin’ …like ‘you need to be more of a team player, just sayin’ …means I am going to say something hurtful right now and let’s remember I am honest and I am adding ‘just sayin’ so I don’t have to take responsibility for my actions.

Folks who use that phrase think they are being blunt and helpful but they are just mean-spirited and hurtful idiots, just sayin’.

“We need to talk and I want you to know I am just being honest with you”…means I am going to hurt your right now and let’s not forget I am wonderful.   Saying your being honest when giving an opinion that was not asked for is the act of a self-serving moron.  Hey, I’m just being honest with you.

“Huh?’

This word, ‘huh’ is not only growing at epidemic speed.  It is the signal of a bigger problem.  The erosion of manners.

Remember, “Pardon me, could you repeat that?” or “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.  Could you repeat that honey?” …or “Come again, John?  I missed that.”

Mandino taught, “I will continue to work on my manners, for they are the sugar all are attracted to”

The world-class worst and the selfish world-revolves-around-me ‘huh?’ manner-less are the bozo’s looking at a Smart Phone while talking to others or you.  The lack of manners with these bozo’s who delude themselves into thinking they can multi-task so they don’t have to deal with how amazingly rude they are…just sayin’

Speaking of which, some stupid bastard actually had the balls to give me a dirty look because I flushed the toilet in a public restroom while he was talking business on his cell in the can.

Social Networking

Marcy S from NY asks for less Facebook and more face time.  People know how may friends they have on FB and others they are monitoring but don’t know the names of the kids on their street, their nephew’s birthdate.  Appreciate and embrace people, with manners, and it gets better for all of us.

Apropos of Nothing

1.  Dogs seem to get along better than people in dog parks…well, everywhere.  Odd?

2. Cats never come when we want them to and they seem to love walking on my head as soon as I doze off.

3. The bottom-feeding guru’s want you to stay confused so they can keep up selling you.  Why would they help?  Once you can do this, networking, you don’t need them.  Confusion is their strategy.  don’t buy it…and to all you bottom-feeding liars, you are stealing…just sayin’

4. Watched 3 minutes of a ‘new revolutionary traffic-driving MLM exploding’ system from a guy who claims to be a millionaire in network marketing.  Has he made a few million?  Yup.  But not IN networking…he’s made it ON networkers.  Lazy people who want to be lied to so they don’t have to do any work seem to be growing in number.

5. Random acts of kindness?  Rising tides lift all ships…and every act of kindness does raise the tide.

5 Updates from my Mentors

1. If you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you. Paul Newman

The internet is the new drug of choice for people who want to make money at home.  The internet is the new carnival where barkers try to separate people from their money.  Been taken in before?  Then, once you do get it to a system…it’s upsell, upsell and more upsell?  OK, here’s 2 tips so no one ends up being the sucker at the table.  1 – If they start off telling you they are your friend or they want to help you or calling you their friend…RED FLAG.  Pitchman, not a friend.  Trying to disarm you.   2 –  High sponsoring numbers.  Anyone who knows MLM knows success has nothing to do with how many people you sponsor.  20 people a month?  Walk away. 80 people a month?  Hide the credit cards and children.

2. Your world is a living expression of how you are using and have used your mind.  Earl Nightingale

I guess we all know this is true and taking personal responsibility for our world is the big thing.

3. Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality. Nightingale.

Ut-oh, the work part.  I got Earl’s ‘The Strangest Secret in The World” years ago on cassette then later or CD.  Was told if I listened to it every day for 30 days and did the one tiny thing it asked you to do my life would become amazing.  It did.  Over the years I gave that CD as a gift to over 200 people and recommended it to thousands of others.  To my knowledge, 4 people have listened for 30 days and done the 1 tiny, tiny thing…and their lives are amazing.  The others?  Not ready.  Listened for a few days, whatever.  If you are wondering what the tiny, tiny thing is you may not be ready and go back to the first quote by Nightingale.

4. Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule. Nietzsche

I love the passion for making it big in networkers and folks who want to work at home.  It’s a passionate but irrational group.  To make it big time and long term you have to lead.  Lesson#1 is test before you testify.  Do not promote a tool, system or method until you’ve tried it yourself and proves it works.  Overreacting to new technology is a big mistake.  Test before you testify to your group.   Most of this stuff does not work out, some of it does.  What is important is that they trust you, so earn it.

5. I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where’s the self-help section?” She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.  George Carlin

Everyone has been doing networking marketing since they were 6 years old.  We told a friend about games, movies and new pizza places.. and they told us about new songs, TV shows and “ice cream shoppes” that just opened.  Our kids do it and we did it too.  What, now that you are getting paid to do something we’ve been doing for 20, 30, 40 years or more…it suddenly got hard?  Complicated?

We all know what to do, we’ve been doing it our entire life and we didn’t forget how to do it when we enrolled.

Imagine your wife just hit the lottery for a million bucks.  Would you call anyone?  Excited?  Who?  Can you think of 10 you’d call right now?

Maybe we should pull ourselves away from this inter-webbie thing and call those 10.

believe

mark januszewski

The World’s Laziest Networker