Tag Archives: influencing

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Fair Treatment

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Do other people treat you the way you expect to be treated?  Believe it or not, you are the largest influencer of how others behave toward you. 

Studies show other people judge our behaviour in just seven seconds.  Your attitude, how you ask for something, respond to a request or your body language are all key tells as to how you will be recieved, percieved and ultimately reacted to.

Think it Through

The you want people to react can be influenced.  Both your body language and verbal communications are key contriutors to this.  In fact though everything from appearance to demeaner are factors.

There are times when how you approach a topic is well worth planning in advance, mainly that is when you are seeking to get something. 

Increasing your chances of success can be as simple as  juding the other persons bias and catering to it.  Juding others in seven seconds is a two way street, how you use this judgement is a choice.

Plan yourApproach

If you can plan the best way to achieve your goals, getting treatment that meets your expectations, before engaging someone, it is helpful.

 This is not always possible and  even if advance preparation is not possible  careful crafting your approach in context of what the other person seeks in the moment will increase you chance of being treated as desired.

Basically, give the people what they want.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Closing the Deal

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Some interpersonal interactions involve influence and persuasion leading to both parties agreement.  A sales transaction is a common example of this, but even the most informational type of exchanges require some closure (to be considered effective).

There is a huge knowledge base around techniques to achieve closure.  Training courses abound and the technology to support deal closing has exploded in recent years.

Achieving success often requires getting others agreement whether to a strategy,purchase or approach (or all of the above).  For myself I have found good success by following some basic principles.

 Motivation

When trying to influence a change/ sell an idea or product, the first step is to get attention from your target.  While gaining their interest evaluate their motivation (i.e., why are they interested?)

Does your target:

  • believe they need to buy, accept, agree to your proposition (i.e., they want something, maybe not sure exactly what but are receptive to agree to something)
  • agree to let you entertain them out of politeness or someone made them  -they are not really interested
  • express that they are are intrigued but skeptical, they are willing to listen but maybe not much more.

Planting the idea

Ultimately if you can get the agreement decision to be championed and proposed by your subject, that is, it’s their idea, chances of a successful close are high.

Unless you are a mentalist or hypnotist you might believe planting the idea so it comes from others is not a realistic approach.  Actually it is quite doable.

Based on their apptitude – they are ready to deal or being polite or forced or semi interested,  the approach is slightly different butthe fundemental methodology is the same (let it be their idea).

The key to this methodology is simply creating involment in others through asking for questions, opinions, thoughts and advice. That is, putting the ball in their court.

Try it, you will be surprised how often your target takes charge, suggests the solution, purchase or strategy you guided them to by probing and questioning, so they think it is their idea.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Behaving Naturally

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There is a multitude of research into human behaviour.  Things like, what are the common reactions under certain specified conditions, what do stress factors do, testing for underlying motivation and so on.

Intuitively, recognizing much behaviour is  situational and/or affected by a variety of physical and pyschological drivers , on the whole,  an individual default behaviour is foused on their own benefit.

Altruism Aside

This is not to disregard the numerous instances of charitable behaviour or cases of putting others first.  I would argue that even in these cases, their is some element of personal satisfaction or internal desire that is driving the actions.

Healthy Cynicism

As cynical as it may seem, at the base of every interraction I have with others or other actions (both mine and others) lies a personal motivation that is “all about me”

Influencing Others

Believing this to be true is a key underpinning to understanding why others behave the way they do.  This understanding is a critical success factor supporting your influencing skills.

Money, power, friendship and respect are often used as examples of ways to drive behaviour.  (e.g., if you help me cut the grass I’ ll give you ten dollars.)

The underlying reason though will most likely be associated with psychologicla benefit ( i.e. feeling good ) or with a basic need (e.g., hunger).

Adressing both the obvious external driver together with the basic emotional needs as you try to influence others behaviours will increase your likelyhood of success.