How to Sky Rocket your Power of Influence

The skill that many business people seem to desire most is the ability to be more influential. This may be in sales situations, with employees or amongst colleagues.

It’s an area which always seems to generate interest and often people are looking for that little extra edge or ingredient that’s going to make all the difference.

I’m sure most people are aware of the need to build rapport, gain trust and ask the right questions. Of course, there is also the much under-used skill of simply being a good listener.

All these are important to develop because they are fundamental to good communication but there’s another aspect to influencing which is less talked about but equally important.

Just recently I was talking to a friend who had attended a sales training. She told me how the trainer had said “it’s a war zone out there and every day you’re marching into battle. Be prepared to take aim, lock onto your target and constantly push forward. Once you’ve got a sniff of interest be like a terrier and never let go” (I wondered if the trainer was ex-military?).

Certainly, this is one approach. It seems to continue to be a commonly taught approach in sales training judging by the number of aggressive sales tactics employed by so many organisations. It was how I was taught when I went into sales and for a long time all I did was push, push, push. It works and it gets results but the problem is that it’s very draining.

Another very different approach is to stop pushing altogether. Instead, once you’ve set your intent you just let go. You stop trying to make things go in the way you want by attempting to control them and you trust in the outcome, whatever that may be.

The late Thomas Leonard, wrote a chapter called “unhook yourself from the future” in his excellent book “The Portable Coach”. How this idea works in an influencing situation is that you allow yourself to be as happy with a ‘no’ as you are with a ‘yes’. The focus is on a genuine collaboration with someone and helping them to move towards their outcome and not on just making a sale or getting someone round to your point of view.

The difference between these approaches, fundamentally, is fear or more importantly, the absence of it. The idea of always pushing is fuelled by the fear not getting what you want and because of this you try to control the outcome. The problem with this, as previously mentioned, is that it’s draining, tiring, and can have lots of disappointment attached to it. More importantly it makes you unattractive because people don’t want to be pushed. 

On the other hand when you ‘let go’ you begin to become more attractive. People will open up to you more and trust you because you are not trying to make them do what you want.

The remarkable thing is that with this approach things will start to go your way more often. The right people, opportunities, and resources appear just at the right time. Personally, I believe that they were there all along but because when we were so locked on to our targets we didn’t notice them or recognise them.

So, to conclude this piece, when you’re in an influencing situation be aware of your intent. Are you trying to control or are you willing to release that control and trust in what happens? Remember that in order to let things come in you must allow the space for them.