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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
Master the power of influence and persuasion to achieve more in work and life For business leaders and managers, as well as those who work in sales, the power of influence can be a potent advantage. The ability to persuade others based on what you know about them is the first step to convincing someone to buy your product or buy into your business vision. In The Ultimate Book of Influence, author Chris Helder--a master of communication and one of Australia's most sought after speakers on influence--shares ten essential tools that will enable you to influence others so you win the sale or seal the deal. The tools in this book will show you how to read body language, uncover what's most important to a client, convince others to take action, understand the four essential types of people at your workplace, and much more. * Written by one of Australia's most successful speakers on the art of influence * Includes ten powerful tools that allow you to understand what matters most to a client or colleague and use that knowledge to influence their actions and behaviors * Ideal for salespeople, business leaders, corporate executives, and anyone who must regularly convince others to take action Before you can truly influence people, you need to learn how to communicate effectively. The Ultimate Book of Influence teaches you how to choose the right kind of communication technique for any situation, so when you speak, you know people are listening.
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The Ultimate Book of Influence
Table of Contents
First published in 2013 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd
42 McDougall St, Milton Qld 4064
Office also in Melbourne
Typeset in 11/13.5 pt ITC Berkeley Oldstyle Std
© Helder Consulting Pty Ltd
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Author: Helder, Chris.
Title: The ultimate book of influence: 10 tools of persuasion to connect, communicate and win in business / Chris Helder.
ISBN: 9781118641309 (pbk.)
Notes: Includes index.
Subjects: Persuasion (Psychology) in organisations.
Influence (Psychology).
Business communication.
Success.
Dewey Number: 658.45
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.
Cover design by Adrian Morgan
Cover image © Thinkstock.com/orsonsurf
Printed in Singapore by C.O.S. Printers Pte Ltd
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Disclaimer
The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.
Chris Helder testimonials
Chris is a truly unique individual who sees the fundamental drivers of sales with crystal clarity. His passion for success is evident in all he does. We engaged him to share his tools of influence and saw not only our sales team inspired but in turn, great sales outcomes.
Radek Sali, CEO, Swisse Vitamins, Australia
Having selected and promoted 127 professional speakers over the last 12 years, I can say Chris’ presentation in Wellington ranked the highest EVER! This is amongst people like Brian Tracy, Stephen Lundin and Michael Gerber.
Mike Doughty, Managing Director, The Knowledge Gym, Auckland, New Zealand
Chris Helder is the best young speaker in the world right now, in my opinion. Chris has spoken twice at our company and blew away the room, getting standing ovations both times. This doesn’t happen very often because our people are used to hearing the best speakers — from Anthony Robbins to Robert Kiyosaki.
Larry Kendall, Chairman, The Group Inc., Colorado, USA
Chris is a dynamic speaker who captures your attention from start to finish. He engages with humour, energy and fun, but most importantly, he delivers a message that you can apply immediately in your personal and professional life. I use the FORD principle every time I network.
Jordan Hawke, Executive General Manager, Asteron Life, Australia
Chris is one of the best speakers we have had. He is engaging, amusing and real. His content resonated with my team and they all loved it. After two big nights, the team was attentive during the entire last day — not many speakers can pull that off.
Leanne Pilkington, General Manager, Laing and Simmons Real Estate, Sydney, Australia
We have worked with Chris at my last two companies. Chris’ mastery of influencing skills has enabled him to break it down to the essence of what drives results.
Arthur Charlaftis, General Manager Sales and Operations, REA Group, Australia
Chris Helder is a highly entertaining speaker who has had an incredible impact in teaching our salespeople how to influence others. With his engaging style and clear messages, Chris has constantly rated in the top echelon of speakers used by the Hockingstuart Group.
Nigel O’Neil, Managing Director and CEO, Hockingstuart Real Estate, Melbourne, Australia
Foreword
The business world does not have an information problem! We are one Google click away from a lifetime of information about any topic we can think of. We have more information than we can possibly need, in fact we are drowning in it. What we have is an implementation problem. I see this in the business world every day. We have meetings where people spend an hour saying nothing tangible and everyone walks out and things stay the same. People go to conferences see amazing speakers, have insightful brainstorming sessions, yet go back to work and forget all of it after dealing with 530 emails.
Approximately 76 per cent of all change efforts in organisations fail and 65 per cent of all strategy is never actioned. The reality is people don’t implement the things they learn: they just keep following the same behaviour patterns over and over again. Why? Most of the information we receive requires us to break it down and make it relevant and we are simply too busy and tired to do this.
I first saw Chris Helder when he was running a full-day workshop on influence and sales. I was immediately struck by his facilitation skills and masterful use of comedy. However, as I watched him present I was stunned by his ability to take concepts, break them down into first principles so that they became practical and easy to implement. He gave the group a suite of tools that they could walk out of the room and implement the very next day. They didn’t need to have more meetings or do more research: they could do it there and then. In fact when I touched base with his client he said that on the Monday morning following the conference he could hear his team use Chris’s techniques and they saw immediate results. Anyone can make a concept complicated: a true genius takes something complex and distils it to make it simple.
I was so impressed by his presentation that I asked Chris to personally mentor me on sales and influence. My business was immediately changed and I still use his techniques today. Just quietly, some of them I use at home too (don’t tell my wife that). Breaking down the e-wall was a revelation to me and saved my business so much time and effort. ‘Sunsets’ made me look at my life differently and altered my behaviour, particularly in my personal life. ‘Positive, positive, positive — negative’ is a technique that I not only use in sales and my presentations, but also in my parenting style.
In this world of inaction, Chris’s work is a breath of fresh air. It just works. It is universal and leads to better outcomes. Enjoy this book and marvel at the complexity in his simplicity.
Dr Adam Fraser, author of The Third Space
About Chris Helder
Chris Helder is one of the most exciting speakers in the world right now. A dynamic speaker who delivers his presentations by teaching the tools of influence, his highly entertaining messages have transformed how businesses communicate with their clients.
Chris has wowed more than 1500 audiences throughout Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Europe and the United States. He is a frequent television and radio guest on the power of genuine communication.
Originally from the United States, Chris graduated from Colorado State University (BA) and served two years as part of the distinguished Teach for America program, an American non-profit organisation that enlists high-achieving recent university graduates to teach in low-income communities in the United States. A certified practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Chris has synthesised his work from NLP, human typological analysis, advanced communications, motivational research and behavioural modelling. Drawing from many different fields of research, Chris has created something simple yet powerful in his keynote talks.
Chris’s brilliant combination of energy, wit, humour and tailored content ensures he relates to every audience member. His global client list includes Citibank, Merrill Lynch, GlaxoSmithKline, Toyota, Fuji Xerox, Levi’s and IBM.
Introduction: the new reality
Do influence skills matter today?
How important is face-to-face influence in a world of email, text messaging and social media? Clearly influence has changed. But is it still as important as it used to be?
The way that business and sales are done today is without a doubt different from the way it has ever been before. Businesses and brands are embracing the digital age. They are using electronic communications and social media more than ever to promote and sell. We live in a world where decision makers are online and contactable 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Being ‘out of the office’ means nothing any more, as workers engage in a new era of trying to find balance between work and life.
So why then has the ability to influence a sale or an idea often become harder? Why has the timeline to get a contract signed stretched out for so many businesses? This is primarily due to three reasons:
1 The customer in business today is being protected by what I refer to as the electronic wall or, more simply, the e-wall. As its name suggests, this is a virtual wall of email and social media behind which your clients can now delay or procrastinate the decision process involved with a sale or a proposal. This, of course, leaves the business development experts unable to use their face-to-face influence skills in order to close the deal.
2 The person presenting the proposal also hides behind the e-wall. It is often easier to just send an email than force the issue to actually create an environment where face-to-face influence can take place. This leads to an extended game of e-pong, which I will explain in the first part of this book. Either way, timeframes for closing deals blow out and often the business is missed simply because there was no leverage created by actually meeting with the decision makers.
3 People are not as good at face-to-face influence skills as they used to be. The pattern of communication has become less about face to face, and it is now acceptable to do business via email. Don’t get me wrong — we all need to embrace the digital age. It has provided our world with an unprecedented level of access to communication at the touch of a button. However, face-to-face influence skills have not become redundant. In fact, they are more important than ever if we are to learn how to break down the e-wall.
This book is about influencing people in the new reality. It is about embracing change, and at the same time developing outstanding genuine communication skills. It is about giving you those skills of influence.
The skills in this book do not deny anything that is happening in society today and they adhere to the trends of the new reality. I want to deliver a series of tools to help you come up with solutions to break down some of these new barriers. By starting with the acknowledgement that business methodology is different today, this book will help you tackle the reality. I won’t preach a method that does not reflect how sales and influence are done in the real world environment. Your best chance of influencing a decision maker still lies in face-to-facecommunication.
Often audiences at my presentations are made up of salespeople. They want to increase their ability to influence others, and in the process increase their sales revenue. There are generally two types of salespeople. There are salespeople who lovebeing a salesperson. Those people love prospecting, love the thrill of the chase, love presenting their unique selling proposition and love the buzz of closing the sale and collecting commission. If that is you — you are going to love this book. The fact is that I am going to share with you some tools of influence that flat out work. Your results are going up.
For the second type of salesperson who is interested in influence skills, you have picked up this book for some other reason. You may not see yourself as driven by money or driven by commission. Instead, maybe your role has changed at work in the current economic climate. Suddenly, you are being asked to sell to customers. Perhaps your company has undergone a culture change and they are really driving the bottom line. Perhaps you have had a job change and you are now finding yourself needing to sell something. Maybe this is something you have never really done before and you are looking for some great tips on how to get started. Once again, you will love this book.
This book is loaded with simple tools that will help you meet budget and start down a path of sales and influence that you are comfortable with. At the many sales conferences I speak at, there is always a clear connection between the growth of the business and the ability of the sales team to influence the clients.
Recently, I was presenting at a sales conference in Hawaii. I had finished my talk and I wandered into a sports bar to watch the NBA finals. I sat at the bar and started talking to the man next to me. The conversation started about LeBron James and the level of spice on the buffalo chicken wings we were eating when we began talking business. He was a national sales manager for a global skin care company. He turned to me and asked me a very direct question. ‘Chris, you talk at all these conferences. What do you really talk about? Ultimately, what is it that you believe makes a great salesperson?’
My answer came quickly with congruence. ‘That’s easy,’ I said. ‘The key is certaintyand simplicity. Great people of influence are certain about what they believe and they are able to present their message in a way that is simple for people to get their head around.’
He smiled. ‘That is a great answer. You’re right — that’s it.’
The reality, however, is there are a great number of salespeople who are what I call PFNs (product-flogging nerds). You can watch the PFNs in action when their idea of selling is to flip through pages of their proposal. They flip from page to page explaining the graphs that demonstrate market share, company information and increased revenue. Actually, I call these salespeople the PTPFNs (page-turning product-flogging nerds).
Many salespeople put their hand up at this point and claim that they used to be one of those people. They tell me how they used to flip pages, but now they have launched into the 21st century and do their presentations on an electronic tablet such as the iPad. One of the first tablet presentations I ever observed with a salesperson flipping pages with their finger and thinking themselves clever completely disengaged the client. The salesperson was failing to look at and connect with their client. Ultimately, they were simply an IPPTPFN (iPad page–turning product-flogging nerd) and they failed to do the one thing that really makes a difference. They failed to influence that client.
Other people might have picked up this book to improve their leadership skills. Perhaps you find yourself having to manage people and bring them together for a common goal. Many people are thrust into roles at work and in life where they are suddenly expected to lead people. This is often a terrifying moment when people are stricken with self-doubt. That is totally normal and, congratulations, you are in the right place! This book will give you an understanding of people that will allow you to manage them more effectively and ultimately influence the people that you work with to achieve the best results.
At the leadership conferences that I speak at, there is always a clear connection between the leader’s influence skills and the results of the team. As the saying goes, ‘Great organisations grow from the top, and a fish rots from the head.’
You may, however, be an experienced leader who is simply looking for an edge. The tools in this book have helped CEOs and managing directors improve their ability to influence and control outcomes. It is critical that the leadership team is equipped with the tools to lead the team to success. If the leadership team is not willing to work on influencing skills, results go down and staff retention levels plummet. This book will give leaders the tools to identify what is driving each member of the team and provide ideas on how to drive results with each of those team members.
Perhaps for you it is none of those things. You might have picked up this book for reasons that have nothing to do with sales or leadership. You might have picked up this book because you are looking for a way to improve the quality of your life. You are simply aiming to gain clarity about what it is that you want to achieve and how to get started in the process of not only influencing others but also influencing yourself. This is a book that will take you on a very simple and effective journey and help you gain clarity about your goals, turn the anxiety that we all feel into action and influence people to improve your ability to get what you want!
I have had the privilege of giving more than 1500 presentations to audiences in the last 10 years as a professional speaker. I have presented throughout Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Europe and the United States. One of the exciting parts of my job is the variation in the companies that I have worked with. I have spoken at conferences throughout the finance industry, insurance, real estate, mortgage broking, pharmaceutical, software, wine, travel and many more.
Let me ask you a question. If you could improve your ability to influence people, would your business grow? Do you currently hide behind the e-wall? Is it time to increase your face-to-facetime and get in front of people to get the results you deserve? Are you a person who simply wants to get your own way more often?
This is a book about how to influence other people. It is time to recognise the appropriate time to utilise technology and the appropriate time to meet face to face. It is also time to make sure that when you do meet in a direct environment that you have the influence skills to get the result that you want.
By the way, I am a firm believer that if things are presented in a simple way, change can happen very quickly. Therefore, I have picked my favourite influence tools that I talk about at conferences and put them together in this book. Some of these tools will help you understand your customers and some will help you understand yourself. In this book there are some language tools that will help you influence others, and some that will help you get through a random Tuesday with greater effectiveness.
I hope you enjoy this book!
The first part of this book is about influencing yourself. When I say that, it is about creating a new level of action to go achieve what it is you are after. The problem, of course, is many people do not have any idea what it is that they are after. So, this part of the book will address these two main concepts — action and clarity
Three tools will be presented in this section of the book:
Tool number 1: breaking down the e-wall
• How to avoid a game of e-pong, where the customer hides behind the e-wall.
• Strategies for creating leverage and moving that customer to taking action.
• How to create a face-to-face environment to influence the customer directly.
Tool number 2: the butterfly
• How to recognise that the number one thing that holds people back is fear.
• How to change anxiety into an action signal.
• How to use that action signal to create successful habits and new results in business and life.
Tool number 3: the sunset
• How to gain clarity about what area of your life you want greatest results in.
• Using the sunset as a tool to uncover the clarity of others.
• How to use that understanding of others to influence them.
Customers are busier than they have ever been before. The easiest way for them to decipher and consider your proposal is when it has been in writing and sent via email. In this way, they are the ones who are in the box seat, able to read and consider the proposal in their time. They are able to compare your proposal to other written proposals, shift around the priority of the proposal depending on their workload, and all of this without your being able to exert your power of influence.
This is because the digital age has created a virtual electronic wall, the e-wall, which our clients can now hide behind. The pattern of communication has become less about face-to-face interaction, and it is acceptable to do business via email.
The e-pong timeline
This is a typical interaction for a proposal that is emailed in the new reality. It is a game that I call e-pong! You have researched, found your decision maker and sharpened your angle to win the business.
• You make a call. The decision maker is pleased to hear from you, but he or she is busy. They ask you to put your proposal in writing and send it to them for review, via email (one week).
• You send your proposal via email.
• The decision maker responds that he or she has received your proposal and will review in due course and respond via email (two weeks).
• You follow up via email in a couple of weeks after hearing nothing back (four weeks).
• Your decision maker is busy and distracted by the day-to-day running of a business. They take four days to respond to your email and say that they are apologetic but will get back to you shortly with a decision after they chat to the relevant people via email (five weeks).
• Based on the reply, you are inclined to give the decision maker another week before hassling them again via email for an answer.
• You send another email to your decision maker asking if a decision has been made (six weeks).
• Nothing is heard back, and doubts creep in about the priority your proposal is being given.
• You write via email one last time stating that you are just wrapping up the quarter or ticking things off your task list and asking once more whether any decision has been made (seven weeks).
• You receive an answer via email four days later from your decision maker, thanking you for the hard work you put into the proposal, but unfortunately other priorities have arisen in the company and they are unable to proceed with the business at this time (eight weeks).
Eight weeks of e-pong, with no result. This has all happened because you let the decision maker hide behind their e-wall. In fact, this happened because you also hid behind the e-wall! It takes courage to break down the wall and be in a position to influence that customer face to face.
It is simply easier to have an email relationship with someone. It is easier to send your client a monthly update or a quarterly newsletter and consider that the job is done. Most of all, it is certainly easier to try to win a sale by sending the client a proposal and play e-pong. It is much harder to pick up the phone and get face to face with our clients to cut through all of the procrastination and time wasting.
Don’t get me wrong. There are times that email is the only option. I realise that. All I am trying to do is challenge you to think about how you can create more face-to-face interactions. What can you do to break down the e-wall?
Changing timelines
