Sales Leaders Understand the Importance of Influence

A sales leader’s level of success or failure may be determined by their ability to influence people within their own organization, as well as those operating in other companies. Sales leaders who use their influencing skills well are exciting to be around, and they exude a positive energy that attracts people to them.

Influencing is about understanding yourself and the effect or impact you have on others. Your ability to influence others can empower employee development, accelerate sales results, and ultimately create a better working environment for your sales team. 

A two-way relationship

Although your relationship as an influencer is often one way, ideally it should be a two-way relationship. Truly excellent influencing skills require a healthy combination of interpersonal, communication, presentation, and assertiveness techniques. It is about adapting and modifying your leadership style when you become aware of the effect you are having on other people, while still being true to yourself.

Behavior and attitude change are what's important, not changing who you are or how you feel and think. You may try to exert your influence through coercion and manipulation. You might even succeed in getting things done, but that isn't really influencing. That's forcing people to do what you want, often against their will. You won't have succeeded in winning support.

Pushing, bullying, bludgeoning, or haranguing do not work. People are far more willing to come halfway (or more) if they feel acknowledged, understood, and appreciated. They may even end up doing or agreeing to something they wouldn't previously have done, because they feel good about making the choice.

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What makes an effective influencer in sales?

Winning influencers share a common set of attitudes and behaviors that ensure consistent success. Studies have shown that influencers normally do the following:

• Indicate the benefits of their ideas and are able to put a context around these benefits so it creates greater impact on the individual.
• Neutralize resistance, usually in advance. Influencers anticipate, respond, and are able to plant a positive association to potential areas of resistance before the other person has even had a chance to voice them.
• Find alternative ways to influence others and demonstrate high levels of flexibility. This means that if the approach they are taking doesn’t get them their desired results, they try a different approach. If this doesn’t work, they try another approach. Ultimately, the person with the greatest flexibility will always have control over the situation.
• Listen attentively to what others say because this improves mutual understanding and conveys respect for the opinions of others. Giving good attention to people makes them feel intelligent; giving poor attention makes them stumble over their words and feel stupid.
• Uncover needs and wants because they appreciate that every individual is unique. They have their needs, their own set of problems, and their own motives for doing what they do.
• Empathizes continuously and is able to adopt different perceptual positions to connect with the feelings of others in different situations. Not only do effective influencers manage to put themselves in their customers’ shoes, they are also able to wear the shoes of individuals on their sales team.
• Have developed high levels of sensory awareness. This means that their senses are fine-tuned to pick up on the smallest details, include non-verbal signals that are sometimes different from what a person is saying.
• Create and maintain rapport throughout their communication that enables them to strengthen relationships, build higher amounts of trust, and minimize resistance.
• Eliminate weak statements from their language and are able to create multiple positive associations by avoiding negative words and using negations in a positive way. For example, “I’m not going to say that this strategy will be totally successful.” The unconscious mind has to think about the strategy being totally successful, irrespective if the word "not" is contained within the statement.
• Base the success of their communication on the response it produces in others. If other people don’t respond in the way that the influencer was hoping, they accept responsibility and change their communication until they do achieve their desired outcome.

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