Maximize Your Influence

The better you become at handling objections, the more persuasive you will be. The key to great persuasion is anticipating all objections, problems, or concerns before you hear them. Great persuaders are always able to accomplish three critical objectives during the objection process: 1. They can distinguish between a real objection and a knee-jerk reaction. Our studies show that most objections should not be taken at face value, because there are other issues involved. 2. They listen intently to the entire objection before attempting to solve it. They stay calm. Tests have proven that calmly stated facts are more effective in getting people to change their minds than becoming emotional. 3. Great persuaders are never arrogant or condescending. They give their audience room to save face. People will often change their minds and agree with you later, if they have the room to do so. Another great way to handle objections is to address each of the seven main areas during your presentation, before they become big issues in the mind of your audience. That way, you've stopped any potential resistance before it happens. As a result, there aren't any main objections left for them to bring up. Studies demonstrate that persuaders were four times more successful when they handled objections during the persuasion process, instead of waiting until the end.6 Also, nothing de-energizes persuasive efforts more than lingering doubts and concerns that remain unresolved in your audience's mind.

We tend to rate our skills that we want, that we need or that we require higher than they actually are.  To improve, grow and become more successful we have to know our weaknesses and be able to identify our blind spots.  If we don’t know what they are than we can never truly improve.   The reason self-perception bias has such a negative impact in our lives is because we are lying to ourselves. That's the bottom line.  We are blind from the truth.  We are deceiving ourselves.  Denial is our happy place where we can cover up our weaknesses to protect our self-esteem.  We set our expectations that are not based on reality or honest evaluation. It might seem nice to view the world through rose-colored glasses for a while, but in the end, you're setting yourself up for failure.   Self-perception bias manifests itself when we are evaluating a skill or talent that we expect ourselves to have or when others expect us to have that particular skill. When social pressure or social validation is involved, we make higher-than-expected evaluations of ourselves.   Self-perception bias ultimately gives us an unrealistic view of reality and a false sense of security. We become numb to reality and fail to see exactly where we stand and what we need to improve.   We are good at judging others and finding out what is wrong with them, but that analysis does not seem to work on ourselves.  The same is true for our skills.  We have to have the ability to honestly access ourselves – both our strengths and weaknesses.  Then find the skills and the discipline to improve our faults.  We always will feel we must gloss over our weaknesses to make things seem better than they actually are. We also lie to ourselves about our incomes, our debt, and our true weight.  When you ask husbands and wives individually about what percent of the housework they each do – the numbers never add up.  Most people will rate their people skills as above average.  We all know that is not true.  If you want to see human blindness and bias in action, all you have to do is go to a sporting event as a neutral party and listen to the bias and comments of each opposing side.

Are you good at flirting?  Admit it, when we asked you rolled your eyes but were A LITTLE bit interested, deep down.  As it turns out, flirting is related to your ability to influence.  A recent article by Psych Central discusses what makes somebody good at flirting.  Check out the article here.  At a minimum you'll be entertained. Thoughts → Emotions → Actions  It all starts with your thoughts. Your thoughts lead to emotions and your emotions lead to your daily actions. Take an honest look at your life right now. Where do you find yourself? That place is the sum total of your thoughts over the course of a lifetime. Where have your thoughts taken you thus far? Where will they take you tomorrow, next week, or next year? It is only natural that negative thoughts will creep into your mind from time to time. As soon as they sneak in, escort them right back out. Don't entertain them. They are destructive. Some people use a rubber band to snap their wrist every time a negative thought comes into their mind. The pain associated with this technique fixes their negative thinking very rapidly. If you don’t want to try the rubber band, you can send me a $2,000 check every time you have a negative thought. I am sure that would start to work for you real fast, because that is what it is probably costing you! Your thoughts are what programs your subconscious mind. Your thoughts are what program your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is the center of all your emotions. When your subconscious accepts an idea, it begins to execute it. And then your subconscious uses your ideas, knowledge, energy, and wisdom to find the solution. Now, it might occur in an instant, or it might take days, weeks, or even longer. Nevertheless, your mind will continue working on a solution. You need to understand that as you program your mind, you must ask yourself, "Do I program negative suggestions in my mind?" If you are telling yourself that you can't do it, you are right. When that inner voice tells you that you can't do something, it is important that you replace the thought or turn down the volume or intensity of the negative voice. Then you can change it to "I can do it," "I'm going to win," and "there's plenty for everybody." Altering your inner voice's perception is going to make a difference, and that's the important thing. That's because your subconscious mind will always accept what you program it to think. The bottom line is that you are what you think about, and you have the power to choose what you think. No one can do it for you. Great persuaders work on this mental training every day, while average persuaders think they have heard it all before and are doing OK.   If we are going to squash our negative thinking, we must replace those thoughts with new, positive ones. As you practice mental programming, new and inspiring ideas will intuitively and instinctively arise on their own. But give yourself specific goals and targets to keep your thoughts centered on—this type of focus will nurture and augment your newfound inner strength. Sure your logical mind will fight you on these new thoughts, but eventually your new programming will win.

Being in sales or being a business owner can be emotionally exhausting.  It's important to develop the ability to pick yourself up out of a bad mood.  To start this episode, Kurt and Steve discuss a recent article that gives you "8 ways to feel better in a hurry."   If there's one topic that people just don't want to hear about anymore, it's listening. Ironic, isn't it?  As we've researched successful persuaders, we've found listening to be one of their top attributes.  Listening is a habit we can lose.  If we aren't careful, months down the road we find ourselves jabbering too much with our prospects instead of listening to them.  

Can your personality type change?  A recent article from Psychology Today seems to think so.  It's not uncommon for many to become more friendly (or less friendly) the older they get.  Check out the article here for more info. Did you know there are over 60 different personality types?  This has led many to try and simplify the science of personality types down into sixteen, or even as few as four different categories.  On this episode, Kurt and Steve give a compelling argument as to why peresonality types could be scraped all together, due to the concept of "meta programs."  This allows a persuader to quickly isolate the key patterns in their prospects mind craft their message accordingly. On this week's persuasion blunder, we see a text book example of a teenager unable to assess long term consequences. 

Is Google rigging elections?  On this episode, Kurt and Steve discuss a recent article that thinks so.  Merely telling the masses that a candidate has a "high" approval rating tends to gender more support.  So how much influence do the "Googles" of the world actually have?  Check out the article here. Most persuaders would rather deal with an angry prospect than an indifferent one.  Indifferent prospects are tough to do anything with!  Enter the Law of Involvement.  Using the Law of Involvement helps us to get prospects to mentally focus and engage in what we are saying.  It's what gives you traction in the persuasion process. 

Everything that we understand and know about our world is based around words.  Words don't just have meaning, they have feeling.  That's why some words in some languages just don't directly translate.  One particular author has used this to apparently create a childrens book that makes children fall asleep.  When it comes to influencing, there are words you should never use.  Kurt and Steve discuss many of these on this weeks episode, as well as many of the most influential words in the English language.  Influential words can change, however.  Words that were effective 5-10 years ago are no longer.  Tune into this episode to find out more!

As we get closer and closer (even though it's a long way away) to the 2016 presidential election, more and more persuasion blunders will be on display.  A recent article shows that politicians who have deeper voices (yes, even women) are perceived as more credible by voters.  Check out the article here. Due to listener feedback, Kurt and Steve realized that they didn't cover the Law of Expectations deeply enough on Episode 101.  On this Episode (103) they return with more ideas on how you can prime your clients expectations to make your selling go more smoothly.   

You can't visit a business web page without hearing "follow us on Twitter!"  We're certainly guilty of this too.  Follow us on Twitter @influencemax!  A recent article from Psych Central shows that when customers complain about a business on Twitter, businesses can actually shoot themselves in the foot by responding too much!  Check out the article here. If you've ever been told your product is too expensive, you need the Law of Contrast.  This is the most effective way to set the terms of value.  Many times prospects come to the table with a preconceived value of your product (justified or not).  You can turn the tables with the Law of Contrast! Speaking of the Law of Contrast, this episode featues a horrible use of it which HAS to be the persuasion blunder of the year!

When you're an entrepreneur or sales person, being mentally tough is key.  If you want the rewards that come from owning your own business or being on commission, you need to put up with days that can be full of rejection and disappointment.  Check out a recent article posted  by Psych Central that discusses the Six Stages of Mental Strength. In any persuasive encounter, your prospect has certain expectations.  And so do you!  When things don't go according to expectation, people feel frustrated and are more likely to act out in anger.  This is a basic pyschological response that we can leverage in our favor as persuaders.  Tactfully letting our prospects know what we expect of them is a great way to get them to behave the way we want them to.  This also spins off into NLP (neuro linguistic programming).  Kurt and Steve discuss some of the merits of NLP and how to use them.