The #1 vastly underrated part of Influence. Great influence means this.
Live inside of your customer’s head. We don’t spend enough time being closer to our customer. We spend too much time inside our own heads and not nearly enough time inside our prospect’s head. We need to know our prospect’s fears, dreams, anxieties, worries, wins, losses, motivations, what they want now, what they’re most struggling with today. We need to know these things so that we can address them in our copy and marketing. We need to know what they’re thinking so we can address their objections before they even come up. This is like we know our customer so well we know what they’re going to say before they say it. And that is the position you want to be in for your market. You know you market like you know yourself. Better: be in the market you serve. Be among them. Always be with them. Be in person with them if you can. Always be listening to them and to their complaints and problems. Think hard how you can address them. Always be asking. Always be listening. Always be curious. The most curious sales and marketing pro wins. The most curious, the better. This is what living inside your prospect’s mind looks like. Then, you can take this insight and write copy that best reflects them with, “Have you ever felt…? “ This addresses exactly how they feel and exactly what’s going on inside their minds. Your #1 goal.
The #1 most underrated thing about influence is care. You have to care about your customer and what they’re going through. Care is what separates you from the rest, and it shows up in your sincerity and delivery. It shows up in your /what/ and in your /how/. Care is also fundamental to Influence. If you really want to be an influencer, you have to care a lot about your audience and customers. Take the time to care. Develop patience. Listen more. Ask more. Sincerely stick around for the answers. As leaders and sales pros, we’re constantly enrolling people into our Mission. We need to ask them what they think. What do they think would be the best solution? What tests should we be running? What’s working now? By asking customers, colleagues, and prospects what they think, we show we care. Ironically, building our influence with them. Remember: people won’t care what you know until they first know that you care. Show care first.
Care is vastly underrated because no one is listening much any more. Everyone’s attention starved, including your customers. So, you have to think about that and think about how best to address this problem. Best way to help solve this is to actively listen more. Ask more. Listen more. Acknowledge them more. /Make them feel heard./ Making people feel heard is a superpower. It is like a fresh breath of psychological air for them. It is the ultimate rapport builder. Wouldn’t you like to have more superpowers? Take the time to care and actively listen to people. This will enable you to develop more influence with people than just about any other method. Best part is almost no one is doing this today. We’re all far too focused on ourselves. That’s the irony of developing influence: the more we focus on others, the more we develop influence with them.
The other power method with our marketing content we need to do more of is take more chances. No one knows what’s really going to resonate with your audience until you put more stuff out there and test it. Like with pricing, you’ll never know until you test it and see what your audience best responds to. You have to be a content machine. Everybody does. So much so that we build software just to help us push content out to the social sites. It’s never ending. There’s always more to be published and shared and tested. Since you never know what will work best, you have to always be publishing and testing and seeing what resonates the most with your audience. There is always more to be done. The real key? Consistency. You gotta be consistent. Consistency wins. Finding your voice wins. Listening to your customers wins. Addressing problems in your content wins. Always adding value wins. Great storytelling wins. Giveaways win. Asking x19 wins. Ask more than you tell. Be more curious with your audience. Find out what they want. If they want the hits, bring them the hits. Free yourself to test it. Constantly be testing ideas. You never know what will work best until you test it.
I believe in this product so much that if you don’t buy, I’ll feel bad for you!
Let’s address pricing and pride in it again because it is so important and so often whiffed upon. Be PROUD of your prices! Think high margin. Think adding so much value to peoples; lives that you’d feel bad for them if you didn’t get your product into their hands. That’s the value goal you should be aiming for! Aim high! Believe so much in what you offer and in what you sell that you’d feel bad for them if they don’t buy. How’s that for turning the tables?
I believe in this product so much that if you don’t buy, I’ll feel bad for you!
That’s a whole new level of belief in self and product and offer. You can’t jack with beliefs like that. That level of belief is POWER: selling power. There’s nothing more powerful in sales than 200% belief & confidence in what you’re selling. And if you developed it and poured your heart & soul into it, you better believe in it! Because if you don’t, no one else will, either. That’s the thing people forget: no one will believe in it until you first express it and showcase it. You gotta believe! Deeply! Take belief seriously because you cannot sell something you don’t believe in.
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