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Dramatically increase your influence

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by Patty Azzarello

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influence

Do you have a seat at the table?

I am often asked to speak about how to have more influence.

Managers often feel like they are getting blocked or ignored by the power structure in their company.

Influence

How can you make sure you are included when important strategies are being decided? How can you impact them?

There are many aspects to this including the need to increase the impact of your work, build your credibility, make the right connections with people, and create a network of support for your ideas, your work, and your career.

But today I want to talk about something very specific. A powerful, practical approach to dramatically increase your influence with your stakeholders.

Be a Translator

I can’t overstate the importance of translating what you talk about into the language of your stakeholders.

It starts here…

No one really cares what you do…

(At least not as much as you do.)

Don’t Educate.  Be more Relevant.

Don’t try to educate your stakeholders. I often talk to managers who say, I need to educate my boss about what my group does.

My advice. Don’t bother. It doesn’t work and it only annoys both of you!

But the important thing to realize is this:

If you have to educate people about what you do, you are not relevant.

Just think about that. If you have to educate, you are not relevant…

What IS relevant? What they already know and care about.

If you want to increase your influence, the way to be more relevant is to always start your conversation with something they already know and care about.

Use that as a hook, and then hang your information that hook.

They will think you are smart and be motivated to listen to you because you are starting the conversation by making them feel smart.

You are engaging them on terms they already know and on things they want to make progress on. Once they are thinking that, they will be ready to listen to you.

Translate your ideas, use their hook

To follow the marketing example, don’t talk about a multi-quarter integrated marketing campaign. While you are at it, don’t even use the word marketing. Talk about building pipeline, decreasing the time to close a sale, or opening new revenue streams.

If you are in IT don’t talk about data centers and virtualization. Translate to improving sales effectiveness, helping reach new markets, or reducing the cost of acquiring customers.

A magic translation tool

Here is a very specific bit of magic to make your work and your ideas much more relevant to the rest of the business.

1. Interview your business stakeholders about what they care about. What is driving their business? What are their pressures and opportunities? What are their key “can’t fail” initiatives right now?
2. Listen for two things:

  • What are the things on their list?
  • What are the exact words they use to describe them?

3. Go back and summarize their top initiatives in their words.

4. Prepare your next communication about what you are doing or trying to influence and ONLY USE THEIR WORDS.

Use your “outside voice”

Remember your plans and your budget are riddled with jargon from your own function. I call that your “inside voice”. You need those things to run your function but don’t – under any circumstances – use those those same artifacts to communicate outside your function.

You need to use your “outside voice”. You need to specifically create new communication tools that are versions of your plans, your proposals, and your budget, but using the language of your stakeholders.

The magic then happens when you are suddenly asking them to approve budget for things they want anyway!

When you translate and use their words, not yours, you are more relevant, you appear more credible and you dramatically increase your ability to influence.

Have you ever been blocked?

What things have you done to increase your influence? Please leave your ideas in the comment box below.

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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How to Attract the Leaders in the Pack

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(Updated in 2020)

Photo by Nathan Lemon on Unsplash

10-Point Plan — Attracting Second Generation Heroes and Champions

Employees as Volunteers and Volunteers as Employees

Whether you’re a small enterprise like SOBCon building a brand and a legacy to stand upon or you’re an internationally known brand with a legacy of success and relationships that you want to nurture and protect, your employees and volunteers are the heart of your brand.

What makes that heart beat?
What gets those people to invest their time into your quest rather than into some other endeavor each day?
One of three reasons brings us to work and that reason that drives us runs through every nuance of every interaction that we undertake — every success we enjoy and every error we miss, overlook or turnaround in a fabulous way.

Whether you’re paying for a job role or enlisting volunteers, what you want is a volunteer who leads like a $200,000 / year employee. Leaders like that are learners who are focused on the cause and willing to put their minds, hearts, and vision into making the best things happen.

The Three Kinds of People Who Show Up to Work

People often say “There are two kinds of people, those who … and those who don’t.” In this case there are really three. Knowing all three will help you find and identify the leaders you need.

  • It’s a job. These volunteers are looking for an in-kind return. They are worker economists in that they do a hard day’s work for a hard day’s pay. The return might not be money. It might be a free seat, new clients or contacts that translate into potential work, a chance to raise the level of their pay grade by raising their skills and contacts. Be aware that they aren’t working for your brand or cause. They are executing a transaction.
  • It’s a career. These volunteers are looking to build their resume.They are politicians in that they look for a return that will enhance their own value proposition. The return is not financial it’s power and positioning. They do a hard day’s work for the ability to say they were part of the team. They might be working for a recommendation or entrance into a new network that will offer more opportunity. Understand that their first purpose isn’t working for your brand, it’s to extend their reach.
  • It’s a quest. These volunteers care about money and reach, but are driven by a need to build something no one can build alone. They look for a situation that will allow them to invest their best and want the same in return. Leaders will actually work for less if they’re convinced that the quest, the people, and process will be tied to values and intelligent ROI.

I bet you could phrase a set of questions and conditions to attract the best volunteers to that outstanding project you want to take off.

How would you start?

READ the Whole 10-Point Plan Series: On the Successful Series Page.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Does Your Brand Promiscuously Sleep with the Whole Football Team?

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Here Everyone Gets It All!!

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Will take a trip with me into ancient history?
I was in my early twenties. A friend, a young lady who was unique, beautiful and fun to be with, was insecure about her personal value. She couldn’t see why any guy might want to be with her. She had a string of bad relationships. She’d meet a guy and almost instantly sleep with him. The next day she’d call him a “boyfriend.”

I would watch it happen over and over. What she wanted was guys who’d get to know her. What she attracted was a huge following of guys who wanted to sleep with her. Some of those guys told me later that they didn’t even like her.

She was promiscuously giving away the wrong thing.

Is Your Brand Guilty of Promiscuous Giving

Now I go to events and trade shows and sometimes I see the business version of the same thing. Big brands and small companies not thinking through their “offers.” They put out samples that attract people people who want “free” rather than people who want a relationship with their brand and their products.

It may be easier to plan one giveaway for a population. But it’s not necessarily the best way to connect with people who want to “love” your brand. That single giveaway is likely to attract people who take anything free whether they need it, want it, or can use it in any meaningful way.

How many bags, water bottles, t-shirts, and hats end up left in hotel rooms because suitcases had no room when they were packed for leaving?

Here’s how to avoid promiscuously giving away the wrong things.

Don’t give everything to everybody. No one wants to marry the girl who sleeps with the entire football team. Have something for the people who are just meeting you. Have a second thing for the folks who’ve tried something in your product line and are beginning to like you. Have a third set for the folks who are madly in love with you.

How Might Brands Do that?

  • The People Who Don’t Know You Ask them about what they love in their current favorite product. Invite them to be on an advisory board that will get special offers and invitations to meetups in their town. Recruit them as “nonusers” to review new products from your line — for internal publication only if they prefer. The best swag for this group might be an elegant portable screen cleaner kit that carries your logo or maybe that flash drive that is huge enough to back up an entire computer. Everyone can will use those and see your logo.
  • The People Who Like You, But Aren’t Customers Introduce them to a service person on a first name basis. Take a hint from the car companies develop a serious test drive offer. Invite the folks who use your competitors to a demo to compare their product with yours. For those who attend extend a special limited price offer. Match them up with the machine that perfectly suits their use and needs. Invite them to test drive your machine for 30 days trial. Give them a price point that they can’t help to talk about. As a swag gift for their participation, give them that screen cleaner kit and add to that a portable power pack with adapters for every gadget in their repertoire. Who doesn’t need more power?
  • Your Loyal Customers and Those Ready to Become One Have your database ready when they walk up and talk about the products they already own. Get to know their favorites and their wishes. These are the folks who should go home with the special new product that you’re just releasing. They’ll talk about it with their friends. It might even work to give them two or three coupons to pass on to folks they know would use your products and talk about them. Let your true friends decide who should be the ones to get the super swag. They’ll choose well for you and you’ll win their loyalty for it.

People get to know people and brands in small steps that break down boundaries and build relationships. If you overwhelm me with too much too fast, it’s hard to trust that you value what you give or that you value the relationship. I don’t want to you see me as the girl who sleeps with the whole football team and I don’t want to see you like that.

How might you step the swag you offer to meet the needs of your fans?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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3 Traits Winning Social Media Teams Bring to the Tools

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Hard Work Isn’t the Same as Great Work

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Pick a passionate team at random people, tell them your vision, and hand them the best materials and power tools. Then ask them to build the new building where you’ll meet your customers. Does that make sense to you?

The passion of random people and the best tools aren’t enough to create a team to build that vision for me or for you. Key to a winning team lies in what those passionate people bring to the tools. For a quality building to be strong, functional, and efficient, the randomness of people who are passionate about building with a passel of fabulous tools won’t build anything useful if they don’t bring something more than passion to the tools.

It’s true in any team endeavor that the tools don’t deliver the great results, the people do.
Great people can build amazing things even with less than the most powerful tools.

3 Traits Winning Social Media Teams Bring to the Tools

A winning social media team is more than people who are passionate about the tools. Look at the teams who are working and you’ll find they have outstanding traits in common that fuel the ways and whys of how they choose and use social media tools.

  1. Brand Identity and Values – The Who — Winning social media teams are anything but random people in a group. Even at the lowest levels, they are leaders who know how to think in service to their customers and as a true ambassador of a brand. This comes as much from who they and from how they’ve been brought into the team. They’re people who share the same values and higher cause of the business and they’ve learned how to their values align with and enhance the core value proposition of the team, the business and the brand.
  2. Purpose and Focus — The What – Winning social media teams have focus on goals that serve those values and that value proposition. They can easily in few words what their purpose and how it fits the higher cause of the business and how it serves a brand and it’s customers. Bringing customers closer and finding meaningful ways to learn from them, serve them, and connect them to other great customers, employees and great resources is what a winning social media team is about. They way they use the tools underscore the vallues and enhance the value proposition.
  3. Bias Toward Action — The When – Winning social media teams pay attention so that they can be there when something needs their personal touch. They respond quickly yet within the values of their brand. Their bias toward action is timed to make things faster and easier for the customers … and all of them see communication as their responsibility — no matter their specific role. They listen, learn, and contribute when the conversation is going on … not hours later after the conversation has moved, changed, or lost it’s audience.

So what about the where AND the how?

You’ll find winning teams choose their tools they use and to be where their customers are and to use the tools their customers already use. In other words …

Winning social medias teams configure their strategy rather than trying to reconfigure their customers.

What qualities drive the winning social media teams you know?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Will Your Customers Define Your Brand or Will You?

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(Updated in 2020)

Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash

10-Point Plan: Build a Brand Values Baseline

Live Your Brand

Before the Internet, when we were silently niched by geographic markets the conversation with customers was one way. We wrote, televised, advertised to them. Then they read, watched, or saw our message and formed their ideas of what those messages said.

Customers decided who we are from the messages we sent.

When the Internet opened up the two-way conversation began. Now we’re finding more and better ways to listen talk, and interact with customers directly. We’re talking on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and social sites we make just for them.

Don’t miss the opportunity in how the social business web has changed brands.

This shift in the way we interact with our customers has a significant impact on the theory of how a brand is born and who determines the character of a brand. We now have a huge opportunity to demonstrate our brand values as we claim them.

We can now define our brand with much more clarity and control than before because we can include our customers as we do. In that way we have a huge opportunity to take our brands where we want them to be. Here’s how to take advantage of this new branding power …

  • Define the core values that your brand represents.
  • Communicate that set of core values — a brand values baseline — to everyone you work with and for.
  • Check every business decision against that values baseline.
  • Celebrate and reward anyone who demonstrates your brand’s values.
  • Choose evangelists who share those values and encourage them to share their ideas.

Live your values and you’ll attract the people to your brand who value what you do. Ask the people who are doing the work what would just one thing. As your heroes and champions get more interested in the values that underpin your business, so will the people who look up to them.

A single meeting with the heroes and champions who love what you do can bring out the best in your brand in less time than a whole team from a huge consulting firm.

Have you found the way to define your brand or are you letting your customers do all of that for you?

Related
To follow the entire series: Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

Be Irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

How to Avoid Using PowerPoint in 5 Easy Steps

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A Guest Post by Scott P. Dailey

You’re losing business because your presentation sucks, not because your fee is too high or someone else is smarter, more creative or more accomplished. You’re going in scared that you won’t compete and that same fear drove your preparedness and your crappy presentation.

… I’ll explain in a minute, but for now, wanna see 200 photographs of my recent business trip to Indianapolis? It’s loaded with killer shots of the thoroughly unremarkable office building I worked from. No? OK. Well what about video of surgeons removing the deceased section of my sigmoid colon? No!? Man, you’re tough to please. Oh I got it! How about I talk to you for an hour about how awesome my six-year-old son is at soccer? …

Seriously. How many of you are remotely interested in any of these topics, let alone eager to view, watch or listen to me carry on about them for an hour?

Now to be fair, maybe if some of my readers work in Indianapolis, they may take an interest in my trip to their fine city. They may, for instance, want to know where I stayed, or if given the right time of year, had I taken the time to catch a Colts or Pacers game. Maybe some among you have also been diagnosed with chronic diverticulitis and like me, had to have abdominal surgery to remove a damaged part of your colon. I bet that segment would want to engage me, if only to relate their experiences to mine. Or possibly your child rocks on the soccer field too and you’re dying to ask what position my son plays, so that you can tell of your child scoring the winning goal as time expired.

So what I’m getting at is that if I’m not able to relate on a visceral level that reflects directly on what’s important to me personally, I’m not likely to care very much about what you want to share with me.

If we know this and somewhere deep down most of us do, why then would we care about your long-winded, one-way presentation? Or an over-detailed dominating PowerPoint presentation?

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These pitches, sadly often aren’t about the prospect at all. It’s about what you think of your ability to do a thing or even worse, all things. It is nothing more than what your prospect sees all the time from potential vendors: an overtly talkative brochure, peppered with gratuitous look-at-me platitudes. But what specifically is it doing apart from forcing people to pretend to be enthusiastic about you purely because they’re trapped in a room with you?

Reinvent the presentation experience

In which of your 100 slides do you get me emotional? I ask because that’s actually where I want your presentation to begin. Flip to that slide right now and please begin. I’m listening. Oh your presentation doesn’t have a slide that stirs me? Well in that case, here’s your hat, there’s the door and have a nice day.

Everyone has an unnecessarily verbose and egocentric PowerPoint. I know of no capabilities presentation that is ever justified in being as long as it is. The problem with most of them are that they’re authored by our fear of failure, not our ability to solve the audience’s problems. And so I challenge you to be the anti-presenter! Be the salesperson who goes in there and kills it because fear of:

* leaving something out
* not being good enough
* not getting money

did not color your pitch. If you’re not going to win the business, lose it because you suck, not because your awful presentation messed you up. Here’s five things I do on sales calls that have helped me not lose the business.

  1. Never bring a presentation to a sales pitch.

    I bring a business card and the team that will steer the project and that’s it. If I’m responding to an RFP, my response honors (to the letter) the RFP guidelines and requirements. Nothing unsolicited is ever included. I never voluntarily talk about business needs nor present business solutions that fall outside the prospect’s requirements or curiosities.

  2. Research your prospect.

    I focus on key players and read up (on and offline) on what is available on each stake holder. I research their successes and failures and because what I do is Web related, I look at the BBB information, along with sentiment surrounding the company’s social and emotional footprint.

    It’s important to memorize these fundamentals because the people you’re meeting with are sure to be emotionally invested in the outcome of the gig, as well as their business in general. Exhibiting a good degree of knowledge out the door will help them see you more as an ally, then a vendor.

  3. Shut up.

    This one’s tough, because I yap a lot. But yes, I do shut up. I close my mouth and listen to the prospect talk about themselves. This is always the best of all available opportunities to sell yourself too because this is precisely the stage in the sales process where the prospect shows you their cards. If they’re talking about their stuff, you can be assured that they’re going to get excited talking about it.

    This is where many perfectly qualified vendors lose the business and never understand why they did. As the prospect is talking about their stuff, the manner with which they exhibit enthusiasm may be foreign when compared to the way you get excited. Doesn’t mean they’re not pumped. So don’t just match their enthusiasm or overdo it. Rather, replicate it using the tone and mood they’re using to convey it. Again, guide them toward seeing you as an ally, not a money-grubbing vendor. Be similar to them, not dissimilar.

  4. Ask Questions.

    Ask them questions that force them to talk more about the stuff that gets them excited. Try, when possible, to limit your questions to only those that relate to the topics they are most passionate about. If you’ve been doing great listening, then you already know what turns them on. Taking this specific action has won me more business and gotten me more jobs than any other sales method I use. And for the love of all things holy, be patient. The longer you wait to add your own anecdotes, the more you’ve got them telling theirs. The more they’re busy telling theirs, the more they’ll want to hear yours when your chance comes. Prematurely grasping for the microphone, or worse, snagging it before it’s been handed to you will kill any momentum you’ve been building in the previous steps. simply put: if you see what got ’em hot and bothered, well hell, sex sells! Make ’em talk about it more. Well done. No go cash some checks.

  5. Relate to them.

    Suggestion #5 is last on purpose. Offering anecdotes and casual social banter in the earliest stages of a pitch is a stupid decision. Imagine we’re at a party and you and your friends are conversing about the NFL. You’re a club. A clan. All equally vetted by the other. Now imagine I walk up to your group, unknown to you all, and dive head-long into a rant about the NY Jets losing their season opener. What are the odds you’ll dig me?

    Relating to the client is really all you’ve been doing to this point, but you’ve been the guy or gal humbly listening, eventually asking questions as you and your friends talk about pro football. After I have demonstrated my interest in you and most importantly, on your terms, you may then be ready to hear my take on a Jets loss.

    The time to crack jokes and secure social common ground isn’t when you first sit down. I’ve seen this over and over. Sure you’re a cool dude or chick. Sure you can slay ’em, but earn your seat at that table. Earn the right to be casual.

How do you relate with your prospects? How do you sell customers? Do you use a presentation? Does it work? What separates you from the thousands that do use a capabilities presentation?

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Scott P. Dailey is a Web designer, copywriter and network administrator. Recently Scott launched ( http://scottpdailey.com ), his social media blog that makes connections between social networking etiquette and the prevailing human social habits that drive on and offline business engagement patterns. You can connect with Scott via Twitter at @scottpdailey.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Geetesh Bajaj

Thanks, Scott!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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