Jonathan Farrington's Blog

Question: What is the number one need for success in business today?

Answer: To persuade others of your value and the value of your ideas.

So What Is Influencing?

Influencing is getting your own way, especially unobtrusively.

Most managers do it, most of the time.

• You can influence others simply be being you (notice how easily children are influenced by the behaviour of those around them)
• You can influence covertly, behind the scenes
• You can use more open strategies and tactics

Great influencers manage to get other people to go along with their ideas while maintaining the relationship. If people feel manipulated, relationships will be damaged. It is important to understand the different strategies available to you and to plan your approach.

Mastering The Art:

Increasingly today’s managers are measured by their ability to influence others in the workplace. Being able to get people to do what you want has a direct effect on:

• The well-being of your staff
• The prosperity of your company
• And, ultimately, your own destiny

You are probably already successful at influencing others – some of the time. How can you become consistently successful? If you can identify your strengths and weaknesses and make a few changes, nothing can hold you back.

Typical Areas Of Open Influence:

A lot of the time, especially in business, influencing is necessary and we accept it as part of human communication. It operates openly and usually follows a recognised process. Open influence can be seen in:

• Meetings
• Presentations
• Sales conversations
• Debates and discussions
• Change management
• Reports
• Proposals
• Negotiations
• Performance management
• Process management

Typical Areas Of Hidden Influence:

Influence can also operate in a less open and direct manner. Your behaviour will be noticed by others, even though you are not necessarily trying to influence them. Your words will always be interpreted, however subtle or oblique. In short – whether we mean to influence or not – we are constantly beaming out influential messages to the world.

Hidden influence, which is often delicate, slow and on-going, works well in the following areas:

• Changing an image or behaviour
• Altering attitude
• Networking
• Communicating non-verbally
• Developing and maintaining rapport
• Counselling others
• Acting as a mentor
• Maintaining customer relations
• Using metaphor and analogy
• Nurturing relationships

What Makes An Effective Influencer?

Winning influencers share attitudes and behaviours that ensure consistent success. Studies have shown that they:

• Indicate the benefits of their ideas
• Neutralise resistance, preferably in advance
• Find alternative ways to influence others
• Listen attentively to what others say
• Uncover needs and wants
• Empathise continuously
• Notice how others respond
• Create and maintain rapport throughout
• Eliminate weak statements from their language
• Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse

Five Easy Steps To Influence

Here are the five main steps to effective influential communication. Make this pattern second nature, leaving you to concentrate on the detail.

Gain Rapport
Be on their level, recognise their beliefs and values; match their behaviour patterns and blend your personality characteristics with theirs.

Ask Questions
Elicit needs and different responses; probe to identify their motives, attitudes and feeling.

Listen Actively
Demonstrate that you are listening: listen with all your senses; suspend judgement.

Stress Pertinent Benefits
Summarise how specific benefits of your proposal accurately reflect their needs.

Work Towards A Decision
Ask question which will force a decision (or rejection); test interest through hypothetical questions; make positive statements which assume their acceptance.

I am writing a couple of articles on the subject of influence and influencing, which I will post on theJF site in the next week so, if this is a subject that interests you or you feel that your own influencing skills could improve, visit the article section here:

In the meantime, this week’s item on the jfa Group site discusses “What Constitutes Making It In Sales”, which you can read here. The lead article on the JF site, offers you the opportunity to identify your external power – all very interesting stuff and you can read it here.

I did promise to recommend some well written sales related articles that I have read over the past seven days, but unfortunately it has been a very barren week with nothing really original catching my eye.

However, I would like to point you towards the refreshingly ebullient Colleen Francis of Engage Selling Solutions – www.engageselling.com There is a quote on her homepage “Colleen is unwavering in her commitment to sales–training that makes a lasting and meaningful impact on the corporate bottom—line: she inspires results!” and reading her articles, I can believe that, her genuine enthusiasm is certainly infectious.

Finally, I am taking this opportunity to wish my good friends on the Dieppe, especially, Lynne, Cas, Richard and Roger, the very best of luck for the future and to thank them for looking after me so well for the last four years.

The Dieppe is one of the ferries I have used regularly and the friendliness and efficiency of the crew, has always made the crossing much more enjoyable. Sadly, it is being replaced by a brand new vessel – including the entire crew. Thanks guys, I will miss you.

Oh and the mysterious case of the missing domain? Yes, yes, I am almost ready to reveal all – but I don’t want to hide my comments within my blog, I think the whole sorry affair deserves a full page within next month’s Newsletter!! It will be worth the wait, I can promise you that much.

As ever, have a great week and good selling – JF

We have been discussing management styles this past week and when I look back over my career, I have experienced a number of different styles. I have also adopted different approaches depending on the maturity and experience of the people I was managing.

There are various ways to define styles of management. Five classic styles are:

• Dictatorship The manager decides on his or her own
• Benevolent autocracy The manager decides, the group advises
• Democracy The group decides, the manager advises
• Laissez-faire Nobody makes proper decisions
• Consultative Manager asks, group contributes, manager decides

All styles have their place depending on the situation. Indeed, the situation must always be considered. In many instances what is needed is a blend of more than one style. Ultimately a manager’s style must play to their strengths, be acceptable to their staff – and aid effectiveness.

From there, we went on to further investigate what I term “Management Personalities” and Merrill & Reid call “Social Styles” in their excellent book “Knowing About Social Styles” – you can read my latest article on the subject: “How To Identify And Use Your Social Style” here

There are four types of management personalities or social styles – Analyticals, Drivers, Expressives and Amiables – and all four have their own unique approach to business, their own language, thought process etc. As a consequence, the very best sales professionals have become adept at recognising which personality they are dealing with and adapt their approach accordingly.

In every boardroom, you will most likely find all four personalities and I have discovered over the years which personality is likely to fill which position on the board. However, rather than reveal all here now, I will expand my theory in a full article which will appear in the November newsletter. We will also give you the opportunity to take an interactive assessment and discover which of the four personalities you most closely match – it is incredibly accurate!

Last week, I was singing the praises of David Bain and his excellent site www.buildyourownbusiness.biz and you will remember that I said David’s site specialised purely in business related topics – as the name suggests.

I am also an admirer of Chris Wright’s EzineArticles site: www.ezinearticles.com because it is quite simply the most successful and with more than 37,000 contributing authors, the largest. Despite its size, the whole operation is run extremely professionally. I have been particularly impressed by the efficiency of the editorial team and also the statistical data available, so well done guys keep up the good work.

Next week, I will refer you to articles by other authors that I will be reading this week, which I consider worthy of a mention but before I sign off, I did promise you an update on the lost domain saga. There has been a significant twist which will leave all but the most cynical of you, open-mouthed in disbelief but I need to obtain legal clearance and I will then share the whole story with you – and yes, I do intend to use every opportunity available to me to “name and shame”. At least it may prevent this sort of thing happening to any other innocent business owner.

Have a great week – JF

Welcome to my brand new blog! Hopefully, you will return often to enjoy articles, advice, commentary, interviews with experts in the fields of professional sales and sales leadership and maybe even contribute with your own comments.

Although tomorrow, October 6th, is the official launch date agreed with the technical team, I am actually out of the country on business and so my first real blog of note will be early next week when I return home to France, however let me share a few thoughts from this week with you, and what a week!

First of all the new jfa Group site – www.thejfagroup was launched and my thanks are due again to the unsung heroes who design and maintain all of our sites, thanks guys, another fantastic piece of work! They are now preparing to start work on the new ASP Profile site which launches before the end of the year.

Then, my son Joe went up to Cambridge to start his first term. I think he has already settled in and providing he, or rather his liver, survives fresher’s week, he will excel, as ever.

Finally, we discovered that a domain we bought and paid for in July, with reputedly, one of the major players in that field, had in fact never been registered! You can imagine that I was less than pleased, particularly as we had begun the design work etc. and have another twenty domains registered with them. The fact that they refuse to give my webmaster the name of the MD and are not responding to either telephone calls or written correspondence, has made me highly suspicious, however I have found the parent company and was quietly amused – actually, that’s not true, I fell off my chair laughing – at a quote the CEO makes “What makes ****** special, are it’s people and their commitment to putting the customer first!” Mmm, I don’t think so.

For obvious reasons, I cannot say more at this stage, suffice to add that I will reveal all next week and it is safe to assume that you will be as staggered as I am at the levels of incompetence and in all probability, gross negligence, by so called industry leaders. Perhaps they have forgotten that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

New articles posted on both the JF and the jfa sites today. The former explores the second stage of how organisations develop, what I call “The Scientific Management Phase” and if you missed the first part in which I identify the first stage, “The Pioneering Phase” you can read it here. The jfa Group feature of the week, highlights the fact that when it comes to bidding for major opportunities, size really does not matter and reveals the secrets of the “Super-Bidders”

Over the coming weeks, I will be recommending excellent sales & marketing articles written by other authors, as well as pointing you towards the business article sites that really do attract the very best writers. You will quickly realise that one of my favourites is www.buildyourownbusiness.biz. The CEO is a wonderful guy called David Bain, who is innovative, bright, offers excellent customer care and if that wasn’t enough, is an expert in his field. David’s site is aimed purely at entrepreneurs, sales and marketing professionals and industry captains. I particularly enjoy listening to his weekly Podcast on Friday evenings, when he discusses the top five articles of the week in depth, before announcing a winner – it really is superb.

OK, have a great weekend – more from France next week .