The Importance of Earned Influence in Sales
By Jeff Shore
Are you an influencer? If you’re in sales, you better be.
Are you familiar with the term earned influence?
What do I mean by earned influence? Well, let me start with what I’m not talking about. I’m not talking about coercion, manipulation, or trickery. Influence should be none of those things. Those things should have no place in the role of a genuinely professional sales practitioner.
On the other hand, there are times when my customer needs me to be genuinely influential, even when it can come across as a force. Let me give you this scenario. You’ve got $10,000 that you want to invest, and you talk to your financial planner. You tell your planner; I will invest it in Sears stock, hoping that that chain will return.
Suppose your planner looks at you and says, well, look, I don’t want to be pushy, but a word of caution, you might to at least think about an alternative. But you’re going to have to decide what you want to do.
A little advice. You need a new planner.
You need that financial professional to be far more assertive. Why? Because you need the planner to keep you from doing something foolish. How would you feel if your planner instead said to you, I can’t let you do that? I know your situation and the markets that will be ten grand you’ll never see again.
How would you feel if they said that? That depends on whether the planner has earned the right to be influential.
I argue that influence cannot be assumed and that it must be earned. Your customer owes you nothing when they first walk through the door. They might carry baggage from previous sales encounters that work against your influence.
You must begin every interaction in person, on the phone, or even in an email with the idea that influence is earned. Here’s the problem, and I want you to think about this question from a customer’s perspective. What does it look like when a salesperson tries to be influential but has not earned the right first? What does that customer see?
Think about that for a moment. What do they see?
Do you know what they see? They see arrogance. They see a one-sided agenda. They feel like they’re being sold in the worst possible sense of the word.
Please don’t do it. Don’t be that person.
Instead, take a genuine interest in who that individual is standing right in front of you. We’ll dive into specific ways to grow earned influence next week.
But for now, think about people in your life who have earned the right to be influential to you. Think about your physician, attorney, hairstylist, or perhaps salesperson you’ve come to trust.
Earned influence is where it’s at. It takes intentionality to get there; we’ll focus more on that next week.
Until next time, learn more to earn more!
