(Week 7) - 7 Steps to Positively Influence your Friends and Family!
Using Ethical Sales Principles.
7 Steps to Positively Influence your Friends and Family! - Using Ethical Sales Principles.
“You can widen your circle of influence by widening your circle of service” - Joseph Grenny.
Today we’ll go through seven steps for ethically influencing your friends and family. To illustrate the point I’ll use a recent friend, Lachlan Tosh who I met during a dinner.
1. Build Rapport and a Genuine Relationship.
“What you do speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you are saying” - Ralph Waldo Emmerson.
Have the intent to serve, give, and add good energy and value to the conversation.
Have genuinely curious questions.
Listen to their answers.
Share your honest and open stories.
Identify Common Values and Interests.
Simplified: You both generally feel good and supported within the relationship. (A specific and genuine compliment is a great way to build rapport also)
I met Lachy at a dinner thanks to one of my mom’s friends Heather Hamilton, it turns out he was a passionate coach for cricket Australia. We found a common interest, as I was a tennis coach at the time, so I was curious to find out more
What are some of your favorite parts about coaching?
What are some of your frustrations currently with it?
Where do you see yourself in the game 12 months from now?
After I asked these questions, I found it easy to listen intently, we both shared various stories within coaching and I opened up about a tennis injury that I had been struggling with, then we ended up bonding over a common value on the importance of having a growth mindset after he shared with me a powerful story from a Mindset Coach who helped Ash Barty the tennis player realize the power of being enough as you are. It made me feel good, so I thanked him for sharing the story and encouraged him to share it with the table as I knew the others would love to hear about it too.
I felt were now in good rapport.
Common Mistake: I’ve heard it being said that just get the other person talking about themselves, and ask them questions and they will like you. This is oversimplistic. I’ve been asked loads of questions and spoken about myself a lot in a conversation yet still not enjoyed them or felt disconnected. There has to be genuine intent and present energy behind the conversation and then the rest of the building blocks seem to flow more naturally.
These fundamentals cannot be overlooked. As Russell Brunson, an online marketer likes to say, “if you propose to strangers on the street, there is a high probability of rejection”.
2. Identify their Problems, Needs, and Desires.
After this, I started sharing a bit about the project Constant Student I was excited about.
Lachy then started to open up about a great idea he had around a start-up to help people get cleaner water. I then asked a few questions to find out where he was struggling with it.
What sort of problems was he was facing?
Where did he want to take it?
Why was it important to him?
It genuinely seemed like he would benefit from joining our community of passionate young leaders, creatives, and entrepreneurs looking to make the world a better place.
Main Tip: Ask quality questions to determine the specific pain or gain the person is looking for.
3. Build Value and link it to their Vision.
You can have evidence, statistics, great tips, or a great story of how you overcame the problem or how someone else did.
I caught up with Lachy for some tea, and he started to explain the bottle in more depth, I loved the idea and where it was going. Seeing the vision he had behind the bottle he was developing, and the health community and movement he was looking to bring with it.
I started giving suggestions when it came to the marketing behind the product and what I had learned over the past 3 years, it seemed like the marketing and selling was the main part he needed help with. I shared stories, ideas, and concepts I had learned around sales and marketing.
I said I was still learning so much more from the community building, I suggested he could look at the model we created and learn from the Co-founder Scott’s extensive knowledge of E-Commerce, which would help him launch his business.
So In our conversation, I kept linking joining the constant student to his ultimate vision. Not because I was scamming him, but because I believed it could truly help.
4. Highlight the benefits of action and the cost of inaction.
Question 1. What are the immediate and long-term consequences of not taking this action?
Even though I didn’t explicitly say these questions, Lachy was clear that if he didn’t learn about marketing and sales, and understood how a community would work. It would cost him a lot more time, energy, stress, and money. He was already clear about the confusion of only using YouTube and wanted greater support. I showcased with him the urgency of jumping into the community ASAP, as the next season would start in 3 months, and the price would likely increase which was true.
Question 2. What are the immediate and long-term benefits of taking this action?
If Lachy took the action, he would meet a like-minded group of creatives, entrepreneurs, and leaders from around the world. Gain feedback and formulate the next steps from the community itself. Which would set him up with great connections to accelerate his journey and help lots of people with his product in the future.
5. Overcome Objections, Limiting Beliefs and ‘Brules’.
Limiting beliefs are thoughts and opinions that one believes to be the absolute truth. They tend to have a negative impact on one's life by stopping them from moving forward and growing on a personal and professional level.
Vishen Lahkiami, Founder of Mindvalley calls them ‘brules’ – bullshit rules – that we adopt to simplify our understanding of the world.
In sales, they are called objections, and often the very reason someone won’t do something is the very reason why they should do it.
To be honest, Lachy didn’t have many of them during the process, however, I felt slightly nervous asking how he would like to pay and stating the price.
Why? Because he was now a friend and I didn’t want to be seen as pushy. Yet I caught myself in that moment and remembered - Humans value what they invest in, and if he valued the Constant Student and invested time into it, I felt so certain he would get at least 6X his money's worth!
“Selling means you are a greasy-haired, used car salesman who is pushy !” - Inner Brule, Limiting Belief, Inner objection
“When you can help, then selling = service!” - Empowering and True Belief.
For greater awareness, an example of a common objection, is that often people we have spoken to about joining the Constant Student Community complain that they love it - they ‘just don’t have time’, when in fact I’d argue that the Constant Student gives its members way more time, through the power of bringing stillness into their lives on a weekly basis.
So, we empathize with people and then share a similar story about how someone even “busier than them” in the community made a decision and took action to overcame the problem of “not having time,” if we believe this person will benefit.
Overcoming objections, limiting beliefs, or ‘brules’ is about having empathy and not sympathy. Brene Brown has an excellent video explaining the difference between the two.
6. Offer clear solutions or next steps.
‘Clear is kind, unclear is unkind.’ - Brené Brown.
In general, people really struggle to embrace uncertainty. So when helping a friend or family member you want to help them build positive momentum ASAP.
With this here is a rule of thumb to keep in mind.
Make the first step very clear, and very simple.
Eg. Instead of going to the gym for two hours. Set a challenge with them for 20 days to do 5 push-ups after they brush their teeth in the morning. James Clear has written an excellent book on this subject called Atomic Habits.
So when I jumped on the phone call and followed up with him about joining the community - I sent him through the link to Constant Student. Which was clearly laid out and assured him if he had any problems just let me know.
7. Gracefully accept others' help, ask for advice, small favors, and feedback. (IT IS THE MOST UNDERRATED).
This is one I’ve struggled with the most, and I have to remind myself of it frequently. Most people feel good and important when they help you. So allowing them to do something small for you actually helps both of you in the relationship.
It’s scientifically called the Ben Franklin effect - which is a proposed psychological phenomenon: a person who has already performed a favor for another person is more likely to do another favor for the other than if they had received a favor from that person.
Lachy demonstrated this when he asked for help and feedback in one of our Constant Student sessions, from that, he had free help with marketing, and setting up a great website, and sold over 5 bottles all in the span of 48 hours instead of 1 month.
As humans, we value what we invest in no matter how small. So asking for small favors can help your influence down the track. This could be allowing your friend to pay for your drink, when given a compliment saying thank you and that it means a lot. Asking your mom or dad for advice on something etc.
Through selling Lachy on the Constant Student, he has taught me a lot about this important sales principle, and I’m so happy I didn’t listen to that limiting belief that selling is being a pushy used car salesman.
Lastly - Click Here for Clean Water Anytime, Anywhere at the Tap of your Finger.
Coming up 📅
Information night for those interested in the Intentional Gap Year Project, to change life after high school! The information night is on 3rd August, at 7pm AEST.
FREE workshop on Ethical Selling, brought to you by Constant Student on 8th August AEST — set up a free profile in the community, then register here.
Uncover Your Truth
Liam.