First published as The Ultimate Book of Influence in 2013 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd, 42 McDougall St, Milton Qld 4064
Office also in Melbourne
This edition first published in 2019 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd
© Helder Consulting Pty Ltd
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Disclaimer
The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.
The business world does not have an information problem! We are one Google click away from a lifetime of information about any topic we can think of. We have more information than we can possibly need, in fact we are drowning in it. What we have is an implementation problem. I see this in the business world every day. We have meetings where people spend an hour saying nothing tangible and everyone walks out and things stay the same. People go to conferences see amazing speakers, have insightful brainstorming sessions, yet go back to work and forget all of it after dealing with 530 emails.
Approximately 76 per cent of all change efforts in organisations fail and 65 per cent of all strategy is never actioned. The reality is people don’t implement the things they learn: they just keep following the same behaviour patterns over and over again. Why? Most of the information we receive requires us to break it down and make it relevant and we are simply too busy and tired to do this.
I first saw Chris Helder when he was running a full-day workshop on influence and sales. I was immediately struck by his facilitation skills and masterful use of comedy. However, as I watched him present I was stunned by his ability to take concepts, break them down into first principles so that they became practical and easy to implement. He gave the group a suite of tools that they could walk out of the room and implement the very next day. They didn’t need to have more meetings or do more research: they could do it there and then. In fact when I touched base with his client he said that on the Monday morning following the conference he could hear his team use Chris’s techniques and they saw immediate results. Anyone can make a concept complicated: a true genius takes something complex and distils it to make it simple.
I was so impressed by his presentation that I asked Chris to personally mentor me on sales and influence. My business was immediately changed and I still use his techniques today. Just quietly, some of them I use at home too (don’t tell my wife that). Breaking down the e-wall was a revelation to me and saved my business so much time and effort. ‘Sunsets’ made me look at my life differently and altered my behaviour, particularly in my personal life. ‘Positive, positive, positive — negative’ is a technique that I not only use in sales and my presentations, but also in my parenting style.
In this world of inaction, Chris’s work is a breath of fresh air. It just works. It is universal and leads to better outcomes. Enjoy this book and marvel at the complexity in his simplicity.
Dr Adam Fraser, author of The Third Space
Chris Helder is a communication expert and master storyteller whose presentations have radically transformed how thousands of people worldwide communicate with clients, customers, colleagues, family, staff and teams. He has been a professional speaker for 17 years and has given some 2200 presentations around the world.
He is the author of three Wiley best-selling books:
Chris speaks at conferences in the areas of communication, mindset, human potential, leadership, customer experience and, of course, how to influence other people.
Do influence skills matter today?
How important is face-to-face influence in a world of email, text messaging and social media? Clearly influence has changed. But is it still as important as it used to be?
The way that business and sales are done today is without a doubt different from the way it has ever been before. Businesses and brands are embracing the digital age. They are using electronic communications and social media more than ever to promote and sell. We live in a world where decision makers are online and contactable 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Being ‘out of the office’ means nothing any more, as workers engage in a new era of trying to find balance between work and life.
So why then has the ability to influence a sale or an idea often become harder? Why has the timeline to get a contract signed stretched out for so many businesses? This is primarily due to three reasons:
This book is about influencing people in the new reality. It is about embracing change, and at the same time developing outstanding genuine communication skills. It is about giving you those skills of influence.
The skills in this book do not deny anything that is happening in society today and they adhere to the trends of the new reality. I want to deliver a series of tools to help you come up with solutions to break down some of these new barriers. By starting with the acknowledgement that business methodology is different today, this book will help you tackle the reality. I won’t preach a method that does not reflect how sales and influence are done in the real world environment. Your best chance of influencing a decision maker still lies in face-to-face communication.
Often audiences at my presentations are made up of salespeople. They want to increase their ability to influence others, and in the process increase their sales revenue. There are generally two types of salespeople. There are salespeople who love being a salesperson. Those people love prospecting, love the thrill of the chase, love presenting their unique selling proposition and love the buzz of closing the sale and collecting commission. If that is you — you are going to love this book. The fact is that I am going to share with you some tools of influence that flat out work. Your results are going up.
For the second type of salesperson who is interested in influence skills, you have picked up this book for some other reason. You may not see yourself as driven by money or driven by commission. Instead, maybe your role has changed at work in the current economic climate. Suddenly, you are being asked to sell to customers. Perhaps your company has undergone a culture change and they are really driving the bottom line. Perhaps you have had a job change and you are now finding yourself needing to sell something. Maybe this is something you have never really done before and you are looking for some great tips on how to get started. Once again, you will love this book.
This book is loaded with simple tools that will help you meet budget and start down a path of sales and influence that you are comfortable with. At the many sales conferences I speak at, there is always a clear connection between the growth of the business and the ability of the sales team to influence the clients.
Recently, I was presenting at a sales conference in Hawaii. I had finished my talk and I wandered into a sports bar to watch the NBA finals. I sat at the bar and started talking to the man next to me. The conversation started about LeBron James and the level of spice on the buffalo chicken wings we were eating when we began talking business. He was a national sales manager for a global skin care company. He turned to me and asked me a very direct question. ‘Chris, you talk at all these conferences. What do you really talk about? Ultimately, what is it that you believe makes a great salesperson?’
My answer came quickly with congruence. ‘That’s easy,’ I said. ‘The key is certainty and simplicity. Great people of influence are certain about what they believe and they are able to present their message in a way that is simple for people to get their head around.’
He smiled. ‘That is a great answer. You’re right — that’s it.’
The reality, however, is there are a great number of salespeople who are what I call PFNs (product-flogging nerds). You can watch the PFNs in action when their idea of selling is to flip through pages of their proposal. They flip from page to page explaining the graphs that demonstrate market share, company information and increased revenue. Actually, I call these salespeople the PTPFNs (page-turning product-flogging nerds).
Many salespeople put their hand up at this point and claim that they used to be one of those people. They tell me how they used to flip pages, but now they have launched into the 21st century and do their presentations on an electronic tablet such as the iPad. One of the first tablet presentations I ever observed with a salesperson flipping pages with their finger and thinking themselves clever completely disengaged the client. The salesperson was failing to look at and connect with their client. Ultimately, they were simply an IPPTPFN (iPad page–turning product-flogging nerd) and they failed to do the one thing that really makes a difference. They failed to influence that client.
Other people might have picked up this book to improve their leadership skills. Perhaps you find yourself having to manage people and bring them together for a common goal. Many people are thrust into roles at work and in life where they are suddenly expected to lead people. This is often a terrifying moment when people are stricken with self-doubt. That is totally normal and, congratulations, you are in the right place! This book will give you an understanding of people that will allow you to manage them more effectively and ultimately influence the people that you work with to achieve the best results.
At the leadership conferences that I speak at, there is always a clear connection between the leader’s influence skills and the results of the team. As the saying goes, ‘Great organisations grow from the top, and a fish rots from the head.’
You may, however, be an experienced leader who is simply looking for an edge. The tools in this book have helped CEOs and managing directors improve their ability to influence and control outcomes. It is critical that the leadership team is equipped with the tools to lead the team to success. If the leadership team is not willing to work on influencing skills, results go down and staff retention levels plummet. This book will give leaders the tools to identify what is driving each member of the team and provide ideas on how to drive results with each of those team members.
I have had the privilege of giving more than 2300 presentations to audiences in the last 17 years as a professional speaker. I have presented throughout Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Europe and the United States. One of the exciting parts of my job is the variation in the companies that I have worked with. I have spoken at conferences throughout the finance industry, insurance, real estate, mortgage broking, pharmaceutical, software, wine, travel and many more.
Let me ask you a question. If you could improve your ability to influence people, would your business grow? Do you currently hide behind the e-wall? Is it time to increase your face-to-face time and get in front of people to get the results you deserve? Are you a person who simply wants to get your own way more often?
This is a book about how to influence other people. It is time to recognise the appropriate time to utilise technology and the appropriate time to meet face to face. It is also time to make sure that when you do meet in a direct environment that you have the influence skills to get the result that you want.
By the way, I am a firm believer that if things are presented in a simple way, change can happen very quickly. Therefore, I have picked my favourite influence tools that I talk about at conferences and put them together in this book. Some of these tools will help you understand your customers and some will help you understand yourself. In this book there are some language tools that will help you influence others, and some that will help you get through a random Tuesday with greater effectiveness.
I hope you enjoy this book!