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How-To Guides

How to Influence without Positional Authority and Improve Employee Morale Using 3 Simple Strategies

We know what you’re thinking…”Influence without positional authority” sounds like an oxymoron and if uttered in the organization, you believe you will have employees wondering about your sanity.

Everyone knows that the only way you will get things done in an organization is to use your authoritative position as a reason for your employees (and others) to listen to you.

Right?

Well – no.

We’re telling you right now, influence without positional authority is not only possible, it’s essential if you want to achieve anything meaningful in your organization. And, you must exercise it to evoke positive change.

And yes, it can be used with your employees, but it can also be used with you peers and with your boss. We all live in a 360-degree organizational world. We have yet to meet one executive who can achieve the results desired solely by using positional authority

As you delve deeper within this article, you will soon realize that you can motivate others to higher levels of performance and also impact positively not only the morale of your employees, but also the morale of your peers. The result – you get more work done and a higher level of cooperation. It’s not the Holy Grail, but it is a critical ingredient to getting work done in an organization

Influencing without Positional Authority Strategy #1: Build Positive Relationships

We estimate that more than 80% of the time we spend as coaches to high-performance leaders – is spent on helping leaders manage the transition and work their way through performance issues with others.
You will fast-track and gain altitude in your career as a leader when you learn and practice the keys to building strong, effective interpersonal relationships with others. And, it starts with recognizing that nothing happens until a relationship is developed.
Building a relationship includes:
-Having the other person’s best interest in mind – win-win verses win-lose
-Understanding and respecting the other person’s work style and key needs/expectations
-Understanding and respecting personality differences
-Finding areas of mutual interest
-Using exchange principles to enhance the relationship

Influencing without Positional Authority Strategy #2: Honor the Law of Reciprocation

The law of reciprocation involves a mutual value for value exchange. To effectively engage in the law of reciprocation, you must identify what the recipient values. And we have much more to offer than many of us realize. For example:

-Resources —  Money/funding, personnel, space
-Information – Competitive intelligence, industry trends, upcoming changes
-Organizational support – -Providing support and resources for meetings or projects
-Personal support — Being readily available and supportive when a person is stressed, vulnerable or perhaps just needs someone listen to them
-Reliability — Doing what you say when you say you will do it
-Gratitude –Saying thank you, expressing appreciation for a person’s contribution in a way that is meaningful to them
-Excellence in service — Producing beyond the expectation of the other person
-Vision — Identifying the future direction, portraying excitement and confidence in the future, and in the outcome of the project
-Rapid response — This is self-explanatory
-Recognition –It can be an award, a new project assignment or praise at a public meeting

No matter what you offer, it must be meaningful to the recipient. Just because we think we are providing something of value does not mean the recipient agrees with us. To determine what is meaningful, we need to understand issues such as:

•    What do they need to succeed?
•    How are they measured on their performance?
•    How are they rewarded? And what is their greatest reward?
•    Career objectives
•    Their key concerns (or fears if they will share it with you)
•    Key expectations (of their boss, peers, subordinates, their constituents)
•    Recognition / Privacy. Preferences of the individual and considering the culture of the organization
•    Interests outside the organization

This means you must first build a relationship!

Influencing without Positional Authority Strategy #3: Participate in Healthy Conflict

It’s possible that as you work to influence others without positional authority, that conflict will arise. Employees and team members will push back, argue, and disagree?

Let’s face it, some people like to argue, negotiate and play devils advocate. In other words “they love a good fight”.

Take note: Conflict is NOT bad or wrong.  Engaged in the right way, conflict is good. In fact, it’s not only good, it’s essential for organizational growth and development. “Healthy conflict”, that is vibrant and candid leads to:

-Expanding ideas and perspectives
-Identifying more options
-Better decisions
-Inclusion (individual value and contribution) rather than reinforcing exclusion and a natural futility when not being heard

So learn how to appreciate and participate in healthy conflict.

Remember, a successful leadership career requires more that the hard skills we learn in school. Success also requires that we recognize and master the intangibles of successful management. And one of the more powerful intangibles that is important to master is the ability to influence others without authority. It will provide you with leverage and enable you to garner more support than you would ever achieve on your own or through positional authority alone.

About the Authors:

Sara LaForest and Tony Kubica are management consultants with more than 50+ years of combined experience in helping organizations improve their business performance. They say that trying to influence with positional authority is just one way to sabotage your business. Get their complete “Self-Sabotage in Business White Paper” at: http://www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com/resources.php and uncover the common, subtle ways you are harming your performance.

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How-To Guides

How to Target Your Marketing Efforts and Master Your Business Niche

If you want to make more money in today’s competitive environment, then you need to master your business niche. Let me show you a perfect, prime example of niche marketing at its best:

The AARP card appeared in the mail again. This time I actually opened the envelope and reviewed the material included with the invitation to join. Offers of insurance, magazines, on-line registrations and general information related to aging spilled out across the table. Everything in the packet maintained the specific intent of enticing a middle age person to join the group dedicated to senior citizens.

A scant five years ago, I wouldn’t have acknowledged the promotional material. It would have been swept into the nearest garbage can as I briefly wondered why this organization wasted its marketing dollars on me. Now, as I scan the introductory letter, the supporting messages delivered in the envelope are beginning to make sense. I’ve discovered that the magazine is dedicated to providing me with information on medical advancements for cholesterol control, suggestions to slim the middle age bulge and tips to improve my memory. That last one caught my attention.

Startled, I realized that I aged into the targeted demographic of The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and didn’t feel it coming on. When, for god’s sake, did I stop being 35? AARP knew it would happen and patiently primed the pump for several years as it waited for me to emotionally recognize that my body and brain would change. My perspective would alter and this organization graciously waited until it was needed.

Now, that’s niche marketing!

When is Niche Marketing Most Effective?

Niche marketing is most effective when you immerse yourself in a specific topic area and then start building your reputation for being a thought leader on that specific topic. It may sound intimidating, but in reality, all it demands is focus.

Nido Qubein, a recognized business strategist and forward thinker coined the term “Intentional Congruence”. He stresses that everything you do in your business must tie into everything else you do. It’s about having intent and purpose to intimately understand what you are doing and why.. Without understanding who you help and why you are doing what you do, how can you expect anyone else to know?

5 Elements to Identifying and Building Your Business Niche:

1. Create an inventory of your strengths. Identify how you relate to people and get specific in your values. List what you already know and what you need to learn to position yourself as an expert in your field. Describe the specific abilities you possess that are unique to you. Determine where you stand in terms of current finances. And, estimate what financial requirements will be necessary to build your niche with your target market.

2. Select the top two areas you have a passion for pursuing. Without passion or emotional engagement for the subject area, long-term success is unlikely. The ultimate goal is to do what you love, love what you do and make an acceptable living as you do it!

3. Research the two niche areas you’ve identified. Determine: who are the top three businesses or individuals already doing what you want to do? Review their websites and gain a sense of how connected and informed your future competition is. Research the internet fully to gain a sense of topic areas, product offerings and customer/client “reach out” efforts. Identify what is already in place and focus on those areas you feel are underserved.

4. Build a resource inventory. Contact business professionals as needed to build alliances. Create opportunities to interview people or hire whoever might be necessary to fine tune your business plan or fill in the gaps of knowledge on areas that are critical in establishing you as an expert. Offer your services to other business professionals as well. Just because you are new to a niche, doesn’t mean you are lacking expertise. They simply don’t know about you yet! Building relational capital with others who thrive in the market you wish to enter is always beneficial to everyone who participates.

5. Put your stake in the ground and claim your position within your targeted niche. Here’s how…

o Start offering your knowledge to the masses by using social media liberally.
o Become a fan of expert pages and register to participate in other List Serves that focus on your area of expertise.
o Read and post to other expert blogs on your topic.
o Write articles focusing on your area of expertise and submit them for online publication. You can go to www.TryMyFreeArticleTemplates.com/karel for 3 free article templates.
o Make every opportunity to interview other industry experts by teleseminar and provide those to your clients as additional resource material.
o Build an accessible on-line library that is exploding with information for your customers and clients.
o Create surveys for completion by your target market to gain knowledge through research and insight that is unique to you. Publish a white paper or report annually that includes this research.

Now, you have the keys to dominating your business niche. Nothing is holding you back from being the expert, knowing your target market and maintaining a gentle helping hand. You are in charge of designing and maintaining a world of comfort for your customers and customers. You can make their lives easy because they now have you – the expert to rely on.

About the Author:

Karel Murray is a Certified Speaking Professional, author of “Hitting Our Stride: Women, Work and What Matters” and business trainer who helps women entrepreneurs and executives improve their overall business effectiveness and productivity. Now, you can listen to her exciting, free interviews at http://www.JustiForaMoment.com. Each podcast interview gives you 3 takeaway ideas or concepts that you’ll be able to implement right away

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How-To Guides

How to Influence Employees to Get Things Done Correctly on Time Without Using Positional Authority

Can you achieve results without authority?

The simple answer is yes.

The challenge is how to do it.

Each of us have a limited amount of authority. And the positional authority that comes with our title enables us to have some influence, but far less than what is required to get the work done. In order to get things done on time and with the highest quality expected so you can meet the demands and expectations of our customers and those with whom we work, we need to rely on others. And to do that, we need influence – but the right kind of influence.
Influence is a Leadership Quality and a Management Skill.

Influence is the ability to achieve our objective (to get work done) when we do not have complete control or enough authority to accomplish our objective. Influence is not manipulation. Done well and done right, influence is also not:

o A demonstration of power
o A method to gain greater control
o A way to promote your personal agenda
o A way to look good to others in the organization
o A means of self-promotion

Influence is about mutuality.

While influence is a powerful tool for getting work done, there are barriers that can stand in your way of influencing others. These barriers cause us to rely on positional authority to get things done.
10 Barriers You Need to Overcome to Influence Employees and Your Peers

1. Fear – This is the number one issue that stops us from using influence to get work done. And fear appears in many forms. It can be the fear of failure, the fear of being rejected, the fear of appearing foolish, the fear that we are not good enough. Regardless of what you are afraid of, fear stops us dead in our tracks. We don’t succeed, we don’t exert influence because we’ve convinced ourselves before we even start that we may not or will not be successful.

2. Inability to develop real relationships — People work with people they like. They buy from people they like. They provide support to people they like. To think otherwise is to miss an important component of organizational success. It is impossible to exert influence on someone with whom you have not developed a real and positive relationship.

3. Poor responsiveness — The quicker you respond the more responsive you appear. And if response is important to the person you want to influence, you have just made a positive impression on them, and have often added value by a giving them something they were interested in.

4. Overselling – This is not just an issue we see in sales people; it is an issue we see throughout an organization regardless of an individual’s position. Overselling is annoying and it also communicates uncertainty in your position. When a person says yes, and you continue to try to convince them– what are you really communicating?

5. Quitting at No – Now, nobody likes rejection. Yet “no” is sometimes the response we get when the timing of the request is wrong (i.e.,“no, not right now”or “no, I need more information”). Oftentimes, an objection is not a rejection. It’s a request for more information and an opportunity for further discussion. Don’t let no be an immediate lost opportunity.

6. Perfectionism — Too often, we believe that unless a project, proposal, request is perfectly framed, it cannot move forward. This is dead wrong. Perfection sends an unintended message of you being indecisiveness and in the worse case it can create immobilization. While you may believe you are striving for perfection, the other person wonders what’s taking you so long.

7. Over-Expressing Personal Beliefs — Some managers and executives just can’t seem to keep their opinions to themselves. Have you heard a manager criticize their peers, their tenants, their subcontractors with statements such as “they just don’t get it”. Another danger is to express personal political or social beliefs such as “the democrats version of healthcare is socialized medicine” or “teachers are overpaid and they underperform”. Expressing personal beliefs has a way of tearing through an organization and irritating others. (By the way, these two examples are examples only and do not reflect either of our beliefs.)

8. Lack of Focus — It’s difficult to get work done or to garner much respect if you go from one project to another; one idea to another; one strategy to another and finish nothing. Often people will just give up, quit listening or no longer support your efforts.

9. Poor Impression Management (Executive Presence) — This is not just about looking the part. It’s about being the part. It’s about managing your image thoughtfully and not artificially. Like it or not, unsuitably presented, tired, overweight, out of shape, sloppy people present a poor and unconvincing image.

10. Lack of Gratitude — People like recognition; they like to know they are appreciated; they like to be noticed in a positive way. Ignore this at your peril. Remember, if you are unwilling or think it’s unnecessary to recognize and express appreciation for others, your chance of influencing them is remote.
Is One of the Top 10 Barriers Holding You Back From Influencing Others?

We have often found that one or more of the above behavioral traits is present in individuals who believe (or who others believe) are less successful then they either want to be or can be. These behaviors are the intangibles that inhibit good performance.  We believe these intangibles are so important to recognize and attend to (if you see these in your own thought processes or behaviors) that should you refuse to address them, you will come up short of exerting the influence necessary to get work done on time the right way.

About the Authors:

Management Consultants and Business Performance Improvement Specialists Sara Laforest and Tony Kubica have 50+ years of combined experience in helping small and large businesses accelerate their business growth in record times. Failure to properly motivate your team is just one way that you can be sabotaging your business. Get the full report on Self-Sabotage in Business now at: http://www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com/resources.php

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Entrepreneurs How-To Guides Online Business Operations

How to Create a Sales Policy That is Fair to ALL of Your Clients

When you start developing your multiple streams of income business by adding products and programs which are available on your website, there’s a very specific policy you need to have in place … and that is a clearly defined Sales Policy.

Before we get into what this is about and why you need it, let me just take a minute to ask you how you would handle the following scenarios:

* You offer a discount to prospective clients of either a dollar amount or percentage off the price of your product/program if they purchase before a certain date.  A client comes to you after the deadline and says they didn’t read your email in time, can they still receive the discount?  What do you say?

* You are offering quite an expensive program so decide to make things easier on your clients by offering a payment plan.  Part way through the payment plan one of your client’s credit cards gets declined.  What do you do?

* You offer a guarantee on your product/program and a client comes to you asking for a refund that is outside of your guarantee period.  What do you say?

As soon as you start selling products and programs online all of these scenarios (and others) become very real – and, yes, I have found myself having to deal with all of the above!

Your Sales Policy is simply a statement which lets your clients and customers know what they can expect from you and how you handle your sales processes.  How your sales policy is structured is entirely up to you; it’s your business and you’re the business owner, but once you’ve decided what those policies are you need to be strong in your implementation.  Having a central page that clearly lays out your sales policies will make the implementation of them far easier (for you) and smoother, and will ensure that you’re being fair to ALL of your clients.

The sort of things you would include in your sales policy are:

* How you handle discounts and coupons that are requested after the deadline.

* How you handle coupons that should have been processed at the time of purchase, i.e. via your shopping cart system.

* How you handle declined credit card transactions (and you will get them when you start offering payment plans).

* How you handle your regular holiday sales.

* How you handle requests for refunds, especially if that request happens after the guarantee period.

These are all situations that you have to consider and assume will happen in your business and therefore you need to plan accordingly.  The best way to do this is by creating a Sales Policy page that is linked to from all of your own sales pages.  You should put it at the bottom of each sales page, but also reference it on the area of your sales page where your customer is just about to purchase.

For example, a great place to link to your Sales Policy page is right underneath where you have your ‘Click Here to order’ button.   Then simply have a sentence underneath that says, “Please see Sales Policy for full details”.

Tip:  Make sure your sales policy page opens in a new browser window so your customer doesn’t lose the sales page when going to review your sales policy.

Once you have your Sales Policy page all set up then should you find yourself in one of the scenarios outlined above, you simply direct your client to your page.  And when you have to say “no” to your client it makes your response a lot less personal and more graceful – especially if you’re having to respond yourself rather than having a team member do it for you.

Having a clearly defined Sales Policy in place eliminates a lot of the stress and frustration of having to deal with these situations, and allows you to be fair to ALL of your clients.

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How-To Guides

How To Run A Sales Meeting With A Prospect: Keep It Simple!

With so many sales articles, sales books, and sales coaching philosophies, it sometimes can be overwhelming and hard to know where to start in terms of how to run your sales meeting effectively.

Many aspects of sales are over complicated. Keep it simple for you and for the prospective client to start seeing better results.
Here are some ways to keep your next sales meeting simple:

Set a simple agenda. Prior to the meeting, email out a very brief agenda, with 3-4 topics you will cover.
ie- current challenges, discovery about those challenges, potential ways your company can address those challenges, and set the next steps.
Be sure to ask if there is anything to add to the agenda before you get the meeting started and get their buy-in that the agenda looks good.

The agenda may read like this:

Agenda
1. Current Goals & Challenges
2. Questions & Discovery
3. Possible Solutions & How We Help
4. Next Steps

Ask simple questions, ask one question at a time and listen. Sometimes the most powerful questions you ask are the shortest and most direct ones. Questions that begin with “what” are generally a good place to start. Take your time listening. Really put your focus on the prospective client and #1 and #2 from the sample agenda above.

Be in the now and in the moment. Most people tend to sacrifice the now because they are worrying about the past or the future all the time. Are you truly listening to the person you are speaking with or are you thinking about what you need to go and do, your emails, your voice mails, or what you are going to say next? The more in the moment and present you can be with your prospect, the more effective the meeting will be. And by the way, they will feel like you listened to them and understand their challenges.

Set simple next steps. Think about how to make things easier for the prospective client by clearly setting out the next steps for partnering together. Make sure the next meeting (phone or in-person) is being set up before you leave the meeting and that you gain a commitment on the next step.

The key here is to keep forcing yourself to look for ways to simplify the meeting and the entire process for the prospect to partner with your organization. If you are not clear, they will be confused and this will only hurt your efforts. Keep looking for ways to make it simple for all parties and you will start seeing better sales results before you know it.

About The Author:
Sales Coaching Expert, Jeremy Ulmer, has helped hundreds of sales professionals, sales leaders, and business owners just like you overcome sales challenges to increase productivity and win more clients faster.
For 100’s of unbeatable, sure-fire ways to increasing your sales results, subscribe for your free sales tips or request a free sales coaching consultation at: http://www.SalesCoachingHabits.com