With very few exceptions, successful people are 100% dependent on others for what they seek to accomplish. Unfortunately, most people still think of selling as a one-man show. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A true win is a win-win. Everybody knows that by now. "Win-win" has almost become an outdated hype - a worn out buzz word. However, successful people not only help others succeed through win-win, but they also establish a powerful connection with individuals, which has great value by itself. How do we build such relationships? (Remember, we're not talking about superficial friendships, but emotional and mutually meaningful bonding strength.)

A small but important part of succeeding with others is proactive networking. Effective networking involves five key principles. Each of them is possible to execute in simple actions as listed:

Please note how each principle has a specific action listed (as an example) that illustrates how it's possible to execute in real life.

One tool only

With today's technological tools it's easy to end up using several platforms and utilities to maintain contact details of key people. If we want to make tools effectively serve us and not the other way around, then we need to consolidate and make them work seamlessly together or eliminate those who cannot be integrated. With contact details in more than one place we allow technology to set limits to how many people we can reach, especially long term.

Care about all

Always remember that key people are mostly found in surprising positions. Top executives are important through the role they fill, but we've found that they're seldom the most valuable contacts long term; when they lose their position they sometimes completely lose their "value" - at least through the eyes of a cynic.

Always remember that our basic perception of people shines through no matter what we say or do. If we truly care about people because people have value in themselves, then that's the energy and message that radiates from us. That's what our surroundings pick up and sense. We simply need to be authentic in caring about others and the world will return the favor when we most need it. We care, not because it pays off to care, but because everyone around us has equal value as individuals. (That's something cynical power fighters don't understand, maybe because they never really cared in the first place.)

Law of reciprocity

...means "what we do comes back to us". Notice that the action linked to this principle is "create value by connecting people and specifying opportunities that they share". You'll find that once you connect people, two causal effects often hit in:

1. You'll quickly become part of the potential business
2. People will return the favor and identify possibilities you yourself did not see

One-on-One

Few understand how complex human interaction really is. If you want to connect with people, one of the most basic principles to live by is to stay personal. Friendships are personal, they are what one person shares with another. If you include others, you'll increase the energy of the social setting, but you dilute the opportunity to exchange personal emotions and feelings. Of course we need both settings, but when it comes to connecting with others, one-on-one is by far the most significant arena.

Always available

Being dependable is being there when someone needs you. Frequently, human need will vanish as quickly as the need arises. This means, someone might need information at an instant, immediate advice or a supporting shoulder for which reason they contact you. If you're available, you become the solution - a valuable individual in their life, there and then. If you're unavailable, because the need is instant and "overwhelming", they will call on someone else. Being unavailable quickly becomes lost opportunities, that others pick up simply because they were approachable instead of you.

These five principles, coupled with "the actions that belong to them" are only but a fraction of what connection is all about. However, they are the essence of an effective networker. Do remember - networking is not down to technique; networking is about being sincere, loyal and a believer in "the good stuff" that's inside each of us... In one word, building TRUST!

All of us are into manipulation to some degree, especially when we run out of options to persuade others.

You may be thinking: "I'm not!" Yes, unfortunately you are, too. Every day! We even do it without knowing. Here's what happens and why.

Every day we encounter something we really want. It could be food, recognition, love, you name it – any unmet need out there, small or great. When we're in a situation where we feel we REALLY need something our brain begins to look for ways to reach our objectives. Or to phrase it simpler; when we want something we automatically look for ways to get it.

This drive to satisfy constant needs is so powerful, it takes place mostly in our subconscious mind. Thus, without knowing it, what we do from minute to minute is inspired by wanting something. (You may say: "I just want others to be happy". That too is wanting something.) Ironically, almost every little need involves people around us, in some way or another. Most of our needs are in fact met through interaction with others, i.e. a great deal of persuasive effort on our part takes place without us even being aware of it. We're actually engaged in selling or negotiating activity the majority of our waking hours, but we don't think of it that way, because we're not aware.

The tricky thing is, the more we want something the more emotional we tend to get. Emotions and feelings are by nature counterproductive to logical thinking. Feelings alone can cloud our reasoning and limits our ability to rationally interact with others. Feelings without logic represents an imbalance. Therefore, it is the ability to sense and truly understand the needs of others that tips the lever back in balance. When we see the world from the outside, we enable ourselves to return to logic, or rather to include logic. To be in balance we need both feelings and logic – emotions and awareness – a constant view of the inside and the outside. This is how our brain actually works. It has these two sides, but mastering both certainly isn't easy. Truly effective (PERSUASIVE) people apply brainpower to balance feelings and emotions (ENERGY) with logic and awareness (SENSITIVITY).

So why do we turn to manipulation?

Manipulation easily occurs when there's an imbalance between what we feel and what we perceive. For example, when we want something and only perceive a limited number of ways to get it, we sometimes allow our "overwhelming" feelings to overrule logical thinking. Even though we know it's wrong (our inner compass tells us so) we are convinced by the imbalance of emotions and awareness to justify cheating. Cheating could for instance be plain lying, withholding facts, raising our voice, tricking someone or putting on some kind of act etc. The ways in which we can cheat is an endless list.

How can we become a Principal of Clean Influence (PCI)?

The question is a big one, and the answer consequently important. I believe mastering "clean persuasion" – i.e. not manipulative – is a lifelong process. In fact, I believe it is life itself. Just think of it: What is the main concern of a dying man? In essence he returns to the naked baby he was when he entered life. His concern is what he leaves behind and what he brings along; both the right brain – love and emotions and the left brain – knowledge and awareness. What is the only thing that matters, the only thing that lasts, the only thing that makes a difference? It is that which guides and develops our persuasive abilities – how we channel energy in our loving and learning.

I know sales people who, when they learn about the Emotional Commitment (EC), want this without paying the price to get it. The price to pay is a price to pay and it is first and foremost this: We need to be sincere.

What does being sincere mean?

Judging from the diagram and illustration on the process of reaching a solid commitment, sincerity is a three-step process to becoming truly sensitive:

1. First we need to know what we want
2. Then we need to understand what others want
3. Finally we need to stay objectively tuned in to outside impressions

Intuitively and quite naturally, most people instantly react to the above mentioned order by saying: "That can't be right! We first need to understand others, then we can seek to be understood." My response is: You're totally right. However, this is not about understanding first - it's about first knowing what we want. It's being aware of who we are, about having a mission and purpose - an identity. Without an identity we don't even have the internal security and perspective that it takes to begin the process of understanding others.

Someone trying to promote a product without first having true insight into oneself (e.g. the product or company), can never progress to step two of understanding others. This is true in both a micro or macro perspective. HERE is the main flaw and where most sales people fail. We get it wrong from the very beginning by promoting something we're not convinced about ourselves. It's almost like being without mission and purpose. Only when done in the right order can we become truly caring for others and sincere in our interaction. This sincerity is what ultimately makes it possible to interact with others in such a way that we can reach an Emotional Commitment (EC). If we're not sincere, hypocrisy will inevitably surface. The subconscious picks it up instantly and we fail.

And by the way - all of this relates to not only selling, but every aspect of life; a happy marriage, teaching children, management, politics etc. I'll say it again: First we need passion, then we seek connection. These two precede the ability to innovate by the power of intuition touching the inside and most personal level of others. That which stimulates deep ownership to a commitment - emotional commitment!

The ability to shed a tear in behalf of someone else is growing rare these days, but probably among the key characteristics of true greatness. The degree to which we maintain or increase our sensitivity is a deciding factor to real influence.

Every so often all of us encounter people who appear arrogant and somehow insensitive. Without exception we also find they have limited positive energy. Positive energy can only grow if we grow in our ability to feel for others. Please consider the illustration below. Influence comes with energy, but energy is irrevocably linked to the degree of sensitivity. If we're unable to sense the feelings of others, we'll never reach higher than the first level of energy. Unfortunately we find a lot of professionals able to excite others, but it very seldom goes beyond that point. Why? Because they are consumed with self.

If we want to reach other people we need to exert strength and attention beyond our own world of concern. In other words, we need to put ourselves in the shoes of others. The popular term for it is empathy, but empathy is limited by the word itself. In the diagram we can see how empathy ("others") is but half way. If we want to reach energation and really strong commitment in others we need to move beyond empathy and become one with the shared reality around us - "external perception". This is when we tune in to outside impressions that allows us to become emotionally involved and mutually affected.

What do we do if the other person has feelings and has gone through hardships beyond what we ourselves have experienced? Is it possible to understand and empathize, when this is the case? The answer is "YES". If we do what is required to reach higher energy levels, we'll also be able to understand pain we didn't suffer ourselves. It's true! and it makes life richer to live. However, most of us are unwilling to do so because it causes us to share the distress of others. It hurts.

So what does this have to do with selling? Everything! Most sales people make their sales on the first level (see diagram). They'll get commitments and sign contracts based on passionate behavior, but the sale doesn't mean anything to them more than getting their paycheck and bonus. Just take one minute - think through all the contracts you signed with clients. Which ones do you remember? Which of them leaves you with positive feelings? If there are any, it will be those where you engaged yourself on the personal side and received reciprocally - the same feelings were exchanged. You built a relationship. You reached stronger commitments and harnessed greater value.

When we consider the balance between energy and sensitivity a lot of questions are answered and the sale becomes easier and more enjoyable. We practice SBP = SPP ;-)

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A number of years ago I was in charge of selling a major IT solution to an important account. Every person involved on the customer side was in favor of our solution. Even board members were completely sold on what we had to offer. When the decision was to be made I was surprised by a new-hire that was assigned the role of decision maker. His mission and purpose was to make sure everyone could feel his power and authority. As a result his best option was to oppose what everyone wanted and opt for a competing solution. Reason and logic was thrown out the window. The chosen solution became a tool to reach other objectives than what the solution was meant to do for the organization. From this I learned an important lesson:

The decision maker is king and ultimately the only person whose feelings really matter. However, every so often the decision maker is not the one with the strongest energy tied to the final outcome. If we want to win business we need to know who has the most feelings tied to what is going to happen as a result of what we offer. This will point out which one of the stakeholders is most effective in affecting the outcome.

Even the most complex sales are about the feelings of the individual. Every decision is the sum of all feelings in an account. All people with influence on the end result will have a private agenda. That private agenda is subjective, and the subjective view of each person is tied to feelings. Let no one tell you anything else. If every person that's involved in the decision feels good about what you're proposing, then you can forget about the rational and objective reasons working against you.

Feelings always precede commitment. In complex sales every contract is the result of a shared commitment signed by the decision maker. To get to this commitment one type of balance is critical, and it's a balance that is superior to everything we do in sales - always - the balance of sensitivity and energy.

Sensitivity is 50% of who we are in communication. It's about being aware of energy. It's about being a receiver of energy. It's the filter through which we pick up and perceive information.

Energy is the other 50% of who we are in communication. It's about needing and looking for sensitivity. It's about finding a receiver of energy. It's information and the driver of information itself that always penetrates depending on the sensitivity of the receiver.

We need both. How these need to be balanced is what I'll share next time ;-)

Last Saturday I spoke to a large gathering of people in the financial sector. The place was packed. I was impressed by how they returned my vibes. The room was truly filled with some unspoken energy. It was visible in the eyes of each one. Everyone could sense it. Don't you love it when a crowd carries you through a keynote session like that?

By the end I had people asking me about specific cases in which they would like to apply the 3 Energies (3E). They experienced what I call a Born Buying Desire (BBD). It happens when our inside passion is triggered - when mind and heart begins to run in sync - when energy and sensitivity are both increasing and in balance. These are the first fruits of passion and are critical elements for any public speaker to be aware of. However, the BBD is but the first step and only the beginning.

To me it's always disappointing to see how most speakers are satisfied with just the Born Buying Desire (BBD). When they're in front of their listeners and get some kind of enthusiastic response, they feel they've achieved their objective. How long do you think that feeling lasts inside them? Do you want me to tell you?

The Born Buying Desire is not the object nor the end. Why? BBD has no lasting effect unless an individual commitment is tied to it. In my experience the BBD pretty much follows normal retention rates, i.e. it depends on how much you've encouraged participation. This means that a good keynote is both forgotten and has lost its emotions within an hour, regardless of how much energy was exchanged. What's left is not enough to inspire action, unless a commitment is made while the mind and feeling is still there.

Here's what we need: No public speaker should ever leave their listeners without challenging each individual participant to some kind of specific action related to the subject. Ideally, we should establish Subjective Linkage (SL) and Emotional Commitment (EC), but unfortunately few know how to do so. Why is that? Because most speakers are not responsible for the follow up and results of what they started.

No sale nor change in behavior occurs without follow up on the BBD level. Next time you're in charge of a keynote session, always ask beforehand how it will be followed up, to make sure you indeed will influence your students, not merely generate a temporary desire.

I rest my case ;-)

I just did another training session with a bunch of great sales people in Voss yesterday. One focus during this session was customer commitment, often referred to as 'the advance'. Complex sales typically have longer sales cycles, and what mostly suffers is how the client is not challenged to help advance the sale from visit to visit. If only the sales person is committed, then no real progression is made and a lot of time is wasted. Eventually the case is lost.

Here's a summary on how we help someone commit - be it a client, a colleague, friend or family member:

1. Never EVER enter a call without deciding beforehand what you want the person to do (both a maximum and an alternative minimum commitment).
   • Make sure the challenge is something that requires specific action.
   • Adjust your planned commitment if the conversation indicates you should.
2. Always focus the initial effort on nurturing a Born Buying Desire (BBD) through passion.
   • Are you convinced yourself?
   • Is your message important to the other person? Why? How do you know?
3. When positive vibes have become the main carrier of information exchange seek to establish Subjective Linkage (SL) through connection
   • Can you get the other person one-on-one, then do so!
4. Involve the other person in problem solving through the optimal dialog. Go for the Emotional Commitment (EC) when feelings are mutual.
   • Help the other person commit to a deadline.
5. Do not leave until you have received a firm commitment. If he or she will not commit, find out why?

The model in one of my previous blog posts illustrates how these steps are linked to our level of energy and sensitivity.

In short, here's a summary: Decide on a commitment, trigger a desire, connect and find out the agenda, make it emotional and end with a challenge. When we do it this way, we're affected positively ourselves also and both parties are happy. It becomes an uplifting experience that inspires action.

The highest level and strongest way in which we tie someone to a promise is Emotional Commitment (EC), the result of energation. Most of the time, people instantly think they understand and therefore perceive this as being "fairly straightforward", and I wish it would be! However, to get this kind of dedicated promise from someone we need to understand energation - the means by which we reach this level of dedication in others.

Emotional Commitment (EC) doesn't just happen by chance - it needs energation as its "engine" to drive it forward. Energation itself hinges on two basic capacities:

1. Sensitivity
2. Energy

To be specific, this means:

1. how sensitive we are a) to self, b) to others and c) to external impressions
2. the energy driving a) our behaviour, b) our relationships and c) revealed problem solving

When sensitivity and energy are balanced we move communication in the direction of energation, or rather, we "energate". This means we move the dialog, balancing energy and sensitivity, in a growing degree of mutual dedication through three levels:

The first level of (customer) dedication is the Born Buying Desire (BBD). The second level of (customer) dedication is the Subjective Linkage (SL). The third level of (customer) dedication is the Emotional Commitment (EC).

Today I'd like to share a quick story to illustrate how BBD and SL precede Emotional Commitment (EC), which is the third and crowning fruit of energation:

I was once involved in providing a major ERP solution to an industrial corporation. They had accepted my invitation to come visit and present what we had to offer (a BBD had been triggered). As the meeting progressed we began to discuss and share how several of the key people in the project were heavily affected by weaknesses in the current information systems. They spent way too much time at the office and were unable to put work behind them when they came home. Their family life was suffering and many other personal matters were also put out in the open (SL was beginning to take effect). At this point we moved into a discussion of how the new solutions should be applied to solve these problems. A stack of suggestions triggered new thinking and ideas from the client that even I had never thought about or seen as possible. These discoveries on the client side caused ownership to grow minute by minute. At the end I was asked to fulfill a number of commitments and any action I needed from them was eagerly accepted. It had become their project and in their interest more than mine (EC).

The Emotional Commitment is where follow up is turned around. Before we get to follow up the customer by the specified deadlines, the customer calls us to make sure we're doing what we're supposed to, making sure we stay on a steady course to contract and delivery. This is what we want! It's commitment on an emotional level.

Finally, a warning. Whenever energy and sensitivity is not balanced, i.e. when either energy or sensitivity is too high or too low, negative energy immediately surfaces. The outward expression or evidence of this is some kind of rejection - what I call "malfunctioning dialog". For a visual illustration of this absolutely critical balance see the diagram below, taken from "The 3 Energies Behind Sales Success".

Do you ever find that some people are hard to connect with? Sure you do. Everybody does!

Most of us are sensitive in this respect. If there's someone we don't get along with, even though we might not admit to it, we spend a lot of our strength on trying to figure out why.

If your relationship with another person is "in minus", it doesn't really matter what you say - any statement will be perceived negatively by default. Why? Because communication is a function of feelings. That's what I mean by the word 'connection'. Thus, the number one thing to do, regardless of what the circumstances might be, is to approach the challenge from the angle of feelings, and not with words. It's how people feel about each other that carries all communicates between them. In other words, what we say is colored and influenced through an "emotional filter".

When it comes to customers, clients and partners, even though we might think it's purely business, there's really no such thing. Even the most "rational" people are feelings only. They might try to separate emotions and logical reason, but in the end of the day, a relationship remains sensitive by how we feel about the other. That's why, from a practical perspective, at any given time we need to give the highest priority to actions that touch people on a personal emotional level e.g.:

• expressing confidence and faith in others
• being kind and polite in small and simple every-day matters
• showing empathy and care
• complimenting others whenever there's an opportunity to do so
• being ourselves (not something we're not) and relaxed
• sincerely apologizing when we falter
• never speaking ill of others
• refraining from irony
• being quick to laughter and slow to criticism

The list could be much longer. What we should remember, is; it's not the behavior listed per se, but rather the indirect result that makes the biggest difference - improved communication through an emotional and personal connection. A real connection!

I've been in business and sales long enough to understand that individual contracts, in the long run, are worthless. What matters is our connection to others. That's what remains - a personal relationship is the long term result of any sale made.

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If we want to reach others we need to balance energy (sending out signals) and sensitivity (picking up inbound signals). What does this mean and how does it work in real life?

The balance between energy and sensitivity is summed up in two basic concepts:

1. Selling Buying Pleasure (SBP)
2. Selling Product Pleasure (SPP)

These two need to stay balanced if we are to succeed in any persuasive effort. Here's a story to illustrate the importance of SBP=SPP.

							I once went into the shop to buy shoes. Before I entered I already had a specific pair in mind, or at least the type of shoes I wanted. Once I came inside and had a look around I was soon approached by a pleasantly smiling lady, willing to help me with whatever I needed. She assisted me in trying on a great variety of shoes. Soon, however, I found myself not comfortable and decided to leave the store. What in the world just happened, I thought? Didn't I already decide I was going to buy my shoes here? (I'd done so many times before!)

It wasn't until years later that for some reason the incident came back to me - when a dear friend of mine pointed out a simple but important aspect of buying and selling. He said: "You know, people love to buy, but they hate being sold to". Looking back I suddenly realized, that's exactly what happened. The lady in the store was service minded - her intentions, I'm sure, were noble and all - but her eager approach and "too much" attitude simply put me off.

I believe "the perfect sale" at least must have that one element in it - the maintaining of the buyer's desire to buy, not to be sold to.

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