What is the process when you’re trying to influence someone?
Everything we understand about our reality, the way we perceive the world around us, the way we interact with other people in our world, is based on two basic things.
Your experiences and your education.
Your understading is based on those two things. The personal experiences you had and the interactions you had and the education from the people who may know more or have been to places you haven’t been.
When we’re trying to influence (not to be confused with manipulation, deception, or illusion), we are attempting to shift someone’s reality.
So if they’re dealing with a pain or they’re dealing with a struggle, we are trying to show them a reality where that doesn’t exist. So your product may be the one that provides that reality shift.
Before the iPhone, people didn’t think they needed a smart phone. But today a lot of people can’t see a world without it. They need to now stay connected and notified of every email and other people’s social media posts. People were shown a reality they didn’t know existed and Apple shifted their reality.
We’re trying to show them a path to a reality that they don’t yet understand or yet believe in. And in order to do that, before we can do any of that, we got to understand where they are at now. How do they currently perceive the world. What’s their education and what has been their experiences.
Once we understand that, once we’ve clearly defined this is whom I’m trying to attract, this is who I’m trying to influence and persuade. Here is where they come from and here’s the way they view the world.
Now we can construct a method for shifting that reality. We can construct a compelling future, a compelling reality for them that they didn’t otherwise have. That’s they key to influence. It is understanding the way people perceive the world and crafting a message, crafting everything we do building celebrity and authority around that.
So remember that if you don’t know where your clients at, where your customers are at, if you don’t know what they believe, why they believe it, you got to figure it out first. That’s critical for you.
“Selling is essentially a transfer of feelings.”
Zig Ziglar