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No doubt, at some point in your career, you’ve been in the presence of people who exude confidence and control; nothing seems to knock them off center. In high stakes situations, they make everyone around them feel calm and cool. Their demeanors not only demonstrate leadership and authority, they command attention. Like the Pied Piper, they persuade people to buy into their ideas and support their causes.
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It’s tempting to believe these influential leaders possess inherent character traits that most people don’t have; that somehow these special folks are born with super powers reserved only for a select few. But you’d be wrong to think that. In fact, the command and confidence influencers have that allows them to step into a room and grab people’s attention are qualities anyone can learn. If you want to leave a lasting impression, nothing beats knowing your audience well, knowing what they want and giving it to them. Here are three ways to do just that.
Know Who You’re Speaking To First
Speaker and master presenter and emcee, Mark Jeffries, believes the first hurdle anyone must clear when seeking to influence others is knowing exactly who they are and what they want.
“The person in front of you (is) immersed in their own world. They have their own problems, their own challenges, their own deadlines,” Mark says. “When you’re pitching your idea, you have to be smart enough to stop for a second and say: what is this person actually looking to buy before I even try to sell them anything?”
Influencers do their homework first. They know their audience well and know what they need. They know the problems they solve and whether or not they can solve their audience's particular problems. As a result, they can walk into any room with confidence knowing they can navigate a situation with certainty and poise. And that confidence adds to their influence.
Seek To Understand
How many times have you met someone who is totally focused on their own agenda and doesn’t want to hear what anyone else has to say? Instead of being curious about divergent opinions, he's critical and argumentative. Rather than being persuasive and inviting, that person is abrasive and drives customers away.
Salespeople who are only worried about meet their quotas by trying to sell customers something they don’t need engage in what I call “push selling”; that type of selling repels rather than attracts people. It's offensive and off-putting. No one wants to be around that kind of energy.
Steve Benson, founder and CEO of Badger Maps describes it like this:
“I think sales people don’t understand their customers' businesses nearly enough and therefore they can’t really connect with them and can’t connect with their problems. They don’t understand the client well enough.”
If you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them first. When people feel understood, they are more likely to lean your way and are more likely to trust what you say because they know you took the time to understand their issues.
Rehearse
If you’re walking into a high stakes situation, the last thing you want to do is wing it. Professional athletes would never run onto a field without having practiced their plays. Professional actors wouldn’t take the stage without rehearsing their lines. So why would you walk into a meeting not knowing in advance what you’re going to do and say?
And yet, salespeople and presenters do it all the time. They walk into a meeting without having done any prepwork. They jot down a few notes the night before (or worse, the day of) and consider that an acceptable form of preparation. At best, they embarrass themselves. At worst, they waste their audience’s time with disjointed, often inarticulate, pitches that make them look like amateurs. That tactic certainly doesn’t make for a great, lasting impression.
My friends and colleagues Amy and Michael Port run Heroic Public Speaking. They train some of the most exceptional speakers on the planet. Michael's book, Steal the Show, is a brilliant resource for anyone who does public speaking - and that's you anytime you are not speaking to yourself, alone.
Michael and Amy teach that top performers rehearse their performances forward and backward. When you know your material well enough, you can focus on impacting the audience. This quiets fears and insecurities, and allows you to be fully present for your audience. By preparing in advance and focusing on your audience, it demonstrates that you care about the experience of your audience. Talk about influence.
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Bonus tip: Be nice
People are more likely to pay attention to you, if you’re likeable. As the old adage goes: People do business with people they like. So be the likeable person.
“So often I see somebody in front of me who is just not likeable,” says Mark Jeffries. “At the end of it, you want everyone to walk out saying what a nice bloke or what a nice woman she was. I would trust her to the end of the world and back.”
It's Your Turn
How do you command attention? What elements do you think are needed to create a great, lasting impression? Share your thoughts on Twitter, LinkedIn, or in the comments.
