Back to How to Motivate Yourself articles

How do you influence people? What determines influence? Do you judge it by how others treat you or by what impact you have on those around you? What effect is there because you exist?

Small business owners need to learn how to influence people if they want to survive. However, in order to have more of an impact, influence needs to go beyond just persuading people to buy a product. Businesses that make an influence on society stand out. What positive influences do you want your business to have on your neighbourhood, community or even just within your own social circle?

When clients remember your business, what do you want them to remember? Do you or don't you want to make a difference? You might think you don't, but everything we do affects someone else.

Creating influence means looking at the current norms and finding a way to stand out. It means being courageous enough to be different. Win friends and influence people with these five steps:

1. Realize that people need to do good

Business exists to make a profit, pure and simple. If you don't make a profit, it might as well be a a hobby. Hobbies are often for fun only, and they won't support you or your family. Yet, with all that, we all as individuals, have a responsibility to treat each other the best that we can, and that extends to small business. Helping each other feeds into people's intrinsic need to do good.

Look at this example. One of the best gags Just for Laughs has done involved a blind man asking several passersby to hold his Alsatian while he used a public potty. While the passerby is waiting with the dog, along pulls up a red convertible with a very pretty poodle inside. The Alsatian gets excited, runs towards the car, and breaking his leash, jumps in. The car drives away with the Alsatian, leaving the passerby aghast .

It's not their dog, what happens is not their fault, and yet they feel responsible. They actually wait until the blind man comes out of the toilet to explain what happened. A more callous person would run away or try to explain away their behaviour, but these people don't. They stay and explain what happened. When the blind man explains that it's a gag, their relief is evident. They certainly feel like they've done their good deed for the day.

And that's the same with small business. As smaller businesses, we have ways to make more of an influence because we are much closer to our immediate communities.

2. Realize it's your responsibility

Forget about buyer beware – that's a cop out. If you provide a service or product, it's your responsibility to ensure that it's the best it can be. You can also look beyond your immediate service to see how you can further fulfill your customers' needs. For instance, if you run a shopping centre and notice that teens hang out at your centre, why not provide seminars on how they can build a future, instead of finding ways to throw them out? Or, if you build websites, you know your clients don't just want a web presence, they want good website traffic. So, add to your services research on how their site can get the best rankings and keywords so their business improves.

3. Consider the customer's ultimate good (in the way you choose to do business)

The customer's ultimate good, is to go beyond what they want. If they're buying shampoo, they're not just trying to get their hair clean, they're looking to become attractive, for someone to be attracted to their good looks and love what they see. Try to fill their core needs. In the case of shampoo or any beauty product, the core need is the need for love.

4. What is the norm for your business and how can you break it?

For example, the norm in the online shoe business is to keep the customer close. Zappos, an online shoe retailer broke that norm. If they didn't have what the customer wanted, they honored their policy of giving the customer what they want, even if it was sending them to the competition. This amazed customers and kept them coming back to Zappos to the tune of 1 billion dollars in sales.

5. What matters to you and how can your business help?

Where do you want to make a difference in your community? What do you see needs to be done in your neighbourhood or community? What problems need to be fixed? What skills, experience and resources can you use to help solve the problem?

If you get involved it's true that some may label you as a publicity seeker. So be it. If a difference is truly being made, so what? With any luck, it will translate into better business for you while truly improving life for others – the ultimate win-win solution!

Recommended Reading

	Tweet