In today’s interconnected world you have a much greater ability to influence others across the world than you did in the past. However, if you don’t consciously direct your energy in the right direction for the outcomes you want to achieve, then your efforts may be wasted or have a less profound effect than they could have otherwise achieved.
In this episode of the Influence By Design podcast, we discuss how to be more deliberate with your influence.
We talk about the importance of understanding who your best prospects are, and how to identify and reach out to them. We also discuss strategies for leveraging existing relationships to expand your influence and gain more traction with those you want to connect with.
Finally, we explore ways to adjust your approach in order to keep your audience engaged and excited about what you have to offer.
If you’re ready to up your influence this year, listen in and get some ideas on how you can be more intentional with your influence and build an audience that is eager to follow your lead.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- The negative impact of the word “influencer” (01:39)
- What does it mean to influence (04:32)
- How to build the right audience (06:29)
- How to subtly influence other people (12:49)
- How to personalize your prospect list (15:20)
- The importance of not being manipulative in marketing (19:01)
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- Your current situation and immediate opportunities for growth
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WHERE TO FIND TIM HYDE
- Website: https://winmoreclients.com.au/
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CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
- Facebook: Samantha Riley
- Instagram: @thesamriley
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- Twitter: @thesamriley
TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley Snippet 00:00
We’re not using this information to be manipulative. We’re not using this information to hurt them or force them into doing something that they potentially don’t want. We’re using this information for good. And I really wanted to mention that. Because when we’re always thinking from a place of service, it will be a lot easier to get this right in a way that works and feels authentic and genuine for you,
Tim Hyde Snippet 00:28
By being personal with them, and making them feel special. I think that’s a key thing. If we can’t make our prospects feel special, they’re not gonna get closer and more intimate with us, which is what we need. The closer we get to our sales process.
Samantha Riley 00:45
My name is Samantha Riley, and this is the podcast for experts who want to be the unapologetic leader in their industry. We’re going to share the latest business growth, marketing, and leadership strategies, as well as discussing how you can use your human design to create success in business and life. Inside and out. It’s time to take your influence, income, and impact to the level you know you’re capable of. Are you ready to make a bigger difference and scale up? This is the Influence By Design podcast.
Welcome to today’s episode of Influence By Design. I’m your co host for today, Samantha Riley. And here with my lovely co host, Tim Hyde. How are you today? Tim?
Tim Hyde 01:25
I am fantastic, Sam, we’re a month into the already 2023 kicked off with a bang. And really excited to be here again for another episode sharing some advice, wisdom tips, yeah. All insights,
Samantha Riley 01:39
timely today, we’re going to be talking about how to be more deliberate with our influence. And I think this is a really important subject. Because whether we always realize it or not, we are influencing people. And it could be influencing them in a negative way, influencing them in a positive way. And really what we want to be doing is influencing as many people as we can in a really empowering way. And today, that’s what we want to talk about. Because I think, well, you and I were talking before we hit record about the word influence. And I think that our Instagram influences over the past few years, I don’t even know kind of when the real term of Instagram influencer came about, but it has, I believe had a bit of a negative impact around this word.
Tim Hyde 02:39
Yeah, look, I would agree with you, Sam, I think we’re, we’ve seen a lot of people come into this space that are potentially coming in with a less than altruistic intent. Rather than and I have, to be honest, I have seen a big shift in that. I’ve been, we were talking about some of the trends. And I’ve been jumping into battle 1000 Different shortform reels across pretty much every channel now. And I’m even seeing Facebook, sort of adopt some of the Tick Tock II kind of fun stuff that’s happening. And anytime we engage with other people, whether they be friends, family, clients, partners, prospects, whatever, in some way we are influencing them to an outcome, hopefully, that benefits them in the same way that it benefits us. And there’s that Win Win relationship. And I certainly think that there’s a, maybe a bit of a legacy because of some of the influences that we’ve seen pop up over the last five to 10 years, particularly as social media has become a very much a mainstream channel of engagement that some of those people haven’t necessarily influenced people, you know, with a positive intent.
Samantha Riley 03:56
Totally. I think that there’s a lot of thought when we use the word influencer, there’s a thought of maybe people being a little bit manipulative, maybe people feeling like it’s like, oh, look at me, look at me, me, me, it’s all about me. And that is certainly one type of influencer. But we can be influential without having that thought around us. And I really, are we really want to have this conversation today. Because the, the length the meaning in the dictionary, I don’t know what dictionary This is. But the meaning of influence in the dictionary is the capacity to have an effect on the character development or behavior of someone or something or on the effect itself. So it really is important to remember that we are all influences. And really let’s get what’s the word I’m looking for deliver it with the way that we’re doing this. Yeah,
Tim Hyde 04:54
I think that’s I think that’s a really important thing and being I mean, hence the name of this podcast, influencing By Design being very deliberate and systematic about how we go around influencing people and what that influence is, in the same way that we would look at your kids and go, Well, I want you to grow up to be X, Y, Zed, you know, that’s having an influence on their belief system that’s having an influence on their values is having an influence on their choices. And we do that with our in business as well, we have the same same sort of thing. You know, we have influence over our staff and the results we get from them, we have influence on the people that we work with, in in terms of other partners, prospects and clients. And I know today, so we’re going to focus particularly on influence of prospects, which, of course, we are for other people, as well, not just in terms of us influencing our prospects. But you know, we’re prospects for other businesses as well. And we
Samantha Riley 05:50
absolutely, absolutely know, I know that you went shopping on the weekend, we’ve had a very large discussion before we hit record on vacuum cleaners, which is not what I was expecting to be talking about for about 45 minutes this afternoon. Clearly, clearly, I was very intrigued and asking a lot of questions to entertain that conversation for 45 minutes, because as it so happens, I am in the market for a new vacuum cleaner. But you shared a story about an interaction that you had on the weekend. Can you share a little bit about that? Because I think that will give us the context of what we’re talking about today.
Tim Hyde 06:29
Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve had a Dyson vacuum cleaner for probably the last 1015 years. And one of the things that I always loved we kept going back and buying that a Dyson. I remember years ago, one of the things that really impressed me in a way how Dyson engage with their customers post purchase, was that they sent me a video email 30 days after purchase saying, Hey, Tim, it’s probably about time to change your filter. You may not know how to do this, because you’ve you know, you’re a bloke and you’ve thrown the instructions out
Samantha Riley 07:02
instructions, who needs instructions, instructions.
Tim Hyde 07:05
And you know, here’s a video as a refresher on how to do this particular thing to get the most out of your vacuum cleaner. Anyway, turns out the ones we’ve got is has been dying for a little while now. Doesn’t quite suck as much as it should anymore. And we weren’t in the market for a new vacuum cleaner. Now, for our listeners outside of Australia will probably not know this brand. But we have a retailer out here in Australia, or homeless retailer called domain as one of the big ones I guess, in Australia. And for a long time we’ve shopped at domain and we keep going back to the same store. We don’t necessarily shop around we’ve done some research online like a lot of people. And we were looking at a couple of different vacuum cleaners and decided that we would look at in this case a Samsung Well, speaking of which Samsung offered me after a call to them the other day, they gave me a whole bunch of discounts on about 1000 different things. So inside tip, if you want a discount from Samsung to buy from their online store, call them up first. Okay, as long as you got another Samsung product, you can get a discount for future ones inside tip. Anyway, so we were there. At domaine, we’ve been shopping that in a vacuum cleaner section, there are about 1000 different ones that research says we want to look at these maybe 10. Cause every time you go onto one of those comparison sites, they’re all I’m sure they’re getting kickbacks, whenever I’m being influenced by what I’m reading online about which one I should go for and so on. Anyway, along comes the sales guy who we recognize because he sold us some products previously. And immediately, he says, let’s take a look at a couple of things. Tell me about what it is that you’re looking for. And we go okay, well we’ve got a five bedroom house we’ve got our son and two of his mates living with us at the moment because they their home situations aren’t really ideal. So we’ve got three messy teenage boys plus all their friends and you know and so on and so forth anyway and he says why don’t you come and take a look at this one. And he takes us across in this case to the LG CT zero. No, we’re not getting endorsements from LG but if you’ll do well to get in contact. You know where we are. So look at this thing and that okay, it’s quite amazing. And anyway about after about an you know, 45 minutes of of conversation about pros and cons of different vacuum cleaners. We walk away with his LG courtier and now if you’re watching the video I like this one because it comes with it comes with a mop, vacuum attachment head.
Samantha Riley 09:39
This is the bit that got me excited. You can mop and you can vacuum at the same time. Wow.
Tim Hyde 09:46
Amazing, but we’re talking about the fact that we’ve got carpets and we’ve got lots and lots of timber floors and then there’s, you know, tiles in the bathrooms and so on. He’s going hey, well why don’t you look at this one because this one will really fit what you need and you know that’s it. So five of them. And of course, naturally, we go and buy the top level one because it happens to have also have a docking station that empties the little barrel for you at the same time. And you only have to imbue the little bag once every three to six months, depending on how often you vacuum.
Samantha Riley 10:18
Right? So good.
Tim Hyde 10:20
So I ended up spending 1300 bucks on a vacuum cleaner, which sounds like kind of crazy. But I think that’s
Samantha Riley 10:26
a lot of money for a vacuum cleaner. But there’s a piece of this story that you didn’t share then. So you went back to where you’d always had great service before. The your salesperson has asked you all the right questions. But he also remembered you didn’t he? He did
Tim Hyde 10:43
remember us. So we’ve actually bought a couple of times, not only from that one store, but from the same guy. And he was definitely we’ve we’ve met before, haven’t we? We’ve you know we’ve bought that. And I think he mentioned that. Because it was about 12 months ago, we went and bought a washer dryer as well. And remember you guys bought that washer dryer, didn’t you? Yes, we did. So immediately, we’re feeling a little bit special, because he’s remembering out of like massive deal with hundreds 1000s of customers. Right? It’d be dealing 2030 4050 people every single, every single day. Or week. And if you bought that thing last year, didn’t you? Oh, wow. That’s amazing. Yeah. And I think the thing is, you know that I could have bought any vacuum cleaner. But here he is going very subtly influencing the to buy the top of the line, you know, cordless, called Zero LG stick vacuum cleaner. I’d have given it a name. I think it’s Rick, the stick now.
Samantha Riley 11:52
I’m sure your wife is going to love that. Why doesn’t that surprise me? Yeah. So what I love about this story is right from the second day you walked in, you felt seen, you felt heard. Because you were asked about what you were, you were therefore you felt valued, because the salesperson had remembered dealing with you before. And he felt understood because he was able to point you in the right direction. And I think that that is really the most important piece about influencing, you know, people or or behaviors or, or other things is really helping to create a much deeper personal connection with people so that they do feel seen and heard, valued, and that we do ask the right questions so that they feel understood. Yeah.
Tim Hyde 12:49
One of the examples I’ve I’ve often given to people, when we look at how do we subtly create influence in a buying decision, like, you know, like I was subjected to over the weekend, and we’re all this, this happens to all of us, aren’t we we’ve got our own, you know, predetermined decisions about how we buy and where we fit in the market. But that can be influenced by a really good sales process, which we all do as business owners. And one of the examples I’ve often use is if you go to a deli, for example, right, we’ve all we’ve all seen the deli, there’s a counter, eyeglass counter chock full of cheeses and meats and seafoods and all kinds of, you know, dip salami, yummy stuff, right, which we look at and go, Wow, yeah. It gets our imagine that isn’t going right. And there’s always someone you know, is a very disinterested, you know, teenager or young adult standing behind the counter on, what do you want? Right. And immediately, you feel you feel deflated? Or Huh, you know, because their attitude influences your attitude. If they’re upbeat and happy. We got oh, well, I wasn’t expecting that you haven’t a great day. So that sort of thing, right? But if they’re down, if they’re already down, you feel down, right? But you’ve also got the you’ve also got this subtle barrier between you because immediately you’ve got this big glass counter between you and the shop assistant. Now imagine for example, if that shoppers system was to come around the counter and be on the same side as you Okay, now the important phrase, there is the same side. We feel like we’re on the same side, soul mate sales guy. Dave was on the same side as us. Yeah, it wasn’t the other way. He was standing next to us.
Samantha Riley 14:32
Having a conversation
Tim Hyde 14:34
having a conversation say What are you trying to do? Tell me about your house? Who lives there? Once you find this one, imagine the same context and that Deli. Hey, look, I can see you’re looking for something.
Samantha Riley 14:45
Yeah, what’s the event?
Tim Hyde 14:48
What’s the event is this what’s the occasion? Just something
Samantha Riley 14:50
for you know, is it around the pool on the weekend? Is it a dinner party? What else you serving and then all of a sudden, if that person And he’s using their expertise to help you, they’re going to be greatly influencing you, if you don’t know how to make that decision.
Tim Hyde 15:06
That’s right. Okay. And so I imagine also, if you’re standing in front of the meat section, they don’t start talking about cheese. They talk about the smoked meats and different stuff, while you’re in front of the cheese section, say, Well, I eat because you think of cheese for before dinner or after dinner. When have you tried this one? Let’s try this one. Ah, you know, it goes really well with that. Okay, and you’ll be influenced in that context by the decisions we make by someone sort of helping you arrive at the right decision. And if we think about this, with our prospects, what is it that we can do as business owners? To make us, as I said, my client now our prospect, feel, you know, feel seen, feel heard, feel understood, feel valued, in what it is we do. And it could be something as simple as making sure that we capture their name as part of our opt in form, and then using the name in the email that says, Hey, Sam, you know, here’s the resource that you that you requested. I’ve written this thing for you. And immediately, as opposed to, you know, dear prospect, here is the resource.
Samantha Riley 16:13
Do you do your first name,
Tim Hyde 16:15
your first name?
Samantha Riley 16:16
I’m sure we’ve all had one of those.
Tim Hyde 16:19
Dear first name, right, yeah, immediately makes us a little bit more real, a bit more connected than we would otherwise be if we didn’t do that. Let’s talk about
Samantha Riley 16:31
some other ways, because we’ve talked about some situations that don’t necessarily relate directly to us as coaches and service providers, as well, let’s, I’ll put this in air quotes, as we’re prospecting as we’re, you know, engaging with our audience. One of the things is to ask their names, but there’s, there’s other things that we can use as well, for example, asking people, great, many people, so if someone opts in, I’ll go one step back. If someone opts in, for your free resource, maybe you could say, hey, look, many people that we work with are in one of three places, tell me which place you’re in right now. And having an ABC option, that straightaway you can use number one, to segment your list, which means that you’re delivering the information in your nurture sequence that’s relevant to where they’re at. But it also means that you can deliver more of the right information at that time.
Tim Hyde 17:32
Yeah, absolutely. Right. And you’ve picked up a thing that I share with you, as well, just before we went to here, was actually passing the information from the opt in form into a quiz diagnostic. That’s on the landing page that says, Thanks, Sam, for for downloading, just curious, you know, which of these three things was the reason you were interested in ABC, and you can then take that information, and then again, feed it back into the next question. So again, we’re really starting to personalize it in the same way that if you were to meet someone, one to one, the first time, you would say, Hey, Sam, you know, I’d love that color on you. You know, where did you get it? Oh, I got it from, you know, the Kubota you got it from I don’t know what’s shops you’ve shot. David Jones, where do you shop?
Samantha Riley 18:25
Oh, my goodness, I shopped wherever I can find something that I like I shop there.
Tim Hyde 18:30
I got it this store, right. And I go, Oh, my God, I love this stuff. Right. So immediately, you’re starting to empathize with the person who’s got something right. But you’re commenting, you’re making comments. And I guess building that relationship, right up front. Yeah, totally, by being personal with them, and making them feel special. I think that’s a key thing. If we can’t make our prospects feel special, they’re not going to get closer and more intimate with us, which is what we need. The closer we get to our sales process.
Samantha Riley 19:01
There’s something I want to mention here. And I meant to sort of bring it in, as you were telling your story of your vacuum cleaner shopping experience on the week, on the weekend. And that was going back to something that I said very early in the episode, which was we think a lot of influence is being manipulative. And I think it’s very important to mention this, again, that even though we’re helping our, our prospects to, to feel seen, heard, valued and understood, we’re not using this information to be manipulative. We’re not using this information to herd them or force them into doing something that they potentially don’t want. We’re using this information for good. And I really wanted to mention that because when we’re always thinking from a place of service, it will be a lot easier to get this right in a way that works and feels authentic and genuine for you.
Tim Hyde 19:59
Yeah, I think it comes back to really understanding who is it that you can best serve? You know, and that necessarily isn’t everybody. One of the ads that Facebook used to run in advertising on Facebook, when they started to push that in a big way, in the early teens around 2010 2011, was they said, there were a billion people on Facebook and they could all be your customers. Right? Which is they could be they could be they could, they could, but unlikely. Interesting choice of words, right? But it’s unlikely and we don’t want them to be we really want to make sure that we attract the people who we can, we can best serve, you know, we know that they’re gonna get really good value from us. Not the ones that ultimately you get cringe when they pick up the phone and this person again,
Samantha Riley 20:51
yeah, exactly,
Tim Hyde 20:55
no, and in some ways, we want to actually influence people away from us. So I am not the right fit for you. And that’s okay.
Samantha Riley 21:01
Totally. Not only is it okay, but it’s much better for everyone. It’s much better for you not attracting people that are not what we call behind the scenes with the work I do with my clients. We call them Bollinger clients. Some people are Bollinger clients. So Bollinger is a brand of champagne. Yes. So we talk about Bollinger clients and be your clients. And we want to attract our Bollinger clients.
Tim Hyde 21:27
Now, that’s not to say anything’s wrong with BIA, if you don’t like it.
Samantha Riley 21:31
There’s nothing wrong with beer clients. There’s not at all, but I think it’s,
Tim Hyde 21:35
there’s nothing wrong with beer, there’s
Samantha Riley 21:36
no, there’s I’ll take a barley over a beer any day. Anyway, we’ve totally gone off. So, you know, hopefully, we’ve given you some things to think about, on how you can be more deliberate with your influence in regarding to building your audience and attracting the prospects that are just right for you. I know next week, we’re going to take this conversation even further and start talking about how we can use this influence with our clients and also influence partnerships also.
Tim Hyde 22:12
Absolutely. I think we might even add in how can you influence your team?
Samantha Riley 22:16
Yeah. And we actually you did mention it at the start of the episode was oh, nice one. Nice one. We didn’t have that on our list about added it already. Any parting thoughts? Tim?
Tim Hyde 22:25
I think this is, again, it’s just being deliberate. If we’re not deliberately, we’ll just find ourselves a place where we don’t want to go. And I would encourage you to to look at 2023. I know you’ve got your theme, Sam, my theme is deliberate. But really looking at how can we deliberately go where we want to go with the people we want to go with? And if we not doing that, we’re not necessarily going to be doing everything. And so just come back to being more deliberate about what am I doing? What is the outcome I expect from that? And, you know, who do I want to have in my world?
Samantha Riley 23:05
I think my takeaway is that a lot of people think about as an influencer, or is it influencing about constantly growing their audience. And whilst we definitely do need to be constantly building our audience, I think we also need to focus in on who can we influence it’s already in our audience, and how can we make the people or makers not the right word? How can we influence the people that are currently already in our network to feel more seen, heard, valued and understood? Because it’s, you know, as the world becomes more connected, we can feel more disconnected, and people really want to be seen and heard. So how can you create more influence in your world? Hopefully, we’ve given you some things to think about. Tim, thank you for chatting with me about this topic. I think it’s been fabulous. Like this one, Sam. Mito, thanks for listening. We will see you in the next episode. Ciao for now.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Influence By Design podcast. If you want more head over to influencebydesignpodcast.com for the show notes and links to today’s gifts and sponsors. And if you’re looking to connect with other experts who are growing and scaling their business to join us in the coaches, thought leaders, and changemakers community on Facebook, the links are waiting for you over at influencebydesignpodcast.com
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