5 Secrets to Being a "Go-Giver" Influencer with Bob Burg
Are you ready to expand your influence and make an impact? By shifting your focus from taking to giving, you can make a positive impact in all areas of your life. In this episode, you learn the 5 secrets to being a "Go-Giver" Influencer.
In This Episode, You Will Learn About:
Influencers and their impact
Influence vs. manipulation
5 Secrets of genuine influence
FREE Career Accelerator Workbook: https://bit.ly/3xXy8U
FREE Business Building Workbook: https://bit.ly/3xXy8U
Want to work with Danielle? Schedule your call today: https://bit.ly/3OnuLLO
Let's Connect!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MsDanielleCobo
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedaniellecobo/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DanielleCobo
Website: www.DanielleCobo.com
Book Recommendations: https://www.amazon.com/shop/influencer-de49157c/list/2W8I8NWS6N4C
About our guest:
For over 30 years Bob Burg has been successfully showing entrepreneurs, leaders, and sales professionals how to communicate their value and accelerate their business growth.
Although for years he was best known for his sales classic, Endless Referrals, it’s his business parable, The Go-Giver, coauthored with John David Mann that has created a worldwide movement.
While part of a four-book series, The Go-Giver itself has sold more than one million copies and been translated into 30 languages. It was rated #10 on Inc. Magazine’s list of The Most Motivational Books Ever Written and was on HubSpot’s 20 Most Highly Rated Sales Books of All Time.
Bob is the founder of The Go-Giver Community Network, the first-of-its-kind online business community created by and for Go-Givers.
He is an advocate, supporter, and defender of the Free Enterprise system, believing that the amount of money one makes is directly proportional to how many people they serve.
He is also an unapologetic animal fanatic and served on the Board of Directors of Furry Friends Adoption & Clinic in his town of Jupiter, Florida.
Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts
"Danielle is so Uplifting." <-- If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing my show! This helps me support more women -- just like you -- accelerate their careers. Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dream-job-with-danielle-cobo/id1571797640
Also, if you haven’t done so already, follow the podcast. I’m adding a bunch of special release episodes and, if you’re not following, there’s a chance you may miss out. Follow now!
How Leaders Influence People?
In one of your books we talk about the go-giver of influence, what does it mean to be an influencer? What does it mean to be an influential person?
Great influencers attract people first to themselves and only then to their ideas. And they do this again, not through push, which is compliance, manipulation, and thread. But no, they do it through earning a commitment from people, that's pull.
Now how do they do that? Well, the great influencer, create pull by placing their focus in the right direction, and that is outwards. See, we need to be inwardly motivated, but outwardly focused. We make it all about the other person. You know, Dale Carnegie and his classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. What I believe was his underlying premise was where he wrote, ultimately people do things for their reasons, not our reasons. That's a very basic law of human nature, right? In the same way, the great leader, and the great influencer, constantly asked themselves questions such as:
What do I want this other person to do?
How does it align with their goals? How does it align with what they need, what they want, and what they desire?
How does it align with their values?
What problems of theirs am I helping them to solve? How am I bringing them closer to happiness?
And when we ask ourselves these questions thoughtfully, intelligently, genuinely, authentically, not as a way to manipulate another human being into doing our will, but as a way of building everyone in the process.
We've come a whole lot closer to earning that person's commitment as opposed to, again, depending on some type of compliance. I love one of my great leadership mentors, her name is Dhi Scuba, she speaks on leadership and team building to companies all over the world. She does mentor companies all over, and I love that she says, "When it comes to leadership when it comes to influencing, compliance will never take you where commitment can go."
I have had leaders who have ruled by compliance and have not been effective in leadership. And then I've had leaders who have always thought, how can I support you? And the difference between the two is polarizing. When I think of what is a great leader, it has nothing to do with compliance or of are we checking the boxes and something that resonated about you.
What you said, and I see this in sales and in leadership and the approach to when we're in sales, it's: I need to hit my quota. I need people to buy, I need people to do this. And I see this in leadership. I need my team to hit their number. I need them to go out and hit in, in sales, at least go make those cold calls.
But what I'm hearing you say is, how can I support them? What are their goals? And whether that's in sales or in leadership, it's about the other person.
You bring up such a wonderful point and it just reminds me of when I speak at sales conferences and, you and I are both speakers, so we're both out there in front of audiences and, and one of the first things I'll say is nobody's gonna buy from you because you have a quota to meet. They're not gonna buy from you because you need the sale or need the money. And actually, they're not even gonna buy from you just because you're a really nice person. They're gonna buy from you because they believe that ultimately they will be better off by doing so, than by not doing so. Basically, the free market economy in which we operate, and when I say free market, I simply mean no one's forced to do business with anyone else. People do so of their own volition. That's the only reason why anyone should buy from you or from me or from anyone else because they believe they're going to benefit. And as you said, it's the same with leadership.
Now, will someone do what you tell them when ruling by compliance? Sure, because they want to keep their job, they don't want to get in trouble, they want to hopefully get a raise or whatever. So sure, but it is at best, it's just unsustainable. At worst, they're gonna try to sabotage the process. Somehow, some way, not even consciously necessarily, but unconsciously. No, there's no question that there's nothing soft or anything else about placing that other person's interest first. It's good business and it's good leadership, it works.
It's that question of, instead of saying, I need you to do X, Y, Z, it looks like if you were to do X, Y, Z, this is how it's going to help you achieve your goals. That's a great, great way, of framing it.
Influence vs. Manipulation
Now, influence can sometimes be perceived by people as manipulation. How do you define the difference between manipulation and influence?
Well, I would say, that when it comes to influence, which in and of itself is neither good nor bad, it's simply moving another person to a certain decision or action. It can take place in one of two forms. One could be manipulation, the other would be persuasion. Persuasion is the positive aspect and manipulation is the negative aspect. When you think about it, great persuaders and great manipulators, both understand human interaction. They understand human nature. They understand what moves people. In a sense, you could say that persuasion and manipulation are cousins, but one is the good cousin, persuasion, and one is the evil cousin, manipulation.
Dr. Paul W. Sweats in a great book written back in 1987, I think it was called, "The Art of Talking," so that people will listen though it was much more about listening than it was about talking. But that was just the title. He described manipulation in a great way, better than I ever had. He said manipulation aims at control, not cooperation. It does not consider the good of the other party. It results in a win-lose situation. The persuader on the other hand, it's just the opposite. They look at the other person as a self-responsible or response-able individual. And they work in terms of helping that person get what they want. With a manipulator, it's not necessarily that they want to harm you, it's just that, if that's what it takes to get their way, they will. With a persuader, that can never happen. With a persuader, they need to know that not only was it also beneficial to you as it is to them, it's also beneficial to you, but that you feel good, genuinely good about it as well.
The Five Secrets of Genuine Influence
It's all about the other person. All about the other person supporting them. In your book, you talk about the five secrets of genuine influence. What are those five secrets?
First Secret: Master Your Emotions
The first one is to master your emotions. This is really where it all begins. There's a saying from the stages, I mean, who is a mighty person? And it's that one, that man or a woman, who can control their own emotions and make of an enemy or of a potential enemy, a friend. This is really where it all begins, because when you think about it, it's only when we're in control of ourselves and our own emotions, that we're even in a position to take a potentially negative situation or person and turn it into a win for everyone involved.
And we all know, we all respect that person who no matter what's happening around them, the chaos around them, they just are able to just keep their calm and they're able to respond rather than react. And they're able to take that negative situation and really turn it into something positive. And we don't feel good about ourselves when we're able to do it. Yet, how often do we, based on what someone else says or does, do we allow ourselves to become hurt, frustrated, anxious, victimized, or angry? And we say or do that very thing that not only is not productive, but it's absolutely counterproductive to attaining the results we want.
If we ask ourselves the question, well, why do we do that? The reason is cause we're human and human beings are emotional creatures. It's simply how we're built. Now we'd like to think we're logical, and to a certain extent, of course, we are. But now we're, we're pretty emotion driven. As human beings, we make very big decisions based on emotion. And we back up those emotional decisions with logic. You know that again, you're a say you're a sales champion. That's just basic human nature. Now, so we back up those decisions with logic. We rationalize, and you take the word to rationalize, it simply means we tell to break the word up into it, which means we tell ourselves rational lies. We do this to justify that decision we made that we know was really not the right one or acting in a certain way or say that certain thing that we know was not us at our best, and was not productive.
Now, please understand that we're not in any way suggesting that you deny or forego your emotions, not at all. First of all, it's contrary to human nature. It's not sustainable, but there's also no reason to do so. Emotions are a wonderful part of life, they bring us joy. By all means, have your emotions. Just make sure you are the master of your emotion. As opposed to your emotions being the master of you, or again, to quote me, one of my great mentors, Dody Scacchi, who I love how she says, take your emotions along for the ride but make sure you are driving the car.
Well, I had my car broken into the other day and my immediate reaction, was to get frustrated and angry. But then I realized, as you're saying, we have control over our emotions and it's how we approach, how we react to things in events like this, that determines almost how I could have determined the rest of my day. I could have taken it and I could have been angry and resentful and spent the whole entire day frustrated, or it was okay, I made a mistake. I had a lapse in judgment. I forgot to lock my car. I had my emergency cash stolen my 40 bucks and my emergency gas. But in the grand scheme of things, it was a lesson learned. Make sure I double-check my car. I'm not gonna let somebody else's poor decisions dictate how I'm going to spend the rest of my day. What I'm hearing you say is, to put words to your emotions.
I heard Brene Brown actually say that, when you're able to understand about 30 different words of emotions, it helps us process it to a deeper level. And when we're able to process it, we can react and approach different situations better.
It really comes down to, it's not that it's not yucky that it happened to you, of course, it is. No one's saying, "Deny your emotions," or, so, "Oh, this is great." No, it stinks. Who wants that to happen? But you will learn from it. Who knows If it's keeping you from making a huge mistake a year from now, or maybe there's nothing other than just learning to be more careful, whatever. But the great thing is you did not allow it to ruin your sense of happiness, and that's the key. You live the rest of your day in a way that was conscious, that thinking, that was joyous. That's absolutely key. Controlling our emotions when we deal with others. Because others can be so difficult to deal with. And so when we can control our emotions, that's really, that inner strength that is so very important.
Second Secret: Understand the Clash of Belief Systems
The next step or secret as we say, but it's really not a secret, is to step into the other person's shoes or what we call to understand the clash of belief systems. We've all heard step into the other person's shoes and it sounds very trite. And it sounds kind of easy, just step into the other person's shoes. But then you think about it, maybe it's not so easy because, well, most of us have different size feet, and it's not. We literally can't step into that other person's shoes. We figuratively can't step into their minds because we're not them. And that's where the clash of belief systems comes in.
As human beings, we all see the world through our own particular prism. But in this case a prism-our own basic way of seeing the world, our belief systems. These belief systems are pretty much given to us. They're handed to us right before we're able to logically check any premises and ask why we're accepting these. It's a combination of upbringing, environments, schooling, news media, television shows, movies, popular culture, and cultural morals. It's everything that comes into our lives, but our belief systems are pretty much set in stone by the time we're a little more than toddlers. And after that, everything that comes in sort of adds to that belief system.
Most people, most of us, live our lives through what I call an unconscious operating system-believing that we're making choices out of free will when really we're operating within a real matrix if you will if you remember the first movie with Cat Reeves. It does not machine, it's the beliefs that we've been handed. But here's the thing, everybody else has their own belief system, as human beings, though, we assume that other people see the world basically the same way we do, which makes intuitive sense. How could it be anything different? It's how we see the world would, who wouldn't see it that way? Well, they don't because they're them and we're us.
The only way and most conflict is the result of two people coming at a situation thinking they're looking at it from the same angle when they're really not. The only way we can step into their shoes is by asking questions and then listening. Listening not to answer, as most people do. That's the surface. Listening. Just listening with our ears, but listening with our eyes, listening with our posture, with our body, with the back of our neck as, as my co-author, John David Mancos. And I love that it's putting your whole essence into listening to that person. And then from there, that's how we get to understand someone. That's how we put them in our church. See, it's not that we necessarily now understand their belief system, that person probably doesn't even understand their belief system. It's totally unconscious. But now, we know kind of where they're coming from, and we're in a much better position to serve them.
The biggest mistake most sales people make is thinking that what we find of value is what our prospective customers would find valuable. Because we see, that's why you see in real estate when someone chose home and they say, they're showing the live day own. Oh, you know what I love most about this living room? Well, who cares? It's what the other person sees in the living room. When I say that real estate conferences, they always laugh because that's such a thing that we just assume that what we value other people are gonna value and it's just not true. They have their belief systems, we have ours. Stepping into the other person's shoes is very important.
Third Secret: Setting the Proper Frame
The third secret, with the air quotes around a secret, is to understand to set the proper frame. This is so important that when you do this, you're 90% of the way toward the outcome that you desire. What do we mean by frame? Well, a frame is a foundation from which everything else precedes.
Let me give you an example, if I may. This was years ago this happened, but still probably one of my favorite stories. I was at a Dunkin Donuts restaurant and there was a little toddler, a little boy, probably two, or three years old who was running around the restaurant when his parents called him back over to their table, starts to run over, and he takes a spill on the floor, he slips. Now, he didn't hurt himself, but you could tell he was kind of stunned. This was not in his realm of experience, and he really didn't know what this meant. So what's the first thing he did? He looked at his parents to get their interpretation of the event. What happened? He wants to know, okay, what's next? And now I truly believe that had the parents upset and panicky and, "Oh no, my poor baby. Are you okay?" He'd have started crying, but what they did is they just handled it so beautifully. They, of course, walked over quickly, but they were calm and stringing and they had smiles on their faces and they looked at them and they applauded and they said, "Oh, how fun. What a good trick." And so what did the little boy do? He laughed, he had fun with it now, but what the parents did is they set a productive frame, from which he could operate. Instead of remedially having to dry his tears and tell him why everything is really okay, no, they created the frame that it was okay.
Now, let's take a sales situation where you know someone, you're sitting down with someone, and there's no real relationship built yet. They don't really know, like, and trust you yet, and they kind of right away, come over with some defensiveness. You know, I'm not gonna be buying anything now, and don't try to sell it to me, well, that's an adversarial frame. And if we buy into that, what do we do? We become defensive. We try to defend ourselves. We tell them why, we know what they're doing, and so forth. And of course, that's a push, and no one's gonna win. Nothing good is gonna happen out of this. But they've already set a frame-a negative frame, we can't buy into that. What we need to do is reset the frame. Instead of reacting to that, you simply respond and you take a breath and you say, "Well, you know, Mr. Davis or Ms. Jones, while I certainly don't know if, while I've been honored to help many people through this X, Y, Z widget service of what have you, whether or not this is the right fit for you, we simply can't know without exploring deeper and determining whether it's gonna fit your needs. So, please know our conversation is for both of us to discover that, and if this is a match, great. If not, that's okay too." Now what we've done is we've totally repositioned this from an adversarial relationship to an alliance. One of two allies simply looking out for what's best for them.
And that is probably where I got the question after reading your book when I first got into sales, I would always start the meeting and this when I was in capital equipment sales, thank you for your time, and today, I'm gonna ask you some questions and if this is a good fit, then great. If it's not, then I appreciate your time. But just by asking that question right off the bat, set the tone where it's: I'm not here to sell you something. It's more along the lines of if this is a good fit for you.
It's a great frame you set and, what we call that the out or the back door. And this is so very powerful one, setting a frame. An out or a back door is simply an emotional escape. People want to feel as though they have autonomy-they are in control of themselves, of their situation, of their decisions. When we give someone the out and let them know right up front that ultimately it is up to them. They feel very comfortable. They feel comfortable with you.
This is why I say the bigger the out or back door, you give someone to take the less they'll feel the need to take. You're not giving them the out or backdoor in order that they do take it. You're giving it to them in order that they feel comfortable enough to know they could, thus they don't feel they have to.
And of course, if it's not the right thing for them, they should walk away and you wouldn't want them to buy if it wasn't right for them. But the chances are that you give them that outer back door and you are really nine steps ahead of the game in a 10-step game because they feel comfortable, they feel relaxed, and they know you have their well-being at heart.
And there have been times when maybe the equipment that I was meeting with them, wasn't a good fit. But then also the follow up to that was, it sounds like this may not be a good fit for you. However, do you know, maybe two to three physicians who it might be a good fit? And it did always lend to opportunities or referrals, and other business. And then there's also been times where maybe it wasn't a good fit for, right then and there. Then a couple of years down the road, they ended up bringing in the equipment, when it became that relationship.
It's obvious, I mean, I can see why you were a champion salesperson. People try to make it so hard and it really doesn't need to be. Treat people with respect, and discovered what it is they need, want, or desire. It's really amazing how you'll develop that no, like, and trust relationship with someone.
Fourth Secret: Communicate with Tact and Empathy
Number four is to communicate with tact and empathy. My dad always defined tact as the language of strength, and I always loved that. It sort of goes back to controlling and mastering our emotions.
The easiest thing to do is to just let someone have it, and that's not a product. It takes strength to be able to say, "Okay, how is what I'm about to say going to affect that person?" Tact is communicating an idea to someone that they normally would not be open or receptive to, but doing it in such a way that rather than they're being defensive, they're open to your idea.
Empathy is sort of the cousin of tact. The definition of empathy is the identification with or vicarious experiencing of another person's feelings. But again, just like stepping into another person's shoes, we can't necessarily know how that person feels, we're not them. What we can do is we can communicate, through what we say, how we say it, sure, but basically how we show up. We communicate that, we might not understand how they feel, but we understand they're feeling something and that this something is distressful to them, and that we're there to help them work through it. Tact and empathy are absolutely powerful elements of, of influence and persuasion.
Fifth Secret: To Let Go of Having to Be Right
Secret number five is to let go of having to be right. This is so counterintuitive, and it doesn't mean we don't want to be right, of course, we do. It doesn't mean we're not gonna prepare to be right, of course, we are. Absolutely. It means that we're going to lose our emotional attachment to having to be right, or to be a hundred percent right, or to not be open to learning new information that we may not have considered.
One of the keys and one of the great reasons for doing this is that when we let go of having to be right, we go into learner's mode. This means we are able, to take in more information, which is gonna make us write more often. This, as opposed to the person whose attitude of life is sort of, well, my mind is already made up, don't confuse me with the facts. That person can never know anything more than they currently do know. And with these types of people, much of what they're certain they do know really isn't true. That's the first part.
But the other thing is when you are with a person who, there's a disagreement and you let go of having to be right, that person's gonna catch onto that and they're gonna understand that you're not just looking to be right. You're not just looking to be right by making them wrong, but instead, you are looking for the truth, wherever that may lead. And when that's the case, that's when that person drops their defensiveness and they're much more likely to go into that same exact mode. Now, you've got a situation where two people are actively seeking the truth.
We probably see that most common in politics when people are arguing about politics, they're getting it coming in from a position of trying to convince the other person while they're right. But what I'm hearing you say is we all come from a different background, a different experience, and so we're coming from a place of different perceptions of things and what may be right to somebody may not be right to the other person based off of our backgrounds. Seeking to understand protest conversations from a learner.
It starts there: if you're not willing to learn, this is where stepping into that other person's shoes comes in. If you are not willing to learn why they think what they think, there's no way you can ever be persuasive. Because your argument's coming from a totally different place than theirs. It doesn't work that way.
One of the things I say about the discourse in politics, which is so unfortunate, is that it used to be: I'm right, you are wrong. That's not great, but it's workable because you'll try to at least engage with someone who you believe is wrong. Now, it's gone from I'm right, you are wrong to I'm right, you are evil. And this is when people don't talk, because why bother if the person's evil? There's no hope. This is why dialogue has totally shut down, other than the screaming and yelling from the two different sides, which is really a shame. I've seen some families that have yeah, broken apart, not speaking together, all because of these conflicts that they have of trying to convince the other person that they're right, and because they're not convincing them, then they start to put them in this like, well, you're evil, and that doesn't resolve conflict. It actually hurts relationships on a deep level.
