Anyone Can Influence

In business we often make reference to “tops-down” and “bottoms-up” when it comes to influencing and enabling change.  I am a firm believer that you can have influence no matter your seat in an organization.

Let’s explore one solid tactical approach to make your influence stronger and longer lasting.

It’s the concept of shopping buy-in vs selling buy-in.

In a traditional sense, people will seek buy-in from their stakeholders and they’ll do it this way:

Hey stakeholder, I’d love to get your buy-in on rolling out a new process related to how we’re identifying and targeting our marketing to our customers.

The person then proceeds to share their proposal.

What happens next?  We then go on the defensive.  We are back on our heels and we are fielding questions and pushback.

With this traditional approach, we present, we defend, and we are selling our idea.  Turns out, most people don’t like to be sold.

But have no fear, there’s a more effective approach that can secure deeper buy-in.  And this is what I call shopping buy-in. It goes like this:

Hey stakeholder, we’re having a challenge with our marketing positioning and think it’s partially related to who we are identifying and targeting.

I’ve put together an idea for how to solve for it and I’d love for you to poke holes in it.

What happens next?  A collaboration session ensues.  By virtue of presenting it as “here’s the problem at hand,” then sharing “here’s how I think we can solve it,” and following it with, “what gaps/pitfalls do you see,” you are including them in the process.  This is shopping buy-in.

You’re shopping an idea.  You’re including your audience.  As a result, they are more invested because they feel as though they’ve been part of the process.

Share this notion with your team members and they’ll feel greater empowerment to influence the team and the organization and you’ll have given them a powerful development tool they can use for their career.