3 Proven Strategies to Influence Anyone: Absorb These into Your Mindset
- Jay Ashcroft
- Jul 6
- 5 min read
Regardless of what you wish to accomplish in your lifetime, it will undoubtedly involve other people. This means that you’ll need to be able to influence their decisions, their behaviours, and ultimately their opinion of how you carry yourself.
Because you’ll be influencing their opinion of how you carry yourself, it’s important to note from the onslaught that there is a sizeable difference between influencing and/or manipulating someone.
Think of a social media influencer. People who enjoy watching social media influencers look up to them. They are people to embody and to replicate regarding their own approach to life. So - don’t get your wires crossed.
Influence = good. Manipulation = bad.
In knowing this, how can you ethically win over the people who will essentially present you with or take away every opportunity you’ll ever experience?
We’ll start with what we can learn from Chris Voss. Chris is an ex FBI negotiator and has a business called the Black Swan Group. He also wrote a book called Never Split The Difference.
Chris Voss teaches two main methods of a) disarming people or b) influencing positive action in the direction he’s wanting the conversation to go.
The first strategy we can employ is using the late night DJ voice - meaning, keep your tone low and comforting. Make it quiet and approachable yet textured and energizing.
When influencing someone’s behaviour, you want the decision to come from them, not from you telling them what you want them to do. So another strategy Chris Voss employs is to continue to drive the conversation back to them. He does this by repeating the last 2 or 3 words they say in a statement with a question inflection at the end of it.
So, for example - if you own a service business, you’re attempting to close a client and they say “I just don’t think I’m ready.” You will respond with “you just don’t think you’re ready?”
They will instantly begin to explain their view point, which will allow you to peel back the complexities of their reasoning - getting the answers you need so you can address their hesitation effectively and move forward together.
Remember my first point though - you are not manipulating them. A scammer or a pyramid scheme will manipulate anyone who will listen into giving money to the cause. This is different, because you are a good person - and you want to help.
In regards to being there to help and putting others first, we’ll now look to Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. The thesis of this book is that by being genuinely interested in others and putting their needs first, you can get whatever you want in a social or business interaction.
There are a number of key points to remember when learning from Dale Carnegie, so let’s address a couple of the most profound ones. First and foremost, be complimentary - never criticize. Let’s look at that same instance with the service business from earlier.
The potential client says “I just don’t think I’m ready.” And you want to say “well, that makes sense. You are the nervous and pessimistic type. You don’t even deserve to work with me anyways.”
But, instead you say “oh come on, that’s not true. You’re in a really good position to invest into yourself today, and you and I both know that you’ve got the right mindset to make this work.”
This rule also goes for people’s actions, in a more broad sense. If you’re regularly collaborating with someone and they make a mistake, don’t criticize. They will hold it against you and their performance will drop. Instead, make it your problem and do what you can to resonate with their mistake - chances are, you’ve made the same one.
A second notion of Dale’s that you can keep top of mind is to prioritize relationships. Again, let’s look at this through the lens of the entrepreneur (however, this can be applied to personal relationships as well).
If you have a client that you provide services for, and they pay you every month to perform the agreed upon tasks - make it a top priority to just call and say hey. It really is as simple as that.
Of course, you can get more nuanced and give them Christmas gifts, invite them out for dinner or go see a concert together - but the first step is simply giving them a call out of the blue, for no other reason than to just check in.
When you treat a client like a person and not a number, it naturally skews your influence over them because when the time does come to make a difficult decision, they appreciate and respect you enough to lean more towards your ideal outcome - especially because they trust that you have their best interests at heart.
The last strategy you can use to influence people is to simply keep your own mind and energy in check. There are a number of ways that you can do this, and it will be different for everyone - but this notion can be distilled down to putting on your own oxygen mask first.
Waking up at 5:00am 5 days a week is a great start when it comes to taking care of yourself. This is a magical hour that many yogis prioritize embracing. Everything is quiet, everything is still. No phone notifications, no one else in the house is up.
You can pray, meditate, read, write, exercise - you do you.
When you operate like this, it gives you more time throughout your day to have the patience required to practice these strategies I’ve shared here. Something strange happens when you intentionally get out of bed before the sun comes up.
It’s not about the literal hour you gain in the morning (assuming you usually wake up at 6:00). It’s about the aftereffects of your perception of the passage of time. Because you started your day intentionally, intentionality moves with you throughout your activities and tasks.
If you want to accomplish things in life, you’ll need to understand how to influence people - they will need to be persuaded. To persuade people effectively, it needs to come from a place of self love, and a genuine longing to help others where you can.
Prioritize remaining cognizant of the difference between influence and manipulation. You are gently nudging individuals in the right direction because it’s what’s best for them, for you - and for the world as a whole.
All The Best,
Jay Ashcroft
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