COVER FEATURE: Personal Clout

BY PETER V. HANDAL

Enroll others in your vision
Common principles, but not common practice
More about Peter Handal
What influencers do (that you can, too)

REALTOR® Magazine is pleased to present a special excellence and innovation series throughout 2005. This article is the third in the series . Put the power of Dale Carnegie’s message to work in your life and business.

Radiating Influence

It was Oprah Winfrey who first called former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani “America’s Mayor.” How apt that one of the nation’s most influential people would christen another. On Sept. 11, 2001, and in the difficult days that followed, Giuliani earned the title. The mayor—despite being opinionated, controversial, and a New Yorker—connected with a frightened citizenry, showing courage, compassion, and even optimism. He won the hearts of the nation and since then has enjoyed the credibility of a national leader. Today, he’s talked of as a potential presidential contender in 2008.

Oprah herself is almost a one-woman religion. Day after day, year after year, since 1986 when her talk show went national, Oprah has offered up stories of personal struggle—childhood abuse, relationship traumas, weight-loss victories and disappointments—to heal an appreciative nation. Collectively, we know her on a first-name basis—and the trust she inspires is remarkable. Her recommendations have spawned epic success for novelists, self-help gurus, and carmakers.

You might say Oprah and Rudy are spectacularly charismatic—but what is it that makes them so? Can their success at influencing others be duplicated by ordinary people?

Those questions are the cornerstone of Dale Carnegie’s enormously successful book on human relations, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Nearly seven decades since it was first published in 1936, the book remains a bestseller and has inspired thousands of other tomes about human nature and personal influence. Today Dale Carnegie Training helps companies around the world put Carnegie’s principles into action. The company provides leadership, sales, and management training to more than 400 of the Fortune 500 companies.

Knowing how to wield influence in a positive manner can make a difference in every arena of your life—whether you’re trying to effect change in your community, communicate with your teenage children, or grow your business. In his book, Carnegie demonstrated how great leaders, such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, used their influence to move the nation. Central to their power: their ability to connect with people on a human, not an abstract, level. Today, companies are actively exploiting that idea through “personal influence marketing” or “buzz marketing.”

Building influence starts with empathy—showing genuine interest in others’ needs, desires, and dreams. “In a classroom, teachers who are able to generate a sense of intimacy with their students—at an appropriate level—find that the students are more likely to listen, attend, and do homework,” says Steven Booth-Butterfield, Ed.D., president of Healthy Influence LLC and adjunct professor of communications studies with West Virginia University in Morgantown. “The same holds true in business and in other aspects of your life. As you develop open, trusting relationships, you have more success.”

One of our Dale Carnegie trainers, Bill Bertolet, received a call one day from a real estate salesperson who knew what Bertolet did for a living. The salesperson said, “I know you speak in front of groups. I belong to the National Association of the Remodeling Industry. Would it be a benefit for you to speak to such a group?” The answer was yes, of course.

Bertolet wasn’t in the market to buy or sell at the time. The salesperson knew his expertise and made the referral without expecting a return. He showed a genuine interest in Bertolet. The best part: Bertolet ultimately bought and sold through the salesperson and referred at least four other people.

This salesperson also demonstrated another key to building trust and rapport. He showed a willingness to learn about Bertolet. Influencers have an insatiable curiosity about what people do. When they meet people, they ask factual questions—Where do you work? Where did you grow up?—then segue to philosophical questions—Why did you get into that line of work? What were some of the obstacles you faced in getting where you are today? With answers to these questions, they know things about the person that not everyone does.

Asking questions isn’t enough, though. Influencers cultivate the power of listening. They take the information they learn and build it into later conversations. You have the opportunity to use the power of listening every day: Say you find out low maintenance is important to a prospect. As you’re showing property, point out special details of properties, underscoring that you remember this fact. “You’ll love this property’s ivy yard—no maintenance.” Or you remember that the business owner you’re working with wants to build brand identity. So you remind the person of that and emphasize an office listing’s great, memorable location. By referencing what people have told you, you make them feel important—and heard.

Enroll others in your vision
All these techniques will take you a long way toward achieving influence. But what if your goal is bigger—to move your community or an organization in a new direction? To effect broad change, you need to both understand people’s dreams and tie those dreams to clear objectives. When a company CEO says, “This is where we’re going, and these are the challenges,” the employees say, “What’s in it for me?” True leaders get people to enroll in their vision.

The chairman of a construction management and general contracting company wanted to further develop his executives’ skill set to take the company to the next level. That meant managers already working 60 hours a week would need to add training, such as earning MBAs, to their schedules.

The company’s chairman laid out a compelling vision of what the company would look like once the transformation was in place. He also painted a personal picture for them. During a managers meeting he said, “Imagine you’re at the office holiday party and your spouses and significant others are talking together about how proud they are of you, who’ve grown with the company as the company has grown, and how proud they are to tell others that their spouse works for this company.” He was able to show the managers that their hard work wasn’t just for the company but supported family goals. The chairman earned willing cooperation for his vision.

At the opposite end of the leadership spectrum is the command-and-control style. It may gain compliance but at a cost—there’s no commitment or loyalty from employees. People want job security, but a sense of personal achievement, as described in Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, is what leads to top-performing companies.

For your vision to take hold, you have to communicate it often. H. Lee Scott Jr., president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., has said you have to feel as if you’re communicating to the mass media. Influencers must repeat their message via numerous touch points. When Chrysler Corp. CEO Lee Iacocca galvanized his employees around a restructuring of the flagging automaker in the 1980s, he “worked relentlessly to keep key people in that network motivated,” says Harvard Business School Professor John P. Kotter in his book The Leadership Factor[ (Free Press, 1988). People in the organization received tons of communications—memos, success stories—to keep them fired up. Iacocca practically lived on television to drum up support among the American people and Congress for federal loans to bail out the company. By 1986 Chrysler had racked up billions in profits, reclaimed lost market share, and repaid $1.2 billion in government-backed loans.

If you’ve ever spearheaded something, you know that once you get people to buy into your vision, you have to follow through just as Iacocca did—keeping the vision alive through constant communication, living up to your commitments so that others feel compelled to live up to theirs, and making sure people know how important their contribution is to the vision. A thank-you is just part of it. When you’ve received a customer referral, for example, make your service special—but also let the person who made the referral know how much you’re enjoying working with his or her friends. It’s gratifying for people to hear how they’ve helped.

Common principles, but not common practice
Becoming influential starts with having a desire and need to improve. Identify your motivation: “I want to be top producer” or “If don’t get four more listings, I’m out of a job.” Then make bite-sized changes. Read biographies of great leaders to learn how they work through conflict. Practice—not on a prospect, but with a friend or coworker—to obtain reinforcement and feedback. Move on to medium-risk situations to build momentum and confidence. One day, these principles will become second nature. Seventy years after the publication of Carnegie’s book, you’ll see the essential truths of his teachings.

MORE ABOUT PETER HANDAL Previously Handal was CEO of a children’s apparel and accessories company and worked for Exxon Corp. He is a widely recognized expert on workplace and executive management issues. He holds a B.A. from Georgetown University and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Handal is president and CEO of Dale Carnegie & Associates, a training company with 200 offices in 65 countries.

What influencers do (that you can, too)
Show that you care. Smiling makes you approachable; using people’s name in conversation underscores your interest.

Solve problems. People are paid in proportion to the problems they solve. If you approach everything as a problem solver, you create loyalty, which builds value. And you create memorable wow experiences that people tell others about.

Make it easy for people to say yes. If you’re fund-raising for your pet charity, get potential contributors to say, “Yes, there’s a need,” “Yes, little steps can make a difference,” “Yes, I’ll come to a meeting to learn more.” When someone gives up a bunch of little yeses, the big yes—for money or time—is easy.

Ascribe a dollar value to people. Stew Leonard, the patriarch of the family-owned New England fresh foods store bearing his name, values new customers at $50,000. That’s roughly the revenue the person will generate for him over 10 years, the average time a customer patronizes the store. Fittingly, his employees treat customers according to their worth. If at the checkout counter a regular customer realizes he forgot his wallet, the clerk is empowered to give the customer a rain check. He’s a $50,000 customer after all!

There’s a parallel for your business. The average homeowner will buy and sell several times. Even if you’re not selling a $2 million home, you may be selling to a $2 million customer. That kind of thinking enables you to justify your energy and investment in the relationship. It worked for Leonard. His seven-employee company has grown to 2,000 in 30 years and brings in $300 million a year.

Appreciate your people before someone else does. That’s the advice of Lou Holtz, who coached Notre Dame to a national title in 1988. For example, remember an off-handed reference a prospect mentioned six months ago, and translate it into a gift or service that’s meaningful for that person.

Recognize the power of enthusiasm. Influencers have a passion for what they do. And it’s contagious. Of course, so is negativity, which can spread faster. Make sure your enthusiasm competes with negativity at an appropriate level. Dale Carnegie had one of the best definitions of enthusiasm: “It’s that ingredient of vitality with which, when mixed with a fervent belief in what you’re doing, will help to ensure the success of any project you undertake.”