Everybody Sells: A New Series on Personal Influence

All business comes down to sales and influence. Whether you’re selling a product, pitching a new idea, or trying to convince an interviewer that you would be a valuable addition to their team, your ultimate goal is to persuade the other party to buy into what you’re saying. And, as Peter Drucker once said, “Nothing happens until somebody sells something.” So, as a business professional, how can you make yourself more persuasive?

In 2019, I will be writing a series of blog posts exploring the concept of personal influence through a social psychological lens. My goal for this blog series is to publish a new post each month, each focused on answering a particular question about how individuals can become more persuasive in a professional setting. These questions will include, but are not limited to:

• How can I make more persuasive presentations?
• What does my body language communicate?
• How does my environment impact my persuasiveness?
• What’s the most effective way to frame a request?
• What’s more impactful, the first impression or the last one?

In every interaction, social psychological principles are at work, whether we recognize them or not. By learning about those principles, you can make them work to your advantage and give yourself a competitive edge. In this blog series, I will draw upon modern research findings on personal influence to help you enrich your understanding of how you can communicate your ideas more effectively and present yourself more persuasively.

Although the focus of this series will be personal influence in a business setting with a specific focus on marketing communications, the concepts discussed are applicable to a wide range of fields. After all, everyone is trying to sell something, no matter what their business is.

Jack Sullivan is guest blogger for LOOMIS, the country’s leading challenger brand advertising agency and a leading advertising agency in Dallas. For more about challenger branding, advertising and marketing, leadership, culture and other things that will drive your success, visit our blog BARK! The Voice of the Underdog and catch up on any of our more than 300 posts.

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