Brain in Business

At the recent Brain friendly learning group meeting I posed this question at one of the clinic sessions. I have been invited to run a 60-90 minute session at an HR teams quarterly meeting. The brief I got was very general so I thought I'd ask the group.

My initial thoughts were around either Influencing with integrity, Building a "rewards Team" group metaphor or an Introduction to NLP.

In the BFLG clinic session the topics suggested tended to focus in on influencing and selling for HR professionals. Group feedback was that HR professionals need to get commitment rather than compliance from their internal clients and so being better salespeople would be very relevant. I'd be interested to hear what the wider community think.

Hi Gavin,
Thanks for posting and using the forum.
I wasn't involved in your particular discussion on Friday but 'sales skills' makes sense - after all we're all trying to sell something to someone.
Tina Harris suggested to me the other day that most of what we deliver is really to do with influencing whether it's communication skills, writing skills, negotiation, networking or assertiveness - it's all about how you influence someone else using your own behaviour.

What do you see as the difference between influencing and selling?

Regards,
Stella

Gavin - having run several influencing workshops for HR professionals, the influencing with integrity idea would certainly get my vote. Within that time you could help them understand their own style, and what works/doesn't work with particular styles / situations. Helping participants understand the difference between positional & organisational power has always been an interesting session. - Ann

Thanks Stella
Your question as to what is the difference between selling and influencing is a great one. To me the difference is a question of perception. Most people tend to associate "selling" with the exchange of a product or service for money. As such they often seem to have a lot of negative baggage linked to this i.e. selling = manipulation, high pressure, con men etc.

I have a wider definition of selling that encompasses the communication of information or ideas in such a way that other people consider and hopefully adopt some or all of those ideas.